The Riots of 1953 — Page xv
vii of the country as well as other Ahmadis from key posts within the government and civil service. If not, the clerics threatened direct action ( raast iqdam ) against the state to ensure their demands were met. Many also suspected the Chief Minister of Punjab, Mian Mumtaz Daultana, of aligning with the ulema as a means of furthering his own political ambitions by engineering the downfall of Nazimuddin. In the aftermath of the riots, Shaukat Hayat Khan, the veteran politician who first called for an inquiry into the disturbances openly accused Daultana of tacitly supporting the rioters. Ultimately, Nazimuddin’s government refused to comply with the demands of the ulema, and a decision was taken to arrest the leading members of the movement. The riots began immediately after the first arrests were made. For all the immediate term causes, the origins of the disturbances were long-standing. The Pakistan that emerged after the partition of India, was a country with no deep-rooted historical or geographic foundations, nor were those who found themselves within the borders of the new state bound to each other by ethnicity, race, language, tribal allegiance, or cultural values. The one unifying force was religion, and the founders of the country unreservedly utilised the language of Islam to try and create a sense of social cohesion, despite, in many cases, their own lack of faith. If religion was to be the glue that brought the country together, then in the minds of the clergy, they and not the politicians ought to be the architects of the new state and the quickest way to gain a foothold in the new political landscape was through the Ahmadi question. But the reigniting of the debate around Ahmadis was not just a matter of a suddenly empowered clergy flexing their might. For all of their bravado, beneath the surface the ulema were also searching for their own sense of place and meaning within the recently formed nation.