The establishment of Pakistan in August 1947 is a remarkable historical development that converted the Muslim Community of British India into a Nation with their own sovereign and independent state. The dynamics of this transformation cannot be understood without undertaking a dispassionate and non-partisan review of the impact of British colonialism on India. It gradually created a modern state system with new pressures and opportunities for Indians. The modern western education and exposure to colonial rule changed the orientations of the Muslim elite, who critically examined the rise and fall of Muslims over time and explored new options for their revival at a time when they were no longer in power; they were living under colonial rule.
The challenge they faced was new and it called for new strategies to make a respectable space for them. Though the change came first among the educated Muslim elite, they fully understood the imperatives of the changed time and mobilized common people to strengthen their demands for protecting and advancing their historical and socio-cultural identity, rights and interests in the context of British endeavors to establish a modern functioning state. In other words, the Muslim of British India rediscovered them in the new socio-political and economic context of the first half of the 20th Century.
The Indian National Congress took a negative view of the Muslim emphasis on their exclusive religio-political identity and the demand for establishment of Pakistan. It accepted the June 3, 1947 Plan for partition of India and establishment of Pakistan with a heavy heart. The Congress leaders were convinced that Pakistan would not survive and its leaders would have to return to India. The Congress Committee resolution of June 15, 1947, maintained that "The Congress has consistently upheld that the unity of India must be maintained.... The picture of India we have learnt to cherish will remain in our minds and hearts.
The AICC (All India Congress Committee) earnestly trusts that when present passions have subsided, India's problems will be viewed in their proper perspective and the false doctrine of two nations in India will be discredited and discarded by all." Several Congress leaders attributed the establishment of Pakistan to the British policy of 'divide and rule' and that the British divided India for weakening independent India. They argued that the Muslim and the Hindus lived peacefully before the advent of the British. It was the British who divided them.
What the Indian Congress leaders did not realize that societal and political imperatives of the pre-British era in India had lost their relevance as the British embarked on setting up a modern state system. The political and social profile of India changed due to the British emphasis on modern education, role differentiation in the administrative system, professionalism and recruitment to civil services through open competition and a gradual induction of the electoral system. The demands and pressures of the new system were very different from the imperatives of the state and governance in the pre-British era. New Hindu and new Muslim elite created by modern British education found them in competition under the incipient state system.
Changes in the orientations of the Muslims
The following major factors changed the orientations of the Muslim in British India and how they articulated their identity, rights and interests in 1906-1947.
1) As discussed above, the British establish a modern state system whose requirements were very different from the pre-British era. It was not merely the modern British education, competition for government jobs and elected positions that created new channels of upward mobility. The new communication and transportation systems introduced by the British in form of roads, railways, postal services, had implications for ambitious Muslims and others. It not only increased their mutual communication and physical mobility but also made it possible for the state machinery to penetrate far and remote areas.
2) The emphasis by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and his colleagues on the Muslims to learn English and modern knowledge created a class of educated Muslims. They were joined by those educated in England in the last quarter of the 19th Century and the first three decades of the 20th Century. This created a strong group of people with modern education who knew about the philosophical bases of western mindset and were conscious of the need to regenerate their community in the new socio-political and economic context. It is they who served as the vanguard of the effort for protection and advancement of the identity, rights and interests of the Muslims.
3) The educated Muslim elite of British India developed a strong consciousness about the decline of the Muslim community in India and elsewhere. They explored the ways to revive the glory of the Muslims by identifying with the principles and teachings of Islam but, at the same time, taking steps to meet with the new challenges of the early decades of the 20th Century.
4) The desire for Muslim revival led the Muslim to articulate their identity with reference to Islamic civilization, culture and history. They invoked Islamic symbols for political mobilization. The Muslim identity also included the nostalgia of Muslim rule in India. They lived in India with other communities but maintained their distinctive religious and cultural identity that shaped their world view.
5) The Muslim elite in British India learnt from their political interaction with the majority community that the latter was insensitive to their needs and aspirations. This created what can be described as the minority's insecurity with reference to their civilizational and historical identity, and their rights and interests.
The Muslims in British India were either descendants of the Muslims that came to India from Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia or the Arab traders who came to Western seaport areas of India for trade and decided to settle down there. A large number of local non-Muslims converted to Islam. With generational change they lost links with their original roots and adopted to local conditions. However, they were not assimilated into local religions and cultures.
They maintained their distinctive identity based on Islamic civilizational and historical traditions. They proudly talked of the years of Muslim rule in India and highlighted it as their contribution to India despite being a numerical minority. However, they were perturbed by the over-all decline of Muslims and explored ways and means to revive their past glory.
Their distinctive Muslim identity and the fact of being a numerical minority brought them in conflict with the majority Hindu community when the necessities of modern state began to unfold. The requirement of modern education, competitive recruitment to civil services and the electoral process made them conscious of the need to stand up alone to protect and advance their religio-political identity, political rights and interests in British India.
Muslim political struggle
By the beginning of the 20th Century the Muslim elite realized that they will have to set up their own political organization to project their concerns and demands and that they need special constitutional guarantees to ensure their adequate representation in state affairs. In October 1906, the Muslim elite met the viceroy in Shimla and demanded separate electorate for their representation in legislative bodies. In December 1906, they established All India Muslim League in Dhaka as the first comprehensive Muslim platform.
The Muslim leaders of the Muslim League showed a deep interest in political settlement with the Congress Party for the protection and advancement of their historical and cultural identity, rights and interests through legal and constitutional guarantees and safeguards. The Lucknow Pact (1916) between the Muslim League and the Congress Party was the first major constitutional formula for the protection of Muslim interests in legislative bodies, cabinets and government jobs. However, the political developments in the late 1920s showed that hardliners had started dominating the political disposition of the Congress Party.
The Nehru Report (1928) rejected most of the commitments made to the Muslims in the Lucknow Pact. Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah made an unsuccessful bid to get amendment in the Nehru Report to accommodate Muslim concerns. This led Jinnah in 1929 to outline the charter of the rights and interests of the Muslims, described by historians as Jinnah's Fourteen Points. This division between the Muslim and Hindu elite deepened in 1930s and Jinnah and his colleagues realized that a pure and simple democratic system in independent India would create a permanent rule of the Congress Party/Hindu Community over the Muslims and that the Congress Party's political domination would undermine Muslim identity, rights and interests.
The Muslim elite were perturbed by their experience under Congress provincial governments in non-Muslim majority provinces in 1937-39 because these governments totally disregarded Muslim cultural sensitivities in educational institutions and victimized them for recruitment to government jobs. For the first time the Muslims realized that their future would be threatened under the Congress rule in independent India. This alienated the Muslim elite from the Congress Party and they began to explore the option of separatism rather than a federal system.
The Congress Party leadership failed to realize the impact of Muslim history and civilization, culture on their politico-cultural identity and how they were alienated from the majority community because it neglected their concerns regarding their position and role in the constitutional arrangements. The Congress leaders thought that religious differences were skin deep and they could be ignored. The other reason why the Congress leadership did not pay much attention to the Muslim elite demand for constitutional safeguards or a separate homeland because they thought that the Muslim elite had no roots in public and that they could easily be bypassed with the help of the Muslim members of the Congress Party.
Jawaharlal Nehru said more than once in late 1936 and early 1937 that there were two political forces in India: The Congress Party and the British. Jinnah responded that the Muslims were the third party in India. He said, "I refuse to line up with the Congress. I refuse to accept this proposition. There is a third party in this country and that is Muslim India."
After Muhammad Ali Jinnah's return from England to India in 1934, he not only reorganized the Muslim League but also used Islamic idiom and discourse in his speeches and statements for articulating Muslim identity, rights and interests. He floated the idea of the Muslims of British India being a Nation with a distinctive "outlook on life and of life." The process of popular mobilization of the Muslims began in the mid-1930s.
However, it was after the passage of the Lahore Resolution (March 1940) that talked of division of India and establishment of Muslim homeland in the Muslim majority regions of British India, the Muslim League and Jinnah made continuous efforts for mobilization of the Muslims. They focused on two issues that the Muslim League was the sole representative of the Muslims, and that their demand was the establishment of the separate homeland of Pakistan. This mobilization produced remarkable results in the provincial elections in 1946 when the Muslim League emerged as the most popular party among the Muslims all over India. This also confirmed Muslim support for a separate homeland.
The Muslim political struggle in British India could be described as a persistent effort to protect and advance their Islam-based historical and civilizational identity, rights and interests. The goal did not change but the strategies to achieve this goal changed. When the Congress showed total inflexibility and refused to show any accommodation towards the Muslim demands, the Muslim League discarded the notion of constitutional safeguards in a federal system in India and demanded a separate homeland for the Muslims of British India.
Jinnah rightly claimed that as a separate nation the Muslims ought to have their own homeland for safeguarding their Islamic-cultural, political and economic future in a modern and democratic nation-state. Jinnah, in his letter to M.K. Gandhi dated 17 September 1944, described Muslim nationhood in these words:
"We maintain and hold that Muslims and Hindus are two major nations by any definition or test of a nation. We are a nation of a hundred million, and what is more, we are a nation with our own distinctive culture and civilization, language and literature, art and architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of value and proportion, legal laws and moral codes, customs and calendar, history and traditions, aptitudes and ambitions - in short we have our own distinctive outlook on life and of life, By all cannons of international law, we are a nation." (The writer is a Lahore based Independent Political Analyst who holds the Doctorate Degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.)
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