Pakistan movement: Freedom struggle/ The creation of Pakistan — an Indian reflects
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Pakistan movement: Freedom struggle/ The creation of Pakistan — an Indian reflects
By Professor Mushirul Hasan
Why did a society with its splendidly plural heritage become, in 1947, the site of one of the most cataclysmic events in twentieth-century history?
The men who organized the Simla deputation on 1 October 1906 would not have anticipated history to take such a bloody course. They were well-bred individuals, representing the creamy layer of north India’s Muslim society but detached from the community. Inspired by the reformist ideas of Syed Ahmad Khan, they reflected the intellectual currents during the last decade of the twentieth century.
Their arrival did not signal the coming of a revolution. On the contrary they were status quo-ists, who safeguarded their interests by being close to the government and expressing loyalty to the Queen.
Their demands, too, had no revolutionary content. It was churlish for their detractors to dismiss them as ‘separatist’ or ‘communal’. The founders of the All-India Muslim League aired the view that minority rights had to be upheld in any constitutional arrangements, and that the Muslim interests, in particular, had to be protected through reservations, separate electorates and weightages. In its early years, the Aligarh leaders, mostly the landed elements, piloted the Muslim League. They were a conservative lot with little or no vision for the future of the community.
M.A. Jinnah knew this. He therefore insisted that the League Constitution be amended to include the adoption of self-government as its goal. This change coincided with the self-introspection taking place between the moderate and the extremist wings of the Indian National Congres. They had split in Surat and efforts were now underway to unite them. No wonder, the Congres and the League were able to reach an important agreement, in December 1916, for the sharing of political power in a colonial system. Jinnah, having been tutored in the liberal traditions of early Indian nationalism, had brokered this peace.
‘Young India’, wrote a correspondent, ‘ought to be proud of the fact that in the Hon’ble Mr. Jinnah it has found a leader who labours under no illusions as to what United India ought to have.’
The League dominated the political landscape, along with the Congres. During the Khilafat movement and thereafter, however, it survived lazily. Its membership plummeted to 1,330 in 1927. The 1929 session was adjourned for lack of quorum.
When Mohammad Iqbal presented his address in Allahabad in 1930, the meeting failed to muster the required quorum of 75 members. In 1935, Halide Edib, the Turkish visitor to India, declared emphatically that one talked of the League as an arbiter of Muslim destiny.
What is more, the League was neither a political adversary not a force counterpoised against the Congres. In 1936, the Raja of Mahmudabad believed that the Congres and the League ‘were like two parts of the same army fighting a common enemy on two fronts.’ Jinnah talked of a ‘united front’ when the Congres accepted office in March 1937. ‘There is no difference’, he proclaimed on 18 September 1937, ‘between the ideals of the Muslim League and of the Congres.’
So, the initiative towards the creation of a separate Muslim homeland, though spurred by political rumblings from the days of Syed Ahmad Khan, had little to do with the ‘two-nation’ theory.
‘It was the war’, wrote the historian Eric Hobsbawm, ‘that broke India in two. In one sense it was the last great triumph of the Raj—and at the same time its last exhausted gasp.’ So that the League’s success needs to be located in the context of the performance and subsequent resignation of Congres ministries in 1939, the fluid political climate during the War years (1939-45), the Congres decision to launch the Quit India movement (1942), and the British government’s readiness to modify its political strategy towards the League. A beleaguered wartime government that had previously refused to deal with Jinnah now turned to him for political and moral support.
The inglorious breakdown of cross-community alliances and the accompanying collapse of the coalition governments in Punjab and Bengal—the last bastions of resistance to the Muslim League—helped turn Jinnah’s dream into a reality on 14 August 1947. This was unthinkable a decade earlier when Pakistan was still a pipe dream and the League was little more than a paper organization
One further point. The swiftness with which the Pakistan idea succeeded in becoming actualized and the intensity of emotions involved had more to do with the political and economic anxieties of various social classes than with a profound urge to create an Islamic/Muslim state.
Both in its conception and articulation the League’s demands summed up the fears and aspirations of the newly-emergent professional groups, especially in UP (United Provinces, now Uttar Pradesh) and Bihar, the powerful landed classes in Punjab, Sind and UP, and the industrial magnates of western and eastern India. The creation of Pakistan symbolized the fulfillment of their aspirations.
A prominent Leaguer from Bengal commented: ‘The great yearning for office which is still uppermost in the minds and hearts of the majority of the Muslim politicians today is really heart-rending’. He should have added that such politicians were not tied down to any political shibboleths but moved by alively regard for their own material benefits. By following Jinnah’s lead they made a calculated decision to throw their full weight behind the government, take advantage of the resignation of Congres ministries, and pre-empt the possibility of their returning to power.
Mohammad Mujeeb, Jamia Millia Islamia’s Vice-Chancellor, recalled how prominent Leaguers took to praying in public when their critics pointed out the inconsistency of representing Islam and neglecting even the elementary religious obligations. ‘We used religion, and the real danger of extinction that it faced, to gain our freedom,’ commented Firoz Khan Noon.
When Sher Ali Khan, brother of the Nawab of Pataudi (Iftikhar Ali Khan), returned to Punjab in early 1946, he found that ‘religious fervour was definitely the pace-setter’. ‘Whenever I heard of Pakistan, I heard of religion,’ he wrote in his memoirs. He found ‘the political atmosphere charged with a communal approach’ in Lahore and Multan. The ability of Muslim League spokesmen to communicate their Muslimness and their Islamic convictions lies at the heart of their success in creating a separate state.
Pirs, sajjada-nashins and sections of the ulama discovered an opening in the rapidly changing political scene. While the going was good, they jumped into the political arena to advance their material well-being, protect their vital landed interests in Punjab and Sind, safeguard religious establishments under their vigil and control, and defend, their status as guardians, custodians and interpreters of the Shariat. They found themselves, after nearly two decades, busy re-enacting the critical role they had performed during the Khilafat activity in the early 1920s.
The League’s campaign is vividly described in Rahi Masoom Reza’s novel Aadha Gaon (Half-a-Village). Gangauli village in eastern UP was a microcosm: what the fiery Aligarh students said there was repeated all over India. For this and other reasons, their dialogue with the rural folk, parts of which are reproduced here, is most illuminating.
‘If Pakistan is not created the eighty million Muslims here will be made, and made to remain, untouchables’, said the other [student] ...
One of the young men proceeded to deliver a complete speech which Kammo didn’t understand in the least because the young man was mentioning matters not one of which had any connection with him or with Gangauli.
‘I can’t believe all that, sahib’, said Kammo after listening to the whole speech. ‘Why should this Gaya Ahir, this Chikuriya or Lakhna Chamar or this Hariya Barhai become our enemies, for no reason, after Hindustan gets free? Is that what you people learn over there [Aligarh]?
‘At this moment you may not be able to comprehend this fact, but that is indeed what is going to happen. Cows will be tethered in our mosques.’
‘Eh, sahib, if all the Muslims go to Pakistan, what difference does it make if horses are tied in them or cows? It’s not as if Hindus are going to say prayers there. It’s a fine old bit of nonsense that we all go to Pakistan and then expect the Hindus to look after our mosques.’
At first the young men tried to persuade the peasant in front of them, but then gradually they became angry—and rightfully so ... One of them said hotly, ‘Very well, but don’t you complain when the Hindus come and carry off your mothers and sisters’....
‘You must all be aware that at the present time, throughout the country, the Muslims are engaged in a life and death struggle for existence. We live in a country where our position is no more than equivalent to that of salt in dal [lentils]. Once the protective shadow of the British is removed, these Hindus will devour us. That is the reason that Indian Muslims require a place where they will be able to live with honour ...
It was a very rousing speech. The brothers in Islam even interrupted from time to time to cry out ‘Allah-o-Akbar’ [God is great]. As a result, a large section of the traders and weavers decided that they should vote for the League as a religious duty. Haji Ghafoor tried to speak several times but the young men wouldn’t allow him the opportunity.‘So you people go ahead and fuck your mother!’, he fumed. In his rage he even forgot that he was in a mosque. The visitors from Aligarh took full advantage of this foul language. Even the men who were wavering became absolutely solid in their conviction.
The Haji Saheb stormed out of the mosque. The speech had been quite beyond his comprehension. He didn’t even understand why all of a sudden Muslims needed a place of refuge. And where was the protective shadow of the British that these boys had made such a song and dance about? No Englishman had ever been seen in Gangauli. And why then hadn’t the Hindus killed the Muslims before the British came to India? And what about the fundamental question - was life and death in the hands of God or the British and Jinnah Sahib?‘And we’ll still be just weavers. Will the Saiyids start marrying their children to weavers in Pakistan’.
This discussion reveals conflicting perceptions, and a sense of impatience and urgency on the part of those who tried to impose their codes and the stout resistance to a discourse that conveyed no real meaning to, say, the Haji Saheb. There were many Gangaulis in India, with their Ghafoors and Hajis, where people did not quite understand the logic behind Muslim nationalism. Hindus and Muslims living in harmony and goodwill could not understand the ill will and hostility that was conveyed through speeches and pamphlets.
That is why one can spot so many Gangaulis on India’s map where the League’s message reached but failed to impress. Indeed, there were many Gangaulis where the Aligarh enthusiasts encountered bitter opposition in their bid to win over a following.
Lastly, standard accounts of the freedom movement in Pakistan portray a unified, harmonious and selfless leadership, inspired by high ideals of service to the Muslim community and motivated by the fervour to create a state and society in conformity with Islamic law.
This interpretation is false for two reasons; first, the depth and intensity of jealousies and internal discord are not commensurate with the ‘pure’ intentions attributed to the League and its following. Second, evidence points to the presence of groups who were either pushed into taking religious/Islamic positions or for whose material concerns the time was ripe at this particular historical juncture.In the end, though, Mohammad Iqbal offered a romantic egalitarian vision to nurture, a vision shimmering with an idealized recall of the heroic past.
He inspired faith, pride and confidence in the Islamic heritage. Instead of the dry ritualized dogma of the ulama, he emphasized Islam’s social dynamism, an Islam which hasd created equality between the rich and the poor, Arab and non-Arab. In a situation where the Muslim middle classes lived in colonial subjection and in competition with their Hindu counterparts, Iqbal’s eloquent poetry inspired a new sense of dignity and importance. Muslims from the modest middle-class stratum, having once been mobilized by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the Ali brothers (Mohamed and Shaukat) and other pan-Islamists around the Khilafat issue, were greatly moved by his powerful Islamic images.
The perspectives and attitudes on such vexed matters are bound to differ, but they should not stand in way of developing a common reference point for rewriting the histories of an event that cast its shadow over many aspects of State and society in the subcontinent. Today, mental laziness and pious rehashing even more than by political ideology hamper the historiography of partition. Surely, it is time to strip it of the elementary significations it has bequeathed to its heirs, and to venture to it another primium movens of the historian, namely, intellectual curiosity and the free search of knowledge about the past.
If the nineteenth-century Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib had been alive, he would have asked in his inimitable style:
When all is You, and nought exists but You
Tell me, O Lord, why all this turmoil too?
In so many ways the first decade of the Congres government, led by Jawaharlal Nehru in New Delhi, stands in contrast to development in neighbouring Pakistan. In 1947 India went on to consolidate itself as a democracy; the enthusiastic members of the Constituent Assembly burnt the midnight oil for over a period of two years and adopted a constitution on 26 November 1949, which came into force on 26 January 1950. On the other hand, Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly took nine years to agree to a constitution.
Jinnah died on 11 September 1948. The Muslim League declined thereafter. The ideological cement that hekd it together dissolved once Pakistan was achieved. If the League had institutionalized itself or provided the leadership essential for under-writing stability or democracy, it could recovered some of the ground it had lost. But that was not to be. In 1954, the part was routed in provincial elections in East Pakistan. This is where 54 per cent of Pakiatan’s population lived. The League was likened to ‘a virtuous lady who has fallen into bad times and is forced by circumstances to become a courtesan.
A Hindu fanatic assassinated Mahatma Gandhi on 30 January 1948. But the Congres survived not only as a powerful organization but spearheaded the nation-building project through a policy of conciliation and compromise. Elected governments in Pakistan, by contrast, held power at the discretion of what Hamza Alavi described as the all-powerful military-oligarchy. The scholar Fazlur Rahman, a victim of religious intolerance in Pakistan, expressed the view that Mohammad Iqbal’s philosophical legacy had not been followed, partly because of what he had said but largely because he was both misunderstood and misused by his politics-mongering followers.
Fazlur Rahman had also pointed out that, ‘in Islam religion and politics are inseparable, is employed to dupe the common man into accepting that, instead of politics or the state serving the long-term objectives of Islam, Islam should come to serve the immediate and myopic objectives of party politics.’ , Since, the failure of successive leaderships has led to a deep and justified skepticism on the part of much of Pakistan civil society regarding their leaders, and the political rhetoric behind which their camouflage their failings.
Why have the experiences of India and Pakistan been so different since their Independence? As the Muslim League celebrates, it is time to reflect on this question.
The writer is a Historian and Vice Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi
Mushirul Hasan has recently published A Moral Reckoning: Muslim Intellectuals in Nineteenth-Century Delhi (2005) and From Pluralism to Separatism: Qasbas in Colonial Awadh (2004).
