Sibt e Hassan and its legacy

Sibt e Hassan and its legacy 

The News on Sunday published a special report 100 years with Sibte Hasan which is indeed a bold effort and we expect similar special reports on intellectuals like K K Aziz, Qazi Javed, Khilafa Abdul Hakim, Mubarak Ali, Bari Aleg, Ali Abbas Jalpuri , Aysha Jallal, M D Taseer etc in future. Largely these reports will address issue of Re-readings in Pakistan. We often make heroes or villains and in that black and white endure we often waste the punch lines. In the editorial of this report the editor looks more clear when said ''It is perhaps time to not just celebrate the man and everything he stood for but to also revisit his thoughts with renewed attention'' but translating it into articles is not an easy job. Writers largely use deductive method which is part of the problem. This weakness of avoiding revisiting is common among ideologically driven people either of left or right yet this report have many new things too.  It began with Raza Naeem Article who tried his best to bridge gapes among Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Allama Iqbal and Sibt e Hassan , praised Pakistan meen Tahzeb Ka Irtaqa (Published in 1976) and Naveed e Fikr (Published in 1986) but avoid to comment on his tricky book Inqalab e Iran.  Raza failed to criticize Tahzeb ka Irtaqa in which (At Page 212) he declared Urdu language and Bhagti Lhar as two symbols of Hindu Muslim unity.  The name of the book is more tricky then any thing else in which author smartly ignored Bengalis. From 1947 till 1971 East Bengal was part of Pakistan but Sibte just ignored it.  I remembered a book by Faieq Kamran (Published in 1955) under the title Magrabi Pakistan...Aik Tahzebi wahdat and it was written after One unit but Sibte did not use West Pakistan.  Since long we are reading books written in deductive rather inductive methods regarding Indo-Pak history. Either the author presumed that One nation theory is right or Two nation theory is right then he started his search for appropriate references. 
In other articles Jaffar Ahmad In pursuit of enlightenment , I A Rahman Relevant as ever, Zahida Hina A tradition of saying ‘No’ and Dr Nasir Abbas Nyyar On the politics of language enrich us from their understanding of Sibt e Hassan. There are many interesting observations in these articles and will try to write about it in a separate piece i have planned for future. I A Rahman reproduced his pieces from battle of ideas in which Sibt e Hassan advocating progressive ideas of both Allama Iqbal and Mohammad Ali jinnah as follows
''In support of his argument that the founders of Pakistan envisaged the state to be a secular polity, Sibte Hasan relies not only on Jinnah’s declarations but also on Iqbal’s views. In the case of Iqbal, he recalls passages from the poet-philosopher’s 1930 presidential address at the Muslim League’s convention at Allahabad, passages that are often ignored by commentators, particularly the advocates of theocracy. For instance, the following quote:

“Nor should the Hindus fear that the creation of autonomous Muslim states will mean the introduction of a kind of religious rule in such states. The principle that each group is entitled to free development on its own lines is not inspired by any feeling of narrow communalism.”

In Sibte Hasan’s view, Iqbal “pleads for a Muslim state on purely secular grounds, consistent with the principle of cultural autonomy” as evident from the following extract from the 1930 address:

“In view of India’s infinite variety in climates, races, languages, creeds and social systems, the creation of autonomous states, based on the unity of language, race, history, and identity of economic interests, is the only possible way to secure a stable constitutional structure in India.” ''
But from Mushraff times a group of secular intellectuals including the same author are advocating a twisted narrative of Jinnah's Pakistan. Is it our poor understanding of Iqbal or a bias , you can decide yourself.  The article regarding mother tongues is the weakest as it has no substantial evidence in its claims. Raza Naeem wrote ''Sibte Hasan was arrested along with scores of comrades in 1951 in the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case and remained in jail until 1955.'' which is a wrong fact.