1 the Pakistan Movement: a Prologue

1 The Pakistan Movement: A Prologue While the administrative and legal uniformity of British India appeared to be an impressive achievement, the increasing commu nal, religious, cultural and political diversities together with new educational and politico-economic prospects were producing a curious situation. In the post-1857 decades South Asian Mus lims suffered from alienation and a deep sense of loss as the British held them mainly responsible for the outbreak of the revolt. The lack ofmanoeuvrability, with no realleadership and an almost complete absence of channels and opportunities avail able to the wider community, left them in astate of chaos. 1 The early traditions of revivalism and resistance would need many more decades and intellects to regenerate a dynamic sense of self-preservation. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Syed Ameer Ali tried to reconcile the Muslims to the new realities by stressing 'adjustment' to rather than 'rejection' of western ideas and institutions.2 But it was not until a generation after them and 'the founding fathers' of the Indian National Congress (INC) that a new leaf was turned which enabled the All-India Muslim League (AIML) to emerge in Dacca in 1906.3 The pre-First World War years saw increased political act ivism in the subcontinent when both the Congress and the Muslim League started a new phase in their political career. Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah joined the League at a time when the reforms of 1909 had already been promulgated and the partition of Bengal had been annulled by the British - who also transferred the capital from Calcutta to Delhi.4 In the wake ofthe Balkan wars, pan-Islamism had already caused a stir among the South Asian Muslims who regarded the Ottoman caliphate as the last symbolic vestige of waning Muslim glory. With the advent of the war and the Turkish alignment with Germany, the South Asian expatriates attempted to strike a Turkish-German-Afghan axis against the British from various western capitals - including the abortive Ghadr Party ventures - and a number of South Asian Muslims went into exile. The commonality in attitudes and ideals led to a bi-polar agreement I. H. Malik, US-South Asian Relations, 1940–47 © Iftikhar H. Malik 1991 2 US-South Asian Relations, 1940-47 between the two leading political parties of the subcontinent at Lucknow in 1916. When the post-war British administration began to oppress the Indian activists with legislation such as the Rowlatt Act, sedition trials and indiscriminate killings atJallian wala in 1919, the subcontinent was already astir with the Khila fat movement. Gandhi appeared on the scene with his Satyagraha at a very opportune time to confront the victorious British. At a time when the reforms of 1919 were put into effect by establishing a fa«;ade ofprovincial autonomy, South Asian polit ical activity underwent a number of processes of polarisation. On one hand, the temporary alliance of the Congress and the Muslim League faltered with the publication of the Nehru report. On the other hand, a number ofnew regional, communal and ideological parties emerged in the subcontinent. The polit ical impasse became more complex with heightened communal rivalries, British stubbornness, Gandhian defiance and increas ing agitation among the masses. The British tried to find a way out of the crisis through the Simon commission in 1927 and the series of round table conferences in the early 1930s, yet Sou th Asian political aspirations could no longer be contained. The India Act of 1935 produced more constitutional reforms and promised more representation to Indians in the administration, yet it was silent on two counts - the ultimate future of the minorities and the princely states. With the promulgation of the provincial part ofthe act in 1937, a number ofCongress minis tri es were established in the Indian provinces. However, this created bitter feelings among Muslims who felt strongly that these provincial governments were geared to the interests of the Hindu majority. After aperiod of eighteen months these minis tries resigned in October 1939 on the ground that the viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, had declared India's participation in the war without any prior consultation with Congress. During the period of Congress rule, the Muslim League gathered facts and data to prove that it had been inimical to Muslim interests. An eight-member committee appointed by the Council of the AII-India Muslim League on 20 March 1938, collected information about partisan measures undertaken by the Congress cabinets. The committee headed by Raja Muham mad Mehdi of Pirpur submitted its famous 'Pirpur report' on 15 November 1938,5 followed by the 'Shareef report'6 and the 'Fazlul Haq report'7 ofMarch and December 1939, respectively. The Pakistan Movement: A Prologue 3 Partisan policies against the League and, more specifically, hostile Congress attitudes towards Urdu and the educational situation highlighted the substance of these reports which, in the words of Jinnah, suggested overall 'destruction of one and the survival of the other'.8 Jinnah had exchanged letters with Candhi, Subhas Chandra Bose and Nehru in 1938-9 to apprise them of Muslim fears of Hindu unilateralism and to impress upon them the fact that it was the Muslim League that was the de facta spokesman of Muslim interests in the subcontinent. It is therefore no wonder that the Congress rule accelerated the Muslims' quest for identity and a more tangible resolution ofthe Indian constitutional deadlock. The resignation of the Congress ministries was celebrated as a 'deliverance day' by the Muslims as a consolidated community, in the same way that they rejoiced at the ultimate deliverance from the Raj eight years later. It may appear rather simplistic to assurne that the fifth largest state in the world came into existence just because of the Mus lims' fear of the Hindu majority. It was not only the pro-Hindu policies of the Congress that caused the Muslims to 'react' by resorting to the Pakistan movement, demanding the 'partition ing' of India. In fact, Muslim 'separatism' in the socio-cultural, religio-ethnic and political-economic realms has been a persist ent reality since the advent of Islam in the region. The lndus valley civilisation clearly demarcated the separateness of the areas from the rest of South Asia, both geographically and culturally.9 The juxtaposition of Hinduism, Buddhism and Zo roastrianism - made more complex by the Persians, Creeks and other invaders from the Northwest - enhanced the distinctive ness of the whole region by adding the ethnic and cultural imprints of Central Asia and the Near East to the 'ancient' Pakistan. No single religio-ethnic group commanded any unilat eral supremacy over the others and in such a segmentary situ ation Islam emerged as a unifying force. Islam not only proved a vital link between the whole subcon tinent and the rest of the world, it also gave it the name 'India' (Hind) which is itself a derivative from 'Indus' (Sind) - the life-line for Pakistan - since at the time of the Arab conquest it was called Mehran. 10 Also, the Muslims cannot be blamed for the 'vivisection' of 'Mother India' as there never was a united, single and homogeneous India in the cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious sense of the word. It has always been a multinational 4 US-South Asian Relations, 1940-47 subcontinent that thrived on diversity, with short-lived inter ludes in its history when a partial political unity was superim posed by administrative means. Under the great empire-builders like Ashoka, Kanishka, Hersha, Akbar, Aurengzeb or the British, vast areas of the subcontinent remained outside the mainstream political-administrative umbrella of the capital. Furthermore, the northern subcontinent has a political his tory which is quite different from that of its southern counterpart - except for a few solitary European incursions in recent times. Curiously, Afghan istan and a few republics in the present-day Soviet Union have at times been part of 'northern Indian' empires, sometimes for extended periods of time, yet nobody can question their 'un Indianness'. Similarly, Pakistan has the same religio-ethnic realities as western Asia, but remains as much aseparate nation state in relation to it as to the rest of South Asia. In addition to geo-historical reasons, the demand for Pakistan was encouraged by the distinctness of the Muslims in a cultural sense. Their dress, food habits, living patterns, thought pro cesses, religious heritage, literary and artistic traditions and a more international orientation (due to their strong pan-Islamic feelings) compared to the introvert affiliations of many other communities, defined them historically as a separate nation genuinely demanding a territorial definition. 11 The Muslims constituted a dear majority in those areas which were under stood to become part and parcel of the new territorial arrange ment, with minor adjustments. 12 Economically, the Muslims regarded Pakistan as a safeguard for their interests as a com munity in the competitive capitalist infrastructure under the British. The Muslim masses, mostly unskilled peasants, bor rowed heavily from the urban Hindu moneyed dass which in predominantly agrarian societies like the Punjab and Bengal had become a neo-feudal aristocracy. Attempts to help tradition al agriculturalists - such as the Land Alienation Act of 1900 13 or the pro-rural active Unionist hegemony in the Punjab - could not protect them from daily mortgages and bankruptcies. 14 Likewise, the Muslim landed aristocracy felt threatened by the increasing power of the urban Hindu elites and thus had their own reasons for advocating the case for Pakistan. 15 In the commercial sector, whether large urban centres like Delhi, La hore, Dacca, Bombay or traditional Muslim power-bases like Peshawar, Kohat, Rawalpindi, Hyderabad, the business interests The Pakistan Movement: A Prologue 5 were predominantly in non-Muslim hands - which increased the worries of the young Muslim middle dass of entrepreneurs, bankers, traders and manufacturers.

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