A LOOK at Haji Sir Abdullah Haroon’s volume of correspondence is enough to give us a fair idea of his place among the front-line workers of the Pakistan Movement. The correspondence can form a book on its own. The letters were often lengthy, had the force of logic, were couched in the political idiom of the day and were written in excellent English. This needs to be highlighted to show the transformation into a mature parliamentarian of an eight-year-old selling haberdashery.
A letter addressed, for instance, to Sir Percy James Grigg, a member of the finance ministry at New Delhi, consisted of 3,000 words and dealt mostly with Sindh’s finances. Other letters, written to the All-India Muslim League (AIML) and Congress leaders, besides politicians, religious personalities and scholars at home and abroad, including quite often the Aga Khan, dwelt at length on the political tangle in India as war raged, independence neared and the Muslims seemed to lack unity.