DOING an anniversary article such as the present one reminds me of Mark Antony's funeral oration over Caesar's dead body. “I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The good that men do is oft interred with them,” so said Mark Antony, addressing the milling, seething, sweating and agitated Roman crowd on the Ides of March some two millennia ago.

However that should not be and is certainly not the case with Abdullah Haroon who died on April 27, 1942. Fractious as a nation as we Pakistanis are, with our deep sectarian, ethnic and tribal cleavages, Pakistan has been able to hold aloft a stolid tradition of remembering those who have contributed in some way or another to the good of the community, the country and the nation. The plethora of anniversary articles published in almost all segments of the Pakistani press throughout the year is a standing testimony to this time-honoured tradition of ours.

Politics to Haroon, as to Jinnah, was a means of serving the community and the country, not a source of amassing wealth. Like Jinnah, Abdullah Haroon had built for himself (and his family) a solid financial base before he went into politics. Like Jinnah, again, he financed his political activities out of his own personal funds. More significant, he contributed generously to meet in part the running of the party he was involved with.

Along with political activities, Abdullah Haroon had helped to build institutions in the spheres of education, health and social welfare that would make groups and communities become self-sustaining, step by step. And he liberally opened his coffers to give huge sums to finance a good many social causes throughout his public life.

In fact, his philanthropy knew no bounds when it came to alleviating the sufferings of the poor, the orphan and the needy. Thus, he came to found, organise or set up (as the case may be) the Karachi Club (1907), Jamia Islamia Yatim Khana (1923), Karachi Muslim Gymkhana (1927), Hajiani Hanifabai Memon Girls School, Sind Muslim League Employees Bureau (1939), Wakf alal-Aulad Trust (1940), Sukkur Relief Fund, the Bhuj famine Fund, and scores of other charities and organisations involved in promoting education, health and religion.

Cosmopolitan in outlook and approach, he reached out beyond the parameters of Sindh to help out worthy causes. Clearly, his philanthropy knew no geographical boundaries it extended to the entire subcontinent and the Middle East. He contributed Rs19,000 to the Muslim University, Aligarh, Rs5,000 each to Lady Dufferin Hospital Children's Ward and the Muslim Ladies Hall in Delhi, Rs10,000 to Maulana Mohammad Ali's Hamdard; Rs50,000 to the Angora Fund and Rs15,000 to the Smyrna Fund. (The last two donations were meant to help rehabilitate the sufferers of the Turkish war of liberation.)

And his philanthropy continued till his last breath. From July 1941 to late April 1942 — that is, during the last 10 months of his life — he had given away a princely sum of Rs88,961 to charities, a sum which would be equivalent to over Rs20m at current rates.

Simultaneously, he also built several institutions, thus distinguishing himself as a role model in advancing social causes materially, and helping the indigent, the orphan and the disadvantaged to become educated and acquire skills so that they become job-worthy and financially self-sufficient.

As indicated earlier, Haroon's politics were ancillary to his campaign for the human resource development of the community. And once he had securely established himself in business, which he did by the late 1890s, he became increasingly involved with civic activities in Karachi. He was subsequently elected to the Karachi Municipal Committee in 1913. Later, he also became chairman of the Karachi Port Haj Committee twice (1933, 1939), and of the Karachi Club (1928), while also being the founder-president of the Karachi Muslim Gymkhana.

By 1917, when both the pan-Islamic movement and the demand for home rule had gathered momentum, he decided to enter national politics. And except for Ghulam Mohammad Bhurgri (d. 1924), he was among the foremost Muslim leaders of Sindh whose activities had impacted significantly on all-India mainstream politics. Thus, he was active, at one time or another, with the major political organisations — the Indian National Congress (1917), the All India Khilafat Committee (1919-29), Sind Provincial Political Conference (1920-30s), the All Parties Conference (1928), the All Parties Muslim Conference (1930-34), the Azad Sindh Conference (1930) and the Muslim League (1937).

A strenuous advocate and campaigner for the separation of Sindh from the Bombay Presidency, he continuously lobbied for it, proposing resolutions at all-India moots, from 1925 onwards. He repeatedly urged the Aga Khan who led the Muslim delegation to the Round Table Conference (1930-32) and Jinnah to get the Sindh separation issue settled favourably during the London conference. Along with Muhammad Ayub Khuhro and Miran Muhammad Shah, Haroon had played a leading role in getting Sindh to acquire an autonomous provincial status in the Act of 1935.

In the next phase of his political career, he established an organic linkage between Muslim Sindh and mainstream Muslim politics, then encompassed by the All India Muslim League. He organised the first Sind Provincial Muslim League Conference in Karachi on Oct 8-10, 1938 — a conference which would acquire a landmark status in the All India Muslim League's history.

For the first time, the conference resolution spelled out the concept of separate Muslim nationhood, officially described Hindus and Muslims as two distinct nations, and called for “the political self-determination of the two nations”.In perspective, it represented the penultimate step to, and prepared the ground for, the adoption of the Lahore resolution in March 1940. And herein lies the prime significance of Haji Abdullah Haroon as a trendsetter in modern Muslim India's politics, and as a shaper of history in a larger sense.n

The writer is HEC Distinguished National Professor, co-editor of Unesco's History of Humanity, Vol. VI, and has edited In quest of Jinnah (2007), the only oral history on Pakistan's founding father.

smujahid107@hotmail.com