Opinion

Peace Process and Flouting of Muslim Nationalism
By Hamid Alvi
Islamabad, Pakistan

With the commencement of the so-called “irreversible” peace process between India and Pakistan, a section of the Pakistani liberals and their patrons abroad, have started raising questions which were settled long time back. Basically they are expressing doubts about the propriety of the creation of a Muslim state in the sub-continent, and the possibility of its survival, even the need for it, in the contemporary times. To promote their objectives such voices use sensational phraseology which draws attention even though it has been repudiated both by historical experience and the existing ground reality. The phrases which have got currency include the following:
The two-nation theory has failed; fight for Pakistan has been mythologized…; Pakistan is a failed state; Pakistanis suffer from identity crisis; claims of Muslim nationhood have been poorly served by the territorial statehood; once peace is restored, the need for borders will cease to exist.
We are not sure about the long-term designs and agenda of the authors of the aforementioned statements. But one thing is clear that such slogan mongering is intended to weaken Pakistan and undermine people’s faith in the dignified survival of the Muslim state. Unfortunately, the Pakistani political scene today abounds with such dangerous talk. The latest to arrive on the scene is Dr. Stephen Cohen’s book, “The idea of Pakistan”. Since Cohen enjoys the reputation of a South Asian expert, although not in the field of history, his book has been widely read by Pakistanis at home and abroad. As this scribe finds it, Cohen’s book is primarily addressed to Pakistanis and the policy makers of the US government. Its implicit purpose appears to be to demoralize the Pakistanis and shake their faith in the existence of their motherland. And once that effect is achieved, he suggests the US to grab the opportunity to control nuclear Pakistan which may otherwise fall in the hands of extremists.
Dr. Cohen has made many statements that are historically incorrect, and therefore predominantly misleading. One such assertion would like us to believe that Quaid-i-Azam M.A. Jinnah won Pakistan not because Muslims had put up some notable struggle, but mainly because the “other two players in the drama”- Indian National Congress and British Raj - “were, at their core liberal”. And as such they conceded to the aspirations of a community large enough not to be ignored. Cohen places the Muslim League’s claims of a titanic struggle in the realm of mythology. The stand of the American scholar, however, is nullified both by the happenings of 1947, and some major political events of nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The author of “The Great Divide”, who draws upon the papers provided to him by Lord Mountbatten, reveals that both Mountbatten and Congress were in collusion to offer Jinnah a thoroughly moth-eaten and absolutely truncated Pakistan, so that he refuses to accept it. And in fact that is what was tried. The role played by Cohen’s “liberal forces” was nowhere in sight.
Cohen and other prophets of doom sadly ignore the political events which helped shape the Hindu and Muslim world views and sharply divided the two communities long before Iqbal and Jinnah conceptualized the existence of two and not one nation in India. These events include majority community’s enthusiasm to reconcile with the British while Muslims were still being persecuted for participating in the revolt of 1857; rejection of Urdu as common language of Hindus and Muslims and insistence on introduction of Hindi as official language of UP and Bihar; majority community’s opposition to the partition of Bengal which had by sheer coincidence, gone in favor of the Muslims of that province; Indian National Congress’ betrayal of Muslim leadership on the formulation of Nehru Report (a constitution for United India); and Congress’ objectionable conduct after the 1937 elections.
As these events played major role in dividing the Hindus and Muslims, and creating among them a relationship of permanent distrust, culminating into the division of British India, a brief discussion of these events is in order.
The Hindu–Muslim split begins with the war of independence in 1857. The prominent feature of the war was that all sections of the Indian society participated in it, but Muslims alone bore the brunt of British wrath once the war was lost. The atrocities committed by the British had few parallels in history.
The first to write about the Hindu Muslim split after the war was the poet Mirza Assad–Ullah Khan Ghalib. A large number of his letters written to friends carry the eyewitness account of the sack of Delhi, indiscriminately killing of Muslims by the victor – British - and the quick reconciliation of Hindus with the British. In a letter to Alluddin Ahmad Alai, Ghalib writes, “Don’t you think I am exaggerating when I say that both rich and poor have left the city (Delhi)… Those who wanted to stay on were forced to leave. Jageerdars, pensioners, craftsmen all have vanished. Employees of the Fort (Emperor) are subjected to torturous interrogations. It is shocking to note that on the one hand even minarets of the mosques are one by one being pulled down and on the other an atmosphere of merry making prevails. The entrances to the homes of Hindus are found decorated with colorful buntings.”
The split between Hindus and Muslims which was chronicled by Ghalib found its political expression in the policies pursued by Syed Ahmad Khan. Although the principal concerns of Syed Ahmad Khan were reconciliation between British and the Muslim; and economic rehabilitation of his community by persuading its members to adopt the British system of education, he was forced to make some political decisions with long-term consequences. First, he was confronted with the language controversy; and second, about the question of commencement of representative institutions in India. About the first his biographer Altaf Hussain Hali writes, “Ever since 1835, Urdu has served as the court language and common medium of communication in the Punjab, UP, and Bihar. Regarding it as a relic of Muslim domination, the Hindus desired to be rid of it. An organized move in this direction was launched from the city of Banaras. A cultural center in the city took the lead. A vast network of associations, societies and groups with different names, but with one object of supplanting Urdu with Hindi, sprang up throughout these provinces.......... Syed Ahmad viewed these developments with undisguised misgivings and felt that they augured ill for the future; in the face of such a cultural fissure he thought, the two communities would inevitably fall apart”. To his dismay opponents of Urdu ultimately won the day.
As expected the language controversy widened the Hindu-Muslim differences and was to markedly influence Syed Ahmad's views on politics as practiced by the Indian National Congress. Founded in 1885, it was soon passing resolutions demanding representative institutions in India. He advised his community to stay away from the Congress.
His reasoning was that the Western type of democracy wherein the majority runs the government was unsuitable for India. It could work well in a homogenous society but not in one like India where the populace was divided on many fronts. Syed never failed to remind his audience that population of Hindus was four times larger than that of Muslims and therefore as long as representatives in a legislature voted on communal lines, Hindus would always carry the house.
It should not be drawn from Syed Ahmad Khan’s stand on representative government that he was against democracy and for the imperial rule, certainly not. His concern was that as long as the two communities’ actions are determined by their religious affiliation, Muslims would live under the domination of Hindus.
The third event relevant to our discussion is the Partition of Bengal. Enacted in 1905 the partition was favored by Muslims and opposed tooth and nail by Hindus. It further sharpened the Hindu-Muslim antagonism. The Muslims had not demanded the partition, but, welcomed it because it was expected to do them lot of good. Consider the conditions prevailing in East Bengal which was separated from the rest of the province, “It had fallen into the luckless condition of being the least known, the least cared for…. It lay beyond the reach of administrators. Its peasantry was crushed beneath the exaction of absentee Hindu landlords who squandered their wealth in Calcutta. Defective administration had ruined the area…. The police system was so feeble that law-lessness not only went unpunished but also unheeded. The rulers of the province (at Calcutta) had virtually relinquished all responsibility for its government.” Partition or creation of the new province of East Bengal was expected to end this state of affairs and therefore was a good reason for Muslims to rejoice over Curzon’s decision.
But not so the Hindu Bengal. “A gigantic mass movement sprang up as if overnight. Its rhetoricians roaring from house tops that the nation had been divided, maimed and ruined and that holy Bengal had been mutilated, lacerated and bled white”. Within days and weeks the agitation spread all over West Bengal. It was largely stoked by Hindu lawyers, politicians, and pseudo- litterateurs who asserted that partition would spell disaster for the Bengali language and literature by severing linguistic ties.
A contemporary Muslim writer, Sardar Ali Khan, in his book “India of Today”, observed, “All the hue and cry which has been raised…. and all the patriotic movements which have been so suddenly started have nothing whatsoever to do with the Motherland, or with the welfare of India. They have no nobler purpose than the maintenance of a class predominance in a province where in the Hindus are in a distinct minority.”
Other developments which directly hurt the Muslim feelings included refusal of Hindu students to sit with Muslims in the class rooms; treatment of anti-Muslim writer and author of Bande Matram, Bankan Chandra Chatterji, as a Bengali super star; use of filthy language by Hindu press to describe Muslims; and Indian National Congress’ support to the agitation.
Whatever the tone and timber of Muslim reaction, the leadership agreed on one thing: that absorption into Indian nationalism was out of question. Exactly a year after the partition of Bengal, Oct. 1906, Muslims demanded separate electorate; and two months later formed the All India Muslim League to protect their interests.
But despite its determination the League could not protect the interest of its followers in Bengal. The Muslim community whom Dr. Cohen paints as the “favorite” of the British was dumped for the third time in a row. First, they suffered discrimination in the aftermath of the ‘Mutiny’; second, they lost the battle in the language controversy, and now the British shamelessly withdrew the benefits yielded to them by the partition of Bengal by its annulment in 1911.
The period between 1915 and 1930 began with overwhelming demonstration of Hindu-Muslim unity, and ended with equally bitter and sad show of disunity. The Nehru Report or the constitution for a united India proved to be the proverbial last straw for Hindu-Muslim Unity. In defiance to the Simon Commission which was entrusted by the Imperial government to prepare a draft constitution for India, the Congress declared that such a constitution would be written by the Indians themselves and not by an external commission. Hence for this purpose a committee was set up under the leadership of Pundit Moti-Lal Nehru, Muslim leadership including Jinnah and Mohammad Ali who like Congress had boycotted the Simon Commission and were asked to submit their proposals for the constitution. The invitation was accepted and thirty Muslim politicians met in Delhi on March 20, 1927; they thrashed out the following proposals.
Muslims will give up separate electorate, much opposed by Hindu Mahasbah, and adopt joint electorate in return for statutory Muslim majorities in the Punjab and Bengal legislatures, (Muslims were 58% in Punjab and 54% in Bengal); Sindh will be split from Bombay and established as a separate province; reforms will be introduced in NWFP, and above all one-third Muslim representation will be assured in the central legislature.
The scheme which was meant to replace the Lucknow Pact, and came to be known as the Delhi proposals, was attributed to Jinnah. The Indian National Congress in its resolutions passed in May 1927 and December 1927 accepted the proposals. However the Muslims were shocked when the Nehru Report’s final draft was released. The only part of the Delhi Proposal included in the Nehru Constitution was separation of Sindh from Bombay. The important demand of ensuring statutory majority in Punjab and Bengal, and one-third representation in central legislature was rejected. An ‘All Parties Conference’ was called at Calcutta in 1928 to discuss and approve the report.
Jinnah who attended the conference had made public his disapproval and proposed to move amendments. Hindu Mahasbah which had gained extensive influence in Congress issued a rejoinder to Jinnah that Mahasbah will walk out if the Nehru Report was altered even by a comma.
The Congress leaders were in the clutches of the Hindu Mahasbah. The verdict of the Conference was no longer in doubt. Thus when Mohammad Ali, M.C. Chagla and Jinnah rose to move their amendments, they were presenting a case which had been already lost. Jinnah implored the Conference to effect an adjustment enabling the people of India to live in unity and friendship. He warned against the dangers of a constitution under which minorities felt insecure.
To the dismay of Muslim leaders the Nehru Constitution was voted exactly as the Hindu Mahasbah had desired. Jinnah felt wounded and shattered. “Never generous with his tears,” says one of his friends, “he cried out in anguish that the parting of ways had come.”
Any serious attempt which seeks to evaluate the reasons for the creation of Pakistan cannot ignore the aforementioned factors. And these factors impart an evolutionary touch to the process of the Muslim nation’s struggle for independence. By the time Iqbal and later Jinnah raised the flag of a separate state the die had already been cast. It was more than confirmed to the Muslim leadership that the Hindu-dominated Congress would never agree to the constitutional safeguards for Muslims in an independent India. The only choice left was to split.
Iqbal had argued in 1930 that the political problem of India was not national but international and had asked for the division of India. His was a direct reaction to the Nehru Report. Jinnah waited for another ten years to take the same position. Both leaders had launched their political career as Indian nationalists. The latter day opponents of the two-nation concept never stop to think as to what made these leaders change their position. To attribute the change to imperial policy of divide and rule, as Indian historians insist, is nothing but a dishonest attempt to shift the blame from the shoulders of the majority community to a third party.
As regards those who quote separation of East Pakistan and sufferings of Indian Muslims as evidence of the failure of the two-nation concept, they must keep in mind two factors. One, Bangladesh has not rejoined India to prove the truth of Indian Nationalism. In fact, Jinnah had unsuccessfully tried in 1947 to create a third state in Bengal. Two, if the Congress had not forced the division of Punjab and exchange of population there, the Muslim minority could live in India without fear of elimination. Pakistan was sought to be a solution for the majority of Muslims and not all the Muslims.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------