February 3: A grave matter
Cambridge City Cemetery. Members of the community offering prayers at the grave of Choudhary Rahmat Ali, the Cambridge student who coined the name "Pakistan" and launched a movement for its realisation. He died on Febraury 3, 1951.
Rahmat Ali returned to the country he named but was hounded out by the authorities for his critical ideas and came back to Cambridge where he died in 1951. He was the first Pakistani and he was the first Pakistani exile, too!
There was a movement to take his remains back to his homeland. In this photo we have Senator Tariq Azeem (in grey suit), the then Minister for Overseas Pakistanis, visiting the grave to take up this idea with Islamabad. However, after digging up the grave in preparation, the Government of Pakistan refused and the grave remains "desecrated" to this day. That headstone you see was only put back in December after protests from British Pakistanis but the grave has not been put back to the condition that it was in.
Pakistanis (grudingly and partially) accept Rahmat Ali's contribution to the Pakistan Movement but after all these years still find it hard to completely accept this Cambridge intellectual as their own! I strongly recommend KK Aziz's "Rahmat Ali: A Biography" as a must read for anyone interested in this matter.
February 3: A grave matter
Cambridge City Cemetery. Members of the community offering prayers at the grave of Choudhary Rahmat Ali, the Cambridge student who coined the name "Pakistan" and launched a movement for its realisation. He died on Febraury 3, 1951.
Rahmat Ali returned to the country he named but was hounded out by the authorities for his critical ideas and came back to Cambridge where he died in 1951. He was the first Pakistani and he was the first Pakistani exile, too!
There was a movement to take his remains back to his homeland. In this photo we have Senator Tariq Azeem (in grey suit), the then Minister for Overseas Pakistanis, visiting the grave to take up this idea with Islamabad. However, after digging up the grave in preparation, the Government of Pakistan refused and the grave remains "desecrated" to this day. That headstone you see was only put back in December after protests from British Pakistanis but the grave has not been put back to the condition that it was in.
Pakistanis (grudingly and partially) accept Rahmat Ali's contribution to the Pakistan Movement but after all these years still find it hard to completely accept this Cambridge intellectual as their own! I strongly recommend KK Aziz's "Rahmat Ali: A Biography" as a must read for anyone interested in this matter.