Ahmed 1

Muhammad Ahmed Shafqat

Professor Anam Fatima
SS-102
23rd November 2021
Assignment 2
The immense success of the All-India Muslim League in the 1946 provincial elections
paved the way for creating an independent nation, soon to be called Pakistan. Unlike earlier
elections, the results highly favored the Muslim League, placing it at the second rank after
Congress. The Muslim League's strategic efforts in Punjab helped them win 86% of Muslim
seats, becoming the single largest party in the provincial assembly. The success was also
reflected in Bengal, where they won 113 seats of 118. Similarly, in Sindh and Muslim-minority
areas, it won majority of the Muslim seats, forming local governments. Their efforts bearing fruit
had several underlying social, communal, and religious factors that describe why India's
Muslims collectively voted for Pakistan.
The constant efforts of Muslim League in Punjab brought them a huge victory over other
parties, especially the Unionist Party, its most competitive opponent. Firstly, Muslim League
utilized the 'wartime economic discontent' which had made the Unionist party unpopular due to
its failure. It adopted the policy of seeking political support from the peasants by helping them to
overcome their economic problems. League propagandists distributed ration, medicine, and
clothes among the people living in economic disparity. They put forth Pakistan to them not only
as the solution to their economic and social problems but also as a religious imperative. It
mobilized its support in backward districts and canal colony areas using 'religious appeals and
traditional channels of political mobilization'. It gained the support of the Sufis, or pirs¸ and
landlords in the countryside more effectively than the Unionist party. It used Islamic symbolism
to get the hopes up for local pirs and their followers, murids. It held meetings in mosques and
ensured recitation of the Holy Quran during its election campaigns as its symbol. As it
progressed along the way, gaining support of the pirs and landlords, most of their respective
followers also started embracing their loyalty to Muslim League. The religion card worked
effectively because it appealed to the people commonly regular in practicing the religion, such as
ulema, pirs, and their followers. In doing so, Muslim League demonstrated how an independent
Islamic would look like, where Islam would be practiced fully and freely, giving these people a
beacon of hope to the independent Islamic Pakistan.
Apart from having an independent state solely to practice Islam, there was a subsidiary
purpose, which was indicated eminently in Bengal where the literary committee worked
incessantly to revive the Bengali Muslim literature, which was only possible once they had a
self-representative identity. They needed it in the form of a separate nation. Abul Kalam
Shamsuddin, the founder of The East Pakistan Renaissance society, declared the call to Pakistan
"inspired by and based on literary and cultural strength"'. Shamsuddin also claimed that, with the
concept of an independent nation in play, they struggled to 'grasp the freedom' in order to come
with an original, yet their own, literature. Another colleague of Shamsuddin, Mujibur Rehman
Khan, sketched the idea of Pakistan as a new nation based on literature and language. Abul
Mansur Ahmed, another colleague of them, saw Pakistan as not only based on the idea of a state
 Ahmed 2

which represented all minority groups, instead, a nation that preserved the self-determination for
all groups. Although they did not oppose or critique the appeals and 'centralizing dictates' of the
Muslim League, they congratulated it to accommodate the Bengali Muslim intellectual life in a
broader picture. They considered the culture of a community as the 'totality' of its self-
determination, with religion being a part of this totality. This expansive view of cultural
autonomy, which included religion but differentiated them from 'Hindu co-culturists and non-
Bengali co-religionists, could only take shape as a result of a 'unified political programme'. With
the concept of Pakistan put forth by Muslim League as their ultimate manifesto, this cultural
distinctiveness they needed seemed within reach.
Another reason why the Muslims of India voted for Muslim League was the growing
hatred between the Hindu and Muslim communities. In the Congress-ruled and Hindu-majority
areas, the scenarios were worse. Congress mainly demanded Hindu rights, which meant it did not
represent the Muslim population. The ideas put forth by Jawaharlal Nehru after becoming the
president of the Congress further alienated Muslims, and the tyrannies of 1937 proved that
Muslims and Hindus could not live together. These tyrannies were not consequences of an inter-
provincial, inter-regional or inter-cultural conflict. They prevailed all over the Congress-ruled
provinces, meaning the hatred was along the lines of religion. Direct attacks on religion such as
the Wardha scheme, ban on azan, playing music outside mosques showed clearly that their
hatred was towards Islam and not towards any cultural identity. In the documentary 'The day
India burned' portrays the extreme violence from both sides. Mass killings such as those in
Amritsar Massacre, in the following the Direct Action, made clear that the Muslim and Hindu
communities could not live together. Muslims wanted an Islamic state where they can practice
their religion freely and vice versa for Hindus. Therefore, the Muslim League agenda of a
separate and independent Islamic state drew those people closer who had lived under these
tyrannies, so they voted for the Muslim League.
The All-India Muslim League's grand victory everywhere in the subcontinent, except one
or two regions strengthened the agenda of Pakistan. Its religious appeals and welfare projects in
Punjab helped them gain maximum support there, while its plan of a minority-representative
state attracted the Bengali Muslims. Its promise to a peaceful and independent life in the form of
a separate homeland for Muslims popularized them in Hindu-majority regions. The Muslims all
over India were determined to work towards a separate homeland where they could live
peacefully. These efforts of young and old, educated, or uneducated working with a campaigning
zeal with the Leaguers show that they were inspired with the invincible spirit of Islam and
depicted the inevitable Muslim renaissance in the form of an Islamic state after about two
centuries of British domination.

(995 words approx.)

(All written in compliance with the requirement – Times New Roman, 12 size, single-spacing)