Colonial History of India

[acharya]

Misreading Partition Road Signs



Hamza Ali Alvi



[About the author: Dr. Alvi is a retired academic and scholar from

Pakistan, who had held many academic and research positions

including UCLA, University of Denver (USA), University of Leeds

(UK), Reserve Bank of India, and so on. Due to his left leaning, he

was banned from Canada in 1972. For more information, please see

[url="http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/sangat/HAMZABIO.htm"]http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/s...at/HAMZABIO.htm[/url]]





There are sadly many issues that stand in the way of a happier

relationship between India and Pakistan. Hopefully we, the people of

India and Pakistan, will find a way to resolve our differences to

inaugurate a new future of mutual friendship. Our different

perceptions of our shared history have, perhaps, contributed in some

measure to create barriers of prejudice between us. What is offered

here is only a modest attempt by a sociologist-cum-social

anthropologist to highlight some issues that could be looked at

again. It is not an alternative history.



The roots of the movement that culminated in the creation of

Pakistan lay in the 19th century crisis of the then dominant

Muslim `ashraf' (upper classes) of northern India, the descendents

of the immigrants from central Asia, Arabia and Iran.1 The crisis

was precipitated by the new Anglo-vernacular language policy of the

colonial regime that displaced Persian, the ashraf language. Two

different components of the ashraf were affected. The first of these

was the class of state officials, who had to take to English

education that was now needed for government jobs. We shall call

them the `salariat'. In a society without industrialisation and

professional management in the private sector, it was to the state,

the biggest employer, that the demands of this class were addressed.



The `salariat' was closely associated with the new English educated

professionals, especially in law for, parallel with the new language

policy, a new statute law was enforced. The salariat and the new

professionals (in law, medicine and other fields) shared a common

education and the emerging Anglo-vernacular culture. They formed a

relatively cohesive social stratum. In Gramsci's language, they were

an `auxiliary' class; not the biggest class in numbers but the most

articulate. They were at the heart of an intellectual ferment.

Members of this group, not infreque! ntly, were the sons (sometimes

daughters too) of landlords or rich peasants, who could afford to

put them through the higher education that they needed. This created

close links between the salariat, the new professionals and the

other classes.



The Muslim salariat of the early 19th century, brought up on Persian

rather than English, had begun to lose ground to the members of

certain Hindu service castes who took to the English language more

readily. The rivalry that ensued was not between all Hindus and all

Muslims, but only between the Muslim and the Hindu salariats, the

Muslim ashraf versus the Hindu service castes, such as the khatris,

kayasthas and Kashmiri brahmins in northern India or the kayasthas,

brahmins and baidyas in Bengal. The Muslim ashraf, therefore, began

asking for safeguards and quotas in jobs for the Muslims. They were

able to mobilise wide support in the society, especially through

their organic links with the landlords and r! ich peasants.

Religious ideology played no part in this nor did the rest of the

Muslim and the non-Muslim society have any direct stake in the

salariat politics. The Congress, speaking for the Indian salariat in

general (and the Hindu service castes in particular), voiced demands

for the `Indianisation' of the services, when top jobs were the

preserve of the British Indian bureaucracy.



Another component of the ashraf were the ulama, religious scholars,

who were steeped in Arabic and Persian learning and shari'a

(Islamic) law. They too came from the same general background as the

salariat and the new professionals. But their interests conflicted,

especially with regard to their attitudes towards the English

language and the scientific culture. Before, prospective members of

the Muslim salariat would be educated in Persian and Arabic at their

madrasas (religious seminaries). With the switch to English, that

clientele dropped off. The more prestigious among the ulama would!

issue religious decrees (fatwas) and mediate in disputes between the

members of the community. The introduction of the statute law,

written in English, displaced this role. Not surprisingly, the ulama

were militantly opposed to the English language, the culture of the

rulers and, indeed, the colonial regime itself. They bitterly

opposed the professionals, the salariat, and the Muslim

educationists for accepting English education and western learning.

The ulama and the mullahs were initially militant. They were subdued

after the suppression of the National Revolt of 1857 and retreated

into their seminaries. The Khilafat Movement led by Gandhi, who

implanted the religious idiom in modern Indian Muslim politics,

activated them again in 1918.



There was also a third component of the Muslim ashraf, namely, the

landlords, whose livelihoods were not affected directly by the new

language policy. The Muslim and the Hindu landlords received

government favours in return for their sup! port. Some landlords, as

individuals, did join the Muslim League or the Indian National

Congress, possibly motivated by the problems faced by their kinsmen

in the salariat or among the new professionals. This was not without

their ha1ving to face pressure or sanctions from the colonial

authorities for doing so.



The Muslim salariat and professionals, looked down upon the poor

Muslims, who were either urban artisans, notably weavers (the

julahas) or peasants. Some of the ulama did reach out to the poor.

But instead of grappling with their problems, all that they did was

to whip them up into religious frenzies. In the United Provinces

(UP), some lawyers from the julaha background did set up the `Mu'min

Ansar Party' and the `All-India Mu'min Conference' but these had

little impact on the national politics.



Sir Syed Ahmad Khan pioneered the cause of English education as well

as scientific thought amongst the Indian Muslims. The Muslim

reformers elsewhere in India emulated his work. Muslim educational

associations were set up everywhere. The ulama, hard hit by the

impact of the new Anglo-vernacular language policy, were bitterly

hostile to Sir Syed Ahmad's movement. He was misrepresented and

reviled by them in every possible way. His role and character have

been grossly misrepresented in the Indian nationalist literature

because of his opposition to the Indian National Congress. He

deserves to be judged more objectively.



Bankim Chandra Chatterjee has been highly acclaimed by some scholars

as a pioneer of Indian nationalism.4 Despite its offence to the

Muslim sensibilities, the Congress has adopted his song Vandé

Mataram as an anthem. It is instructive to compare his views with

those of Sir Syed Ahmad. Leaving aside, for the moment, Bankim's

violent hostility towards the Muslims, one aspect of his thought is

quite striking. He had declared that the British were not `our

enemies and we sho! uld not fight them'. Instead, he had stressed

that the British possessed knowledge that `we should acquire if we

ourselves were to progress'. Bankim (1838-94) was advocating a

generation later what Sir Syed Ahmad (1817-98) had preached before

him.



Bankim's classic play `Anandamath' sets out his ideas. T W Clark

describes it is the most important statement that Bankim made and

offers a translation of the final chapter. 5 Satyananda, the hero,

has killed in battle all the Muslim officers (Muslim soldiers having

all fled). The British remained. At that moment `He' (the voice of

Satyananda's Master, that of Bankim himself) orders Satyananda to

cease killing for only the British are left. Satyananda is

puzzled. "Why do you order me to cease?" he asks. To this `He'

replies: "your task is accomplished. The Muslim power is destroyed.

There is nothing else for you to do." Satyananda persists. "The

Muslim power has indeed been destroyed. But the domi! nion of the

Hindus has not yet been established. The British still hold

Calcutta." `He' replies: "The Hindu dominion will not be established

now". At this, Satyananda exclaims: "My Lord, if the Hindu dominion

is not going to be established now, who will rule?" `He'

replies: "The English will rule …Physical knowledge has disappeared

from our land. … So we must learn it from the foreigners. The

English are wise in this knowledge. And they are good teachers.

Therefore, we must make the English rule. …Your vow is fulfilled.

You have brought good fortune to your mother. You have set up a

British government. …There are no foes now. The English are friends

as well as rulers. And no one can defeat them in battle."



Bankim was advocating English education and accepting the British

rule just as Sir Syed Ahmad had done earlier. Bankim is honoured

while Sir Syed Ahmad is reviled for saying the same thing. This

extraordinary difference reveals the intellectual biases underlying

the Indian nationalist thought. There is, of course, a marked

difference between Sir Syed Ahmad and Bankim in one respect. As

Bankim's admirer Clark notes, "Bankim's references to Muslims are

generally unfriendly, and in many places unmistakably hostile." That

stands in marked contrast to Sir Syed Ahmad's attitude to the other

community.



Writing under the title `Bonds between Hindus and Muslims', Sir Syed

Ahmad says: "Centuries have passed that we two have lived on the

same earth, have eaten the produce of the same land, drunk the water

of the same rivers, breathed the air of the same one country. Hindus

and Muslims are not strangers to each other. As I have said many

times before, India is a beautiful bride and Hindus and Muslims are

its two eyes. Her beauty demands that her two eyes shall be

undamaged, whole (salamat) and equal".6 That was his call for Hindu-

Muslim Unity. We find no hostility towards the Hindus in his

writings. In his social life! too, he was free of communal

antipathy. He had many close Hindu friends. On the occasion of the

bismillah (an important rite of passage) ceremony of his four-year-

old grandchild, he made the boy sit in the lap of his close friend

Raja Jaikishandas, which was symbolic of their brotherly relations.7

His disagreement with the Congress is quite another kind of matter.



Sir Syed Ahmad based his opposition to democracy on a sociological

argument. Whereas, he argued, the English society is made up of free-

acting individuals, who are unconstrained by `community' loyalties,

in India, individuals are enclosed within institutionalised

communities. In this political arena, they do not (cannot) act as

free individuals for the society demands that they support

candidates of their own community. A Muslim has to vote for a fellow

Muslim and a Hindu for a fellow Hindu. That, he said, was a fact of

the Indian culture. Therefore, until the society and culture became

individualised (which may h! appen in time), democracy is unsuitable

for India. Given the cultural imperatives that would mean a

permanent majority of the Hindus over the Muslims. He concluded that

for the time being, it was useful to have the British as neutral and

impartial referees. He may be criticised for his faith in the

British impartiality. But he felt that there was no alternative.



Sir Syed Ahmad, unlike the generation of the Indian nationalists who

came after him, had no idea of the exploitative and destructive

impact of the colonial rule on India. Nevertheless, he was aware

that the British Indian bureaucracy was racist, rude and arrogant.

Himself a member of the ashraf aristocracy, he believed (naïvely)

that it was the aristocratic birth and breeding that made the

difference. He once said: "England is so far from us that we cannot

verify if some of these rude bureaucrats are not really sons of naïs

(barbers)." The pages of his journal Tahzib-al-Akhlaq are full of

trenchant criticism of the B! ritish Indian bureaucrats who

misbehaved towards the Indians. Maulana Mohammad Ali, in his

presidential Address at the Cocanada Congress meeting in 1923, gave

fulsome praise to Sir Syed Ahmad as a man of dignity and dealt

(inter alia) with the charge of servility towards the British. He

said: "A close study of his [Sir Syed Ahmad's] character leads me to

declare that he was far from possessing the sycophancy with which

some of his political critics have credited him".



Sir Syed Ahmad is not above criticism. Occasionally, he derisively

referred to the Bengal Congress's `bhadralok' politicians, who

attacked him, as `babus'. But surely that was no more than political

tit-for-tat! More serious is the matter of his conservative attitude

to women's education. For a man who had boldly taken on the

conservatives on most issues, it is a great pity that he did not do

better on this score. His views on this are quite unacceptable

today. Finally, even worse, was his `aristocratic' disdain for the

non-ashraf and the poor. Referring to the membership of the

viceroy's legislative council, he expressed his deeply rooted class

(caste?) prejudices when he said: "it is essential for the viceroy's

council to have members of a high social standing. Would our

aristocracy like that a man of low caste or insignificant origin,

though he may be a BA or MA and have the requisite ability, be in a

position of authority above them and have the power of making laws

that affect their lives and property?"



He was, after all, a product of his class and his times.



Sir Syed Ahmad is said to have had close affinity with Raja Ram

Mohan Roy, who himself was a great thinker and a rationalist. It has

been suggested that he was a regular reader of Roy's writings (in

Persian). Troll writes that "the personality and work of Ram Mohan

Roy were a formative influence in Sayyid Ahmad Khan's life… The

parallels between the ideas and working methods o! f the two men

could be mere coincidence, or the effects of a common historical

situation or perhaps a result of Sir Sayyid being directly

influenced by Ram Mohan Roy and his monotheistic Brahmo Samaj."9 Sir

Syed Ahmad, in turn, relates how, as a young boy, he looked with

great admiration, and from a respectful distance, at the famous

Bengali reformer, when the latter visited the Mughal Emperor in

Delhi in 1830 (ibid, p 60). It might be said that with the social

changes brought about by the colonial transformation of the Indian

society and with the rise of colonial capitalism,10 rationalism and

monotheistic ideas flourished all over India in the late 19th

century. This was also, for instance, the case with the Prarthana

Samaj of Ranadé and Bhandarkar in Maharashtra. These rationalist

movements attracted the English educated upper classes of India.



By the end of the 19th century, the newly educated Muslims began to

make their concerns felt. Mohsin-ul-Mulk (Sir Syed Ahmad's not ! so

distinguished successor at Aligarh) arranged a meeting of Muslim

notables with the viceroy on October 1, 1906 at Simla, where they

represented the Muslim demands to Lord Minto. In the eyes of the

Indian nationalists the mere fact of that meeting is a proof of a

British conspiracy to entice the Indian Muslims away from the

nationalist movement to pursue a policy of divide and rule.

Unfortunately, this has had the effect of making the Indian

nationalist historians impervious to all evidence of the material

facts behind theMuslim movement. In his presidential address at the

Cocanada Congress meeting, Maulana Mohammad Ali rashly spoke of the

Simla delegation as a `command performance'. This was taken to mean

that the Muslim movement was nothing more than a creation of the

colonial government's policy of `Divide and Rule'. It may well be

that Mohammed Ali had uttered this phrase on an impulse, for which

he was notorious. The Indian nationalist historians, with the rare

exception! of Bimal Prasad, have seized on Mohammad Ali's passing

(and misleading) remark as if it was a complete explanation of the

Indian Muslim politics.



The background to the 1906 delegation to the viceroy was an

announcement by John Morley, the secretary of state for India, that

his government proposed to introduce constitutional reforms in

India. When Mohsin-ul-Mulk heard about it, he wrote to Archbold,

principal of Aligarh College, who was then vacationing at Simla. In

his letter, Mohsin-ul-Mulk emphasised the importance of the occasion

and asked Archbold to inquire whether Minto would receive a

delegation of Indian Muslims, who wished to put before him their

views about the projected constitutional reforms. The viceroy

agreed. That initiative, as Bimal Prasad has emphasised (and

documented), came entirely from Mohsin-ul-Mulk; not even from

Archbold, let alone the British. Mohammad Ali's phrase `command

performance' was baseless and mischievous.



When Mohsin-ul-Mulk got t! he green light from Simla, a Memorial was

prepared and discussed with some Muslim leaders at Lucknow. The big

issue of the day that concerned both the viceroy and the Muslims of

the new province of East Bengal and Assam was the powerful ongoing

agitation to annul the Partition of Bengal. Nawab Salimullah of

Dacca and Nawab Ali Choudhury insisted at Lucknow that the Memorial

should ask for an assurance that the Partition would not be

annulled. But Aligarh was not interested in that issue, which was

not even mentioned in the Memorial. Nawab Salimullah of Dacca,

therefore, refused to join the delegation although Nawab Ali

Choudhury did.



The viceroy too appears to have been disappointed that the Bengal

Partition issue was not included in the Memorial. Minto took it up

on his own bat. In his reply, he reminded "the Mahomedan community

of Eastern Bengal and Assam [that they] can rely as firmly as ever

on British justice and fair-play." The delegation had asked for

separate elector! ates and a fairer quota of representation in the

viceroy's council, his executive council, in provincial councils and

on senates and syndicates of the Indian Universities. They had

reiterated the demand for a Muslim University. They sought a Muslim

quota in the government service and the appointment of Muslim judges

on the Bench. These were all predictable demands of the Muslim

salariat and professionals. In response, Lord Minto "promised …

nothing, except sympathy."12 So much for the `command performance'!



A word about the separate electorates. The Muslim candidates in

elections complained of difficulty in getting elected, even from

Muslim majority constituencies. Due to the property and tax

qualifications, Muslim voters were far fewer than their proportion

in the population. The Simon Commission Report points out that in

the `governor's provinces' of India, the average franchise extended

to no more than 2.8 per cent of the population. This proportion was

heavily weighted i! n favour of those who owned property. The Report

says: "Adoption of property qualifications as a basis for the

franchise gave a predominance and sometimes a monopoly of votes to

certain classes of the population. …In the Central Provinces, the

brahmin and the bania have in proportion to their numbers not less

than 100 times as many votes as the mahar." The report speaks

of "the total exclusion of … the under-tenants in Bengal". Separate

electorates were a defence against such non-representation.

Conversely, joint electorates would have the advantage of drawing

minorities into the mainstream of political life. Separate

electorates could be looked upon, at best, as a short-term remedy.



Nawab Salimullah of Dacca, sidelined by the Simla deputationists,

tried to retrieve his initiative by calling a meeting (to coincide

with the meeting of the Muslim Education Society) in Dacca in

December 1906 to start an All India Muslim political association. On

December 30,! the All India Muslim League was founded. But, to his

chagrin, the Aligarh-UP group, led by Aligarh's Viqar-ul-Mulk,

hijacked the new organisation by taking all the top posts in the

executive committee, leaving Nawab Salimullah of Dacca high and dry

again.



The early Congress was not very different; its demands were similar,

namely, (1) the Indianisation of the services and promotion of

Indians to higher positions within the service; and (2) greater

representation of Indians in governing bodies, such as the viceroy's

executive council. These demands were identical to those of the

Muslim salariat and the new professional classes but applied in a

wider context. Neither party really represented the urban and rural

labouring poor. The so-called `mass politics' that emerged after

Gandhi, sought no more than to make the peasant speak in the name of

the Congress. He did little to make the Congress speak in the name

of the peasant. By declaring that the landlords were the `tru!

stees' for the peasantry,13 Gandhi put forward a philosophy that

reduced the peasantry to zero. The Congress claim of a `mass basis'

is a myth. There was a basic similarity in the class bases and

demands of both the Muslim League and the early Congress.



The Muslim movement was not the only one of its kind in India.The

Dravidian movement in south India was very similar to it.14 InTamil

Nadu, the brahmins dominated the salariat and the professions.

Although the Brahmins were three-four per cent of the population of

the Madras Presidency, they monopolised the government services and

places on the local boards. The non-brahmins, or the dravidians as

they called themselves, rebelled against the brahmin dominated

political and social system. Their sense of a separate identity was

promoted by the discovery by the linguists during the first two

decades of the 20th century that all four southern languages, Tamil,

Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada, formed a distinct, dravidian,

linguist! ic group, quite independent of the northern Indian

Sanskrit that came to the south with the brahmins.Thus grew a sense

of the Dravidian identity. The birth of the Dravidian Movement is

dated to November 1916, when an organisation was formed which

eventually evolved into the anti-brahmin Justice Party. E V

Ramaswami Naicker, who was known as the Periyar, initiated a

Dravidian national movement with secessionist objectives. At the

Madras session of the Muslim League, he was seated in a place of

honour on the platform. His secessionist movement did not succeed as

he was unable to rally people other than those of Tamil Nadu. But

his movement transformed the politics of Tamil Nadu.



The Muslim League, set up in 1906, went through far reaching changes

from about 1910. A more radical generation of Muslim Leaguers had

come up, very different in their mood. There was a shift too in the

social base of the League. There was an increased participation in

it from the more modest strata of ! the society. Far fewer of them

were from the substantial landed families."The great majority (of

them) belonged to the class which occasionally had a small pittance

in rents from land but, generally, in order to survive, had to find

employment in service or the professions."15 The Muslim League had

found its enduring class base, even though some landlords (like the

Raja of Mahmudabad) and also some businessmen played a part in it.

Instead of government patronage, the new Muslim League earned its

hostility. We are told that the Raja of Mahmudabad "became more

cautious after governor Meston threatened to take away his

taluqdari `sanad' in 1916."



The centre of gravity of the Muslim League shifted away from the

Aligarh conservatives to a relatively more radical leadership based

in Lucknow, though the bulk of them were educated at Aligarh. By

1912, the energetic and radical Wazir Hasan, took over as general

secretary. A new phase began in the polit! ical style of the League

and it's attitude towards the Congress. As Rahman puts it: "The

growing number of young professional men in the ranks of the Muslim

League helped to produce reorientations in the League's relation

with the Hindu community".16 By 1910, the Muslim League Constitution

was revised, bringing it in line with that of the Congress, except

for the League's commitment to separate electorates and weightage

for the Muslims. There was by now a realisation in the Muslim League

that they would not make much headway against the British unless

they built a united front with the Congress. Calls for Hindu-Muslim

unity were reiterated.



The Muslim League looked for someone who could build bridges between

the League and the Congress. Jinnah was the obvious choice. Although

not a member of the Muslim League, he had participated, by

invitation, in the meeting of the Muslim League Council in 1912,

where proposals for a new (more radical) Muslim! League constitution

were formulated. Jinnah had made several suggestions that were

accepted.17 Jinnah had a high standing in the Indian National

Congress and was ideally placed to bring the two movements together.

In October 1913, when Wazir Hasan and Maulana Mohammad Ali were in

London to see the secretary of state for India (who, in the event,

refused to see them), they took the opportunity to meet Jinnah. The

two persuaded him to join the Muslim League and work for the

Congress-League Unity. Jinnah agreed, provided that his commitments

to the Congress would remain.



Soon after joining the Muslim League in October 1913, Jinnah worked

hard for the Congress-League unity, which was sealed by the Lucknow

Pact and adopted at a Joint Session of the Congress and the League

in 1916.18 By virtue of the Pact, the Congress accepted some Muslim

demands, including separate electorates with specified province-wise

weightage for the ! Muslims that proved to be controversial. The

Muslim minority provinces, like UP, were given a bigger share of

seats than that provided under the Morley-Minto Reforms. This was

done at the cost of Bengal, which had a Muslim population of 52 per

cent but was given a share of only 40 per cent of seats, and Punjab,

which had a Muslim population of 54.8 per cent but was given a share

of only 50 per cent. The United Provinces with a Muslim population

of only 14 per cent was given a share of no less than 30 per cent.

After all the UP elite were running the show.



The justified criticism of the Lucknow Pact should not make us

underestimate its achievements. It succeeded in bringing the

Congress and the Muslim League together on a single platform to

fight British Imperialism. It was the Muslim League and Jinnah who

had initiated that bid for unity. Jinnah was a unifier and not a

separatist, as generally suggested. He was to persist in that

difficult role, d! espite setbacks, for a quarter of a century until

the point was reached when, despite all his efforts, unity was no

longer an option.



The Lucknow Pact also covered shared demands of the Congress and the

League vis-a-vis the colonial government. The pact sought a majority

of elected members in legislatures. It demanded that in the

provinces, four-fifths should be elected members and only one-fifth

nominated, and that the members of councils should be `elected

directly by the people on as broad a franchise as possible'.

Likewise, it provided that four-fifths of the members of the

Imperial legislative council should be elected. It demanded that

half of the members of the governor-general's executive council be

Indians elected by elected members of the Imperial legislative

council. Thus contrary to the popular opinion, the Lucknow Pact was

not just about concessions to the Muslim League. It also spelt out

the basis on which the Congress and the Muslim League could work

togethe! r as close allies. The significance of the Lucknow Pact is

greater than is generally supposed.



The contentious part of the Lucknow Pact was its acceptance of

separate electorates. Jinnah had always preferred joint electorates.

At the annual Indian National Congress of 1910, he moved a

resolution rejecting separate electorates for local bodies. But

after he joined the Muslim League, having failed to persuade his

colleagues to accept joint electorates, he acquiesced in what the

party demanded. He was probably also influenced by the fact that

after the Morley-Minto reforms had enacted separate electorates,

senior Congress leaders were reconciled to the idea. As Bimal Prasad

points out, in 1911 Gokhalé "again made it clear that in his opinion

separate electorates for the Muslims were necessary in view of the

failure of sufficient numbers of Muslims to get into the legislative

councils…" (op cit, p 123).



By the end of the first world war, there was a radical change in!

the Muslim movement, when the ulama were activated and brought

centre stage. The Khilafat movement (1918-1924), in the hands of

Mahatma Gandhi, torpedoed the new political dynamic of the joint

struggle of the Muslim League and the Congress against the colonial

rule that was set in motion by the Lucknow Pact. It also undermined

the secular leadership of the Muslim League. Instead, it helped to

mobilise one section of the Sunni ulama, namely, the hardliner

Deobandis, on the basis of some false assumptions about the post-

war `hostility' of the British towards the Ottoman sultan, their

khalifa. The movement capitalised on the pan-Islamic sentiments

amongst the Indian Deobandi Muslims. These sentiments were centred

on the role of the Ottoman Sultan as the `Universal Khalifa'. It

ignored the fact that the Ottoman Sultan was not recognised as the

Khalifa by the populist Barelvi tradition of the Indian Sunni Islam

(arguably, the majority of Indian Muslims). T! he Barelvis, like the

Arab nationalists, rejected the claims of the Ottoman Sultan to be

the Khalifa on the doctrinal ground that he was not of Quraysh

descent.



The Khilafat movement got off the ground after Gandhi decided to

take it over, becoming, in his own words, the `dictator' of the

movement. Leaders of the movement, like Abdul Bari of Firangi Mahal,

Ansari, Shaukat Ali and Mohammd Ali, sought guidance from him for

every action.20 It is difficult to discuss critically the role of

Mahatma Gandhi, a man who became a saint. But until the end of first

world war, Gandhi had yet to establish himself as a major Indian

political leader. His early moves can best be understood in the

context of his attempts to achieve that end. He became the

undisputed leader of the Indian nationalist movement by the time he

had finished with the Khilafat and the non-cooperation movements.

Gandhi's movement undermined the secular leadership of the Muslim

League an! d, for the time being, established the mullahs in that

place. Gandhi even helped the mullahs to set up a political

organisation of their own (in 1919), namely the Jamiat-i-Ulama-i-

Hind, which was reincarnated in Pakistan as the Jamiat-i-Ulama-i-

Islam, the extreme hardliner fundamentalists who were instrumental

in the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan.



Thanks to Gandhi, the Khilafat movement implanted the religious

idiom in the modern Indian Muslim politics for the first time. A key

moment in that was when Ansari organised an invasion of the Delhi

Session of the All Indian Muslim League in 1918 by the mullahs.

Ansari, chairman of the AIML reception committee, convened a meeting

of the ulama with the help of the seminaries at Deoband and Firangi

Mahal, on the day preceding the AIML annual conference, without the

knowledge of his Muslim League colleagues. They met at the Fatehpuri

mosque in Delhi.21 At that meeting, mullah fanaticism was whipped

up, preparing them for the take over next day. The mullah invasion

of the League meeting (referred to, absurdly, by some authors as an

advent of the `masses') came as a surprise to the League leadership.

When the resolutions about Khilafat were brought forward, it became

clear that there was little point in arguing about the substantive

issues with the mullahs.



Jinnah, realising that, raised some legalistic and procedural

objections. But he knew that the game was lost. To make his point he

staged a walkout from the meeting. It was agreed that the Raja of

Mahmudabad and Wazir Hasan would not walkout with him. They stayed

behind to fight moves to remove them from their positions of

president and general secretary of the AIML. Many of the mullahs

drifted away after passing the controversial resolutions and the two

league leaders were comfortably re-elected. Both resigned a few

months later because they could not work with the mullah infested

League.



Directly, as a ! reaction to the Khilafat movement and the

politicisation of religion, there followed in the 1920s a long

period of the worst communal rioting that India had ever known. In

1924, the Turkish Republican Nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal

abolished the Ottoman Khilafat. The Khilafat Committee, which for a

time had become more influential than the League, disintegrated in

total confusion. The political influence of the Ulama `declined

swiftly' and the Muslim League returned to its secular concerns. It

must be emphasised that it was only after the partition that Islamic

ideology began to be fostered in Pakistan; it was attributed

retrospectively to the Muslim League to justify the claim that

Pakistan was created to establish an Islamic state. The fact is that

the rare attempts to place `Islamic ideology' on the agenda of the

Muslim League were firmly scotched by the leadership.22 The Indian

Muslim movement was driven by the concrete objectives of the social

grou! ps that were involved, rather than by some abstract ideology.



Jinnah soon reappeared on the Muslim League platform. According to

Khaliquzzaman, "the time had come to reinforce the Muslim League as

the Khilafat Committee was on its last legs. …We decided to invite

Jinnah, who had attended only one meeting of the Council of the

League in Calcutta in 1919, after his walkout in December 1918, to

preside over the Muslim League session at Lahore in May 1924."23

However, by that time the nature of the Indian provincial politics

and the centre of gravity of power in the Muslim League had changed

radically.



When the Muslim League was set up, the League's role was that of a

pressure group to articulate the Muslim demands. The Montagu-

Chelmsford `reforms' completely altered the dynamics of Indian

politics and brought about a shift away from the Muslim minority

provinces (e g, the UP ) to the Muslim majority provinces, where the

Muslims could form provincial governments. Under ! dyarchy,

ministers now had some power, however limited, to dole out resources

and jobs. Political leaders and parties were no longer confined to

being just pressure groups. They could now dispense patronage. The

influence of the salariat in the Muslim minority provinces declined.

The Muslim majority provinces, Punjab and Bengal, notably the

former, acquired a new importance. David Page offers an excellent

account of this, especially of the emergence of the Punjabi

dominance in the Indian Muslim politics.24



There was now a new logic to the role of political parties and

politicians. What is not so widely perceived is that there were also

shifts in the class base of Muslim politics, which was different in

Punjab and in Bengal. The feudal classes were dominant in Punjab.

The Punjabi Muslim, Hindu and Sikh landlords joined with the

powerful biraderies (extended families) of the jat peasants of east

Punjab (led by Choudhry Chhotu Ram) under the unionist ! Party. A

remarkable man, Sir Fazl-i-Husain, who was from an urban middle

classbackground but who understood the needs of the feudal classes,

led that party. Sir Faz-i-Husain also made a point of patronising

the very weak Muslim salariat in Punjab, especially those from rural

background. The majority of the urban population in Punjab consisted

of the Hindu salariat, professionals and traders, who were the

mainstay of the Hindu Sabha. The Punjab Muslim League barely

existed. Fazl-i-Husain allied with it also because it had its uses.

He was a skilful, pragmatic politician who practised political

accommodation as long as his basic interests were taken care of.

Along with his feudal constituents, he was favoured by the colonial

regime and this greatly strengthened his hands.



Jinnah and Fazl-i-Husain and his Unionist Party, each had something

to offer to the other. They entered into a tacit alliance, though

they detested each other. It was a marriage of convenience. The

Unionist P! arty was a secular, inter-communal regional party of the

Punjabi landed magnates, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and the biraderis of

the well-off Jat peasants of East Punjab.25 The Punjabi landed

magnates were parochial and hankered after the autonomy of Punjab

within the Raj. They were doing very well from the patronage of the

colonial regime, to which they were completely loyal. Due to the

fragility of their inter-communal and feudal alliance with in

Punjab, they did not see any wisdom in extending themselves beyond

Punjab because that would import problems into their comfortable set

up. Jinnah's Muslim League was a channel through which they could

relate to the all India developments, but on the Unionist terms. Sir

Fazl-i-Husain and his successor Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan made it a

point to keep the Punjab Muslim League under their tight control.



Jinnah badly needed the deal with the Unionists. He could not claim

to be the spokesman of all the Indian Muslims if he could not say

th! at Punjab was behind him. He needed the Unionists to announce

that theirs was a Muslim League government. It mattered little if

everyone knew that this was a fiction. He did not seek power over

Punjab. His single concern was to legitimise the `representative'

role of the All India Muslim League.The Punjab Muslim League itself

barely existed. As late as February 1940, Khaliquzzaman was to

report that "we also discussed the formation of a Muslim League in

Punjab" (op cit p 233).



Some influential Unionists even dreamt of an independent dominion of

Punjab. Sir Sikandar Hayat met Winston Churchill at Cairo in the

summer of 1941-1942 (sic), as Noor Ahmad has reported.26 On his

return, Sikandar Hayat told his cabinet colleagues that he had put

it to Churchill that loyal Punjab deserves to be given the option of

being an independent dominion or be included in an independent

dominion with Sindh, Baluchistan and NWFP (provinces that Punjab

could easily dominate). He said that he did no! t know if Churchill

was persuaded of this but that it was significant that in his March

1942 proposals Churchill had included the option that provinces be

allowed to opt for separate dominion status. Some Unionists expected

that they would be allowed to form an independent Punjab `with Hindu

and Sikh support', for which Khizr Tiwana held on to his premiership

to the bitter end.



The picture in Bengal was quite different. Bengal was a land of

(mainly Muslim) small peasants. When the East Bengal Muslim League

was first set up in 1911, its leadership was in the hands of the

Urdu/Persian speaking immigrant Muslim ashraf, such as the Dacca

Nawab family, who were remote from the Bengal peasants. By the end

of first world war , the more dynamic Bengali professionals,

presumably from the rich peasant rather than the zamindar

background, became the leaders. Amongst them was Fazlul Haq, who was

to play an important role in mobilising the support of the rich pe!

asants. The peasantry or the `praja' ranged from quite large tenants

(`jotedars'), who had their land cultivated by sharecroppers

(`bhargadars'), especially in north Bengal, to small holders, often

with tiny holdings, who predominated in the `Active Delta' in the

south. Virtually all sections of the overwhelmingly Muslim Bengal

peasantry and the salariat, along with the urban poor, were badly

hit by the economic conditions in the aftermath of first world

war.27 The insertion of Bengali agriculture into the global economy,

by virtue of Bengal's dependence on jute as a cash crop, had made

the province highly vulnerable to fluctuations in the market.



These economic pressures brought about a radicalisation of the

Bengal Muslim politics. There was an urgent case for reform of the

tenancy laws. Following the province-wide agitationfor reform of

theTenancy Act, the colonial government introduced a TenancyBill in

1923 to amend the Act. The radical element in the Bengal Muslim

salar! iat leadership, with the jotedars and the small peasants,

supported the Bill. But, sadly, the Congress-Swaraj Party, a Hindu

zamindar dominated party in Bengal, successfully killed the bill.

Despite its radical rhetoric, the Bengal Congress leadership

shamefully backed the parasitical zamindars.



By the late 1920s, Fazlul Haq and other new generation Muslim

leaders plunged into mobilising the Bengali tenants. The Indian

nationalist historians have played down the class aspect of the

struggle (vis-a-vis Zamindars, mainly Hindus) and tend to represent

the Bengali peasant struggle as a `communal' issue. However, against

the background of a `spontaneous' praja (tenant) movement in the

1920s, the Nikhil Banga Praja Samity (All -Bengal Tenants' Party)

was organised by Fazlul Haq and the new political leadership. The

Bengal Provincial Muslim League also came under their control. The

Muslim Zamindars, hostile to this movement, together with some top

professionals organised a Uni! ted Muslim Party (with Suhrawardy as

its secretary and Khwaja Nazimuddin as one of its stalwart members)

to oppose it. Jinnah's main concern, as in Punjab, was to maintain

the claim of the All India Muslim League (and himself) to be the

sole representative of the Indian Muslims. He tried to mediate

between the two sides in the name of Bengal unity, but was

unsuccessful. The Nikhil Banga Praja Samity changed its name in 1936

to the Krishak Praja Party and prepared to contest the 1937

elections. Zamindari abolition without compensation was at the top

of the KPP manifesto.



The KPP, with its petty bourgeois leadership, failed to mount a

sufficiently strong campaign amongst the poor peasantry, and won

only slightly more than 30 per cent of the seats. Their excuse was

that the voting rules were too restrictive. That was not true for,

in 1946, with the same voting qualifications, the Muslim League

General Secretary, Abul Hashim, organised a landslide! victory for

the Muslim League. Under the 1935 act, a person who paid six annas

(one rupee being 16 annas) under the Village Chowkidari Act was

entitled to vote. That was a low limit that gave the poor peasants

(but not the landless) the vote. In 1937, the landlords dominated

the Muslim League, which won almost 30 per cent of the Muslim seats,

with independents taking 35 per cent. The Muslim League then settled

for a coalition government with the KPP, with Fazlul Haq as the

Prime Minister. That was just about enough to sustain the claim that

the AIML and Jinnah were the sole representatives of the Indian

Muslims. Bengal was the only province where the Muslim League (under

the Dacca Nawab family) got respectable results in the 1937

elections. It did quite badly elsewhere.



When the Simon Commission was appointed, the Indian public opinion

rejected it universally. Jinnah saw that as an opportunity for a

united struggle against the colonial rule. After consultation with

the Cong! ress president, Srinivas Iyengar, he convened a meeting of

30 prominent Muslim leaders to consider the Muslim position on the

future constitution. What emerged came to be known as the Delhi

Muslim Proposals.28 To get over the main hurdle in the way of unity

with the Congress, Jinnah used all his powers of persuasion to get

his Muslim colleagues to accept joint electorates (which he himself

preferred) on the condition that the Muslim representation in Punjab

and Bengal shall be in accordance with the population and that in

the central legislature the Muslim representation shall not be less

than a third. This was also conditional on the acceptance by the

Congress that (1) Sindh shall be separated from Bombay and

constituted as a separate province; and (2) Reforms shall be

instituted in the NWFP and Baluchistan to place them on the same

footing as the other provinces in India. The package was to be

accepted or rejected as a whole.



Many Muslim leaguers, not unreasonably, bel! ieved that the joint

electorates would work against them. Sir Muhammad Shafi, Fazl-i-

Husain's protégé, got the Punjab group to split the party and

organise their own separate `Muslim League' session in Lahore. Shafi

rightly held that Jinnah had underestimated the opposition among the

Muslims to the abandonment of separate electorates. Although most

members of the League Council stuck loyally with Jinnah at that

critical time, they had their reservations about this issue.

Announcing the Delhi Muslim proposals, Jinnah himself acknowledged

that "the overwhelming majority of Mussalmans firmly and honestly

believe that (separate electorates) are the only method by which

they can be secure".29 Also, the Shafi League and the Unionists were

not prepared to boycott the Simon Commission. Fazl-i-Husain was

determined to isolate Jinnah but failed.



The Delhi Muslim proposals were considered by the (Motilal) Nehru

Committee, which was appointed in February 1928 by the Delhi All

Parties Conference "to determine the principles of the constitution

of India". The committee recommended adult franchise with joint

electorates. It also recommended the reservation of seats for the

Muslims in the Muslim minority provinces, but not in the majority

provinces (Punjab and Bengal), with similar reservation of seats for

the Hindus in the NWFP where they were in a minority. The committee

strongly recommended the separation of Sindh from Bombay and normal

provincial status for the NWFP and Baluchistan. But at a convention

at Lucknow in August 1928, where the Muslim League was not

represented,30 the committee's original recommendations were

effectively reversed at the behest of the Hindu Mahasabha, which

dominated the Lucknow meeting.



At the subsequent 10 day Calcutta Convention in December 1928, a

battle royal ensued between the Muslim League and the Hindu

Mahasabha over those issues. Sadly, despite its earlier support, the

Congress did not honour its own commitment! s about Sindhh,

Baluchistan and the NWFP. The Congress delegates just kept silent

and watched the show. The Mahasabha vetoed further discussion of the

proposal, on the ground that this was settled at Lucknow. The Muslim

League, claimed Jinnah, was not represented at Lucknow. But,

tragically (as one might now say with the benefit of the hindsight)

the Congress went along with the Mahasabha, betraying the principles

that the Nehru Committee had spelt out. The Hindu Mahasabha would

sooner accept separate electorates than agree to the democratic

reorganisation of the provinces.



For Jinnah, this betrayal by the Congress was a terrible blow. He

had staked all for the sake of unity and had even isolated himself

from his Muslim supporters by abandoning joint electorates. The

breakdown of his marriage at that time no doubt compounded his

bitterness and sense of isolation. This was a turning point and the

subsequent developments led inexorably to the final parting.



After the ! failure of the Muslim League and the victory of the

Congress in the 1937 elections, there was bitterness among the

Indian Muslims at what they perceived to be the communal

partisanship of the rightwing Congress ministries that were

installed in the provinces. These factors came together to bring

about a total collapse in Jinnah's (and the Muslim League's) belief

in the good faith of the Congress and its independence from the

Mahasabha, especially in matters concerning the Muslims.



Now, faced with a situation in which the Hindu Mahasabha could wield

a veto over the Congress decisions, Jinnah was bitterly

disillusioned. The mood for cooperation and unity with the Congress

gave way to one of hostility. The Indian Nationalist historians tend

to explain these developments purely in terms of Jinnah's personal

ambition and his `intransigence', which are taken as axiomatic. If

we dispassionately look at Jinnah's role in Indian history, what we

find is his consistent pursuit of nati! onal unity on the basis of

agreed demands, even at a grave risk to his position. The breaking

point for Jinnah came with the betrayal at Calcutta, and there was

no turning back.



There was little hope left now of achieving any understanding with

the Mahasabha dominated Congress, as far as the Muslim issues were

concerned. Thoughts turned to the idea of a separate homeland. This

was the climate in which the 1940 `Pakistan Resolution' was passed.

Its full implications are not obvious, especially in Pakistan. One

can only be mystified by the fact that the Resolution says nothing

about the shape that the centre would take. Some scholars believe

that this was done to allow for some space for later negotiation.

But what options were there? The future direction was `over-

determined' by the anxieties and concerns of the feudal barons of

Punjab. For them, the Partition was the only acceptable option. The

situation was already beyond the powers of even such a formidable

negotiator ! as Jinnah. The die was cast.



There were by now unmistakable signs that the British were well and

truly on the way out. In their place loomed the spectre of the rule

of the Congress Party, which was firmly committed to radical land

reform. If the Congress came to power in Punjab and Sindh, it would

break up the feudal structures there. The Cambridge educated Mumtaz

Daulatana was the first to jump off the sinking Unionist ship in

1943. Others soon followed. Their option was to take over the Muslim

League and work for the partition of India. The preoccupation of the

feudal classes with the danger of land reforms, in case they were to

find themselves under a Congress government,was confirmed to me in

February 1951 in Dacca by Feroze Khan Noon, who was then the

governor of East Pakistan. In the course of an informal conversation

over lunch, to which he had invited me, when Nehru's name came up in

the conversation, he said to me: "Jawaharlal comes from a good

family. But he ! has surrounded himself by communists. They are out

to destroy the great landed families of India. Thank god, they

cannot touch us here."



By 1945, most Unionists had moved over to the MuslimLeague in time

to contest the forthcoming elections from their own constituencies.

In Sindh, it was likewise. In October 1942, Jinnah had given his

blessings to a ministry of big landlords, which was formed by Ghulam

Husain Hidayatullah in the name of the Muslim League. That ministry

continued. Jinnah despised and detested them all but he had no other

option. It was the power of the landed magnates of the Indus plain

and the powerful campaign in Bengal leading to the landslide victory

in the 1946 elections that created Pakistan. Religious ideology

played no part in this, as indeed, it had never done, except during

the brief interlude of the Gandhi led Khilafat movement. The role of

the `pirs' (saints) of Punjab and Sindh in the elections has

prompted some historians to jump to the con! clusion that it

signified the religious appeal of the Pakistan slogan. Nothing could

be further from the truth. The pirs in question were big landowners

in their own rights and had jumped on to the Muslim League bandwagon

because they were concerned about the Congress's plans for land

reforms. However, due to their religious power, the pirs did

instruct their followers to vote for the Muslim League candidates.



There is a myth too about the `Aligarh students' who travelled round

Punjab and Sindh to mobilise the peasants for Pakistan. A group of

Aligarh students did go round (some of whom I personally know). The

landlords or their lawyers managed their tour. They would give a

speech or two in district or sub-district towns. Only the very

naïve, who have no idea of how the Punjabi and Sindhi feudal society

works, will take this to mean `mass ncontact'.



The picture in Bengal was very different. The Muslim feudal families

had led the Bengal Muslim Lea! gue since its inception. This was

challenged by the rise of Fazlul Haq and the KPP, which had a base

among the rich peasants. After the 1937 elections, the KPP and the

Muslim League formed a coalition government. This was an `alliance'

of conflicting class interests. Fazlul Haq was soon isolated. By

this time (in 1938), H S Suhrawardy, a minister in the government,

had assumed the charge of the Muslim League organisation. In 1943,

Abul Hashim, a man who professed a confused mixture of socialism and

Islam, was elected as the party's secretary. Suhrawardy and Abul

Hashim played key roles in the unsuccessful attempt to create an

united independent Bengal with the support of the Sarat Bose faction

of the Bengal Congress and Jinnah. The Congress leadership vetoed

the plan. During the 1945-46 elections, when Suhrawardy kept himself

in Calcutta, Abul Hashim, organised an extraordinary campaign

amongst the poor peasants of Bengal on economic issues. This res!

ulted in a massive and unprecedented landslide victory for the

Muslim League. Religious ideology played no part in it.



In Bengal, the peasants, who were overwhelmingly Muslim, were

enmeshed in the colonial (globalised) cash economy. Their immediate

conflict was with the traders and moneylenders, who were

overwhelmingly Hindu. It is a tribute to the Bengali Muslim League

leadership, especially to Abul Hashim, who concentrated on the

economic issues and did not allow the elections to degenerate into a

Hindu-Muslim communal conflict – though in some places such

incidents did occur. The issues that were brought to the fore in the

election campaign included the peasant demand for settlement of the

accumulated debt owed to the moneylenders. The people were also

promised some protection from the traders who manipulated prices.

There was also the demand for the abolition of zamindari without

compensation, a promise fulfilled in 1951.



Unlike in 1937! , these elections reached down to the poor peasants.

The Bengal Muslim League won 114 seats out of the 121 Muslim seats

(as against only 39 in 1937). However, Abul Hashim had served his

purpose for the powerful rightwing politicians. By February 1947,

they appointed another man as acting general secretary of the League

and Abul Hashim found himself in his village in Burdwan. The Dacca

Nawab family was back in the saddle.



The stage was now set for the partition. The East Bengal, Punjab and

Sindh elections demonstrated that Islamic ideology did not play any

part in the success of the Muslim League and the creation of

Pakistan. Could the Partition have been avoided? This is a favourite

question of our Indian friends. It is not a useful question anymore.

History does not retrace its steps. We must look forward and ask

ourselves what we can do to live in peace and friendship with each

other.



Address for correspondence: halavi@c...



Notes



The Muslim ashraf were concentrated in UP and Bihar. With the decay

of the pre-colonial state that they dominated (especially in the

18th century) and with the rising power and prosperity of Bengal

under the East India Company (EIC), many Muslim ashraf migrated

eastwards, and found employment in Murshidabad or with the EIC and

settled down in West Bengal. They took with them their languages,

Urdu and Persian. There were few Muslim ashraf elsewhere in India,

except for Hyderabad under the Nizam.

A vivid picture of the divided family interests and relationships is

portrayed, with great empathy, by (the late) Khadija Mastoor in her

prize winning Urdu novel Aangan, which has been published in an

English translation under the title The Courtyard, Lahore, 2001.

W Cantwell Smith, Modern Islam in India, London, 1946, pp 228-29.

Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World,

London, 1986, Ch 3: `The Moment of Departure – Culture and Power in

the Thought of Bankim Chandra', pp 54 ff.

A translation of the relevant parts of Anandamath by T W Clark will

be found in The Role of Bankim Chandra in the Development of

Nationalism, in C H Phillips (ed) Historians of India, Pakistan and

Ceylon, London, 1961, p 442 ff.

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, `Hindu aur Musalmanon mein Irtibat' (Bonds

Between Hindus and Muslims), Maqalat-e-Sir Syed, Vol 15, Lahore

1963, p 41.

David Lelyveld, Aligarh's First Generation, Delhi, 1996, p 302.

The Indian Annual Register, 1923, Vol I, p 25.

C W Troll, Sayyid Ahmad Khan, OUP, Karachi and Delhi, 1979, p 18,

note 75.

For the concept of colonial capitalism c f (1) Hamza Alavi, `The

Structure of Colonial Social Formations', Economic and Political

Weekly, Vol XVI, Nos 10, 11, and 12, Annual Number, 1981, (2) Hamza

Alavi, `India: Transition to Colonial Capitalism' in Hamza Alavi,

Doug. McEachern et al, Capitalism and Colonial Production, Croom

Helm, London 1982, also published in Journal of Contemporary Asia,

Vol 10, No 4, 1980.

Bimal Prasad has dealt with the story of the 1906 delegation

objectively and accurately in Pathways to India's Partition, Vol II,

A Nation within a Nation, Dacca, 2000, pp 100 ff. Bimal Prasad's

three volume work – of which the third volume is elusive – seems to

be one of the best studies so far done on the `Pakistan Movement'.

Earlier, Francis Robinson also dealt with it in the same scholarly

way in Separatism Among Indian Muslims, Delhi, 1993, pp 142 ff.

Francis Robinson, op cit, p 147.

Cf John R MacLane, Indian Nationalism and the Early Congress,

Princeton, 1977, ch 7, Congress and Landlord Interest, pp 211 ff.

Based on Eugene F Irschik's Politics and Social Conflict in South

India, Berkeley, 1969; and M R Barne