Choudhary Rahmat Ali: “The Fatherland of the Pak Nation”

Choudhary Rahmat Ali: Giving a Name to Pakistan

[p. 494] There has been considerable controversy over the origin and meaning of the word “Pakistan.” It was first widely used after the Lahore Resolution of 1940, when newspapers hostile to Jinnah began saying that he wanted to divide the country into “India” and “Pakistan.” Jinnah commented that neither he nor the Muslim League had invented the word, but that it had been foisted upon them by the Hindus and the British. He went on to say that he was grateful that they had done so, for he had wanted a word to cover what was being asked for in the Lahore Resolution. As he pointed out, “Some young fellows in London, who wanted a particular part of the northwest to be separated from the rest of India, coined a name, started the idea, and called a zone Pakistan.” One of the “young fellows” was Choudhary Rahmat Ali, a student at Cambridge who, with a group of friends, issued a manifesto in 1933 on behalf of the Muslim population of Punjab, the Northwest Frontier Province, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan in what they called a “grim and fateful struggle against political crucifixion and annihilation” by the Hindu majority.

“The Fatherland of the Pak Nation”

In an essay written some years later, Rahmat Ali tells how the name was chosen.

In my early youth three fundamental truths became clear to me about the future of our people and our lands. First, that such old names of our “Indian” homelands [p. 495] as the Sindh Valley, the Indus Valley, and North-Western India, were anachronistic and dangerous. They were anachronistic because they were the relics both of a mythology which we exploded in the 7th century a. d. [sic] and of a hegemony which we annihilated in the 8th; and they were dangerous because they made ... our “Indian” homelands Hindoolands and our people Indian—which they had ceased to be at least twelve centuries ago. So, to my mind, these names were our worst enemies; for through them the ghosts of dead ages and of defunct hegemonies were still ruling us and ruining our nationhood in our own country.

Second, that in the modern world the recognition of our nationhood was impossible without a national name for our people and our “Indian” homelands—a name which would equally serve and suit after the reintegration of our “Indian” and “Asian” homelands[,] a reintegration which in my judgment was both vital and inevitable; that the absence of such a name, in the past, had proved harmful to our interests, but, in the future, would prove fatal to our existence. For, more than anything else, it would encourage the Caste Hindoos—and others ... to suck into the orbit of Indianism not only our “Indian” homelands but also our “Asian” homelands—Iran, Afghanistan, and Tukharistan.

Third, that unless and until we all in our “Indian” and “Asian” homelands, now separated by the twists and turns of history and exploited by our enemies, reintegrate ourselves into one nation under a new fraternal name, none of us whether living in the “Indian” or in the “Asian” homelands could survive and thrive in the world.

The realization of these truths created in me a solemn, surging urge to invent such a name as would reflect the soul and spirit of us all, symbolize the history and hopes of us all, strengthen the national bonds of us all, and ensure the realization of the destiny of us all. That is, a name that would detach those of us who are living in our “Indian” homelands from Indian Nationalism and re-attach us to Islamic nationalism; that would sever our artificial, national and territorial bonds with India and cement our Islamic, national and territorial ties with Iran, Afghanistan, and Tukharistan; and that would meet the challenge of Indianism and British Imperialism both to us in our Indian homelands and to our brethren in Iran, Afghanistan and Tukharistan.

It had therefore to be a name born of all the elements of our life—spiritual and fraternal, moral and ethical, historical and geographical, supra-regional and supra-national. In other words, it had to be charged with an irresistible, eternal appeal to the heart and head of all our people, and possessed of elemental power to seize on our being and make us all go out crusading for the Millat's [Muslim community's] Mission. For nothing short of that could generate those mighty forces which alone could ensure the liberation of us all, the transformation of some of the most important parts of India and Asia, and the fulfilment of our Millat's Mission in India and its Islands....

I ... prayed for Allah's guidance. I did everything that could help the accomplishment of the task, and never lost faith in Divine guidance. I carried on till, [p. 496] at last, in His dispensation Allah showed me the light, and led me to the name “Pakistan” and to the Pak Plan, both of which are now animating the lives of our people.

So much for the invention of the name Pakistan. Now a word about its composition.

“Pakistan” is both a Persian and an Urdu word. It is composed of letters taken from the names of all our homelands—“Indian” and “Asian.” That is, Punjab, Afghania (North-West Frontier Province), Kashmir, Iran, Sindh (including Kachch and Kathiawar), Tukharistan, Afghanistan, and Balochistan. It means the land of the Paks—the spiritually pure and clean. It symbolizes the religious beliefs and the ethnical stocks of our people; and it stands for all the territorial constituents of our original Fatherland. It has no other origin and no other meaning; and it does not admit of any other interpretation. Those writers who have tried to interpret it in more than one way have done so either through love of casuistry, or through ignorance of its inspiration, origin, and composition.

[Choudhary Rahmat Ali, Pakistan: The Fatherland of the Pak Nation (1947), quoted in Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, Evolution of Pakistan (Lahore: All-Pakistan Legal Decisions, 1963), 28–32.]