This is impressive! About the 11 Aug 1947 speech.
More interesting that the objection of the minister of parliamentary affairs was overruled and way made for the bill by a minority MNA.
http://dawn.com/2007/02/14/top6.htm
Move to make Quaid’s speech part of Constitution
By Raja Asghar
ISLAMABAD, Feb 13: The National Assembly allowed the introduction of a ruling party member’s bill designed to amend the Constitution to insert a key speech of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah about Pakistan’s polity, overruling a ministerial objection.
Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Khan Niazi, who is incharge of the government’s legislative business in parliament, opposed MP Bhandara’s private bill that seeks to incorporate in the Constitution the Quaid-i-Azam’s historic August 11, 1947 speech to the then Constituent Assembly with words that religion would have “nothing to do with business of the state”.
But a majority of ruling coalition and opposition members voted ‘yes’ to allow Mr Bhandara, a member of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML), to introduce his Constitution (Amendment) Bill seeking insertion in the Constitution of a new article consisting of the Quaid’s speech, often quoted by liberal politicians and writers to oppose perceived moves by religious parties to turn Pakistan into a theocracy.
Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain referred the bill to a house standing committee, where it is likely to generate a lot of controversy, though the move faces an uncertain fate as no party in the government or the opposition has yet to take a position on the draft, which needs a two-thirds majority in both the 342-seat National Assembly and the 100-seat Senate to be passed by each house.
“You are free, you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan,” the founder of the country had told the Constituent Assembly as its first president only three days before the country formally emerged as an independent state on August 14 on the partition of the sub-continent, and added: “You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to with business of the state.”
Mr Bhandara later told Dawn that his bill sought to restore an ‘ideological balance’ envisioned by the Quaid-i-Azam but lost by the insertion Article 2-A that made the Objectives Resolution, passed by the Constitution Assembly in the 1950s, a substantive part of the Constitution.
The Objectives Resolution was part of the preamble of the original 1973 Constitution but was made an enforceable substantive part through the controversial Eighth Amendment during the regime of former military ruler General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq as part of his drive to Islamise the Pakistani society.
Mr Bhandara, whose bill calls for the insertion of the Quaid-i-Azam’s speech as Article 2-B of the Constitution, said he would try in the standing committee to get his amendment renumbered as Article 2-A and the present Article 2-A as Article 2-B, and would be satisfied if only the relevant portion or the gist of the speech rather than the whole text was inserted in a ‘useful manner’.
The turn of his bill, which has been pending on the house agenda for a long time, came in the absence of its hardest likely opponents in the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) alliance of six Islamic parties, who boycotted the National Assembly’s present session until Tuesday to protest against the passage of the women’s rights bill by both houses of parliament in November.
Members of religious parties have often quoted other speeches of the Quaid-i-Azam to counter argument for a secular polity.
The Objectives Resolution says that in Pakistan “Muslims shall be enabled to order their lives in the individual and collective spheres in accordance with the teachings and requirements of Islam as set out in the Holy Quran and the Sunnah”, and “adequate provision shall be made for the minorities to profess and practice their religion and develop their cultures”.
Mr Niazi, while opposing Mr Bhandara’s move, said nowhere in the world a speech of the founder of a country had been made part of its constitution and argued that the bill could not enjoy support from a two-thirds majority needed for the passage of a constitutional amendment.
The ruling coalition stole the limelight on what was the first private members’ day of the present session that began on August 6.
Mr Bhandara’s bill was taken up after PML president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain introduced his Prevention of Anti-Women Practices (Criminal Law Amendment) Bill that seeks to eliminate what it called some ‘inhuman practices and customs’.
In another development, another ruling party member, Sardar Mohammad Nasrullah Dreshak, introduced a bill to remove what was described as only a technical error in the one passed last year to allow the so-called ‘one-dish’ but up to six-item meals at wedding parties.
When some members asked why the amendment was needed so soon after the previous private bill became an act after its passage by both houses of parliament and presidential assent, the speaker said that the earlier draft had mentioned only private homes and not hotels and wedding halls where meals could be served.