Daily Times

Carving out a separate state for Muslims in a geographical-cultural context where in every town and village plurality of religious communities was the rule rather than the exception was never going to be easy. Unlike Western Europe where one religion reigned supreme for 2000 years and minorities were persecuted as a rule, in South Asia religious pluralism was always the norm irrespective of whether the ruler was Hindu or Muslim. Consequently, if the Muslim League wanted a separate state for Muslims while the Hindus and Sikhs opposed it, then great upheaval was in the offing. In the midst of this growing confrontation were the British with their own imperial interests to safeguard.
It is interesting to note that between 1936, when Colonel (retd) Amjad Hussain Syed met Jinnah for the first time, and 1940 Jinnah when came to Lahore to take part in the historic Lahore session of the Muslim League, the contest over the future of India had begun to take a triangular shape. Thus for example, in 1936 Jinnah could not manage to get an invitation to visit Islamia College, but by March 1940 he could with confidence overrule the Punjab Premier’s intention to postpone the annual session. He even went to console and sympathise with the Khaksars (founded as a unitarian social movement by Allama Mashriqi) who had clashed with the government of Sir Sikander — who was in principle his ally and the chief host of the Lahore session of the Muslim League. During Lord Linlithgow’s viceroyalty, British policy had been recast to build a strategic alliance with the Muslim League in order to checkmate the All India Congress. By late 1946 or sometime in 1947 when Captain Amjad Hussain Syed took to task his superior Lt Colonel Azam Khan for criticising Jinnah’s ideas of dividing India and the British Indian Army, the British officers present at the party clapped and applauded the young captain.
No doubt, however, after Lord Louis Mountbatten arrived in late March 1947 a viceroy sympathetic to Congress presided over the final stages of Partition, but he was an outsider and did not enjoy much respect or following among the large British contingent in the civil and military services. They hated the Congress and had found in the Muslim League a valuable ally during the Second World War. More importantly, even though he leaned towards Congress, Mountbatten was determined to ensure that Nehru succumbed to his pressure and blackmail to keep India in the British Commonwealth while Jinnah separately agreed to seek membership in it. These twists are covered in both my recent books. The partition plot thickens if we include the British as the paramount power seeking to maintain its influence in the Indian subcontinent even after it transferred power to the Indians.
In any event, the main reason the progressive Iqbal-Jinnah vision was eclipsed is that between March 1940 and late 1946 when Colonel Amjad Hussain Syed was away from India, serving in the Middle East, the exclusivist and Islamist vision nurtured during the election campaign of 1945-46 captured popular fancy. One of the enduring myths manufactured by the so-called Pakistani liberal-left is that the ulema as a whole opposed the creation of Pakistan. The truth is that all the familiar slogans that now characterise extremist Islam were raised during that campaign by the ulema, pirs, and lay politicians masquerading as pirs, as well as the Aligarh Muslim Student volunteers.
The Muslim communists too had jumped onto the Muslim League bandwagon in the hope of directing it towards class liberation! The truth is that the Muslim League undermined the hold of the Unionist Party in Punjab by mobilising an assortment of forces that ordinarily would have been hurling abuse at one anotherz, something that has gone on ever since Pakistan came into being. Moreover, Jinnah’s own pronouncements on Pakistan during the election campaign came increasingly to rely on typical two-nation theory arguments: that the basis of Pakistan was laid as soon as Islam arrived in the Indian subcontinent; that in a united India Islam would be in danger; that Islamic law would naturally have a leading role to play in Pakistan, and so on.
The Muslim League’s direct action in Punjab from January 24 till February 26, 1947 created in its final stages a lynching milieu in Punjab. Thus for example on February 24, 1947 (the same date on which I was born in Lahore) an off-duty Sikh constable was brutally clubbed to death by a frenzied mob in Amritsar. Master Tara Singh called it a communal murder and vowed not to let the Muslim League succeed in its mission of taking the whole of Punjab. Moreover, the Congress and the Punjab Unionist Party, once sworn enemies, promoted the Ahrar, who could question the Islamic credentials of Jinnah and the Muslim League. The Khaksars opposed the Muslim League independent of external help. Those two organisations, however, were no match to the propaganda machine that was at the disposal of the Muslim League.
From March 1947 onwards the Punjab remained more or less disturbed all the time and casualties kept on rising, but the real holocaust took place when power was transferred to the Indian and Pakistani administrations and British rule in India came to an end: suddenly from a mere 5,000 dead (officially, but in reality more) within four-five months the death toll increased to anything ranging from 500,000 to 800,000. Such a cataclysmic rupture of the Punjabi social fabric bequeathed a legacy of demonising and dehumanising the other: in 1947 it was Muslims versus Hindus and Sikhs, since then in Pakistan such perverse thinking has been claiming its victims on the basis of sect and sub-sect.

(To be continued)

The writer is a visiting professor, LUMS, Pakistan, professor emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University, and honorary senior fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He is the author of the award winning book The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed, and of Pakistan: The Garrison State, Origins, Evolution, Consequences.

He can be reached at:billumian@gmail.com