In Pakistan, there are contradictory views about Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. In recent years, Gandhi has been officially acknowledged as a...
In Pakistan, there are contradictory views about Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
In recent years, Gandhi has been officially acknowledged as an advocate of non-violence who was murdered for his acceptance of the position that Pakistan had the right to exist.
But in textbooks in Pakistani schools, Gandhi is represented as a shrewd politician who is a symbol of Muslim hatred and an enemy of Muslims. In fact, books in the Pakistan Studies course contain a famous couplet by Maulana Zafar Ali Khan suggesting that Gandhi and Savarkar shared the same line of thought.
Pakistani post-Partition Urdu literature contains many examples of hatred towards Gandhi.
But Gandhi’s detractors forget that the leader had numerous followers and great support in many parts of British India that later became Pakistan.
That was obvious from the many places named after him, among them a public park that is now the Karachi Zoological Garden and Gandhi Street in Rawalpindi. They have been re-named after Partition.
He sometimes appears in unusual forms. As journalist Akhter Baloch writes, “Gandhiji can be seen with his emblemised spectacles by the iron railing in front of one or two rickety buildings in the Tyre Wali Gali of the Urdu Bazaar in Karachi.”
Gandhi still lives in #Karachi | Gandhi’s exile | BLOG | http://t.co/YJsBEAupTl pic.twitter.com/dEX6lsSasV
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