Faiz Ahmad Faiz(1911-1984) was a renowned poet who is being projected as a Progressive thinker, writer poet from Pakistan but contrary to this common perception, his writings reflect that he was he was a fanatic Muslim who pushed for partition of India. He was a fan of MA Jinnah. He worked closely with Muslim League leaders and post-independence continued his diatribe against India and Indians.
Faiz chose to become Editor-in-Chief of ‘The Pakistan Times’, a newspaper started by Muslim League leader Mian Iftikharuddin , a Punjabi politician who joined Muslim League after quitting Indian National Congress(INC). Iftikharuddin’s house and other properties were used for training National Guards of Muslim League who played havoc in the communal riots. Everyone knew this including Faiz but still he chose to remain with him.
Here are some more interesting details about Mian Iftikharuddin on whose pay roll Faiz Ahmad Faiz chose to be till 1951 as Editor-in-Chief of The Pakistan Times.
Iftikharuddin was elected to the Punjab Provincial Assembly in 1946 as a Muslim League member. He was elected the first president of the Punjab Provincial Muslim League after the Independence of Pakistan in 1947. He was also appointed as the Minister for rehabilitation of refugees in the government of Punjab in Pakistan. Iftikharuddin played an important role min fomenting trouble in Kashmir.
Interestingly, the newspaper started publication on February 4, 1947, around five months before Pakistan came into existence and Faiz was too happy to be its Editor-in-Chief. It was clear he believed in two-nation theory and that India should be divided on the basis of religion and yet he is called a PROGRESSIVE WRITER/POET!
Faiz’s editorials: loved Jinnah, Hated India
Let us take a look at some his editorials in The Pakistan Times which reveal his hatred towards India and his communal
Faiz on Partition (Faiz Sahib’s editorial of the Pakistan Times dated August 15, 1947. The original title was: August 15)
“It is August 15 today. The dawn that brought this day into the world also restored to our people their long-lost freedom. Through many bleak decades of political serfdom, millions of us have waited and hoped for this dawn. It has arrived at last and yet, for us in the Punjab, it is not bright with laughter and buoyant with song. It is black with sorrow and red with blood. The heart does not lift to the great diction that has descended on us on this wonderful day and the reality of freedom, compared to the reality of the death and suffering around us, appears insubstantial and far away. While, in the West, the new edifice of Pakistan is emerging above its foundations, in the fire ravaged countryside of the East, the ancient homesteads of our less fortunate brothers are crumbling into ashes: while we are entering into our heritage, they are being turned out of theirs. It is a cruel tradition and our day of joyous thanksgiving is also the day of mourning. To enjoin and to practice a correct reaction to this day therefore, is difficult, and it is equally difficult to preach the pattern of collective and individual behavior that should govern our actions to day and hereafter. The difficulty, however, absolves no one of this duty to himself, to his people; and to the future of the great State that has today come into being. At a time of dire emergency, helplessness is as reprehensible as blind passion and to lose either courage or reason is criminal. Let us, therefore, try to put by our anger and our sorrow and look at thinks as they are. In Eastern Punjab an undetermined number of Muslims villages have been destroyed, an indefinite number of Muslim men, women and children have been bestially butchered and the killing and destruction, as yet, show no sign of abatement. Our unfortunate country has witnessed other tragedies of a similar nature in recent times but a number of crucial factors which operated in Eastern Punjab, did not exist elsewhere. In the first place the Provincial Governor who has against the will of the majority party in the Legislative, taken the responsibility for law and order upon him was fully aware of the menace that was developing. His administration were duly informed, both through their own resources and through repeated representations made to them by responsible public men, that one community was making extensive preparations for organized offence while the community marked out as the victim was being reduced to utter helplessness through forcible disarming. The answer of the Governor and his administration to these representations was to abet the arming of the belligerents and to enforce the disarming of their victims more vigorously than before. Secondly, while thousands of men were clapped into jail under various Safety Ordinance for merely suspected “dangerous thoughts”. The Sikh leader who went about preaching fire and sword in every hamlet and town were allowed the maximum liberty of action and speech. All the stringent laws banning public meetings, provocative speeches, organisations for violence, etc. suddenly paled into invalidity at the remotest approach of hate-maddened communalists. Thirdly, even though the timing of the tragedy was known well in advance, the civil administration was allowed to go completely partisan precisely at the same juncture and to cap it all the entire Muslim police force stationed in Amritsar was collected and disarmed under false pretences. This last was the most treacherous act of all and its repercussions were frightful and immediate. It is impossible to believe, therefore, that the misfortunes of our brethren in the East were either a visitation of Fate or a calamitous upheaval of unforeseen communal frenzy. It appears to have been, on the other hand, cold-blooded premeditated murder and if the criminals are not made to appear the bar of justice, they will not escape the bar of history. Whatever the place assigned to Governor Jenkins in the annals of the Indian Civil Service, he will long be remembered in the history of the Punjab as either the most incompetent or the most unscrupulous occupant of the gubernatorial chair. How far his policy of setting the people of the Pubjab at each other’s throats has the tacit support or sanction of the British Government, we do not know, but if the British are still aiming to use the Sikhs as a permanent wedge between Pakistan and Hindustan they could not have found a better player to handle the cards. We regret to have to soil our pen on this day with this sordid tale but it has to be told and it has not yet concluded. Our brothers in the East are today the subjects of another State. We have no desire to cringe or whine before the new administration that has today taken over and we shall not enjoin this course on our brothers. We may not be able to render them any great material help, although we shall do the best we can, but we are fully confident that they will bear up bravely in the ordeal that confronts them and retain their self-respect and their solidarity, however hard these virtues might appear to be in the face of cold, mechanised destruction. Unlike Acharya Kripalani we shall not talk of the hostages of the other community that are among us, as one innocent life is no repayment for another, and one burnt out homestead does not regain its inhabited contentment, if we burn out another. Revenge and retaliation may appear to some as normal and human, frenzy and passion may be mistaken for love and courage. We have to realize, however, that the only real support that we can render to our people outside Pakistan is to make Pakistan so strong and so powerful that all our neighbours are forced to territories. We cannot even set about this task if we encourage lawlessness and disorder and violence in our midst, whatever the end in view. We have no moment to fritter away in idle destruction, not a sinew, nor a muscle to spare for any task except the urgent tasks of constructing and fortifying the State we have won, after countless years of suffering and privation. Our present sorrow is but a passing phase and must not be allowed to damage our national heritage that is permanent and enduring. Let us enter into our heritage, devoutly and thankfully, even though the steps are stained with blood and the threshold washed in tears.”
Faiz on Jinnah (Faiz Sahib’s editorial of the Pakistan Times dated Dec 27, 1947. The original title was: HOMAGE)
“As we write the Muslims of India and Pakistan are celebrating the birthday of the Quaid-i-Azam. As the man who has propelled, guided and controlled the national policies of nearly hundred million human souls, the man who has been responsible for the birth of a major State and the liberation of a major nation from economic and political bondage, the Quaid-i-Azam has already passed into history. With the establishment of Pakistan the mandate entrusted to him by his people may be considered to have been fulfilled and his historical role as the architect of our national State may be said to have reached its glorious consummation. The attainment of this objective demanded a steadiness of vision, fixity of purpose, an amount of unflagging devotion and courage that are rarely found among a people, broken and debased by enslavement and exploitation. The history of nations however is continuum like time, and the culmination of one struggle merely means the commencement of another. The mission of our national leaders, therefore, is far from complete and the national objective we have formally attained still awaits its material content. The future of Indian Muslims who have done as much and suffered far more for Pakistan than we the Muslims of Pakistan have, is still uncertain, and the State of Pakistan has still to require the constitutional flesh and bone. Both these problems are of as great an importance to us as the achievement of Pakistan itself and their satisfactory solution will require an equal amount of vision, determination and courage. There are already many among us, men of small minds and smaller vision, who think that the future of our brothers beyond the border need not enter our national calculations and now that we have got Pakistan, the future of nonPakistanis is none of our business. The happenings in East Pakistan have utterly negated our thesis and proved that our kinsmen in the neighboring Dominion are very much our business that we have got to take them into calculation while formulating our national policies. We have got to ensure that these policies do not in any way adversely affect the national existence of our co-religionists in the other land, through injudiciousness or lack of imagination. Similarly we have to ensure that both the constitutional structure and the governmental practice of the Pakistani State conform to the ideals that we put before ourselves when we embarked on our national struggle. We have not yet had a glimpse of the Pakistan of our dreams, for we are still besieged by all the ills that have plagued us in the past and the common man has yet to taste the contentment, physical and spiritual, of a free and prosperous existence. The helmsmen of the nation, therefore, of whom the Quaid-i-Azam is the greatest and the most indefatigable, have far from reached the end of their labours and the future of the nation depends as much on their sagacity today as it has dependent on their industry and devotion in the past.”
Faiz on Baluchistan (Faiz Sahib’s editorial of the Pakistan Times dated June 29, 1947. Original title was: Baluchistan)
“On June, 30th the representatives of Baluchistan consisting of the Shahi Jirga (excluding the Kalat State nominees) and non-official members of the Quetta Municipality, will be called upon to record their vote in favour of joining either of the Constituent Assemblies. From all indications public opinion in that Province is overwhelmingly in favor of entering the Pakistan Constituent Assembly. Only isolated voice are heard (as one was the other day) the Baluchistan should negotiate with the Congress as well as the League, and side with that body which offers the most advantageous terms. Apart from the fact that any hesitation to choose between Muslim India and Hindu India reflects ill on the national consciousness of those who advocated this petty bargaining, did they pause to think that the Congress could now offer them nothing. The Congress no longer finds it practical politics to take a Muslim Province directly under its wing. It now knows, to its cost, that the game is not worth while; and instead of figuring as a directly interested party in the coming referendums, it encourages its stooges to discard their old labels and assume newer and ostensibly more appealing ones. The NWFP has to offer Baluchistan an object lesson. Having despaired of drawing the Frontier Province into its fold, the Congress has signalised its defeat by boycotting the referendum, under pretexts which do not invest its necessity with even a semblance of virtue. If Khan Abdul Ghaffar has broken away from the Congress on the ground that by accepting Dominion State it has betrayed its creed we would have credited him with honesty and consistent principles. His leadership was Congress-sustained and now stands exhausted of its entire dynamics. The Frontier referendum is expected to be walk-over for the League, and neutralise this plainest that other objectives are sought, and abstention from the referendum is prescribed. The example of the Frontier Khanate should not be lost upon Congress henchmen, if there be any, in Baluchistan. It is not only geography, but religion and ideology as well, that render Baluchistan’s kinship with Pakistan, all the closer. It is hoped that the Baluch Province will enthusiastically respond to the call of the great leader, who has served it and the rest of Muslim India, for ten years, with a wholehearted devotion, singleness of purpose and unrivalled sagacity. There will be efforts may be some of them determined and even ingenious to disrupt Muslim unity in Baluchistan; but it is for the Baluchis to present a solid, invincible form against all such machinations. The Muslims of Sylhet will also be faced with a similar situation and it goes without saying that they will cast their vote for Muslim solidarity.”
The above editorials have been sourced from http://www.faizcentenary.org/articles_by_faiz.htm.
To read more articles of Faiz Ahmad Faiz, the readers can use the above link.
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