AT the strike of the midnight hour on August 14, 1947, Lahore Radio Station started its broadcast with the opening sentence - “This is Pakistan Broadcasting Service”. Mr Zahur Aazar read this very first sentence of the Independence Day in his firm and clear voice.
Immediately afterwards, the same statement was broadcast in Urdu in the soft voice of Mr Mustafa Hamadani, the regular announcer of Lahore Radio Station.
These two sentences are now a part of Pakistan’s history. These broadcasts announced to the world the emergence of a new State over the Indo-Pakistan continent.
These broadcasts also indicated the culmination of the struggle of the Muslim Umma of this region for a separate homeland carved against the severest opposition of the leaders of the majority community of the subcontinent as well as of the shattering of the dreams of the Raj to leave the most precious jewel in the royal crown in one piece.
The feelings generated by hearing those two sentences over the radio cannot be expressed in words but their tinge and spark still persist in the mind. These words took one back to June 3, the same year, when over Sardar Vallab Bhai Patel’s All India Radio, a frail, lonely but steadfast person of determined will had uttered “Pakistan Zinda-Baad”.
That day the Quaid-i-Azam had ended his speech of acceptance of the Partition Plan of India with these determined words, which still ring in the ears. These two electrifying words of the Quaid drew a curtain over the struggle of the Muslim Umma of the subcontinent for a separate homeland.
The announcement of the coming into being of Pakistan over Lahore Radio Station on the midnight of August 14, 1947 was actually the moment of the commencement of the struggle to keep this country Zinda and Painda from the moment zero and to prepare her to face the difficulties or inflictions of the wounds at its very birth - the wounds of Sikh atrocities in East Punjab which had already started, and would uproot 20 million Muslims who would trek empty handed, sick and grieved to the new homeland.
The wounds of the Radcliffe-Mountbatten doctored Boundary Awards; the wounds of Kashmir’s accession to India engineered through Mountbatten-Gandhi-Menon collusion, and worst of all, the creation of instability by conspiracy. These wounds still simmer after 52 years of Pakistan’s existence. But Zinda and Painda, it has remained and, would remain so.
source: Dawn ]
Long Live Pakistan!
[This message has been edited by Elmo with headphones (edited August 13, 2000).]