“Now is the time for the Sindh government to leave Karachi, make its capital in Hyderabad or elsewhere, it is its will.”
By: Farooq Adil – Author, columnist
The Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan said very angrily.
It was a chilly morning in January 1948 when a special meeting of the Central Cabinet was held at the Governor General’s House, chaired by the Governor General of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, instead of the Prime Minister.
Former Sindh provincial minister and intellectual Dr Hamida Khorro writes in her book ‘Muhammad Ayub Khorro: A Life of Craze in Politics’:’ Apparently it was a normal meeting, the Chief Minister of Sindh was also invited to such meetings. But on the day when Ayub Khorro (Sindh Chief Minister) left for the meeting, his friend and politician Pirzada Abdul Sattar warned him that the only agenda of the meeting was for Karachi (which is the central and provincial government at the same time). The capital was (from Sindh) it has to be handed over to the central government.
The Prime Minister added in his address: “The central government can no longer live under the shadow of the provincial government. My government is like a stranger here, if there is any authority here, it is the same person, that is, Khuro, you need money or water to irrigate the lawn, you have to ask Khuro hand in hand, Khuro here Everything is there and we are nothing.
The meeting, which took place almost five months after the formation of Pakistan, was a manifestation of the many bitterness that arose in the early days of the newborn country.
Dr. Hamida Khorro further writes that the differences between the central and provincial governments started when the buildings for the secretariat were selected. These differences later became personal, after which the bitterness escalated.
At that time, the important responsibilities of the government of Pakistan were in the hands of a few personalities who had previously worked in the central government under the British government, such as Chaudhry Ghulam Muhammad and Chaudhry Muhammad Ali.
Hamida Khorro writes that these people were accustomed to working in the unlimited resources of the British government, they had no idea how many problems there are in the province of Sindh with limited resources, that is why when Karachi to Pakistan When the decision was taken to make it the capital, the burden fell on the shoulders of Chief Minister Ayub Khorro, who was also in charge of the Ministry of Construction.
He had to arrange offices and residences for clerks, officers, even ministerial bureaucrats in a few days, and he had only two months to do so.
When it was decided to make Karachi the federal capital, the central government refused to make its suburbs, especially Malir, its capital, where there were many World War II-era government buildings and offices where the Pakistani government The Secretariat could easily have been established.
But some government officials insisted that space be provided in the city center.
According to Dr. Hamida Khorro, in recognition of this demand, the Sindh government handed over its Government House, Provincial Assembly building and Secretariat in the vicinity of the Sindh High Court to the Central Government, while the provincial offices were located at Napier Barracks in a corner of the city. I decided to move.
Thus the then Chief Minister of Sindh set up his office in a small annexe behind these barracks, while the sessions of the Sindh Assembly were held in a school building instead of in the historic House.
Nusrat Mirza, a leading figure in Sindh politics, author and columnist, says the central government’s proposal to relocate the Secretariat to Malir contradicts the fact that there were no buildings in which the central government of a state A secretariat can be established.
He says that the buildings of the Second World War were not fit to have offices in them. Another important reason, he said, was that Malir was not selected for the central secretariat because there was no access to it, especially roads.
According to him, the last corner of the city at that time was the Central Jail Karachi (from where the University Road now begins) after which the roads ended and the dirt roads began and the proposal to set up a Central Secretariat in such a place was rejected. It can only be called irony.
After dealing with the secretariat and office stage, the selection of houses for the new government leaders and key officials took a strange turn.
Dr. Khorro writes that for his residence, First Lady Rana Liaquat Ali had her eye on the house of the Chief Justice of Sindh High Court but the wife of the Chief Justice was not tolerant of hearing this. After failing here, he preferred the house of Mir Ghulam Ali Talpur, one of the provincial ministers, but he also refused to vacate the house.
Seeing this spectacle, Chief Minister Ayub Khorro vacated his house and handed it over to him and he himself moved into the small house of a collector.
A beautiful townhouse owned by a Parsi family was arranged for Ghulam Muhammad, the finance minister of the new government, but he was unhappy that it was not located on a well-known highway, but he was very upset because there was no alternative. Liked to live in this house.
Disputes over the establishment of the Secretariat and the selection of houses were so difficult to deal with that another controversy arose.
A few days after the incident, on a day off, the founder of Pakistan invited Sindh Chief Minister Muhammad Ayub Khorro to a private luncheon. It was at this meeting that he became aware of the central government’s intentions for the future of Karachi.
Dr. Khorro writes that after the meal, when Ayub Khorro started to leave, the founder of Pakistan and Miss Jinnah came out to bid him farewell and said that Ghulam Muhammad had come to me to decide something about the future of Karachi. But I know that you will never be willing to hand over Karachi to the Center.
During this period, among many other administrative and financial problems, there were differences between the central and provincial governments, with one demanding a hefty loan from the center and the other relocating. It was a matter of occupying the vacated buildings of the Hindus.
According to Dr Khorro, Liaquat Ali Khan and Ghulam Muhammad wanted the allotment of these buildings to be done as per their wishes, while Ayub Khorro said that it was a provincial matter which they would like to resolve in accordance with the law.
The dispute was still going on when a personal quarrel broke out between Liaquat Ali Khan and the Sindh government. Liaquat Ali Khan wanted additional water to be provided at his official residence to run the lawn and decorative fountains in it. The prime minister’s request reached Chief Minister Khorro through municipal officials, who rejected it.
He said there was a shortage of water in the city, which was exacerbated by the influx of large numbers of refugees. Therefore, the demands for water for decorative purposes are inappropriate.
The refusal to provide additional water sparked resentment between the Chief Minister and the Prime Minister, which angered Liaquat Ali Khan, who slammed the Sindh Chief Minister at a public reception.
He said in his speech that “the Prime Minister of Pakistan does not have enough power in Karachi to get even a little bit of water without his (Chief Minister’s) permission.”
In response, the Chief Minister told the Prime Minister, “I am not at all happy to reject any of his wishes but I am sorry that I had no other choice.”
This bitterness led to another dispute between the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister over defense matters. It seems that the Defense Ministry officials created this controversy out of their own recklessness or there was a mindset behind it which can be gauged from the details given by Dr. Khorro.
Dr. Hamida Khorro writes that senior officials of the Ministry of Defense had informed Chief Minister Ayub Khorro that Prime Minister Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan had decided to hand over six Saber aircraft parked at Maripur Airport near Karachi to India. Which have come to India after the distribution of assets.
On this information, the Sindh Chief Minister deployed police at Maripur Air Base so that the planes could be handed over to the Indian authorities and no one was able to blow them up.
The Sindh chief minister’s action added to the prime minister’s anger, which he expressed at a banquet in honor of some foreign guests.
He said, ‘Khoro! You are interfering in the affairs of the central government. As the Chief Minister, you have no right to interfere in the administrative affairs of the Ministry of Defense.
The events described in Dr. Hamida Khorro’s book are significant in that their source of information was directly from her father, Ayub Khorro. In this way, this information becomes one-sided.
Mir Noor Ahmed’s book ‘From Martial Law to Martial Law’ and Dr. Safdar Mehmood’s book ‘Muslim League’s era of government’ gives a detailed account of the events of this period but these books do not contain such details as Hamida Khorro. Has stated.
In such a situation, the memories of the Muslim League leadership that migrated to Pakistan after the partition of India remain the only source that can be trusted in this regard.
Writer and columnist Nusrat Mirza explains that the main argument was that the Sindh Muslim League leadership had refused to allow Muslim leagues coming to Pakistan after partition to join the Sindh Muslim League. The controversy escalated to the point that Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, who had been the secretary general of the All India Muslim League, formed the Citizens Muslim League and linked it to the Central Muslim League. Ayub Khoro and the other Sindh leadership of the Muslim League were unhappy with the situation which led to bitterness. These incidents worsened the situation and according to Dr. Khorro, at the same time Liaquat Ali Khan started preparing the case against Ayub Khorro very carefully so that Karachi could be taken out of the Sindh administration and taken into the custody of the Center.
This was the background against which the famous meeting of January 1948 took place in which Liaquat Ali Khan in his scathing address to the Chief Minister of Sindh said that the Sindh government should leave Karachi and move to Hyderabad or elsewhere as its capital. Make it
In this meeting, Khorro presented his position in great detail and said that the tradition of making the capital of the central and provincial governments in the same city already exists, in this regard he gave the example of Calcutta where the capital of the province of Bengal is also present. And the British central government.
Similarly, Shimla which was in the custody of the Punjab government and was also the winter capital of the British government. In view of these examples, Sindh can be considered as the simultaneous capital of the center and the province.
But his position did not seem to matter and a committee of central ministers was formed to make Karachi the permanent capital of the country, which included II Chandragar, Raja Ghazanfar Ali and Finance Minister Ghulam Muhammad.
In view of the situation, Ayub Khorro approached his provincial cabinet while the central government took over the management of the customs department while setting up a committee for allotment and renting of abandoned houses, whose secretary was the finance minister. Ghulam Muhammad was.
Ayub Khoro protested against it, saying it was all unfair. In this regard, he wrote a long letter to the Prime Minister in which he reminded the Prime Minister:
“As promised by the Quaid-e-Azam, the central government has been temporarily set up in Karachi, so it is not right to order the Sindh government to leave.”
Did the founder of Pakistan ever say that? Nusrat Mirza said: ‘Ahmad Ali Khan, who has been the editor of Dawn for a long time, told me that it is true that this is attributed to the founder of Pakistan, he said that this decision will be made later but when and where ? It was not determined. This is what Ayub Khoro justified against the transfer to the central government of Karachi.
Nusrat Mirza says it needs to be understood that Ayub Khoro was unwilling to resettle migrants permanently in Sindh and Karachi, as evidenced by the fact that in other parts of the country. The name of the land buyer dies forever but in Sindh a law was made that land was leased for twenty, thirty, forty or ninety years. In this way, a permanent obstacle was created in giving the right of ownership of land to the outsiders.
According to Nusrat Mirza, Ayub Khoro’s stance against the transfer to the central government of Karachi also needs to be understood in this context.
It was against this backdrop that the Sindhi population in and outside Karachi reacted to the situation and riots broke out. The uproar of January 21, 1948 is particularly noteworthy in this regard.
About students from various colleges protested in front of the Chief Minister’s House in the morning. When the situation reached this stage, the Sindh Muslim League and the Sindh Assembly passed a resolution opposing the transfer of Karachi from Sindh to the Center.
The resolutions described Karachi as a natural part of Sindh and said that such a decision would affect the unity of the Pakistani people and create prejudices.
The Sindh Assembly resolution said that the decision was also against the spirit of the Lahore Resolution of 1940 which assured respect for the geographical boundaries of the units forming the federation.
Following these resolutions, the Prime Minister proposed in a meeting in the first week of February to set up a committee of central and provincial governments to resolve the issue.
These committees could not agree and a member of the central government committee and Union Minister II Chandragar disagreed with Ayub Khorro and stressed on the right of the central government over Karachi and said that the issue of transfer of Sindh government from Karachi was a committee of ministers. If there is any disagreement in this regard, the final decision should be taken by the Quaid-e-Azam and until the parties reach a conclusion, the matter of transfer of the provincial capital should be put on hold.
But contrary to this consensus, according to Dr. Khoro, the central government insisted on the immediate transfer of the provincial capital. Protests continued, with protesters waving black flags, demonstrating at ministers’ homes and chanting slogans against the national leadership.
Governor General Muhammad Ali Jinnah summoned Chief Minister Khorro and sought clarification. The issue was considered more serious because the Chief Minister’s brother was also involved in the protests.
Based on this issue, Sindh Governor Hidayatullah, with the help of some members of the Assembly, tried to bring a no-confidence motion against the Chief Minister in which he failed.
In view of these activities of the Governor of Sindh, the Chief Minister in a letter apprised the Governor General of the situation and said that the Assembly trusted him and the activities to remove him were not correct.
On the other hand, Governor Hidayatullah, after the failure of the no-confidence motion, suggested to the Governor General that he should summon Ayub Khorro and direct him to stay away from politics for six months as the Prime Minister of Pakistan and the Governor of the province Do not agree
The governor-general agreed with the proposal, saying it would be for six months only. Ayub Khorro, on the other hand, offered his resignation, rejecting the terms of detachment from politics, and sent his resignation in writing to the Governor-General, but at the same time an order was issued for his removal and it was announced that a tribunal Will investigate the allegations against.
The chief minister later said in a statement that these were allegations which had not been made public till then.
Aqeel Abbas Jafari has written in ‘Pakistan Chronicle’ quoting historian Zahid Chaudhry that on June 1948, , the Sindh Chief Court started hearing the corruption case against former Chief Minister Ayub Khorro in which charges were leveled against him. There were allegations of appointments and reprisals against the rules.
According to Zahid Chaudhry, the sole purpose of these cases was to entangle them in lengthy cases so that they could not organize any mass movement against the secession of Karachi from Sindh.
Following the ouster of Ayub Khoro, Pir Elahi Bakhsh was sworn in as Chief Minister on May 1948, , and the next day the Constituent Assembly passed a resolution to hand over Karachi to the Central Government.
Nusrat Mirza says that Ayub Khorro was against the resettlement of migrants from India to Karachi in Sindh, but when Pir Elahi Bakhsh became the Chief Minister, he was the first to provide one for migrants in the outskirts of the city. He established a settlement which was named after him namely Pir Elahi Bakhsh Colony.
“Otherwise, Ayub Khoro and other Sindhi leaders of the Muslim League were obstructing the resettlement of the migrants and these people were forced to stay in huts for a long time.”
Dr. Safdar Mehmood has written in a book ‘From Martial Law to Martial Law’ that Ayub Khorro was the first politician who aroused the sentiments of provincialism only for political interests. He writes that Khorro, after his ouster, started a movement against the decision to separate Karachi from Sindh.
The founder of Pakistan had visited for treatment during this time. Mir Noor Ahmad writes that when the crisis became serious, at the suggestion of Muslim League leader Hashim Ghazdar, a Muslim League delegation visited him to meet him, where the founder of Pakistan advised the delegation that the situation before that should be serious. The decision of the government should be accepted as it will benefit Sindh instead of harming it. Because the development plans of the federal government will be made here and the people here will benefit from it.(Courtesy BBC NEWS)