Special articles

Misreading Partition Road Signs

History does not retrace its steps. It is no longer useful to ask if the partition could have
been avoided. The question is no longer important. The different perceptions of the
shared history of India and Pakistan have, perhaps, contributed in some measure to create
barriers of prejudice between the two nations. However, there are issues of history that
need to be looked at again. This article attempts to highlight some of those contentious and
often ill-understood issues. Offered here is an attempt by a sociologist-cum-social
anthropologist to highlight some issues. It is not an alternative history.
HAMZA ALAVI

T
here are sadly many issues that stand
in the way of a happier relationship
between India and Pakistan. Hope-
fully we, the people of India and Pakistan,
will find a way to resolve our differences
to inaugurate a new future of mutual friend-
ship. 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 culmi-
nated 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 manage-
ment in the private sector, it was to the
state, the biggest employer, that the de-
mands 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 profes-
sionals (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 infrequently,
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.2
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 so-
ciety, especially through their organic links
with the landlords and rich 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 parti-
cular), voiced demands for the ‘Indianis-
ation’ 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 inter-
ests conflicted, especially with regard to
their attitudes towards the English lan-
guage 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 intro-
duction of the statute law, written in
English, displaced this role. Not surpris-
ingly, the ulama were militantly opposed
to the English language, the culture of the
rulers and, indeed, the colonial regime
itself. They bitterly opposed the profes-
sionals, the salariat, and the Muslim edu-
cationists 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 reli-
gious 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
support. 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

Economic and Political Weekly November 2-9, 2002 4515

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 weav-
ers (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 back-
ground did set up the ‘Mu’min Ansar Party’
and the ‘All-India Mu’min Conference’ but
these had little impact on the national
politics.3
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 edu-
cational associations were set up every-
where. 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 misrepre-
sented and reviled by them in every pos-
sible way. His role and character have been
grossly misrepresented in the Indian na-
tionalist literature because of his opposi-
tion 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 should 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 advocat-
ing 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 re-
mained. At that moment ‘He’ (the voice
of Satyananda’s Master, that of Bankim
himself) orders Satyananda to cease kill-
ing 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
4516
to do.” Satyananda persists. “The Muslim
power has indeed been destroyed. But the
dominion of the Hindus has not yet
been established. The British still hold
Calcutta.” ‘He’ replies: “The Hindu do-
minion 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 educa-
tion 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 extraordi-
nary 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.7His 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’ loyal-
Economic and Political Weekly
ties, 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 happen 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 breed-
ing 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 British
Indian bureaucrats who misbehaved to-
wards 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 syco-
phancy with which some of his political
critics have credited him”.8
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 conser-
vative attitude to women’s education. For
a man who had boldly taken on the con-
servatives 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
November 2-9, 2002
high social standing. Would our aristo-
cracy like that a man of low caste or in-
significant 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 rational-
ist. It has been suggested that he was a
regular reader of Roy’s writings (in Per-
sian). 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 work-
ing methods of 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 Em-
peror 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. Unfortu-
nately, this has had the effect of making
the Indian nationalist historians impervi-
ous to all evidence of the material facts
behind theMuslim movement. In his presi-
dential address at the Cocanada Congress
meeting, Maulana Mohammad Ali rashly
spoke of the Simla delegation as a ‘com-
mand performance’. This was taken to
mean that the Muslim movement was
nothing more than a creation of the colo-
nial government’s policy of ‘Divide and
Rule’. It may well be that Mohammed Ali
Economic and Political Weekly November 2-9, 2002
had uttered this phrase on an impulse, for
which he was notorious. The Indian
nationalist historians, with the rare excep-
tion of Bimal Prasad, have seized on
Mohammad Ali’s passing (and mislead-
ing) remark as if it was a complete expla-
nation of the Indian Muslim politics.11
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 em-
phasised 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 con-
stitutional reforms. The viceroy agreed.
That initiative, as Bimal Prasad has empha-
sised (and documented), came entirely from
Mohsin-ul-Mulk; not even from Archbold,
let alone the British. Mohammad Ali’s
phrase ‘command performance’ was base-
less and mischievous.
When Mohsin-ul-Mulk got the 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 Mus-
lims 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 electorates 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 de-
mand 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 profes-
sionals. 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 com-
plained 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 aver-
age franchise extended to no more than 2.8
per cent of the population. This proportion
was heavily weighted in favour of those
who owned property. The Report says:
“Adoption of property qualifications as a
basis for the franchise gave a predomi-
nance 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 de-
fence 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 re-
trieve 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 differ-
ent; its demands were similar, namely,
(1) the Indianisation of the services and
promotion of Indians to higher positions
within the service; and (2) greater repre-
sentation 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 profes-
sional classes but applied in a wider con-
text. 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 ‘trustees’ for
the peasantry,13 Gandhi put forward a
philosophy that reduced the peasantry to
4517
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4518 Economic and Political Weekly November 2-9, 2002

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 domi-
nated the salariat and the professions.
Although the Brahmins were three-four
per cent of the population of the Madras
Presidency, they monopolised the govern-
ment 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, lin-
guistic 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 Novem-
ber 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 suc-
ceed as he was unable to rally people other
than those of Tamil Nadu. But his move-
ment 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 dif-
ferent 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 profes-
sions.”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
Economic and Political Weekly November 2-9, 2002
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 political style of
the League and it’s attitude towards the
Congress. As Rahman puts it: “The grow-
ing 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 commit-
ment 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 acce-
pted.17 Jinnah had a high standing in the
Indian National Congress and was ideally
placed to bring the two movements to-
gether. 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 com-
mitments 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 de-
mands, 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 Impe-
rialism. 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, despite 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 prov-
inces, four-fifths should be elected mem-
bers 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 pro-
vided that four-fifths of the members of
the Imperial legislative council should be
elected. It demanded that half of the mem-
bers of the governor-general’s executive
council be Indians elected by elected mem-
bers of the Imperial legislative council.
Thus contrary to the popular opinion, the
Lucknow Pact was not just about conces-
sions to the Muslim League. It also spelt
out the basis on which the Congress and
the Muslim League could work together 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 elec-
torates. 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 colle-
agues to accept joint electorates, he acqui-
esced in what the party demanded. He was
probably also influenced by the fact that
after the Morley-Minto reforms had enact-
ed 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 suffi-
cient 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
4519
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 tra-
dition of the Indian Sunni Islam (arguably,
the majority of Indian Muslims). The
Barelvis, like the Arab nationalists, re-
jected the claims of the Ottoman Sultan
to be the Khalifa on the doctrinal ground
that he was not of Quraysh descent.19
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 leader-
ship of the Muslim League and, 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 in-
strumental in the rise of the Taliban in
Afghanistan.
Thanks to Gandhi, the Khilafat move-
ment 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, con-
vened a meeting of the ulama with the help
4520
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 leader-
ship. 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 legal-
istic and procedural objections. But he
knew that the game was lost. To make his
point he staged a walkout from the meet-
ing. 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 secre-
tary 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 reli-
gion, 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 ‘de-
clined swiftly’ and the Muslim League
returned to its secular concerns. It must be
emphasised that it was only after the par-
tition 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 move-
ment was driven by the concrete objectives
of the social groups that were involved,
rather than by some abstract ideology.
Jinnah soon reappeared on the Muslim
League platform. According to Khaliqu-
zzaman, “the time had come to reinforce
the Muslim League as the Khilafat Com-
mittee 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
Economic and Political Weekly
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’ com-
pletely 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 lead-
ers 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 prov-
inces declined. The Muslim majority prov-
inces, 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 domi-
nant in Punjab. The Punjabi Muslim, Hindu
and Sikh landlords joined with the pow-
erful 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 con-
sisted 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 alli-
ance, though they detested each other. It
was a marriage of convenience. The Union-
ist Party was a secular, inter-communal
November 2-9, 2002
regional party of the Punjabi landed mag-
nates, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and the
biraderis of the well-off Jat peasants of
East Punjab.25 The Punjabi landed mag-
nates 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 that 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 (prov-
inces that Punjab could easily dominate).
He said that he did not know if Churchill
was persuaded of this but that it was sig-
nificant 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 differ-
ent. 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
Economic and Political Weekly November 2-9, 2002
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 peasants. 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 poli-
tics. There was an urgent case for reform
of the tenancy laws. Following the prov-
ince-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
salariat leadership, with the jotedars and
the small peasants, supported the Bill. But,
sadly, the Congress-Swaraj Party, a Hindu
zamindar dominated party in Bengal, succe-
ssfully 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 United
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 ofthe 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 compensa-
tion was at the top of the KPP manifesto.
The KPP, with its petty bourgeois lead-
ership, 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 Gen-
eral 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 Min-
ister. 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 re-
jected it universally. Jinnah saw that as an
opportunity for a united struggle against
the colonial rule. After consultation with
the Congress 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 Con-
gress, Jinnah used all his powers of per-
suasion to get his Muslim colleagues to
accept joint electorates (which he himself
preferred) on the condition that the Mus-
lim 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 accep-
tance 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 foo-
ting as the other provinces in India. The
package was to be accepted or rejected as
a whole.
Many Muslim leaguers, not unreason-
ably, believed that the joint electorates
4521
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’ ses-
sion in Lahore. Shafi rightly held that Jinnah
had underestimated the opposition among
the Muslims to the abandonment of sepa-
rate 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 him-
self acknowledged that “the overwhelm-
ing 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 con-
sidered by the (Motilal) Nehru Committee,
which was appointed in February 1928 by
the Delhi All Parties Conference “to de-
termine 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 prov-
inces (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.31
At the subsequent 10 day Calcutta Con-
vention in December 1928, a battle royal
ensued between the Muslim League and
the Hindu Mahasabha over those issues.
Sadly, despite its earlier support, the Con-
gress did not honour its own commitments
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
4522
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 break-
down 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 right-
wing Congress ministries that were in-
stalled 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, espe-
cially 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 bit-
terly disillusioned. The mood for coopera-
tion and unity with the Congress gave way
to one of hostility. The Indian Nationalist
historians tend to explain these develop-
ments purely in terms of Jinnah’s personal
ambition and his ‘intransigence’, which
are taken as axiomatic. If we dispassion-
ately look at Jinnah’s role in Indian history,
what we find is his consistent pursuit of
national unity on the basis of agreed
demands, even at a grave risk to his po-
sition. The breaking point for Jinnah came
with the betrayal at Calcutta, and there was
no turning back.
There was little hope left now of achiev-
ing 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 implica-
tions are not obvious, especially in Pakis-
tan. 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 direc-
tion was ‘over-determined’ by the anxieties
and concerns of the feudal barons of Punjab.
For them, the Partition was the only ac-
ceptable option. The situation was already
beyond the powers of even such a formid-
able 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 re-
form. If the Congress came to power in
Economic and Political Weekly
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 pre-
occupation 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 Feb-
ruary 1951 in Dacca by Feroze Khan Noon,
who was then the governor of East Paki-
stan. In the course of an informal conversa-
tion over lunch, to which he had invited me,
when Nehru’s name came up in the con-
versation, 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 inter-
lude 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 conclusion
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 band-
wagon 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 Pakis-
tan. 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.
November 2-9, 2002
The Muslim feudal families had led the
Bengal Muslim League 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 ‘al-
liance’ 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 Con-
gress 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 resulted in a mas-
sive and unprecedented landslide victory
for the Muslim League. Religious ideo-
logy played no part in it.
In Bengal, the peasants, who were over-
whelmingly Muslim, were enmeshed in the
colonial (globalised) cash economy. Their
immediate conflict was with the traders
and moneylenders, who were overwhelm-
ingly 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 elec-
tions 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 with-
out 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 poli-
ticians. By February 1947, they appointed
another man as acting general secretary of
the League and Abul Hashim found him-
self 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 elec-
tions demonstrated that Islamic ideology
did not play any part in the success of the
Economic and Political Weekly November 2-9, 2002
Muslim League and the creation of Pakis-
tan. 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. EPW
Address for correspondence:
halavi@cyber.net.pk
Notes
1 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.
2 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.
3 W Cantwell Smith, Modern Islam in India,
London, 1946, pp 228-29.
4 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.
5 A translation of the relevant parts of
Anandamath by T W Clark will be found in
The Role of Bankim Chandra in the Develop-
ment of Nationalism, in C H Phillips (ed)
Historians of India, Pakistan and Ceylon,
London, 1961, p 442 ff.
6 Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, ‘Hindu aur
Musalmanon mein Irtibat’ (Bonds Between
Hindus and Muslims), Maqalat-e-Sir Syed, Vol
15, Lahore 1963, p 41.
7 David Lelyveld, Aligarh’s First Generation,
Delhi, 1996, p 302.
8 The Indian Annual Register, 1923, Vol I, p 25.
9 C W Troll, Sayyid Ahmad Khan, OUP, Karachi
and Delhi, 1979, p 18, note 75.
10 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 Con-
temporary Asia, Vol 10, No 4, 1980.
11 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.
12 Francis Robinson, op cit, p 147.
13 Cf John R MacLane, Indian Nationalism and
the Early Congress, Princeton, 1977, ch 7,
Congress and Landlord Interest, pp 211 ff.
14 Based on Eugene F Irschik’s Politics and
Social Conflict in South India, Berkeley, 1969;
and M R Barnett’s Politics of Cultural
Nationalism in South India, Princeton, 1976.
15 Francis Robinson, op cit, p 177.
16 Matiur Rahman, From Consultation to
Confrontation, London, 1970, p 197.
17 S S Pirzada (ed), Foundations of Pakistan:
All India Muslim League Documents, Vol I,
1906-1924, n d (1969?), p 258-59.
18 For the Text of the ‘Reform Scheme’ (the
Lucknow Pact), c f S S Pirzada (ed), op cit,
pp 392-97.
19 See Hamza Alavi, (1) ‘Ironies of History –
Contradictions of the Khilafat Movement’ in
Mushirul Hasan (ed), Islam, Communities and
Nation, Manohar, New Delhi, 1998, and
(2) ‘Review Article on ‘Pan Islam in British
Indian Politics’ by Naeem Qureshi’ in Pakistan
Perspectives, Vol 7, No 1, January-June 2002,
Pakistan Studies Centre, University of Karachi.
20 M K Gandhi, Collected Works, Vol XV, Delhi,
1979, pp 63-64.
21 A M Zaidi, Evolution of Muslim Political
Thought, Vol II, n d, p 122.
22 Such a move at an AIML conference in 1943
by one A H Kazi was Scotched and a Proposed
Resolution about Islamic Ideology was not
even moved. C f, S S Pirzada (ed), op cit,
Vol II, p 440.
23 Choudhry Khaliquzzaman, Pathway to
Pakistan, Lahore, 1961, p 76.
24 David Page, Prelude to Partition, OUP, Delhi,
1987, pp 114 ff.
25 A Model of this will be found in M C Pradhan,
The Political System of the Jats of Northern
India, OUP, Bombay, 1966; for biraderies of
Punjabi Muslims c f, Hamza Alavi, ‘The Two
Biraderis: Kinship in Rural West Punjab’ in
T N Madan (ed), Muslim Communities of
South Asia, Revised and Enlarged Edition,
New Delhi, 1995.
26 Noor Ahmad, Martial Law Say Martial Law
Tak (in Urdu), Lahore, 1967, pp 203-04.
27 Taj ul-Islam Hashmi provides an excellent
account of conditions in the 1920s, When we
find a radicalisation of Bengal Muslim politics
in Peasant Utopia: The Communalisation of
Class Politics in East Bengal – 1920-47, Dacca,
1994, pp 50 ff.
28 Indian Annual Register, 1927, Vol I, p 32 ff,
for the Delhi Muslim Proposals; IAR 1927,
Vol II, p 397 for Resolution on Hindu-Muslim
Unity; IAR, 1928, Vol I, p 9 ff, for the text
of the Nehru Report and an account of The
All Parties Conference.
29 Indian Annual Register, 1927, Vol 1, p 37.
30 Indian Annual Register, Vol I, 1928, Jinnah’s
speech at the Calcutta All Parties Convention,
p 124. At the time of the Lucknow meeting,
he had not yet returned from Europe where
he had gone with his wife, who was seriously
ill. As Wolpert reports the young Chagla
‘accepted the Report’ at Lucknow on behalf
of the Muslim League from Motilal. A friend
of Jinnah, Chagla did not represent the League
and held no office in it.
31 David Page, op cit, p 190.
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