THE MAKING OF PAKISTAN

: you are.a nationality if

you have national aspirations, if you are a group potentially

but not actually a nation. Others made it a spiritual or abstract or subjective

aspect of nationhood: you have nationality

if you feel that yo'"u are one of a separate group. This subtle distinction between
'being' and 'having' makes for ambiguity, and

we need not go any further with nationality. The argument presented here is

that nationalism, like so many other human experiences, is a

state of mind. We know that we are a nation, therefore we are

a nation. It is not logic, it is intuition. It is not dialectics, it is

instinct. It is not a thought process approved by the laws of

reasoning. It is a conviction born of insight. It is a vision, an

awareness, which comes to us in the flash of a moment. That is

what makes it irresistible. People die for their faith; they

rarely die in defence of reason.

Culture, in its broader sense, is the most lasting foundation of

nationalism.

With the two

most dangerous enemies thus 'disposed of, he proceeded to

found the so-called Mughul Empire -one of the greatest and

the most brilliant imperial pageants of all history. Babur the

. lion-hearted, Humayun the wanderer, Akbar the great, Jahangir the just,
ShahJahan the magnificent, Aurangzeb the puritan-the world has nothing to
match Babur and his five lineal

descendants who gave India peace and glory and fame for

nearly two centuries.

Every political phenomenon is caused by two agents: circumstances and

personalities

Between 1902 and 1905 Muslim leaders had made some

attempts to negotiate with Hindu politicians. The Aga Khan

had remonstrated with Sir Pherozeshah Mehta about the

necessity of persuading the Congress to gain Muslim confidence.

When these efforts failed, it was felt that the only hope lay in

the establishment of a Muslim political body to secure 'independent political

recognition from the British Government as

a nation within a nation'. 2 The All India Muslim Leagve was

accordingly established in December 1906 at a meeting of Muslim leaders in

Dacca.

The Muslim League was thus the child of four factors. First,

the old belief uttered by Sayyid Ahmad Khan that the Muslims were somehow a
separate entity. Secondly, the Hindu

character of the Indian National Congress which did nqt allow

the Muslims to associate themselves with other Indians.

Thirdly, the agitation against the partition of Bengal which

conveyed to the Muslims the Hindu designs of domination.

And, finally, the Muslim desire to have their own exclusive

electorates for all representative institutions

The Times' comment1 was

both wise and prescient. The next instalment of reforms should

continue to safeguard the rights of the religious and political

minorities and to maintain the reserved powers of the provincial governments. To

those who took this to be a reactionary thought, the journal addressed the
pertinent question: will

Indian nationhood be advanced by presenting powerful minorities with potent

grievances or by seeking to deprive the

executive of the authority necessary to preserve Indian

political unity until Indian national union became a plain and

irrefutable fact? -

1 The Times (leader), 19 June 1926.

Commission's recommendations for constitutional
advance. Historians have lavished much praise on Simon's.
handiwork and, though sometimes overrated, it is certainly an
impressive treatment of an exceedingly complicated problem.
In the fullness of its study, the depth of some of its
observations, the lucidity of its argument, the realism and
reasonableness of its approach, it is a commendable essay at
constitution
makingd in 1989 The Times India correspondent reported that
authority in the United Provinces was disintegrating, that law
and order were not being maintained, that
administration of justice was being tampered with, that the
services and police were losing confidence, that agrarian
discontent was spreading widely and that communalism was
more rampant than ever. Petty Congress officials were
interfering with the police, and the Government had issued a
circular asking the district authorities to consult local Congress
leaders. 2 A shocking example of Hindu into.lerance was given
by Sir Michael O'Dwyer, when he quoted a directive issued by
the Congress chairman of a Local Board in the Central Provinces
to the headmasters of all Urdu schools, which were
attended by Muslim boys, to order the students to worship
(the words puja ki jawe were used) Gandhi's portrait. 3 In
short, 'there was every sign that the new constitution signified
a Hindu raj, pure and simple'
a former Secretary of State for India, L. S. Amery, believed
that it was the conduct of the Congress ministries that had
driven the Muslims to separation
See Report of the Inquiry Committee appointed by the Council
of the All
India Muslim League to inquire into Muslim Grievances in
Congress
Provinces (Pirpur Report), Delhi, published at the end of 1938;
Report of
the Inquiry Committee appointed by the Working Committee of
the Bihar
Provincial Muslim League to inquire into some Grievances of
Muslims in
Bihar ( Shareef Report), Patna, March 1939; and A. K. Fazlul
Huq,
Muslim Sufferings under Congress Rule, Calcutta, 1939.
2 The Times, 27 .June 1939.
When the Congress ministries resigned en bloc in October
1939, Jinnah called upon his
people to observe a Deliverance Day on 22 December to mark
the end of tyranny and oppression. This daY was widely
celebrated, not only by the Muslims but also by those Hindus
and
Parsees who were displeased with the way the Congress had
used
its power
It was in December 1930-that Sir Muhammad Iqbal, the
poet, delivered his presidential address to the Muslim League
annual session at Allahabad. In this speech he said that the
principle of European democracy could not be applied to
India. Communalism was indispensable to the formation of a
harmonious whole in a country like India. The Muslims of
India were the only Indian people who could fitly be described
as a nation in the modern sense of the word. And then he
came to the famous sentence which has· earned him the title
of the father of the Pakistan idea: 'I would like to see the
Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan ·
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 NorthWest
lndia.'1
It must be remembered that Iqbal did not argue for a Muslim
State, but only for a Muslim bloc in an Indian federation.
Moreover, Bengal and Assam (the present East Pakistan) did
not enter into his calculations. It is grossly misleading to call
him the originator of the idea of Pakistan or the poet who _
dreamed of partition. He never talked of partition and his
· ideal was that of a getting together of the Muslim provinces in
the north-west so as to bargain more advantageously with the
projected Hindu centre. It is one of the myths of Pakistani
# nationalism to saddle Iqbal with the parentage of Pakistan.In
1932-3, during the sittings of the Round Table Conferences and
the Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform, a group
of Muslim students in England were evolving
another scheme for India. Led by Chaudhari Rahmat Ali, a
Punjabi studying at Cambridge, they formed the Pakistan
National Movement, which issued its first pamphlet on
'Pakistan' in 1933, entitled Now or Never. The essence of the
plan
was the formation of an independent Muslim State comprising
the. Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, Kashmir,
Sind and Baluchistan, in complete independence of the rest of
India and in close alliance with the Muslim States of theMiddle
East. The word 'Pakistan', coined by Rahmat Ali
himself, was formed from the initials of the component un_its
-
P for the Punjab, A for the Afghan Province (North-West
Frontier Province), K for Kashmir, S for Sind, and TAN for
Baluchistan~and meant literally, 'the land of the· pure'
(pak=pure+stan=land).
In 1938-9 three other schemes appeared, each trying in its
own way to appease the demands of Muslim nationalism. Abdul
Latif of Hyderabad presented his 'zonal'' scheme; Sir
Sikandar Hayat Khan, the Punjab premier, proposed the division
of India into seven regional zones; and 'A Punjabi' advocated
the formation of five regional federations. None of these
favoured a complete separation between the Muslim and
nonMuslim areas.
In July 1925, William Archbold, one-time Principal of the
M.A.O. College, Aligarh, foresaw a 'powerful Muhammadan
combination in the north-west in alliance with Afghanistan'. 2
In March 1928, The, Times correspondent in India reported a
vision of effective Muslim rule in north India and prophesied
a division of the Punjab and the creation of a solid Muslimbloc
from Peshawar to the mouth of the Indus. His own comments
on this were: 'It does not seem logical, however, or
compatible with our avowed intentions towards India to
discountenance out of hand a plan which is constructive and
contains many elements of a practicable structure.'1 In Decem-
1
ber 1928, the Empire Review favourably considered the
suggestion of breaking up Indian provinces into small units in
accordance with ethnic and local sentiment, and thus to allay
communal fears. The implication was that at some future date
it might be practicable or necessary to merge the Muslim and
Hindu areas into some sort of separate blocs. 2
In March 1931, the Round Table thought it 'certainly possible'
that India might break up, first into a Muslim and a
Hindu India, and later into a number of national States, as
Europe did after the Renaissance and the Reformation. 3 In
June, Sir Theodore Morison, a former principal of the Aligarh
College, declared that Hindus and Muslims were not two com-
_munities but two nationalities, and envisaged a Muslim
national State in the north of India, though he felt that this
could
not make for peace.4 In July, the Marquess of Zetland
appreciated that a chain of predominantly Muslim provinces
stretching across the north~west of India would be 'a basis of
great
strength and influence' to the Muslims generally. 5 In
November,
the Economist saw the Muslims manceuvring for an effective
control of the entire Indus basin, Eastern Bengal and a corridor
between the two. With these territories in their hands, it
said, the Muslims would hold a large Hindu population in
pawn as pledges for the safety of the scattered Muslim minority
in other parts of India. 6 In December, similar sentiments were
voiced in a debate in the House of Commons when Colonel
Goodman thought that the mutual suspicion of Hindus and
Muslims was so deeply rooted that it would be generations
before ei~her would have any confidence in the other; Sir