The 1954 Justice Munir Commission Report on the anti-Ahmadi Riots in Punjab in 1953 was signed by Justices Muhammad Munir and M.R. Kayani. There may have been other contributors (e.g., Justice Din Muhammad) but they are not acknowledged in the report.
Per Wiki, Munir (1895-1979) obtained a Master’s in English from the Government College, Lahore, and L.L.B. from the Punjab University Law College. Kayani (1902-1962) passed the matriculation examination from Islamia High School, Kohat; did his F.A. from Edwards College, Peshawar, and a master’s degree in English from the Government College, Lahore.
The learned Justices found it necessary to address the question of whether the State of Pakistan, still writing its Constitution, should take cognizance of doctrinal differences between the Islamic orthodoxy and the Ahmadis, and declare the Ahmadis to be a non-Muslim minority.
Their report contains the following passage:
Throughout the three thousand years over which political thought extends, and
such thought in its early stages cannot be separated from religion, two questions have invariably presented themselves for consideration : —
(1) what are the precise functions of the State? and
(2) who shall control the State?
If the true scope of the activities of the State is the welfare, temporal or spiritual
or both, of the individual, then the first question directly gives rise to the bigger question:
What is the object of human life and the ultimate destiny of man? On this, widely
divergent views have prevailed, not at different times but at one and the same time.
The pygmies of equatorial West Africa still believe that their God Komba has sent them into the forest to hunt and dance and sing. The Epicureans meant very much the same when they said that the object of human life is to drink and eat and be merry, for death denies such pleasures.
The utilitarians base their institutions on the assumption that the object of
human life is to experience pleasant sensations of mind and body, irrespective of what is to come hereafter.
The Stoics believed in curbing and reducing all physical desires, and Diogenes found a tub good enough to live in.
German philosophers think that the individual lives for the State and that therefore the object of life is service of the State in all that it might decide to undertake and achieve.
Ancient Hindu philosophers believed in the logic of the fist with its natural consequence, the law of natural selection and the struggle for survival.
The Semitic theory of State, whether Jewish, Christian or Islamic, has always held that the object of human life is to prepare ourselves for the next life and that, therefore, prayer and good works are the only object of life.
Greek philosophers beginning with Socrates thought that the object of human life was to engage in philosophical meditation with a view to discovering the great truths that lie in nature and that the business of the others is to feed the philosophers engaged in that undertaking.
Islam emphasises the doctrine that life in this world is not the only life given to man but that eternal life begins after the present existence comes to an end, and that the status of a human being in the next world will depend upon his beliefs and actions in this world. As the present life is not an end in itself but merely a means to an end, not only the individual but also the State, as opposed to the secular theory which bases all political and economic institutions on a disregard of their consequences on the next life, should strive for human conduct which ensures for a person better status in the next world. According to this theory Islam is the religion which seeks to attain that object.
Does this statement “Ancient Hindu philosophers believed in the logic of the fist with its natural consequence, the law of natural selection and the struggle for survival” reflect the actual knowledge of two eminent jurists (at some time, each was a Chief Justice of Pakistan) or merely their disdain for anything Hindu?
These two jurists received as good an education as any in British India. If this was the state of their knowledge, it raises the question – if they, and by implication most other Muslims, had better knowledge of their Hindu neighbors, would history have been different? If it was disdain for Hindus based on more complete knowledge, why was it necessary to include this sentence in their report?
