The Emergence of Pakistan III All India Muslim league
Most of the time busy duly Eid-ul-Adha and wedding ceremony at home; unfortunately unable to finish “The Emergence of Pakistan” to provide you the struggle of Muslims to create a heaven in this world called “The Pakistan“. As I particuallary involed in history, a various moment I beleive to provide such a valuable struggle to get Pakistan from this historical information, we’ll be able to start new struggle to protect Pakistan from everyone such as our most enemy India , Afghanistan, Isreal andUnitied States of Amera. The fact is all four countries enemy of Pakistan, but some peoples from their and I’m sure none of the rest of others. All peoples of above countries are loving and peaceful but their government peoples are cruel as we know our government peoples are too…
Please follow the 3rd part of research papper of The Emergence of Pakistan, soon I think able to end-up this historical struggle of Muslims in Indian Subcontinent or may be it’ll be 4th or 5th or 6th part, able to write something more about history of Pakistan from my view point.
In 1885 Indian National Congress was founded by A.W. Hume, a retired British member of the Indian Civil Service, with the blessings of Lord Dufferin, the Governor General of India. The Governor-General wanted the Indian politicians to meet annually and point out to the government ways to improve its administration. Syed Ahmed Khan (well known Sir Syed) advised the Muslims not to join the Congress. He thought that the Hindu-dominated Congress would champion the Hindu cause only and would not safeguard the Muslim interest.
In 1905, the large Bengal Presidency was split into two provinces for administrative reasons. One of the two provinces was Eastern Bengal and Assam in which the Muslims were in a majority. This was vehemently opposed by the Hindus. It was made an all-India issue. To press their demand they started the Swadeshi Movement, a movement to boycott British cloth. The British government ultimately yielded to the Hindu agitation and the partition of Bengal was annulled in 1911.
In 1906 a deputation under the leadership of the Aga Khan met the Viceroy, Lord Minto, and demanded separate electorate for the Muslims on the plea that they had no confidence in a Hindu majority. The Morley-Minto Reforms were introduced in 1910 which gave a separate electorate to the Muslims. The Congress condemned and opposed the separate electorate. From there on wards whenever any constitutional changes were discussed the Congress tried to grab power for the Hindu majority and the Muslims tried to safeguard their future. The Nehru Report, a formula for the constitution of an independent subcontinent, and Jinnah’s Fourteen Points, a suggested amendment of the formula clearly demonstrate Hindu aspiration and Muslim fear. Round Table Conferences also failed to produce any agreed solution because the Hindus wanted to be the future rulers of the subcontinent and the Muslims had no confidence in them.
The Congress government formed in 1937 under the 1935 Act amply demonstrated that the Muslim apprehension was justified. Discrimination against Muslims prevailed in all fields of life. Hindu-Muslim riots became a daily affair. Hindu cultural traditions were introduced in educational institutions and everyday life. The Muslims felt that their religion, tradition and culture were in danger.
The dissatisfaction of the Muslims with the Congress rule facilitated the work of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah who was reorganizing the Muslim League. The Muslim League was founded in 1906. The All India Muslim League was founded by the admirers, companions, and followers of the Aligarh Movement. The formation of a Muslim political party on national level was being reckoned to be essential since 1901. The first stage of its formation was the meeting held at Lucknow in September 1906, with participation of representatives from all over India. The decision for re-consideration to form the all Indian Muslim political party was taken and further proceedings were adjourned until the next meeting of All India Muhammadan Educational Conference. The Simla Deputation reconsidered the issue in October 1906 and decided to frame the objectives of the party on the occasion of the annual meeting of Educational Conference; that was later, scheduled to be held at Dhaka. Meanwhile Nawab Salimullah Khan published a detailed scheme through which he suggested the party to be named All India Muslim Confederacy. Pursuant upon the decisions taken earlier in Lukhnow meeting and later in Simla; the annual meeting of All India Muhammadan Educational Conference was held at Dhaka that continued from 27 December, uptil 30 December 1906. that was headed by both Nawab Waqar-ul-Mulk and Nawab Muhasan-ul-Mulk (the Secretary of the Muhammaden Educational Conference); in which he explained its objectives and stressed the unity of the Muslims under the banner of an association. It was formally proposed by Nawab Salimullah Khan and supported by Hakim Ajmal Khan, Maulana Muhammed Ali Jauhar, Zafar Ali Khan and several others. The Founding meeting was hosted by Nawab Sir Khwaja Salimullah and attended by three thousand delegates, while Ameer Ali, Sir Mian Muhammad Shafi were also the founding fathers who attended this meeting. The name “All India Muslim League” was proposed by Sir Agha Khan III who was appointed its first President. The League’s constitution was framed in 1907 in Karachi.” Since then it had been voicing the cause of the Muslims.
In 1936 Muhammad Ali Jinnah became its president. He was a successful barrister and an experienced politician. He worked hard for Hindu-Muslim unity, so much so that he was called the ambassador of the Hindu Muslim unity. He was instrumental in bringing about a rapprochement between the Muslim League and the Congress in 1916. He was a man of vision and conviction. In an excited crowd of more than one hundred thousand in 1920 when the resolution for non-cooperation was moved by Gandhi, Jinnah alone had the courage to oppose it and the foresight to see how futile it was. He was the author of Fourteen Points put forth in reply to the Nehru Report which was the proposed political set-up of the subcontinent after the withdrawal of the British. The implementation of the Nehru Report would have put the Hindu majority in the saddle.
A- Fourteen Points of Jinnah
The report was given in a meeting of the council of the All India Muslim League on March 28, 1929.
1. The form of the future constitution should be federal with the residuary powers vested in the [ [province]]s.
2. A uniform measure of autonomy shall be granted to all provinces.
3. All legislatures in the country and other elected bodies shall be constituted on the definite principle of adequate and effective representation of minorities in every province without reducing the majority in any province to a minority or even equality.
4. In the Central Legislature, Muslim representation shall not be less than one third.
5.Representation of communal groups shall continue to be by means of separate electorate as at present, provided it shall be open to any community at any time to abandon its separate electorate in favor of a joint electorate.
6.Any territorial distribution that might at any time be necessary shall not in any way affect the Muslim majority in the Punjab, Bengal and the North West Frontier Province.
7. Full religious liberty, i.e. liberty of belief, worship and observance, propaganda, association and education, shall be guaranteed to all communities.
8. No bill or any resolution or any part thereof shall be passed in any legislature or any other elected body if three-fourth of the members of any community in that particular body oppose such a bill resolution or part thereof on the ground that it would be injurious to the interests of that community or in the alternative, such other method is devised as may be found feasible and practicable to deal with such cases.
9. Sindh should be separated from the Bombay Presidency.
10. Reforms should be introduced in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Baluchistan on the same footing as in the other provinces.
11. Provision should be made in the constitution giving Muslims an adequate share, along with the other Indians, in all the services of the state and in local self-governing bodies having due regard to the requirements of efficiency.
12. The constitution should embody adequate safeguards for the protection of Muslim culture and for the protection and promotion of Muslim education, language, religion, personal laws and Muslim charitable institution and for their due share in the grants-in-aid given by the state and by local self-governing bodies.
13. No cabinet, either central or provincial, should be formed without there being a proportion of at least one-third Muslim ministers.
14. No change shall be made in the constitution by the Central Legislature except with the concurrence of the State’s contribution of the Indian Federation.
A1- Reactions
One newspaper headline described the 14 points as Muslims’ irreducible minimum. These demands were rejected by the Congress Party. He was then invited to attend the round table conferences, where he forwarded the Muslims’ point of view
A2- Importance
A comparison of the Nehru Report (1928) with Jinnah’s Fourteen points shows a political gap between the Muslims and the Hindus in India. He tried to amend the Nehru Report or get more rights in it but failed and therefore gave his 14 points. The 14 points covered all of the interests of the Muslims at that time and in this Jinnah stated that it was the “parting of ways” and that he did not want and would not have anything to do with the Indian National Congress in the future. They motivated Jinnah to revive the Muslim League and give it direction. As a result, these points became the demands of the Muslims and greatly influenced the Muslims thinking for the next two decades till the establishment of Pakistan in 1947.
On assuming the presidentship of the Muslim League in 1936 the Quaid-e-Azam made an all-out effort to make the Muslim League the sole spokesman of the Muslims of the subcontinent. At the same time the Muslim League was also working on a formula for the future political set-up of the subcontinent.
The Government of India Act 1935, the voluminous and final constitutional effort at governing British India, articulated three major goals: establishing a loose federal structure, achieving provincial autonomy, and safeguarding minority interests through separate electorates. The federal provisions, intended to unite princely states and British India at the centre, were not implemented because of ambiguities in safeguarding the existing privileges of princes. In February 1937, however, provincial autonomy became a reality when elections were held; the Congress emerged as the dominant party with a clear majority in five provinces and held an upper hand in two, while the Muslim League performed poorly.
Due to no participation of Muslims in Punjab area, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah decided next annual session of the Muslim League arrange in Lahore, Punjab. On 23 March 1940 at the annual session of the Muslim League held at Lahore, the Pakistan Resolution was passed, demanding the division of India into two separate sovereign states, one Muslim, the other Hindu; sometimes referred to as Two Nation Theory. Although the idea of Pakistan had been introduced as early as 1930, very few had responded to it. However, the volatile political climate and hostilities between the Hindus and Muslims transformed the idea of Pakistan into a stronger demand.
Earlier also the partition of India between the Muslims and the Hindus was suggested by others. These proposals did not attract sufficient public attention. On December 29, 1930 Sir Muhammad Iqbal delivered his monumental presidential address to the All India Muslim League annual session. He said:
| “ | I would like to see Punjab, North-West Frontier Province (Now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Sindh and Balochistan amalgamated into a single state. Self government within the British Empire or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim state appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India. |
” |
Sir Muhammad Iqbal did not use the word “Pakistan” in his address. According to some scholars, Iqbal had not presented the idea of a separate Muslim State; rather he wanted a large Muslim province by amalgamating Punjab, Sindh, NWFP and Baluchistan into a big North-Western province within India. They argued that “Iqbal never pleaded for any kind of partition of the country. Rather he was an ardent proponent of a ‘true’ federal setup for India…. And wanted a consolidated Muslim majority within the Indian Federation”.
Another Indian historian Tara Chand also held that Iqbal was not thinking in terms of partition of India but in terms of a federation of autonomous states within India. Dr. Safdar Mehmood also asserted in a series of articles that in the Allahabad address Iqbal proposed a Muslim majority province within an Indian federation and not an independent state outside an Indian Federation.
On January 28, 1933, Choudhary Rahmat Ali, founder of Pakistan National Movement voiced his ideas in the pamphlet entitled “Now or Never; Are We to Live or Perish Forever?” The word ‘Pakstan’ referred to “the five Northern units of India, viz., Punjab, North-West Frontier Province (Afghan Province, now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Kashmir, Sind and Baluchistan””. By the end of 1933, the word “Pakistan” became common vocabulary where an “I” was added to ease pronunciation (as in Afghan-i-stan). In a subsequent book Rehmat Ali discussed the etymology in further detail. “Pakistan’ is both a Persian and an Urdu word. It is composed of letters taken from the names of all our South Asia homelands; that is, Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh and Balochistan. It means the land of the Pure”.
According to some scholars, “Rehmat Ali’s concept of Pakistan was nebulous, impractical and fantasy-ridden. It was to include the entire northwest of India, Kashmir, the Kathiawar peninsula, Kutch, and several enclaves deep within UP, including Delhi and Lucknow. There were to be two independent Muslim states besides Pakistan: Bangistan comprising Bengal and Assam in the east and Osmanistan in the south. These two were to form a federation with Pakistan. The 243 principalities or Rajwaras were to be divided among caste Hindus and “others” and then herded together in a ghetto called Hanoodia. As for the Sikhs, they were to be pushed into an enclave called Sikhia. Other races and religions were to inhabit an encampment by the name of Hanadika. Every non-Muslim was to remain subservient to the master race he called “The Paks”. And yes, the subcontinent was to be renamed Dinia. He did not say how he was going to bring all that about.”
The British and the Indian Press vehemently criticized these two different schemes and created a confusion about the authorship of the word “Pakistan” to such an extent that even Jawahur Lal Nehru had to write:
| “ | Iqbal was one of the early advocates of Pakistan and yet he appears to have realized its inherent danger and absurdity. Edward Thompson has written that in the course of conversation, Iqbal told him that he had advocated Pakistan because of his position as President of Muslim League session, but he felt sure that it would be injurious to India as a whole and to Muslims especially. |
” |
Sir Muhammad Iqbal disapproved the scheme of Ch. rahmat Ali because there were seven or eight other imaginary and utopian ‘…stans’ linked with this scheme. He wrote to Prof. Edward John Thompson of Oxford University, that;
| “ | You call me a protagonist of the scheme called “Pakistan”. Now Pakistan is not my scheme. (Iqbal is here, referring to Ch. Rehmat Ali’s scheme of Pakistan) The one that I suggested in my address is the creation of a Muslim Province – i.e., a province having an overwhelming population of Muslims in the North-West of India. This new province will be, according to my scheme, a part of the proposed Indian Federation. Pakistan scheme (i.e., scheme of Ch. Rahmat Ali) proposes a separate federation of Muslim Provinces directly related to England as a separate dominion. This scheme originated in Cambridge. The authors of this scheme believe that we Muslim Round Tablers have sacrificed the Muslim nation on the altar of Hindu or the so called Indian Nationalism. |
” |
Like Iqbal, Jinnah also disapproved this scheme and considered it;
| “ | as some sort of Walt Disney dreamland, if not Wellsian nightmare”, and thought that “he felt the professional’s contempt for the amateur’s mistake of showing his hand without holding the trumps. |
” |
In his presidential address to the All India Muslim League annual session at Delhi on 24 April 1943, Muhammad Ali Jinnah said:
| “ | I think you will bear me out that when we passed the Lahore resolution we had not used the word ‘Pakistan’. Who gave us this word’? (Cries of “Hindus”) Let me tell you it is their fault. They started damning this resolution on the ground that it was ‘Pakistan’. They are really ignorant of the Muslim movement. They fathered this word upon us…. You know perfectly well that Pakistan is a word which is really foisted upon us and fathered on us by some section of the Hindu press and also by the British press. Now our resolution was known for a long time as the Lahore resolution popularly known as ‘Pakistan’. But how long are we to have this long phrase? Now I say to my Hindu and British friends: We thank you for giving us one word. (Applause, and cries of hear, hear.)”What is the origin of the word ‘Pakistan’? It was not Muslim League or Quaid-i-Azam who coined it. Some young fellows[17] in London, who wanted a particular part of north-west to be separated from the rest of India, coined a name in 1929-30, started the idea and called a zone Pakistan. They picked up the letter P for Punjab. A for Afghan, as the NWFP is known even today as Afghan, K for Kashmir. S for Sind, and Tan for Baluchistan. A ¬name was coined. Thus, whatever may have been the meaning of this word at the time it is obvious that language of every civilized country invents new words. The word Pakistan has come to mean Lahore resolution. We wanted a word and it was foisted on us and we found it convenient to use it as a synonym for Lahore Resolution.” |
The long negotiations between Hindus and Muslims over the future political set-up of the subcontinent had failed because the approach was made with a wrong premise. In Western democracy where the majority rule prevails no particular group constitutes the majority or the minority for all times. The members are free to change their allegiance from one party to another and therefore the majority party of today becomes the minority party tomorrow. This situation did not exist in the subcontinent, where the two parties were religious groups. Furthermore the Muslims were not a microscopic minority which could be ignored as a parasitic cultural group. They numbered 100 million. They had their distinct culture, glorious history and political aspirations. As such they constituted a nation and demanded a homeland. Incidentally two large regions on the western and eastern sides of the subcontinent had a Muslim majority which could be made the homeland of the Muslims. In 1946 elections were held. The Muslim League swept the polls. That election proved a referendum for the demand for the creation of Pakistan. The British were opposed to the partition of the subcontinent. Therefore they made further attempts to resolve the Hindu-Muslim deadlock through the Cripps Missions and the Cabinet Mission.
The Cabinet Mission Plan presented on 16 May 1946 was a realistic and a positive attempt to preserve the unity of the country and also to satisfy the two parties, the Hindus and the Muslims. According to that plan the union of Indian was to have three subjects: defense, foreign affairs and communication. All other powers would be vested in the three groups into which the subcontinent would be divided. One group would comprise Baluchistan, NWFP (Khaibar Pakhtoon Khuwan), Punjab and Sind (Sindh), whereas Assam and Bengal would constitute another group and the third group would include the rest of the country. A constituent assembly would then be set up to formulate the constitution. The Muslim League accepted the plan. The Congress also accepted the plan but took the stand that the constituent assembly would be sovereign and thus could alter the plan in any way that it desired. That was obviously unacceptable to the Muslim League. Thus a sincere and positive attempt to resolve the deadlock failed. Thereafter the British government, the Congress and the Muslim League agreed over the partition of the subcontinent.
The Emergence of Pakistan I , The Emergence of Pakistan II
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