From Lucknow to Lahore - the crucial years: 1937-1940

25 Dec, 2004

Isn't it an irony of fact that a leader like Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who left the All India Congress in 1920 at its Nagpur session on the plea that M.K. Gandhi had introduced religion into politics, came to the conclusion later that the communal problem was the national problem of India. This major development in India's politics suddenly emerged in 1937 at the Lucknow session of the AIML. Many chroniclers of that period in united India have ascribed it to Jinnah's stubbornness.
In fact, the reverse is true. Jinnah, upto the 1936 Bombay session of the League, believed in the framework of a United India. He was for a complete united front with an honesty of purpose to obtain full national democratic government for India.
It was only after the Congress victory at the 1936-37 provincial elections on the General (ie Hindu) seats and its dismal performance on the Muslim seats - 26 only out of 482 were captured by it. It had to admit that it didn't represent the Muslims.
The Muslim League, also didn't do any better to press forward its claim that it was representing the whole Indian Muslims. The Muslim League performance in Punjab, Bengal, NWFP, Assam and Sind was not impressive at all. The Unionist, Krishak Praja Samiti and the Nationalist Muslims had an upper hand in Punjab, Bengal, NWFP and Sind.
The Muslim League had triumphed in the Muslim minority provinces, especially in U.P. and Bombay. In all, the ML won 109 seats out of the 482 Muslim seats. As for the Muslim majority provinces, in Sind it got 3 seats, in Punjab only one and in the NWFP none at all.
In Bengal it had won a third of the Muslim seats in the legislative assembly. In U.P. and Bombay it did well. It is strange that Jinnah's claim to be the leader of the Muslims was only valid in a few Muslim minority provinces.
Why was this splendid performance of the Muslim League possible in the minority provinces? It was due to the fact that Jinnah had succeeded in working out his strategy of having Joint Parliamentary Boards in Muslim minority provinces.
The decision of the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Hind to be on the Muslim Unity Boards had blunted the tirade of a strong section of the Muslim clergy - particularly of the Deoband seminary.
It had disproved the congress claim of representing the Hindu and Muslim interests. The congress couldn't afford to lose this card in the Hindu majority provinces.
Why was it so? The Hindu communal force had set a chain of adverse reaction in the Muslim intelligentsia. What Jinnah did was to make this disenchantment spread over to the lower echelons of the Muslim society - the peasants and workers engaged in professions which were looked down upon by the elitist class. Jinnah, by having a wide platform of the Muslim Unity Boards and then setting up the stage for Joint Parliamentary Boards had established an arena which conferred on him a unique prestige. Now the Muslim League could be entrusted with safeguarding Muslim interests.
This point had remained a debatable issue right from 1906. The situation, however, took a U-turn and the Muslim League, which was to a great extent an elitist or Muslim middle class party, became a mass party after the 1937 Lucknow session.
THE REASONS ARE AS SIMPLE AS FOLLOWS: First of all we take into account the Congress attitude towards Junnah and the Muslim League. It was very negative - no different from Savarkar and Monje's of Hindu Mahasabha. Pandit Nehru, in spite of having a great appeal among the U. P. Muslims, couldn't realise that a humiliated Jinnah could muster up great support among the Muslim, specially when the Congress Party had flaunted a leader like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad's agreement with Chaudhry Khaliq-uz-Zaman and Nawab Ismail Khan that both of them would be taken in the U.P. Cabinet as M.L. representatives. Nehru took the U-turn by deciding that only one of them would be taken in the provincial cabinet and that too being on the condition that the League identity would be obliterated in the Legislature.
Also add to this insulting behaviour Pandit Nehru's claim that only two parties were to be consulted: the British government and the Congress.
The third factor was the failure of the Congress's mass contact programme which had challenged Jinnah's leadership. Its failure contributed a lot to Jinnah's stature. A recent dissertation produced at the Alligarh Muslim University by Abida Shakoor entitled Congress - Muslim League Tussle 1937-1940 and compiled by Hajira Kumar and Q.Z. Hasan, this aspect has been comprehensively discussed.
It is not contestable that the Congress in general and Pandit Nehru, in particular, provided a cool logician like Jinnah to persevere in his struggle which turned a dormant Muslim League into a party of the masses. The Congress's trump card of having a substantial section of the Muslim clergy was so thoroughly blunted by a person of Jinnah's non-communal past, that he became the champion of a Muslim homeland in 1940. V.B. Kulkarni, in his book, India's Struggle (p. 402), takes Nehru to task for his alleged remark that "Jinnah had been finished" and admits that "it was haughty and uncalled for" adding fuel to fire.
It was but natural that Nehru's remark that the British and the Congress were the only two parties and the others must simply line up, should arouse a lot of provocation among the Muslims. Jinnah responded, "I refuse to line up with the Congress". Now we come to the gigantic move which Jinnah made to take Punjab, Bengal and Assam on his side to turn Nehru's claim upside down. This was the most dramatic achievement.
There is no doubt that the All India Muslim League was not in good shape in 1936-37. The provincial elections had dented its claim to be the sole spokesman for the Indian Muslims but Nehru's indiscreet remark provided a lot of ammunition to a battered and beaten League.
It was about the historic Lucknow session of 1937 R. C. Majumdar, in his book Freedom Struggle (p. 563) has rightly averred that "soon after the Lucknow session, Jinnah's clarion call to the Muslims went home and changed the Muslim political outlook almost overnight".
Abida Shakoor also write in her book "Congress-Muslim League tussle. 1937-40" that Jinnah played on the responsive religious element, a valuable factor in Muslim politics. Immediately after Jinnah's 1937 Presidential address in Lucknow, "provincial leaders who had fought elections on the basis of their splinter parties and had jealously guarded the distinct entity of their respective organisations - and had been disinclined to merge their parties with the Muslim League - were softened to join the All-India Muslim Organisation". As a result thereof Muslim members of the Unionist Party in the Punjab, under the leadership of the premier Sikandar Hayat Khan, went over en bloc to the League. Moulvi Fazlul Haq, premier of Bengal, declared his allegiance to the Muslim League. Muhammad Saadullah of Assam followed suit.
Many Muslim leaders from Sind, Frontier, Madras and the Central Provinces also joined the Muslim League. It is true that Muslim League washed ashore all the accusations of being a party of some Muslim minority provinces.
It also set us thinking as to how the philosopher-poet Iqbal's disenchantment with Jinnah-Sikandar Pact was proved wrong. Jinnah kept his cards closer to his chest and the time proved that he played his game too well.
The well-known political scientist of India, Guha, in his book India's Struggle (p. 405) wrote that the Muslim League's triumph in taking Punjab and Bengal in its bag "was a big breakthrough for the League's claim to be the sole representative body of the Muslims".
Far from being a politician who had been taunted by the remarks that the only course left for him (Jinnah) was to 'simply line up with the Congress' Jinnah was quick enough to cash in on Linlithgow's remarks that the British government would like to leave it to the Indians to come up with the consensus on the future constitutional arrangement for the country.
The Lahore session (1940) was the culmination of the Muslim League decision. It passed the resolution for the setting up of Muslim zones in the East and West of the subcontinent. It was interpreted as the demand for Pakistan.
The Congress further embarked upon its violent 'Quit India Movement' of 1942, even when the Communist Party of India was supporting the British for its anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist War.
Isn't it right then that the Congress's anti-British policies complicated the political scene. Jinnah kept his cool. He dealt with the Cripps Mission proposals and the Wavell Plan on merit. It should be termed strange, if not interesting, that Jinnah once again turned the tables on the Congress by lending his support to the Indian Unity by accepting the Cabinet Mission Plan in 1946.
The Congress made the wrong decision by declaring its intention of not going by the Cabinet Mission proposals after the independence under the pressure of Indian bourgeoisie as is proved by G. D. Birla's letter to Jawahar Lal Nehru, published in his memoirs, advising him not to accept Jinnah's willingness for a United India. How strange it sounds!
Jinnah finally came to the conclusion that "Pakistan was imminent" and so Pakistan became a reality on August 14, 1947.
(The writer is a former director of Quaid-i-Azam Academy)

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