The Riots of 1953 — Page 19
19 Government with thousands of such printed letters so as to impress upon it the necessity of conceding their demands. These demands did not include in express terms that the Ahmadiyya Community should be declared a minority. The Ahrar, however, were busy with their own game and had succeeded to a certain extent in influencing the uneducated masses in securing support to the claim that Ahmadis be declared a non-Muslim minority. The Jamaat-i- Isla m i sensed a danger to their leadership if they did not include this demand amongst the eight demands already formulated by them. It is surprising that inspite of the claim of its leader that the eight demands formulated by him included, by implication, this particular demand, he still felt the necessity of making it an independent demand of his party. It is still more surprising that such a demand should have been considered for inclusion in the Constitution of the State. The adding of this demand to the eight demands of the Jamaat-i-Islami removes the veil from its so-called religious structure and establishes the fact that it had no other object than to overthrow the Government and to seize power for itself. The leader of Jamaat-i-Islami thought that the rejection of such a demand and s i milar demands will afford an occasion to his party to inflame the masses against the Government and thus to render the task of the Government difficult. The idea was to create difficulties for it so that it should do no constructive work. The problems which faced the Government were too difficult of solution even otherwise; so to incite the masses against it and at the same time to create obstacles for it could only be motivated by a desire to accelerate the process of disintegration of the State. 21. In October 1951, Mr. Liaquat Ali Khan was murdered at Rawalpindi and this served as a fillip for the Ulema for pushing forward their programme of establishing their own Government and vilifying the Ahmadiyya Community. The extracts of speeches