All India Radio has handed over to Pakistan recordings of two important speeches by the country’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a step that was welcomed in Islamabad with much joy, according to Outlook India.
The speeches by Jinnah include one recorded by All India Radio in New Delhi on June 3‚ 1947 – two months before partition – in which he reacts to the decision of holding a referendum in the then North West Frontier Province (now ‘Khyber Pukhtunkhwa’) for determining if the region would join Pakistan or India.
The second recording is his August 14 address where he talks about the “welfare and well-being of all the communities” in Pakistan.
“We have received both the speeches. We are very happy and thankful to All India Radio (AIR),” said Javed Khan Jadoon, Head of Current Affairs, Pakistan Radio.
He said the speeches were received over the internet and officials here downloaded and transferred them to a Compact Disc.
“This will become part of our archives. I spoke to AIR Director yesterday and he has promised all help in case we need any recordings prior to 1947 also,” he said.
Asked when the speeches would be played to the people of Pakistan, he said an editorial decision is yet to be made.
On March 29, 2012, the then Pakistan Broadcasting Cooperation chief Murtaza Solangi wrote to AIR Director General
Leeladhar Mandloi, requesting him to provide a copy of Jinnah’s first presidential address to the constituent assembly in Karachi on August 11, 1947.
Solangi noted that he was told during his visit to the AIR in November 2011 that the speech was in the archives.
In that speech, Jinnah spoke of his vision of Pakistan as a state with equal citizens, irrespective of community, colour, caste and creed, and said people were free to go to their places of worship.
But AIR later said it did not have a copy of that specific speech.
- Reports
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