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STRAIGHT LINE

Muslim identity and Pakistan

The conceptualisation of a Muslim nation was not the brainwork of Jinnah alone or of a select group of articulate intellectuals. It was legitimised by thousands of ordinary Muslims of Sindh, UP, Bihar, Bengal, Punjab and other places.

MUHAMMAD NURUL HUDA
ON August 14, 1947, the State of Pakistan came _ into existence as a result of continuous political
movement waged for the creation of a separate homeland for the Muslims of Indian subcontinent. Though the creation of such a State has not been able to satisfy the political, moral and material aspirations of the Muslim community, it might be of academic interest to examine if the partition of India with creation of Pakistan was inevitable.
In retrospect, it appears that the prospect of the introduction of representative government in early 20th century created the
threat of a majority domination, which led to the formation of the All-India Muslim League in 1906. This was the beginning of a search for distinctive political identity—not a quest for separate homeland—with a demand for the protection of their political rights as a minority community through the creation of separate electorate.
The granting of the above privilege of separate electorate by the colonial State in the Morley-Minto reform of 1909 elevated the Muslims to the status of an "All-India" political category, but positioned them as a "perpetual minority" in the Indian body politic. These structural imperatives of representative government henceforth began to influence the relationship between the Muslim League and the Congress.
The Khilafat movement of 1916-18 that used a pan-Islamic symbol to forge a pan-Indian Muslim unity, contributed further to the strengthening of Muslim identity in
Punjab and Bengal. Frequent use of religious symbols by the overzealous Ulama, who were pressed into service, highlighted the Islamic self of the Indian Muslims. It was indeed from the Khilafat movement that a serious communal riot erupted in Malabar in 1921. This Muslim mobilisation under the banner of Khilafat generated a sense of inferiority and insecurity among the Hindus.
The Hindus, emulating their aggressive other, started counter-mobilisation. The inevitable result of such mobilisation along community lines was the outbreak of a series of riots between the Hindus and Muslims in the 1920s, affecting practically all parts of India. Mahatma Gandhi lamented in 1927 that the resolution of the problem of Hindu-Muslim relations was beyond human control, and had passed on to the hands of God.
The 1920s were a time when whoever talked about community was dubbed as anti-nationalist or communalists. This eliminated the likelihood of accommodating the community identities within a composite nationhood and destroyed all possibilities of a rapprochement between the Congress and the Muslim League. The Muslims at this point looked for "shared sovereignty" and a political arrangement capable of accommodating cultural differences. They were not against a United India but contested Congress's claim to indivisible sovereignty.
The public pronouncements of Congress secularism came at a time when religious identity was being articulated practically at every sphere of public life by both the Muslims as well as the Hindus. The leaders of Hindu Mahasabha decided to operate as a separate pressure group within the Congress, trying constantly to marginalise the secularists and destroy any possibility of an understanding with the Muslims.
Within the Indian National Congress there was a contest between two rival concepts of nationalism, one based on the idea of composite culture, that is nation above community, and the other founded on the idea of racial domination of the Hindus, more particularly of the subordination of the Muslims. Significantly, the protagonists of the former gave way to or made compromises with those of the latter, giving ample reasons to the Muslims to besuspicions about the real intent of Congress politics.
In a war of symbols, non-essentials became non-negotiable demands for those wanting to mobilise communities along religious lines. Playing music in public acquired significance and the issue was used in UP, Punjab and Bengal to consolidate Hindu solidarity and the CP and Bombay to divert attention from the rising tide of antiBrahmanism. This “music before mosque" not only sparked off a series of violent riots between 1923 and 1927, but also became an emotive issue dividing the electorate along communal lines in the election of 1926.
It is interesting to note that even in 1930s Muslim politics remained caught in provincial dynamics as their interests in Bengal and Punjab, where they were a majority, were different from those of others in the minority provinces. The All-India Muslim League was little more than a debating forum for a few articulate Muslims in the minority provinces and had made no impact on the majority provinces. Quite significantly, the resounding Congress victory in 1937 election and the arrogance that it bred, however, gradually brought all divergent Muslim groups under the banner of a revived and revitalised Muslim League under the leadership of Jinnah.
The Muslims had politically gained a lot in the 1920s and 1930s. The doctrine of separate electorate was now firmly enshrined in the Indian constitution. They had wrested power from the Congress in the majority provinces of Bengal and Punjab. Two other Muslim majority areas, Sind and North-West Frontier Province, had been elevated to full provincial status. All those came to be threatened by the Congress victory in 1937 elections. Mr. Nehru declared with supreme arrogance that there were now only two parties in the Indian political scene, the Raj and Congress.
The reality on ground reflected the Muslim sense of missing out from the patronage distribution system cre-
ated by the new constitutional arrangement of 1935. The class approach in Congress policies and its emphasis on individual citizenship failed to satisfy the community-centric concerns of the Muslims. It was this collective sense of fear and dissatisfaction which was politically articulated by Jinnah. The passage of Shariat Application Act in 1937, with
spirited advocacy by Jinnah in the Central Legislative Assembly, provided a symbolic ideological basis for Muslim solidarity on a national scale, transcending all divisive internal political debates. In December 1939, the Muslim League membership had risen to more than three million and Jinnah appeared as their "sole spokesman.”
The Sindh branch of Muslim League passed a resolution which mentioned the need for "political self-determination of the two nations, known as Hindus and Muslims," and asked the Muslim League to think of appropriate measures to realise it. It was the first declaration of the "two nation" theory, but it was not separation yet. The Lahore Resolution of March 1940 formally proclaimed the Muslims as a nation. It did not mention partition or Pakistan but signaled the transformation of Indian Muslims from a 'minority' to a 'nation.'
The road from the declaration of nationhood to the actual realisation of a separate sovereign State in 1947 was long and tortuous. The conceptualisation of a Muslim nation was not the brainwork of Jinnah alone or of a select group of articulate intellectuals. It was legitimised by thousands of ordinary Muslims of Sindh, UP, Bihar, Bengal, Punjab and other places.
The alienation of the Muslims was bom of provocations from the militant Hindu nationalists as well as constant sneering by an intransigent secularist leadership of the Congress. Consequently, recognition of separate Muslim nationhood became a non-negotiable minimum demand and such sentiments were shared by a wider Muslim population. The Congress-led national movement cannot escape most of the responsibility for the emergence of a separate Muslim identity at a period when an anti-colonial pan-Indian national identity was in the making.
The writer is a columnist of The Dally Star.