The British had emerged as the dominant force in South Asia. Their rise to
power was gradual extending over a period of nearly one hundred years. They
replaced the Shariah by what they termed as he Anglo-Muhammadan law.
English became the official language. Thes and other developments had great
social, economic and political impact especially on the Muslims of South Asia.
The failure of the 1857 War of Independence had disastrous consequences for
the Muslims. Determined to stop such a recurrence in future, they followed
deliberately a repressive policy against the Muslims. Properties and estates of
those even remotely associated with the freedom fighters were confiscated and
conscious efforts were made to close all avenues of honest living for the
Muslims.
Indian Reaction to
Britishers
The Muslims kept themselves aloof from western education as well as
government service. But their compatriots, the Hindus, did not do so. They
accepted the new rulers without reservation. They acquired western education,
imbibed the new culture and captured positions hitherto filled in by the
Muslims. If this situation had prolonged, it would have done the Muslims an
irrepairable loss. The man to realise the impending peril was Sir Syed Ahmed
Khan (1817-1898), a witness to the tragic events of 1857. His assessment was
that the Muslims' safety lay in the acquisition of western education and
knowledge. He took several positive steps to achieve this objective. He founded
a college at Aligarh to impart education on western lines. Of equal importance
was the Anglo-Muhammadan Education Conference, which he sponsored in 1886, to
provide an intellectual forum to the Muslims for the dissemination of views in
support of western education and social reform. Similar were the objectives of
the Muhammadan Literary Society, founded by Nawab Abdul Latif (1828-93), but its
activities were confined to Bengal.
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was averse to the idea of Muslims participation in any
organised political activity which, he feared, might revive British hostility
towards the Muslims. He also disliked Hindu-Muslim collaboration in any joint
venture. His disillusionment in this regard primarily stemmed from the
Urdu-Hindi controversy of the late 1860s when the Hindu enthusiasts vehemently
championed the cause of Hindi in place of Urdu. He, therefore, opposed the
Indian National Congress, when it was founded in 1885, and advised his community
to abstain from its activities. His contemporary and a great scholar of Islam,
Syed Ameer Ali (1849-1928), shared his views about the Congress, but he was not
opposed to Muslims organizing themselves politically. In fact, he organized the
first significant and purely communal political body, the Central National
Muhammadan Association. Although its membership was limited, it had above fifty
branches in different parts of the subcontinent and it accomplished some solid
work for the educational and political uplift of the Muslims. But its activities
waned towards the end of the 19th century.
All-India Muslim
League
At the dawn of the 20th century, a number of factors convinced the Muslims of
the need to have an effective political organization. One of the factors was the
replacement of Urdu by Hindi in the United Provinces. The creation of a Muslim
province by partitioning the Province of Bengal and the violent resistance put
up the Hindus against this decision was another. But the most important factor
was the proposed consititutional reforms. The Muslims apprehended that under
such a system they would not get due representation. Therefore, in October 1906,
a deputation comprising 35 Muslim leaders met the Viceroy at Simla and demanded
separate electorates. Three months later, the All-India Muslim League was
founded at Dhaka mainly with the object of looking after the political rights
and interests of the Muslims. The British conceded separate electorates in the
Government of India Act of 1909 which confirmed League's position as an
All-India Party.
Hindu-Muslim
Relations
The visible trend of the two major communities going in opposite directions
caused deep concern to leaders of all-India stature. They struggled to bring the
Congress and the Muslim League on one platform. Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah
(1876-1948) was the leading figure among them. After the annulment of the
partition of Bengal and the European powers' aggresive designs against the
Ottoman empire and North Africa, the Muslims were receptive to the idea of
collaboration with the Hindus. The Congress-Muslim League rapporchement was
achieved at the Lucknow session of the two parties in 1916 and a joint scheme of
reforms was adopted. In the Lucknow Pact, the Congress accepted the principle of
separate electorates and the Muslims in return for 'weightage' to the Muslims of
the Muslim minority provinces agreed to surrender their slim majorities in the
Punjab and Bengal. The post-Lucknow Pact period witnessed Hindu-Muslim amity and
the two parties came to hold their annual sessions in the same city and passed
resolutions of similar content.
The Hindu-Muslim unity reached its climax during the Khilafat and the Non-cooperation Movements. The Muslims of South Asia, under the
leadership of Ali Brothers, Maulana Muhammad Ali and Maulana Shaukat Ali,
launched the historic Khilafat Movement after the First World War to protect the
Ottoman empire from dismemberment. Mohandas Karamchand Ghandhi (1869-1948)
linked the issue of swaraj (or self-government) with the Khilafat issue
to associate the Hindus with the Movement. The ensuing Movement was the first
country-wide popular movement. Although the movement failed in its objectives,
it had far-reaching impact on the Muslims of South Asia. After a long time they
forged a united action on a purely Islamic issue which created momentarily
solidarity among them. It also produced a class of Muslim leaders experienced in
organizing and mobilizing the public. This experience was of immense value to
the Muslims during the Pakistan Movement.
The collapse of the Khilafat Movement was followed by the period of bitter
Hindu-Muslim antagonism. The Hindus organized two highly anti-Muslim movements,
the Shudhi and the Sangathan. The former movement was designed to
convert Muslims to Hiduism and the latter was meant to create solidarity among
the Hidus in the event of communal conflict. In retaliation, the Muslims
sponsored the Tabligh and Tanzim organizations.
Muslim Demands
In the 1920s the frequency of communal riots was unprecedented. In the light
of this situation, the Muslims revised their constitutional demands. They now
wanted preservation of their numerical majorities in the Punjab and Bengal;
separation of Sind from Bombay; constitution of Baluchistan as a separate
province and introduction of constitutional reforms in the North-West Frontier
Province. It was partly to press these demands that one section of the All-India
Muslim League cooperated with the Statutory Commission sent by the British
Government, under the chairmanship of Sir John Simon in 1927. The other section
of the League boycotted the Simon Commission for its all-white character and
cooperated with the Nehru Committee to draft a constitution for India. The Nehru
Report had an extremely anti-Muslim bias and the Congress leadership's refusal
to amend it disillusioned even the moderate Muslims.
Several leaders and thinkers having insight into the Hindu-Muslim question
proposed separation of Muslim India. However, the most lucid exposition of the
inner feelings of the Muslim community was given by Allama Muhammad Iqbal
(1877-1938) in his presidential address to the All-India Muslim League at
Allahabad in 1930. He proposed a separate Muslim state at least in the Muslim
majority regions of the north-west. Later on, in his correspondence with
Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, he included the Muslim majority areas in the
north-east also in his proposed Muslim state. Three years after his Allahabad
address, a group of Muslim students at Cambridge, headed by Chaudhry Rahmat Ali,
issued a pamphlet Now or Never in which, drawing letters from the names
of the Muslim majority regions they gave the nomenclature of Pakistan to the
proposed state.
Round Table Confrences & Elections
Meanwhile, three Round Table Conferences was convened in London during the
period 1930-32, to resolve the Indian constitutional problem. The Hindu and
Muslim leaders could not draw up an agreed formula and the British Government
had to announce a 'Communal Award' which was incorporated in the Government of
India Act of 1935. Before the elections under this Act, the All-India Muslin
League, which had remained dormant for some time, was reorganised by Muhammad
Ali Junnah, who had returned to India in 1935 after a self imposed exile of
nearly five years in England. The Muslim League could not win a majority of
Muslims seats since it had not yet been effectively reorganised. However, it had
the satisfaction that the performance of the Indian National Congress in the
Muslim constituencies was bad. After the elections, the attitude of the Congress
leadership was arrogant and domineering. The classic example was its refusal to
form a coalition government with the Muslim League in the United Provinces.
Instead it asked the League leaders to dissolve their parliamentary party in the
Provincial Assembly and join the Congress. Another important Congress move after
the 1937 elections was its Muslim mass contact movement to persuade the Muslims
to join the Congress and not the Muslim League. One of its leaders, Jawaharlal
Nehru, even declared that there was only two forces in India, the British and
the Congress. All this did not go unchallenged. Quaid-i-Azam countered that
there was a third force in South Asia constituting the Muslims. The All-India
Muslim League, under his gifted leadership, gradually and skilfully started to
consolidate the Muslims on one platform. It did not miss to exploit even small
Congress mistakes in its favour.
Muslim
Nationalism
The 1930s saw realization among the Muslims of their separate identity and
their anxiety to preserve it within separate territorial boundaries. An
important element that brought this simmering Muslim nationalism in the open was
the charater of the Congress rule in the Muslim minority provinces during
1937-39. The Congress policies in these provinces hurt Muslim susceptibilities.
These were calculated aims to obliterate the Muslims as a separate cultural
unity. The Muslims now abandoned to think in terms of seeking safegaurds and
began to consider seriously the demand for a separate Muslim state. During
1937-1939, several Muslim leaders and thinkers inspired by Allama Iqbal's ideas,
presented elaborate schemes of partitioning the sub-continet on cummonal lines.
The All-India Muslim League on March 23, 1940, in a resolution at its Lahore
session, demanded separate homeland for the Muslims in the Muslim majority
regions of the subcontinent. The resolution was commonly reffered to as the
Pakistan Resolution.
The British Government recognized the genuineness of the Pakistan deman
indirectly in the proposals for the transfer of power which Sir Stafford Cripps
brought to India in 1942. Both the Congress and the All-India Muslim League
rejected these proposals for different reasons. The principle of secession of
Muslim India as a separate dominion was, however, conceded in these proposals.
After the failure, a prominent Congress leader, C. Rajagopalachari, suggested a
formula for a separate Muslim state in the Working Committee of the Indian
National Congress, which was rejected at the time but later on, in 1944, formed
the basis of the Gandhi-Jinnah talks.
The Pakistan demand was popularised during the Second World War. Every
section of the Muslim community - women, students, Ulema and businessmen - was
organised under the banner of the All-India Muslim League. Branches of the party
were opened in the remote corners on the subcontinent. Literature in the form of
phamphlets, books, magazines and newspapers was produced to explain the Pakistan
demand and distributed largely.
Faliure of
Hindu-Muslim Negotiations & Elections
The support gained by the All-India Muslim League and its demand for Pakistan
was tested after the failure of the Simla Conference 1945. Elections were called
to determine the respective strength of the political parties. The Muslim League
swept all the thirty seats in the central legislature and in the provincial
elections also its victorywas outstanding. After the elections, on April 8-9,
1946, the All-India Muslim League called a convention of the newly elected
League members in the central and provincial legislatures at Dehli. This
convention which constituted virtually a representative assembly of the Muslims
of South Asia, on a motion by the Chief Minister of Bengal, Hussein Shaheed
Suhrawardy, reiterated the Pakistan demand in clearer terms.
British Efforts to
Break Deadlock
In early 1946, the British Government sent a Cabinet Misiion to the
subcontinet to resolve the constitutional deadlock. The Mission conducted
negotiations with various political parties but failed to evolve an agreed
formula. Finally, Cabinet Mission announced its own plan which, among other
provisions, envisaged three federal groupings, two of them comprising the Muslim
majority provinces, linked at the Center in a loose federation with three
subjects. The Muslim League accepted the Plan, as a strategic move, expecting to
achieve its objective in a not-too-distant future. The Congress also agreed to
the Plan but soon realising its implications to the Congress, its leaders began
to interpret in a way not visualised by the authors of the Plan. This provided
the All-India Muslim League an excuse to withdraw its acceptance of the Plan and
the party observed August 16 as a 'Direct Action Day' to show Muslim solidarity
in support of the Pakistan demand.
In October 1946, an Interim Government was formed. The Muslim League sent its
representatives under the leadership of its General Secretary, Mr. Liaquat Ali
Khan, with the aim to fight for the party objective from within the Interim
Government. After a short time the situation inside the Interim Government and
outside convinced the Congress leadership to accept Pakistan as the only
solution of the communal problem.
Independence
The British Government, after a last attempt to save the Cabinet Mission Plan
in December 1946, also moved toward a plan for the partition of India. The last
British Viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, came with a clear mandate to draft a
plan for the transfer of power. After holding talks with political leaders and
parties, he prepared a Partition Plan for the transfer of power which, after its
approval by the British Government, was announced on June 3, 1947. Both the
Congress and the Muslim League accepted the plan. Two largest Muslim Majority
provinces, Bengal and Punjab was partitioned. The assemblies of west Punjab,
East Bengal, and Sind; and in Baluchistan, the Quetta Municipality and the Shahi
Jirga voted for Pakistan. Referenda were held in the North-West Frontier
Province and the District of Sylhet in Assam which resulted in an overwhelming
vote for Pakistan. On August 14, 1947, the new state of Pakistan came into
existance.
