Name in vain

Huw Richards on the man who coined the word Pakistan.

Rahmat Ali's holy book may have been The Koran, but he would have had no difficulty in recognising the biblical concept of the prophet without honour in his own land.

He has the strongest possible claim to have invented the name of Pakistan and a vital role in defining the concept that became the state: "He is one of the five or six most important creators of Pakistan," says his biographer Khursheed Kamal Aziz.

Yet Ali, who died in 1951, lies in a Cambridge graveyard, unacknowledged in the country he helped to create.

Aziz's interest in Ali grew out of his History of the Idea of Pakistan that chronicles the development of the concept of a separate Muslim state on the Indian subcontinent: "Rahmat Ali cropped up among the proposers of more than one of the schemes offered."

This was not in itself a particular point of distinction - Aziz lists no fewer than 170 proposals, but "his insights into, and understanding of, the Hindu-Muslim problem and the position of Muslims within India were exceptional, placing him apart from other people. He made a great appeal to both my heart and mind."

Aziz's empathy was heightened by his own circumstances in the 1980s: sacked from his job as chair of the National Commission on Historical and Cultural Research and forced into exile by General Zia.

Ali spent his final years in poverty in Cambridge after an unhappy six-month trip, ending in expulsion, to newly independent Pakistan in 1948. "I knew how I felt, and all that I had done was written a few books. It was possible to imagine how he must have felt, ignored and rejected by the country he had devoted his life to creating," says Aziz. His biography of Ali was published in English in Pakistan and Germany in 1987. It is an extraordinary, deeply sad story that turns on Ali's exploits in Cambridge in the early 1930s.

He came to England to study law from 1930 when he was 33. Aziz says: "This was a decisive time for India. The Simon committee had completed its work and there were annual round table talks on the future of India, which would lead to the Government of India Act in 1934."

Ali had a straightforward, clear vision for the future of the Muslim peoples of India. "He spelt out the two-nation theory, that the Muslims of India are not a minority but a separate people. He understood that if India continued to exist as a single state after the British left, the Muslims would be forced to live as a permanent minority, and that this would be intolerable," says Aziz.

He has equally little doubt that Ali coined the word Pakistan. "There are other claims, but none backed by any real evidence. It represents the different areas he hoped would make up the state: P for Punjab, A for Afranistan, K for Kashmir, S for Sind and tan for Baluchistan. The I is to make it pronounceable. But it also means something. 'Istan' in sanskrit means place, while 'Pak' in Persian and Urdu means pure, so 'land of the pure'."

Both the word and the theory were laid out in the pamphlet Now or Never, published on January 28, 1933. It was rejected as "the connivings of a student" by Muslim delegates at the round table conference, but Ali ensured that it was mailed to students in India and Britain. Within in a few months vigorous debate had started in the Indian press. Eventually, in 1940, the leaders of the Muslim League followed public opinion by accepting the concept, but without acknowledging Ali's role.

Aziz's biography paints a picture of a sophisticated and sociable man who was at the same time obsessed. Out of that obsession came ideas that were both perceptive - as in his recognition that an independent East Indian Muslim state would one day emerge, as Bangla Desh did in 1971, and his forecast that Iran and Turkey would be vital to Pakistan's future, an alliance realised under Ayub Khan in the 1960s. But they also led him into advocating a series of Muslim enclaves within India:"This was impossible. These states would have had no chance of any real independent existence surrounded by India".

And it led him into possibly the decisive act for his future reputation within Pakistan - an intemperate assault on Muhammad Ali Jinnah's acceptance of the frontiers agreed when India was partitioned in 1947. "He called it the 'Great Betrayal' and portrayed Jinnah as a traitor," says Aziz.

Even so you might hope that more than 40 years after the death of both protagonists and nearly 50 from the foundation of the state both helped create, there might be room for Rehmat Ali's memory alongside that of Jinnah. Not so. Aziz says: There is an attitude of mind that if you give credit to anyone else for the creation of Pakistan, you are attempting in some way to pull down Jinnah."

The mantle of Jinnah, whose death within a year of independence ensured that his hero status could not be clouded by the compromises and failures of office, is one claimed by all aspirants to power in Pakistan. Aziz believes he is able to get away with what many countrymen would see as disloyalty because he writes in English, which is decreasingly understood.

Ali still lies in the Cambridge town cemetery, any proposal to bring his body home certain to excite violent controversy. "As far as I know he is the only man this century to invent the name of a country. And he is the only man to have invented the name of a country who is refused burial there."