We celebrate the national days such as the Independence Day (August 14), the Pakistan-Resolution Day (March 23) and Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s birth anniversary (December 25) for reviving the memories of the long and difficult struggle for achieving independence.
We examine the nature and dynamics of the independence movement. Why and how the leaders managed the struggle and what are its highlights and turning points? What motivated the leadership to launch the political struggle and how they mobilized the common people in favor of the political struggle? We also study the evolution of the conceptions of national identity, Two-Nation Theory, and the factors that made these notions politically appealing to Muslims.
The national days are also observed to pay tribute to the leaders of independence movement for their guidance and articulation of political demands. We also remember those who sacrificed their lives and properties in the struggle for achieving independence. We know that lakhs of people were uprooted from their homes, and they had to migrate to the homeland of their choice under extremely difficult conditions.
The armed groups killed thousands of people on their way to independent Pakistan and India. These armed gangs attacked railway trains that carried people from India to Pakistan. Those who travelled in bullock carts or on foot also faced the wrath of armed marauders. Still another reason for observing the national days is to reaffirm our commitment to the nation-state of Pakistan and its institutions and processes.
We renew our commitment to the national ideology and its guiding principles as articulated by the founders of Pakistan. We promise to work hard to achieve the national goals and serve national interests. The public display of the love and affection for the nation state on national days strengthens the relationship between an individual and the nation-state.
Pakistan officially became independent on August 15, 1947, but we celebrate our Independence Day on August 14 because it was on this date in 1947 that the transfer of power ceremony from British India to Pakistan took place in Karachi. This ceremony was led by Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah and Louis Mountbatten as the last Viceroy of British India.
He left Karachi for Delhi in the afternoon of August 14 to participate in India’s transfer of power ceremony on August 15, soon after the midnight of August 14–15. Mountbatten also assumed the office of first Governor General of independent India. He held this office until June 1948.
The establishment of Pakistan was the result of an arduous and long political struggle. Its basic assumptions were: (1) Distinct civilizational and cultural identity of the Muslims of British India inspired by the teachings and principles of Islam. (2) How to protect and advance the distinct Muslim identity in the political and societal domains of British India. (3) The Muslims of British India were a separate nation rather than a community entitled to a separate homeland.
The journey of the Muslims from the status of a community to a nation was the result of a remarkable political struggle that developed in the peculiar political and economic context of British India. It was the outcome of the political experience of the Muslims which was articulated by the Muslim League leadership into political demands for securing the Muslim historical and civilizational identity, rights and interests during the British rule in India and after their exit from India.
The notion of the Muslims of British India as a distinct civilizational and cultural identity surfaced in the writings and statements of Muslim scholars and community leaders in the second half of the 19th Century, especially in the last quarter of that Century and the beginning of the 20th Century.
The Muslim leadership of this period not only highlighted the distinct nature of the Muslim identity and rights, but it also raised this issue on public platforms and took up the issue from time to time with the British government for special arrangements to protect the Muslim identity, rights and interests in British India.
The British government gradually introduced a new state system patterned on the political system working in its mainland. The new state system focused on setting up state institutions with specialized functions and role differentiation, a codified legal system, and competitive recruitment to government jobs. The British government also introduced representation of Indians by nomination or limited elections. The new system of education with English language also had a profound impact on Indian society.
As the new system moved on, it created a competition among different communities, especially between the Muslims and non-Muslims, for securing government jobs, representation in the cabinets and legislative councils.
The Muslim elite organized themselves for making political demands to the British government. In October 1906, the Muslim elite demanded separate electorate for the Muslims to elect their representatives, and in December 1906, they established the Muslim League party in Dacca (now Dhaka). In 1909, the British government granted separate electorate to the Muslims for electing their representatives.
Goals and Strategies
The Muslim elite did not initially start their political activities under the British colonial system for creation of a separate homeland. Their focus was on protecting and advancing the cultural and civilizational and historical identity of the Muslims, their rights and interests under the new state system introduced by the British. However, their strategies to achieve these objectives changed over time. The goal of protecting the future of the Muslims of British India did not change. The Muslim leadership adopted the following strategies in 1858-1947.
1- Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and the Aligarh educational movement underlined the need for acquiring modern education and that the Muslims should avoid direct involvement in active politics. They advised the Muslims to stay away from the Congress party that was set up in 1885. The educational institutions under the Aligarh Movement combined British modern knowledge, including the learning of the English language, with Islamic teachings and education.
2- The Muslim educated elite gradually started political activity by the end of the 19th Century for advocating the issues pertaining to the Muslim community. They demanded separate electorate for the Muslims in October 1906 and established the Muslim League as a political forum for the Muslims for articulating their political and societal demands and presenting them to the British authorities.
3- In 1913, the Muslim League advocated the introduction of local self-governance keeping in view the diversity of people and their identities.
4- The Muslim leadership demanded constitutional safeguards and guarantees for their representation in legislatures, cabinets and government jobs. They also talked of weightage in representation in the assemblies to religious minorities for enabling them to protect their rights and interests in the provinces where they were in numerical minority.
5- Federal system with provincial autonomy.
6- The demand for a separate homeland for the Muslims of British India (1940), who were a nation with distinct cultural and civilizational identity and their history which included Muslim rule in India.
7- While reiterating its commitment to the demand for a separate homeland of Pakistan, the Muslim League expressed its willingness to work with the Cabinet Mission Plan (May 1946) that proposed a loose Indian federation in which the federal government had a limited role. It divided Indian Provinces into three groups. Two of these groups were the Muslim majority provinces that the Muslim League claimed for Pakistan.
The elected provincial legislatures could decide about the powers the group executive could exercise. After ten years, any province could ask by the majority vote of its legislature for a review of the terms of the constitution, including its relations with the group and the federation. The Muslim League was willing to talk on these proposals because these proposals proposed a loose federation and the option of quitting it after ten years.
The Congress refused to accept the Cabinet Mission Plan in totality and claimed that it was prepared to enter the constituent assembly for framing a constitution, but it could not promise to abide by the administrative and federal structure offered by the Cabinet Mission Plan, especially the provisions regarding provinces and groups. This practically meant the rejection of the Cabinet Mission Plan. Keeping in view the response of the Congress party, the Muslim League withdrew its positive response and decided to pursue the separate homeland demand with full political strength.
The Muslim League was willing to work within a limited scope federal system for India with greater powers with the provinces.
However, the Muslim League wanted the Congress party to first acknowledge the exclusive civilizational and religio-political identity of the Muslims and that it should be willing to include guarantees and safeguards in the constitutional and legal arrangements for protecting the Muslim identity, rights and interests, especially for Muslim representation in elected institutions, government bodies, government jobs and their religious and cultural sensitivities.
The Congress party was not willing to give constitutional guarantees to the Muslim League on any matter. Its leadership argued that all people, irrespective of religious differences, are one Indian nation, and that they should work together for achieving independence and that different political parties could discuss internal political and constitutional arrangements after the achievement of independence.
The Muslim League could not trust the Congress party on these issues because of its political experience of interaction with this party.
The Congress party opposed the Muslim League on the separate electorate system, the partition of Bengal and it reversed its commitments for representation of the Muslims in elected bodies, cabinet, and government jobs, as initially agreed in what was described as the Lucknow Pact between the Congress party and the Muslim League (1916).
The Nehru Report on constitutional reforms (1927) rejected all Muslim demands, including constitutional guarantees for their demands. Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah’s Fourteen Points (1929) reiterated the Muslim political and constitutional demands, and this speech was described as a rejoinder to the Nehru Report.
Separate Homeland
The most bitter Muslim experience that played a decisive role in changing the political strategies of the Muslim League was the treatment of the Muslims by Congress ministries in six provinces where the Muslims were a numerical minority.
The Congress provincial ministries (1937-39) neglected the Muslims in government jobs and assaulted Muslim civilizational and cultural identity by imposing Hindu socio-cultural norms. The school education projected Hindu religious and cultural patterns in the name of Indian culture.
These cultural, educational and economic policies of the Congress governments alarmed the Muslim League leadership. They interpreted this to be a preview of how the Congress would treat the Muslims in post-British India.
It was the experience of the Muslims under the Congress provincial ministries that led the Muslim League leadership to think about an alternative to federal option to protect and advance the Muslim identity, rights, and interests.
The Sindh chapter of Muslim League proposed to All India Muslim League to explore an alternative to the federal system for securing the future of the Muslims of British India. The Muslim leadership, especially Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah and his close associates, were already thinking about going beyond the federal model of governance. It was in 1939-40 that the Muslim League leadership began to ask for a separate homeland for the Muslims.
The Lahore session of the annual Muslim League Conference formally asked on March 23, 1940, for a separate homeland for the Muslims in Muslim majority regions of India because the Muslims as a separate nation were entitled to a separate homeland. Jinnah’s speeches and statements from 1940 onward offered a precise articulation of nationhood of the Muslims of British India.
The demand for a separate homeland was fully articulated in the post-1940 period as the political struggle for the making of Pakistan moved onwards in 1940-47. Jinnah and his associates took the message of separate homeland to the Muslim masses who responded enthusiastically to this message.
The success of the Muslim League in the provincial elections in 1946 clearly showed that the Muslim League was the sole representative party of the Muslims, and its demand was the establishment of a separate homeland of Pakistan.
Pakistan was established in the name of the Muslims of British India, and it was meant to save the Muslims from being overwhelmed by an unsympathetic non-Muslim majority.
The demand for a separate homeland was aimed at securing the Muslim cultural and civilizational identity, rights, and interests. It was meant to give them a better and secure future.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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