Mian Iftikharuddin, an Oxford graduate, hailed from an influential landed family of Baghbanpura, Lahore. He was the first minister for rehabilitation of refugees in the Punjab in the government of Nawab Iftikhar Hussain Mamdot.

Despite his landed background, he had progressive ideas. He proposed land reforms and agricultural income tax and his Progressive Papers spoke for the working classes.

Iftikharuddin joined the Indian National Congress in 1934 as he viewed the All India Muslim League as a party led by landlords and communalists.

In 1945, he switched his affiliation to Muslim League. Sibte Hasan and Kamran Asdar Ali have suggested that Sajjad Zaheer, a friend, persuaded him to enter Muslim League ahead of 1946 elections to raise a progressive voice and to create political space to radicalize the League from within.

His proposals for agrarian reforms came in view of millions of refugees —mainly peasants — awaiting rehabilitation. He proposed that radical changes were needed in the socio-economic system to resettle the refugees.

Mian Iftikhar argued that land reforms would secure the rehabilitation and resettlement of refugees on one hand and respond to the economic hardships of the newly-created state on the other. He argued that landowners and industrialists needed to make sacrifices and suggested that evacuee property be redistributed among refugee families according to their needs rather than on the basis of their pre-partition socio-economic status.

He proposed that satisfactory resettlement of the refugees was impossible without radical changes in the socio-economic system of the province, particularly with regard to redistribution of agricultural land.

He made the following specific proposals:

First, landless refugees from East Punjab should be allotted lands for tilling; second, sharecropping should be regularised; third, tenants should have security of tenure, and their ejection from land should be stopped; fourth, begaar (corvée — unpaid labour) should be outlawed; fifth, land in excess of 5,000 produce index units (PIUs) (which amounted to nearly 50 acres) should be acquired by the state without compensation; sixth, the acquired land should be redistributed gratis among landless tenants; seventh, nobody should be allotted more than an area needed for subsistence farming (twelve and half acres in the Punjab at the time); and eighth, state land should be allotted to landless tenants and small farmers, against easy installments instead of being auctioned.

He also proposed an agricultural income tax on landholdings exceeding 25 acres and/or earning more than Rs 15,000 rupees annually.

Iftikharuddin also highlighted and opposed allotment of evacuee land to Mamdot, his relatives and allies. Mamdot was accused of having acquired 2,000 acres of evacuee agricultural land at throwaway prices. He was also accused of allotting hundreds of acres of evacuee land to his brother and helped his relatives and allies acquire state or evacuee lands. A conflict thus arose between those benefiting from such allotments of evacuee lands and those opposed to such allotments.

Iftikharuddin’s proposals for agrarian reforms were met with stiff resistance from the landed elite. He was accused of being a non-Muslim for making the ‘un-Islamic’ proposals.

So severe was the criticism that he had to resign from the cabinet as well as the League. In November 1949, he established the Azad Pakistan Party. He recorded the reasons for his resignation as follows: “Because I was sure the big zamindars [landlords] would not allow me to levy agricultural tax and introduce any kind of reforms.” The landed aristocracy prevailed.

This was because the state had turned towards the landed class to establish its authority and to exert its writ, particularly in rural areas. In return, it was committed to favouring landlords in its policies. This included delaying and blocking demands about and recommendations for land reforms. It was alleged that most of the advocates of land reforms were city dwellers who lacked knowledge of agriculture.

Iftikharuddin also set up the Progressive Papers Limited which published The Pakistan Times, Imroze, and Lail-o-Nahar under the patronage of Quaid-i-Azam. The Pakistan Times was launched on February 4, 1947, to promote League’s cause, particularly in the Punjab, with Faiz Ahmed Faiz as its first editor. It consistently opposed the preventive detention laws of 1949-52 and called for a fair deal for labour and for land reforms. This made it popular among its readers but suspect in the eyes of the establishment. On April 18, 1959, the Progressive Papers Limited was seized by the martial law regime of Ayub Khan.

Iftikharuddin died on June 6, 1962, from a cardiac arrest. He was buried in Lahore. Faiz’s tribute to his commitment to the cause of the poor included this verse: Jo rukay toe koh-i-graan thay hum, jo chalay toe jaan sey guzar gaey/ rah-i-yaar hum ney qadam qadam,tujhay yaadgaar bana diya.

(I was mountain like when I took a stand, I would not stop short of giving up my life once I championed a cause; I have made memorable every step of my journey).

The writer has a PhD in history from Shanghai University and is a lecturer at GCU, Faisalabad. He can be contacted at mazharabbasgondal87@gmail.com