In immediate terms, the adoption of the Pakistan Resolution in March 1940 was provoked by, and represented a riposte to, Congress's sustained attempts at denying Muslims a religio-political entity in India's body politic.
The tussle between the Congress and League, at least, since 1937 centred on the issue whether India was uni-national or bi-national, whether she was uni-cultural or bi-cultural, if not multi-cultural.
The first salvo in this controversy was fired by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the Congress President (1936-38), on September 18, 1936: "The real contest is between two forces - the Congress as representing the will to freedom of the nation, and the British Government in India and its supporters who oppose this urge and try to suppress it.
Intermediate groups, whatever virtue they may possess, fade out or line up with one of the principal forces....The issue for India is that of independence. He who is for it must be with the Congress and if he talks in terms of communalism he is not keen on independence."
Nehru returned to his "two-forces" formula in his January 10, 1937 statement, asserting: ".... historically speaking, the present contest lies between imperialism and nationalism. All "third parties", middle and undecided groups, etc, have no real importance to this historic sense.
The Congress represents Indian nationalism and is thus charged with a historic destiny.... There are other vital forces in the country, representing a new social outlook, but they are allied to the Congress. The communal groupings have no such real importance in spite of occasional importance being thrust upon them".
Clearly, this posture represented a paradigmatic shift in Congress's erstwhile policy. Since 1910, Congress had always treated Jinnah as representing an influential and progressive, if not always a major, segment of Muslims; since 1915, Congress had always considered the Muslim League as the most authoritative Muslim body.
For over two decades (1915-33/36), whenever Congress negotiated the Hindu-Muslim problem, it was always with Jinnah and the Muslim League.
But why this rather unexpected change? Because of Nehru's desire and determination to swamp other parties before the impending provincial elections under the 1935 Act, or at least to isolate them by presenting them as allies of British imperialism and by, thus, putting them on the defensive, so that a massive vote for the Congress be ensured.
In a sense, Nehru's strategy did pay off immensely. The Congress was able to swamp most parties; it also scored a spectacular victory at the polls: it won 711 out of 1,585 seats. But his calculations went awry in respect of the Muslims. The Congress could barely win 26 Muslims seats, 19 of them in the N.W.F.P. "where Abdul Ghaffar Khan had given the Congress a decisive hold". Moreover, it won no Muslim seats in eight provinces.
In contrast, the League had won 112 (23%) out of 492 Muslim seats, the rest going to the Unionist Party (Punjab), the Krishak Proja Party (Bengal), and some minor Muslim, regional parties. Though by no means impressive, the League's score was still the highest. More important, it had won seats in seven out of eleven provinces. Therefore, it alone could claim to speak on Muslim India's behalf. (Even otherwise, except for the Khilafat Conference and the All Parties Muslim Conference during 1921-23 and 1929-32 respectively, when the League was in eclipse or in doldrums, no Muslim party had over contested the League's claim.)
The British had tried to prop up various interest groups and breakaway or minor parties as a substitute for, and against the Congress in the early 1920s and in 1930s; now Congress, in bolstering up the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Hind, the Ahrars and the Khudai Khidmatgars against the League, seemed bent upon resorting to the same ploy. From their viewpoint, it was, of course, convenient to deal with provincial and minor Muslim parties, piecemeal and on its own terms, even inducing, humouring or forcing them from its position of strength to walk into its parlour unconditionally. On the Nehru Report (1928-29) and on the Communal Award (1932-33), attempts were made to reach some sort of understanding with regional or minor parties on a provincial basis, and that with some success.
Now that there was a chance of the provincial option working better, why deal with the Muslim League or talk to Jinnah, the hard bargainer that he was? Such, in any case, seemed to be the trend of thinking in the Congress.
At any rate, the Congress claimed to be the authentic champion of Indian freedom. Meantime, a sort of divine right doctrine was developed. When asked about the Congress Working Committee's resolution on office acceptance on July 7, Nehru asserted, "Every decision of the Working Committee is the right one. Just as the King can do no wrong, the Working Committee also can do no wrong". With this doctrine was developed the complementary doctrine, "Congress is India", which figures prominently and frequently in Congress pronouncements. Subhas Chandra Bose (1897-1945), for instance, asserted, "There is no question of brooking any party after the Congress is victorious.
Every party, whether it likes it or not, would have to surrender to the Congress. Having established its dictatorship, the Congress would then become synonymous with the whole country".
Thus, Nehru's "two-forces" dictum could by no means be considered astray declaration out of tune with the Congress's mainstream thinking. This explains why Nehru even identified responsible government with Congress government. "The power to mould our country's destiny", he wrote in July 1937, "is not ours yet. There is no Swaraj or Congress raj, though Congressmen may be ministers".
Interestingly though, Jinnah's response to Nehru's onslaught was surprisingly conciliatory. Of course, he disputed the Congress's claim, in his speech at Calcutta's Mohamed Ali Park election meeting on January 4, 1937, saying: "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 ..... We are not going to be camp followers of any party".
But at the same time, he held out the olive branch, saying "We are willing as equal partners to come to a settlement with our sister communities in the interest of India". For the next six months - ie, till the Congress, upon its assumption to power in the provinces, seriously began implementing its "uni-national and uni-cultured India" dictum - Jinnah reaffirmed this stance repeatedly. Thus, in his May 21, 1937 speech at Bombay he reiterated that his idea was still to "form a progressive, independent, nationalist group to work with the Congress for the good of the country", and that "We are prepared to fight for the country's freedom as equals with other parties, but never as camp followers, nor shall we submit to anybody's dictation".
Thus, the deep divergence that characterised Hindu and Muslim Congress and League, thinking in 1937 centred around the issue whether India was uni-national or bi-national, whether it was uni-cultured or bi-cultured. In denying "the intermediate groups" the right to existence and in denying "all 'third parties', middle and undecided groups" any "real importance" in the historical sense, Nehru was not only denying the Muslim League the right to exist or its due importance. More important, he was denying the Muslims the right to organise themselves politically on a platform of their own or on a platform other than the Congress; he was denying them their identity in India's body politics as a religio-political entity.
As against this, Jinnah felt that India was multi-national and multi-cultured, that Muslims had the right to maintain their separate entity, that Muslim India represented the "third party" in India's body politics, that it should refuse to be "camp followers of any party", and that, above all, Muslims should organise themselves politically, to make the third party claim a fait accompli. As a corollary to this claim, he demanded equality of status for Muslims; he offered to coalesce with the Congress in the struggle for freedom provided the Muslims were "assured of their political freedom".
Two speeches in particular, besides the January 4, Calcutta address, indicate the trend of Jinnah's thinking. After he had adroitly manoeuvred to get the U.P. Parliamentary Board fall into line with his thinking on Congress-League collaboration in ministry formation, he told a meeting at the residence of Syed Ali Zaheer, presided over by Syed Wazir Hasan, on May 9, 1937, "While we shall not knock at the Government House, we shall not also bow before Anand Bhawan". (Anand Bhawan was the Congress headquarters at Allahabad).
Addressing the AIML Council six weeks earlier, he had explained that it was impossible for Muslims to merge with Hindus because "their language, culture and civilisation are quite different". National self-government, he said, was his creed; but Muslims "must unite as a nation and then live or die as a nation".
What was then at issue in the Congress-League, Jinnah-Nehru, controversy in 1937 was the status of Muslims in Indian politics. Their status in turn depended upon whether India was uni-national or bi-national.
In attempting to explain the increasing alienation of Muslims from the Congress since its ascension to power in the Hindu majority provinces in 1937, historians have generally dilated upon, and attributed it to, various Congress policies, and listed various items in its programme which forced the Muslims to the wall - and to the path of confrontation. In doing so, they are at best counting the trees. For, these policies and programme assume their real significance only in an "uni-national and uni-cultured India" framework; it is only in the context of this framework that the Congress policies and the various items in its programme fall into place.
This framework alone explains why Congress opted for "unitariansim" as against Muslim "federalism" in the formation of ministries, why it offered "absorption" instead of "partnership" to the Muslim League, why it called for the disbandment of Muslim League parties in the legislatures, and why it insisted upon Muslim members of the legislatures to sign up the Congress pledge before being sworn in as ministers.
This framework also explains why Congress sought to impose the tri-colour, the Bande Mataram, Hindi and the Wardha Scheme as the national flag, the national song, the national language and the national system of education respectively, why it tried to isolate the Muslim League, the "third party", and Jinnah, its leader, by sucking in minor, but still quite influential, parties such as the Jamiatul Ulema-i-Hind, the Ahrars and the Khudai Khidmatgars into its fold and by mounting a mass contact campaign among Muslims in collaboration with its "client" parties. Once the Congress President denied the existence of a Hindu-Muslim problem, and the need for safeguards for Muslim religion, culture and language, the Congress was bound to initiate and implement policies and programmes that were suicidal to the concept of Muslims being a political entity.
Some participants in the U.P. ministry formation talks, such as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1889-1958) and Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman (1889-1973), attribute the beginning of the Congress-League confrontation in 1937 to the breakdown of their negotiations at Lucknow. Azad also attributes the breakdown on the number of places to be given to the League nominees. However, the talks broke down not on the number of League nominees to be accommodated in the ministry but on Azad's refusal to include a clause in the agreement that "communal matters such as the questions relating to the Communal Award, language, culture, religious observances, etc will be outside the scope of the agreement".
Till 1937, the Muslims believed in a composite nationhood and a composite nationalism, which would allow them the retention of their identity. It was their cardinal belief in a Muslim identity that had led them to insist upon federalism and autonomy of the provinces in the Delhi Muslim Proposals (1927), the All Parties Muslim Conference Resolution of January 1, 1929, the Fourteen Points (1929), and in the demands put forth at the Round Table Conference (1930-32). The abandonment of the separate electorates principle in the Delhi Muslim Proposals caused a split in the League, and the Muslim consensus on its retention in Jinnah's Fourteen Points underscored their concern to keep their political entity intact.
For the first time in 1937, however, they realised, if only as a result of the implementation of the Congress credo and their experience under the Congress raj, that even a composite nationhood in he Congress dictionary meant majority rule, pure and simple. Historical experience shows that majorities are apt to oppress the minorities as a rule. Worse still, majority rule in India meant Hindu rule, and the Hindu record of tolerance of other groups in history (eg, Buddhists and Jains) did not offer much hope.
It is true that the Muslims of the Congress provinces, especially the U.P. Muslims, were the first to apprehend "the dangers of Hindu ascendancy under a Congress Raj" and react "with a sense of persecution". But the "absorption" edict, which had serious implications both on an all-India level and on a long-term basis, had alarmed the majority provinces' Muslims as well.
For, "If the U.P. sample was to be the pattern of Congress's political conduct, then what would be the position of Muslims wen a federal government for all India came to be formed? There would be no room on the throne of India save for Congress' stooges", remarks Penderal Moon.
An echo of what Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (1817-98) had predicted some fifty years earlier when he had posed the critical query: "Is it possible that under the circumstances two nations - the Mahomedans and the Hindus - could sit on the same throne and remain in equal power? Most certainly not. It is necessary that one of them should conquer the other and thrust it down. To hope that both could remain equal is to desire the impossible, and the inconceivable".
To Muslim, then, the Congress rule in the provinces (1937-39) portended precisely the sort of dispensation they had been trying to save themselves against since the days of Syed Ahmed Khan. This was the background to the adoption of the Pakistan Resolution which formally and unreservedly declared India as bi-national and bi-cultured.
And Jinnah argued the case for Muslim nationhood, which constituted the basis of the Pakistan demand, cogently and eloquently. He asserted. "We are nation with our own distinctive culture and civilisation, names and nomenclature, sense of values and proportion, legal laws and moral code, customs and calendar, history and traditions, aptitude and ambitions; in short, we have our own distinctive outlook on life and of life. By all canons of international law we are a nation".
(The author was Founding Director, Quaid-i-Azam Academy, and authored "Jinnah: Studies in Interpretation".)