Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?–Wordsworth
We who belong to the generation who fought against British Imperialism look back to March 23, 1940 with pride. On that day we took destiny in our hands, allured by the dream of Pakistan, which beckoned us—the teeming millions of the exploited, oppressed Muslims of India—to a future of freedom, democracy and prosperity. Read the rest of this entry »
Man lives for himself, but is an unconscious instrument in the attainment of the historic aims of humanity—Tolstoy
Lord Acton, in his report to the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press wrote in 1896: “Ultimate history we cannot have in this generation, but we can dispose of conventional history and show the point we have reached on the road from one to the other, now that all information is within reach, and every problem has become capable of solution.” Read the rest of this entry »
On February 18, 1946, the sailors of the Talwar, the communications training establishment on shore in Bombay struck work in protest against bad cooking. Although the first day of the uprising passed off as a peaceful hunger-strike, it was clear that the rebels intended to receive from the British a full redress of their many grievances. Read the rest of this entry »
On March 23, 1931, at 7:15 pm 24 year old Bhagat Singh, with two of his comrades, Raj Guru and Sukhdev, stepped on to the scaffold at Lahore’s Central Jail. Two hours earlier their lawyer, Mehta Pren Nath, met Bhagat Singh, and, in his words, saw him walking in his death cell, “as the tiger walks in his cage.” Bhagat Singh asked him whether he had brought the book he had asked for. Mehta handed him the book for which he was so impatient. It was Lenin’s biography.
Two hours later, when the jail officer went to the death-cell, Bhagat Singh laughed and said, “wont you let me finish even the first chapter. He and his comrades did not let their hands be tied or their faces covered with black veil. They walked joyously, hand in hand to the scaffold, raising the slogan: Inqilab Zindabad. Read the rest of this entry »
(written five years before Dada Amir Haider’s death)
“Never betray one’s country, never betray one’s trust,” says Dada. This trust was and still remains loyalty to the proletarian cause. “There has never been and never can be any conflict between one’s loyalty to one’s country and to one’s trust.” Read the rest of this entry »
Midway in the journey of our life I found myself in a dark wood, for the straight path was lost. Ah, how hard it is to tell what that wood was: wild rugged, harsh; the very thought of it renews fear! It is so bitter that death is hardly more so–Dante
Like Dante, today we feel adrift after losing the path charted by the founding fathers Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Hakim-ul-Ummat Allama Iqbal. Many years ago on August 14, 1947 we arose as a nation under the leadership of our great leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who had traversed a long journey from Indian nationalism to Pakistani nationalism. The Quaid like the Allama started off as an Indian nationalist, but both eventually advocated Pakistani nationalism, which is a harmonious amalgam of love for our land and for the universal values of Islam.
Tracing their political evolution from Indian nationalism to Pakistani nationalism should help us to properly appraise our national identity and find our way back to the ideal for which our nation struggled hard and long. Read the rest of this entry »
The true criterion of his greatness is not in the range and variety of his knowledge and experience but in the faultless perception and flawless refinement of his subtle mind and spirit; not in a diversity of aims and the challenge of a towering personality but rather in a lofty singleness and sincerity of purpose and the lasting charm of a character animated by a brave conception of duty and an austere and lovely code of private honor and public integrity—Sarojini Naidu
The Quaid-e-Azam was a deeply anti-imperialist liberal par excellence. He abhorred autocracy, tyranny and injustice and envisaged an anti-imperialist, socialist, non-theocratic, and democratic Pakistan.
The Quaid enjoyed fervent loyalty and following from the Muslims of India, because they were absolutely convinced of his complete dedication to the cause of national liberation and social emancipation and his sincere devotion to the Islamic values of equality, fraternity and social justice. Read the rest of this entry »
All things created joyfully acclaimed Him,
Sorrow was done, with new life the world was flooding,
The very atoms joined in mighty chorus, Singing with sweetest voice: Welcome, welcome!
Welcome, O source of knowledge, thou art welcome!
Welcome to him who knows the Lord of Pardon, Welcome, the rebel’s only place of hiding, Welcome, the poor man’s only sure confiding — Sulayman Chelebi, the Turkish dervish-poet
Goethe has devoted a magnificent poem to the Holy Prophet (PBUH) in which he is the epitome of mankind, and likened to a mighty river. His followers are streams which call on him to help them reach the sea that waits for them. Majestic, triumphant, irresistible, he draws them onwards. Carlyle puts the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) among the heroes of mankind blessed with the spark of divinity. He is hailed as the creator of a religion of reason, while revolutionaries claim him as their own. Read the rest of this entry »
Worn-out ideas have never come to power among the people who have worn them out – Iqbal
Progressive Muslim scholars since Shah Waliullah have striven to restore the dynamic potential of Islam’s divine message by explaining the social context of the Shariah and thereby to free it from these shackles. Iqbal, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Maulvi Chragh and the Quaid-e-Azam underscore the need to continuously enrich the meaning of Islam’s divine message in the light of the ever-growing knowledge and the latest discoveries of science. Read the rest of this entry »
What is the Quran?
The message of death for the bourgeois,
But for the helpless proletariat
A support–Iqbal
Iqbal struggled to liberate the Muslim mind from the sterility of five hundred years of intellectual lethargy and tyranny of obscurantist orthodoxy. He sought to cleanse the house of God of the idols of wealth and bigoted orthodoxy, and he sought to restore direct relations between man and God. Read the rest of this entry »
Selected Articles of Khwaja Masud 