IQBAL AND JINNAH ON PALESTINE

Dr. Ghulam Ali Chaudhry

In 712 A.D. Hajjaj bin Yusuf Saqafi despatched Muhammad bin Qasim at the head of an expeditionary force to punish Dahir of Sind. That Hindu Raja had shown recalcitrance and behaved with impunity when warned not to neglect the safe passage of Hajis along the coastal strip of his territories. The young arab general won the first Muslim foothold on the Subcontinent. But it was a long time before torrent after torrent of Muslim conquerors from Afghanistan and Central Asia swept down the passes of the North-West Frontier. Thus, established Muslim rule in the Subcontinent continued in varying power and glory for about a thousand years. For in 1707 A.D. when Aurangzeb died, almost all India was under Muslim sway.

Early in the seventeenth century the British came to the Subcontinent by sea, appearing as merchants, and, favoured by Mughal generosity, they established trading posts mostly on and near the western coasts. A century and a half later they were in the thick of the power struggle going on the replace the declining Mughal authority. Through conspiracy, force and fraud, they grabbed, annexed and transacted Muslim principalities and Muslim territories wherever they lay, in Bengal in the east, in Oudh in the north, in Mysore in the sourth and in Sind in the west. The first big blow came 50 years after Aurangzeb, in 1757, when Nawab Sirajuddaulah lost the day against the English at Plassey in Bengal, and the last one 150 years after Aurangzeb, in 1857, when the last Mughal emperor, Sirajuddin Bahadurshah Zafar, lay prostrate at Delhi, watching helplessly the massacre of his children and appearing as a rare-show in the bazaars of his capital before being exiled to Rangoon in Burma where he died and was buried.

The British rise to power in the Subcontinent was marked by two perennial factors: first, their inveterate hostility to Islam and the Muslim which they shared with the other Christian countries of Europe since their defeat at the hands of Sultan Salahuddin in 1187 A.D. and, secondly, the ready and steady cooperation which the Hindu, having been ruled by the Muslim for a thousand years, extended to the British. Thus while the British built up and boosted the Hindu in every field and by every means, they put down and ruined the Muslim everywhere and in alt possible ways; and the Hindu, paying off old scores, has often on the side of the British and pitted against the Muslim. The most heinous outrage that this British-Hindu combine perpetrated was the sale-deed of Kashmir. In 1946 the British struck a deal with Gulab Singh, a Dogra Hindu of Jammu, to give him possession of that beautiful land, with its 80% Muslim population (now about 6,500,000) and its area well over 180,000 sq. km., for a cash payment of 15,000,000 rupees. A people and their homeland transacted as a common piece of landed property. It was an enormity, a most monstrous crime against humanity; Allama Muhammad Iqbal, himself of Kashmiri stock, cried out some eighty years[1]

Wood and stream and field and ploughman, And a nation into the bargain,

Without o’er a scruple or shudder,

All they sold for filthy lucre,

Against this double-barrelled British-Hindu gun aimed at them, Muslims in the Subcontinent took two lines of action. The more desperate among them set up a camp of resistance in the hills of the North-West Frontier after the earlier pattern of struggle of Syed Ahmad Shaheed and Shah Ismail Shaheed against the Sikh tyrants of the Punjab; and the more foresighted, led by Syed Ahmad Khan, advised their community to accept the fact of British supremacy with patience and fortitude, warned them of the coming Hindu domination and prescribed self-assertion through co-operation. No wonder the Muslims fell foul of the British-founded, Hindu-ridden Indian National Congress so early in the day and met at Dacca in Bengal in 1906 to organize their own separate political party, The All-India Muslim League. Among those who guided these deliberations were Nawab Viqarul Mulk, Nawab Mohsinul Mulk and Nawab Salim Ullah. The mujahid camp in the North-West was eventually liquidated by the British, but the policies of Syed Ahmad Khan and his circle paid immediate dividends. As the British gradually began to introduce reform for representative institutions through elections, the Muslims 25% of the total population of the Subcontinent, clearly saw the threat to their existence as a community: 25 Muslim votes against 75 Hindu votes, or 1 against 3, at all levels, district, provincial and centare! They demanded and won the separate electorates-- the principle that Muslims were to elect their representatives and Hindus their own, Muslims representing Muslims and Hindus representing Hindus.

It is interesting that this constitutional provision for a separate electoral register for the Muslim minority in a predominantly Hindu India had a very pertinent precedent. The Turkish minority in a predominantly Greek Cyprus had long before secured for Turks the right to represent, and vote for, Turks alone!

This assertion of their separate political identity sprang from the Muslims’ abiding faith in Islam as their sheet-anchor. Their one-thousand year rule in the Subcontinent as believers in Allah and the Prophet of Allah (peace be upon him) had shaped their attitudes in two definitive ways:

1) At home they never would accept the idolatrous Hindus as their political masters, and (2) Abroad they would always work for the solidarity of the Muslim world. Their Muslim consciousness never flagged, not even in their darkest hour. Whatever their own trials and tribulations, they never lost sight of their ideal of a universal Muslim brotherhood. Imagine their lot as British subjects during and at the end of World War I when the whole Muslim Ummah lay rent up and bleeding at the mercy of the treacherous and unscrupulous Allies! Hundreds of thousands of them through the length and breadth of the country stood up, agitating against their British rulers who shot them, rode their horses over them, threw them into jails, exiled them, burnt down their habitations and confiscated their properties. All this they suffered not for weeks or months but for years in the cause of Khilafh which in the end proved to be a hopeless struggle. And when the movement died out following certain unexpected developments in Turkey, hundreds remained sullen and unreconciled, and left their homes and hearths, performing “hijra” from India (which was Darul harb) to Afghanistan (which was Darul Islam).

Even a casusl glance over the relevant historical documents of the period should reveal how sorrow seethed in the minds and hearts of Muslim India at the predicament of the Muslim world. For instance, one can turn page after page of the annals of the All-India Muslim League and find the assembled delegates voicing their protests against the happenings in the Balkans. Algiers, Morocco, Iran, Turkey, Tunis, Tripoli, Egypt and Jaziratul Arab which was believed to include Syria, Iraq and Palestine besides Arabia proper. Reception speeches, presidential addresses and resolutions poured out their resentment and grief over the inhuman and unjust treatment meted out to their Muslim brethren in these lands. And the castigation came from some of the best minds of Muslim India, such as Hakim Muhammad Ajmal Khan, Maulana Muhammad Ali Jouhar Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Allama Muhammad Iqbal, Maulana Hasrat Mauhani and Maulana Zafar Ali Khan.

As the separatist Muslim struggle for freedom advanced and expanded under the Muslim League, this note of solidarity with the entire world of Islam range loud and clear. It is not my purpose here to capture this fraternal sentiment in its full volume but to record it only in the utterances and activities of Muhammad Iqbal and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. I will try to show how these two founding fathers of Pakistan remained over watchful of Muslim Arab interests on Palestine even during their grim battle against the British-Hindu axis.

Ever since November 1917 when the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, in wicked league with that arch-Zionist Lord Rothschild, and with the prior endorsement of President Woodrow Wilson of America, declared British support for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, the Muslims of the Subcontinent had been most unreservedly condemning this plan of international gangsterism. Their sense of shock was further aggravated when, in July 1922, the League of Nations gave its official blessings to the mandate forged clandestinely be the Allies and World Zionism. Through meetings, processions, speeches, resolutions and deputations, they tried to impress upon their British rulers the extreme heinousness of their policies in Palestine and the simple justness of the cause of the Arabs.

Jewish immigrant hordes were pouring into Palestine and the Arab land was being seized and auctioned under the aegis of the mandatory Britain and in the name of agriculture and colonization. Except for 88 years, from - 1099 A.D., when the Fatimids lost to the Crusaders, to 1187 A.D., when Sultan Salahuddin wiped out the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Arab community under Islam had dominated Jerusalem and the Holy Land politically, socially and culturally from 638 A.D. to 1917 A.D., and it was now being disinherited and supplanted by the Jewish community scattered all over the world whose Iron Age ancestors and their descendants had ruled in Palestine from 12th century B.C. to 721 B.C. when Israel became politically extinct! Only the British, who had sold the land and people of Kashmir. en masse, could sell the land and people of Palestine piecemeal. Muhammad Iqbal asked them a question, through the answer to it he well knew:

If the Jew had a right to the soil of Palestine, Why can’t the Arab lay claim to Spain? No, British Imperialism has other aims. It’s no tale of citron, honey or dates.

In poem after poem, Iqbal attacked the two Mandatories, Britain and France, for their ghastly deeds in Palestine and Syria.

In the 1930’s the situation in Palestine became increasingly alarming. The British adopted ruthlessly repressive measures to quell Arab opposition, and the result was a general revolt. When in July 1937 the Royal Commission under Lord Peel recommended partition and further Jewish immigration, the whole world of Islam was left aghast.

Miss Farquharson of the National League of England requested Muhammad Iqbal to express his views on these shocking recommendations. Writing to her on 20 July 1937, he said:

“We must not forget that Palestine does not belong to England. She is holding it under a mandate from the League of Nations, which Muslim Asia is now learning to regard as an Anglo-French institution invented for the purpose of dividing the territories of weaker Muslim peoples. Nor does Palestine belong to the Jews who abandoned it of their own free will long before its possession by the Arabs. Nor is Zionism a religious movement.... Indeed the impression given to the unprejudiced reader is that Zionism as a movement was deliberately created, not for the purpose of giving a National Home to the Jews but for the purpose of giving a home to British Imperialism on the Mediterranean littoral.

“The Report amounts, on the whole, to a sale under duress to the British of the Holy Places in the shape of the permanent mandate which the Commission has invented in order to cover their imperialist designs. The price of this sale is an amount of money to the Arabs plus an appeal to their generosity and a piece of land to the Jews. I do hope that British statesmen will abandon this policy of actual hostility to the Arabs and restore their country to them.”[2]

In a statement issued on 27 July 1937 to the press, Muhammad Iqbal said:

“I assure the people that I feel the injustice done to the Arabs as keenly as anybody else who understands the situation in the Near East

“The problem, studied in its historical perspective, is purely a Muslim problem. In the light of the history of Isreal, Palestine ceased to be a Jewish problem long before the entry of Caliph Umar into Jerusalem more than 1300 years ago. Their dispersion, as Professor Hockings has pointed out, was perfectly voluntary and their scriptures were for the most part written outside Palestine. Nor was it ever a Christian problem. Modern historical research has doubted even the existence of Peter, the Hermit. Even if we assume that the Crusades were an attempt to make Palestine a Christian problem, the attempt was defeated by the victories of Salah-ud-Din. I, therefore, regard Palestine as a purely Muslim problem.

“Never were the motives of British imperialism as regards the Muslim people of the Near East so completely unmasked as in the Report of the Royal Commission. The idea of a national home for the Jews in Palestine was only a device. In fact, British imperialism sought a home for itself in the form of a permanent mandate in the religious home of the Muslims. This is indeed a dangerous experiment… The sale of the Holy Land, including the mosque of Umar, inflicted on the Arbas with the threat of martial law and softened by an appeal to their generosity, reveals bankruptcy of statesmanship rather than its achievement. The offer of a piece of rich land to the Jews and the rocky desert plus cash to the Arbas is no political wisdom. It is a low transaction.

“It is impossible for me to discuss the details of the Palestine Report in this short statement. There are, however, in recent history, important lessons which Muslims of Asia ought to take to heart. Experience has made it abundantly clear that the political integrity of the peoples of the Near East lies in the immediate reunion of the Turks and the Arabs. The policy of isolating the Turks from the rest of Muslim world is still in action. We hear now and then that Turks are repudiating Islam. A greater lie was never told. Only those who have no idea of the history of the concepts of Islamic jurisprudence fall an easy pray to this sort of mischievous propaganda.”

Warning “The Muslim statesmen of the free non-Arab Muslim countries of Asia” that the present moment “was also a moment of trial” for them, Iqbal concluded:

“Since the abolition of the Caliphat this is the first serious international problem of both a religious and political nature which historical forces are compelling them to face. The possibilities of the Palestine problem may eventually compel them seriously to consider their position as members of that Anglo French institution miscalled the League of Nations and to explore practical means for the formation of an Eastern League of Nations.”[3]

Muhammad Iqbal wrote to Miss Farquharson again on 6^th September 1937:

“I have been more or less in touch with Egypt, Syria and Iraq. I also received letters from Najaf. You must have read that the Shias of Kerbala and Najaf have made a strong protest against the partition of Palestine. The Persian Prime Minister and the President of the Turkish Republic have also spoken and protested.

“In India too the feeling is rapidly growing more and more intense. The other day 50,000 Muslims met at Delhi and protested against the Palestine Commission

“I have every reason to believe that the National League will save England from a grave political blunder and in so doing it will serve both England and the Muslim world…”[4]

And on 7 October 1937, Iqbal wrote to Muhammad All Jinnah, President of the All-India Muslim League:

“The Palestine question is very much agitating the minds of the Muslims… I have no doubt that the League will pass a strong resolution on this question and also by holding a private conference of the leaders decide on some sort of a positive action in which the masses may share in large numbers. This will at once popularise the League and may help the Palestine Arabs. Personally I would not mind going to jail on an issue which affects Islam and India. The formation of a Western base on the very gates of the East is a menace to both.”[5]

Only a week later, on 15 October 1937, in the course of his presidential address to the All-India Muslim League Session at Lucknow, Muhammad Ali Jinnah said:

“May I now turn and refer to the question of Palestine? It has moved the Mussalmans all over India most deeply. The whole policy of the British Government has been a betrayal of the Arabs, from its very inception. Fullest advantage has been taken of their trusting nature. Great Britain has dishonoured her proclamation to the Arabs, which had guaran-teed them complete independence for the Arab homelands and the formation of an Arab Confederation under the stress of the Great War. After having utilized them, by giving them false promises, they installed themselves as the Mandatory Power with that infamous Balfour Declaration, which was obviously irreconcilable and incapable of simultaneous execution. Then, having pursued the policy to find a national home for the Jews, Great Britain now proposes to partition Palestine, and the Royal Commission’s recommendation completes the tragedy. If given effect to, it must necessarily lead to the complete ruination and destruction of every legitimate aspiration of the Arabs in their homeland -- and now we are asked to-look at the realities! But who created this situation? It has been the handiwork of and brought about sedulously by the British statesmen ... I am sure I am speaking not only of the Mussalmans of India but of the world; and all sections of thinking and fair-minded people will agree, when I say that Great Britain will be digging its grave if she fails to honour her original proclamation, promises and intentions -- pre war and even post-war -- which were so unequivocally expressed to the Arabs and the world at large. I find that a very tense feeling of excitement has been created and the British Government, out of sheer desperation, are resorting to repressive measures, and ruthlessly dealing with the public opinion of the Arabs in Palestine. The Muslims of India will stand solid and will help the Arabs in every way they can in the brave and just struggle that they are carrying on against all odds.”[6]

At the same session at Lucknow, under the presidentship of Jinnah, the All-India Muslim League passed the following resolution on Palestine:

“The All-India Muslim League declares, in the name of the Mussalmans of India, that the recommendations of the Royal Palestine Commission and the subsequent statement of policy presented… to Parliament conflict with their religious sentiments and in the interests of world peace demands its rescission without further delay.

“The All-India Muslim League appeals to the rulers of Muslim countries to continue to use their powerful influence and best endeavours to save the holy places in Palestine from the sacrilege of non-Muslim domination and the Arabs of the Holy Land from the enslavement of British Imperialism backed by Jewish finance.

“The All-India Muslim League places on record its complete confidence in the Supreme Muslim Council and the Arab Higher Committee under the leadership of His Eminence the Grand Mufti, and warns the local administration in Palestine not to aggravate the resentment already created in the Muslim world by a policy of repression… obstensibly to uphold law and order, but in reality calculated to further the interest of aliens through the scheme of partition.

“This Session of the All-India Muslim League warns the British Government that if it fails to alter its present pro-Jewish policy in Palestine, the Mussalmans of India, in consonance with the rest of the Islamic world, will look upon British as the enemy of Islam and shall be forced to adopt all necessary measures according to the dictates of their faith.”

During the years that followed the Royal Commission Report, the Arab rebellion, led by the Grand Mufti Al-Haj Amin al-Hussaini and the Arab Higher Committee, rose to an unprecedented fury. The number of Jewish colonies, which had risen from 22 in 1900 to 47 in 1917, was now 200. case for partition had thus been treacherously forged, and the Jewish “national home” was now to become the “State of Israel.”[7]

Allama Muhammad Iqbal passed away on 21 April 1938 but his call rang on in the Muslim soul. On 26 December 1938, in his presidential address to the All-India Muslim League at Patna, Muhammad Ali Jinnah declared:

“I know how deeply Muslim feelings have been stirred over the issue of Palestine. I know Muslims will not shirk from any sacrifice if required to help the Arabs who are engaged in the fight for their national freedom. You know the Arabs have been treated shamelessly -- men who fighting for the freedom of their country, have been described as gangsters, and subjected to all forms of repression. For defending their homelands, they are being put down at the point of the bayonet, and with the help of martial laws. But no nation, no people who are worth living as a nation, can achieve anything great without making great sacrifices, such as the Arabs of Palestine are making. All our sympathies are with those valiant martyrs who are fighting the battle of freedom against usurpers. They are being subjected to monstrous injustices which are being propped up by British Imperialism with the ulterior motire of placating the international Jewry which commands the money-bags…[8]

At the same session at Patna, under the presidentship of Jinnah, the All-India Muslim League adopted the following resolution:

“It is the considered opinion of the All-India Muslim League that the unjust Balfour Declaration and the subsequent policy of repression adopted by the British Government in Palestine aim at making their sympathy for the Jews a pretext for incorporating that country into the British Empire with a view to strengthening British Imperialism, and to frustrating the idea of a federation of Arab States and its possible union with other Muslim States. They also want to use sacred places in Palestine as aerial and naval bases for their future military activities. The atrocities that have been perpetrated on the Arabs for the attainment of this object have no parallel in history.”

“This Muslim League Session regards those Arabs who are being subjected to all kinds of persecutions and repressions, and who are making all sacrifices for preserving their sacred land, protecting their national rights and emancipating their motherland, as heroes and martyrs, and congratulates them on their bravery and sacrifice, and warns the British Government that if it does not forthwith stop the influx on Jews into Palestine and does not include in the proposed conference the Grand Mufti, the genuine leaders of the Arabs, as well as the representatives of the India Mussalmans, the conference will be nothing but a farce.

“This Session declares that the problem of Palestine is the problem of Muslims of the whole world; and if the British Government fails to do justice to the Arabs and to fulfil the demands of the Muslims of the world, the Indian Muslims will adopt any programme and will be prepared to make any sacrifice that may be decided upon by a Muslim International Conference, at which the Muslims of India are duly represented in order to save the Arabs from British exploitation and Jewish usurpation ....”[9]

World War II broke out in 1939. On the one hand, the British Government in India sought Muslim co-operation with the war effort, and on the other, they conspired with the Zionists to open the doors wide for Jewish immigrants entering Palestine as “war refugees.” On 21^st March 1940, in his presidential address to the All-India Muslim League Session at Lahore -- at which the historic “Pakistan” resolution was passed -- Muhammad Ali Jinnah reported on his negotiations with the British Government, saying:

“We are told that endeavors, earnest endeavors, are being made to meet the reasonable, national demands of the Arabs. Well, we cannot be satisfied by earnest endeavours, sincere endeavours, best endeavours. We want that the British Government should in fact and actually meet the demands of the Arabs in Palestine.”[10]

At the same session at Lahore, under the presidentship of Jinnah, the All-India Muslim League passed the following resolution, moved by Abdur Rahman Siddiqui who had attended the Palestine Conference in Cairo the preceding year:

“The All-India Muslim League views with grave concern the inordinate delay on the part of the British Government in coming to a settlement with the Arabs in Palestine, and places on record its considered opinion, in clear and unequivocal language, that no arrangements of a piecemeal character will be made in Palestine which are contrary in spirit and opposed to the pledges given to the Muslim world, and particularly to the Muslims in India, to secure their active assistance in the War of 1914-18. Further, the League warns the British Government against the danger of taking advantage of the presence of a large British force in the Holy Land to overawe the Arabs and force them into submission.[11]

At the All-India Muslim League Session held at Delhi in April 1943, under the presidentship of Jinnah, the following resolution “from the chair” was adopted:

“This Session of the All-India Muslim League views with great concern and alarm the new Zionist propaganda and move in the U.S.A., which is putting pressure on the U.S. Government, firstly to remove all present restrictions on Jewish immigration in Palestine, and secondly to adopt the policy of converting Palestine into a Jewish State.

“In the opinion of this Session the aim of this new Zionist move is to make Jewish majority in Palestine a fait accompli by opening her doors to the Jewish war refugees, on the ground of the war emergency and the persecution of Jews in Europe.

“This Session condemns this new move as a deliberate attempt to perpetrate a wrong on the Arab and Islamic world at a time when the Arab National Higher Committee of Palestine stands disbanded and the Arab Nationalists are, at present, almost defence-less against organized Jewry and High Finance in the world.

“This Session, reiterating its demands for the fulfilment of Arab national demands for Arab independence in Palestine and Syria, solemnly warns the British Government against any step or move which may prove detrimental to Arab national interests, and declares that such a policy will be bitterly resented by the whole Arab Islamic world as an outrage on democracy and justice and inalienable Arab rights to their homeland.”[12]

Again, the the All-India Muslim League Session held at Karachi in December 1943 under the presidentship of Jinnah, the following resolution was passed:

“This Session of the All-India Muslim League urges, with all the emphasis at its command, upon His Majesty’s Government in particular and other Allied Powers, that the territories recently released from the control of Italy, viz., Ceranaica, be not handed back to the Italian Government, but be constituted independent sovereign States.

“This Session is further of opinion that the vicious system of mandates should be abolished once for all, and the countries of which the mandates were held by Great Britain and France, viz., Palestine, Syria and the Lebanon, should be restored to the people of the countries to set up their own sovereign Governments in their territories.

“Having regard to the oft-repeated declarations by the United Nations that they seek to liberate subject nationalists, this Session demands that the United Powers should urge France to liberate Morocco. Algeria and Tunis.” [13]

The War ended in 1945. During the two years that followed the Muslims of the Subcontinent were locked in a life-and-death struggle against the British Government and the Hindu Congress. They were made to wade through blood and fire, but, Allah be praised, they emerged triumphant, and on 14^th August 1947 there appeared on the map of the world the sovereign and independent State of Pakistan.

While, in the Subcontinent, the British enacted another piece of treachery against the Muslim people of Kashmir by clamping on them the Hindu Raj of New Delhi, in the Middle East, the Allies and the Zionists were now finally preparing to perpetrate a Jewish state on Palestine, the Arab world and Islam, and this they did on 14 July 1948. And the Pakistanis and the Arabs have fought three wars each against India and Israel and the Big Powers behind them.

Palestine or Kashmir --- the Big Power technique is the same. They choose a Muslim land or a Muslim people for their target, Take up conditions of hysteria around it, and the hit it with brute force, Crusades-style, exactly as the Church Militant would, which these powers really are; and then, to get legal cover for their fait accompli, they approach the League of Nations or the United Nations which is truly the Church Litigant. So the stricken Muslim land or people lies torn up between the two arms of the Church --the Church Militant and the Church Litigant.

Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah died with a thorn in his heart. For barely two weeks before he passed away on 11 September 1948, he said in his Eid-ul-Fitr message on 28^th August 1948:

“My Eid message to our brother Muslim States is one of friendship and goodwill. We are all passing through perilous times. The drama of power politics that is being staged in Palestine ... and Kashmir should serve as an eye opener to us. It is only by putting up a united front that we can make our voice felt in the counsels of the world.”[14]

Allama Muhammad Iqbal had insistently struck in his work this same note of mistrust of the presiding powers of the present-day world and prescribed this same remedy of self-reliance for the Muslim individual and the Muslim community. He hadn’t lived to see his dream of Pakistan come true or to watch the enemies of Islam producing the last bloody act of the tragedy in Kashmir and Palestine. But he had offered a word of advice, perhaps as farewell:

To the Palestinian Arab

The flame that may enkindle a world conflagration, is yet alive in your soul.

I know

Seek not redress from London or Geneva.

The jugular veins of the Frank are in the grip of the Jew I hear — A people’s chains snap when its

Ego grows and exults in proper self-expression.

In fact the call of these two great servants of Islam to the entire world of Islam derives directly from the Qur’an:

And he who reject the Taghut and believed in Allah,

hath grasped a firm handhold which will never break.

Only if we Muslims could learn to reject Taghut and hold fast to our faith in Allah, we would be on firm and safe ground.

Shall we then understand?

NOTES