Allama Iqbal and the Muslims of Bengal - 2
By Mohammad A. Chaudhry
Pittsburg , CA
Asl hai Lakho Sitaroo ki Ik Wiladat-e Mihr: Finaa ki Need Mai Zindigi ki Hasti Hai
(Nations do not get annihilated; they regenerate themselves through their progeny in a far better way. It is just like the stars who do not die when they disappear; they leave behind their trace in the form of a full Moon, far brighter than they were themselves”)
This brings us to our next main question, which, according to Prof. Nazeer, is, why did Iqbal miss the Bengali Muslims in his Allahabad address of 1930.
On the face of it, Bengali Muslims then were not any different from other Muslims and the focus of Iqbal’s address in 1930 was mainly directed on what was happening on the North-Western horizon. The missing of letter “B” for Bengali Muslims in Pakistan was neither deliberate, nor was it an aberration, nor was it needed. It is to be remembered that the title of Pakistan was coined in 1933, three years later after Iqbal’s address in 1930 by Chaudhry Rahmat Ali. The name of Pakistan was not created after the partition.
Chaudhri Rahmat Ali himself explains, “ Pakistan is both a Persian and an Urdu word. It is composed of letters taken from the names of all our South Asian homelands; that is, Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh and Balochistan. It means the land of the Pure”. Pakistan did not exist then, and its title was not coined by Allama Iqbal either. He had just predicted two possibilities, two viable solutions for the Muslims as well as for the Majority Hindus, which being - within the British Empire or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim state appears to be the destiny of Muslims, at least of North-West India”.
Allama Iqbal’s son Justice Javed Iqbal in the biography of his illustrious father titled, “Zinda Roud- Living Stream,” on page 457 raises the same question which has been raised by Dr. Prof. Nazeer Ahmed. He answers it by stating that Iqbal just presented the idea or the principle of a Muslim state in the North West Hind in his Allahabad address of 1930. He did not make any mention of the Majority Muslim province of Bengal for some very obvious reasons. First, he proposed a Muslim State within or outside a combined India just as a proposal, an alternative solution. He took great precaution in his address to mention it in as few words as possible.
This in an implied sense shows that Bengali Muslims were there in his mind. If the idea of forming a Muslim state in provinces where they were in majority ( the Muslims were in majority only in the provinces of Bengal and Punjab), was accepted as a principle, as a solution in the areas of North/West India, then automatically it would also have become applicable to the Bengali Muslims. As regards the provinces of Muslim minority, such as Bombay, United Provinces, Bihar, Central Provinces and Madras, there was no need to make any mention of them because giving some weightage to Muslims there could not have entailed any objection from the Hindus.
Another important point to be noted here with regard to the Allahbad address is that at the end of the address, no Resolution was tabulated or passed. This again was done for two reasons: one not to weaken the stand of Mohammad Ali Jinnah taken by him as a Muslim representative in the First Round Table Conference that he was attending in England at the time; second, it was also intended that the Allahabad address should not in any way adversely affect the 14 Point Agenda of Jinnah which he had postulated and presented as a way of solution for reaching a compromise with the Indian National Congress leadership. His 14 Points had also been presented to the British government, and any decision with regard to them was awaited. Thirdly, Iqbal also had made it clear in the very beginning of his address that he was presenting this idea purely in his capacity as an individual, and not as a leader of any organization, not the least the Muslim League. At the end of his address, he had further made it clear that he was not closing all the doors leading to a reconciliation between the Muslims and Hindus even if that meant the acceptance or rejection of the 14 Points or of his own proposal.
The irony of the matter is that notwithstanding all the precautions taken by Iqbal, his address resulted in raising a huge political storm. It instantly angered the British as well as the Hindu leadership. “Indian Daily Mail”, and Allahabad’s “Leader” instantly indulged in direct personal attacks. The editorials of ‘Pioneer’ and ‘The Times of India’ labeled Iqbal as “an orthodox”, and his proposal as “preposterous and unviable”. The Hindu press went over-time and resorted to using even filthy and un-parliamentary language.
The “Tribune” attributed Iqbal’s proposal as his revenge for having not been included in the delegation of the Round Table Conference; The “Partaab” called him, ‘a mad-man, a mischief-monger, a fool, a dangerous person, a narrow-minded fanatic, a detestable individual, a mean-spirited person and a failed Muslim”. This was the level of tolerance prevailing in the 1930s. In the next 17 years, it was to touch new nadirs.
There was a time after the First World War when the issue of Hindu/Muslim rapprochement and understanding hung in balance. Later, Indian nationalism assumed a further dubious character. Its outer layer remained secular and non-communal, but its inner spirit became tilted and remained informed by the Hindu aspirations. The Indian nationalism kept addressing in its appeal to the patriotism of every citizen, Hindu or Muslim, but in the event of a difference of opinion or clash of interests, only the Hindu view prevailed. It was in this background that people of other ethnicities and nationalities also felt constrained to begin voicing and taking practical measures to protect their own interests.
Chaudhri Muhammad Ali in his insightful book, “The Emergence of Pakistan” on page 14 writes what was happening in Bengal in early part of the 20 th century. Two times Bengal got united and two times it was divided. In 1905, the Hindu leadership opposed its division, and in 1947 they agreed to its division. In 1911 they welcomed its unity, and in 1971 they engineered its separation from its West Wing.
“In 1905, Viceroy Lord Curzon carried out, mainly for reasons of administrative efficiency, a readjustment of the boundaries of Bengal. This was an unwieldy province with a population of 78 million people. Curzon divided it, and by combining its eastern part with Assam, created a new province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, and the bulk of whose population were Muslims. Bengal Hindus - the absentee Zamindars, Mahajans (money lenders), Bhadralock (middle class/professionals like lawyers, doctors etc) who had thrived on the toil of the Muslim peasants of eastern Bengal, saw in this a threat to their cultural, economic, and political domination. A movement was started, boycott of Lancashire manufactures in favor of Swadeshi cloth was made; and even terrorist activities were engineered. Tilak and other Congress leaders took up the grievances and made it an all-India question. The Muslims, backward in education, political consciousness, and modern means of publicity, remained disorganized. At best they kept relying on the empty assurances of the British officials and were soon disillusioned”
King George V in his Darbar in 1911, annulled the 1905 division. The Muslims of the eastern Bengal reverted to their previous position of subservience to the Hindus. In the six years of the divide, the Muslims of Bengal, however, had tasted what it was to be in majority in a legislative house.
Bengali Muslims had virtually been under the Hindu Babu dominion for almost 190 years. The Hindu Zamindars established schools in Calcutta. Hardly any Muslim could find his way to those institutions. Muslim Mullas did what was left, by urging Muslims not to go to any educational institution because “Ramayan” or ‘Bible” was being taught there. While there were 36,686 Hindus studying English in the year 1880-81, there were only 363 Muslims learning this subject; and in 1878, there were 3,155 Hindus as against 57 Muslims holding graduate and post-graduate degrees. Muslims themselves are to take the blame for their backwardness, and the residue continues.
Later, when the zamindars began establishing schools in East Bengal, and those too for the Hindus, Muslim students in them encountered a yet more humiliating environment. They were forced to wear “dhoti’, instead of a “pajama” they were forced to use a prefix of ‘Sree” before their names; they were obligated to sit only on the back seats; they were not encouraged to call themselves “Bengalis”, they were just Muslims; they were not allowed to enter a Hindu sweet shop; no Muslim was allowed to cross a zamindar’s house with shoes on and by wearing a loin cloth below his knees. No wonder then that in the elections of 1946, about 97% Muslim Bengalis voted for Pakistan. Bengalis always aspired to remain as one. Suharwardy being the CM of the united Bengal in 1946 did not wish to join India or Pakistan. It were the British who vetoed his option. It was thus but natural for a Muslim majority, be they in Bengal or in the North West of India to aspire to have a homeland of their own.
In the words of the author of the Indian Constitution, Mr. Ambedhkar, “ Pakistan or The Partition of India”. “Mr. Savarkar… insists that, although there are two nations in India, India shall not be divided into two parts, one for Muslims and the other for the Hindus; … in the struggle for political power between the two nations the rule of the game which Mr. Savarkar prescribes is to be one man one vote, be the man Hindu or Muslim…minority is to be no justification for privilege and majority is to be no ground for penalty. … the state will not guarantee secured seats in the Legislature or in the Administration …”. It was Mr. Savarkar who promoted the idea of “Hindutva”, India for the Hindus only. Other people, meaning minorities, will have to either ‘Indianize’ their cultures and religions, or must be ready to vacate this land. Dr. Amritya Sen, the Nobel Laureate, in his article, “The Argumentative Indian”, calls it an attempt on the part of the supporters of this idea (the BJPs and the Jan Senghis and Jains) ‘to re-invent India’s history”. The result had been the massacre of Muslims in Gujrat and the burning of churches and the killing of nurses and nuns, etc. This was not what Nehru and Gandhi had espoused for India.
Even a blind man knows that one man one vote in a democratic system means binding the minorities forever in the rope of servitude. One reason that Bangladesh became an independent country in 1971 was that in the elections of the 1970s their victory was not honored by the West Pakistani politicians. The system looks beautiful on paper, but in reality it is a trap for the minorities, and who should know better than the minorities living in India or Pakistan.
Three years after Iqbal’s address, Nehru in 1933 called the attitude of the Muslim delegates in the First Round Table Conference as “Reactionaries”, and Mr.Jinnah a “Communalist”. It was Allama Iqbal who himself replied him through a rejoinder. He said, “I must put a straight question to Pundit Jawahar Lal, how is India’s problem to be solved if the majority community will neither concede the minimum safeguards necessary for the protection of a minority of 80 million people, nor accept the award of a third party; but continue to talk of a kind of nationalism which works out only to its own benefit? This position can admit of only two alternatives. Either the India majority community will have to accept for itself the permanent position of an agent of British imperialism in the East, or the country will have to be redistributed on a basis of religious, historical and cultural affinities so as to do away with question of electorates and the communal problem in its present form”.
All well-meaning historians and writers like Khushwant Singh, Kuldip Nayyar, M J Akbar, Raj Mohan Gandhi, Ayesha Jalal; and Jaswant Singh contend that it were the “Hindus, the Congress, Nehru, and Gandhi who were responsible for the creation of Pakistan”, and not Jinnah or his Muslim League.”. The minorities, including Muslims, just wanted some safeguards for their rights.
Bengali Muslims were absent for a reason in Allama Iqbal’s address in 1930 at Allahabad, but they were not beyond the reach of his poetic sway. When he breathed his last on 21 st April in 1938, his special absentee funeral prayers – namaz-i-janaza ghaibana - were arranged and were attended by over fifty thousand Muslims at the football ground in Park Circus, Calcutta; condolence meetings remained in session all over Bengal on and after 21 April for over a month. Bangiya Musalman Sahitya Samity’s condolence meeting was held at the Muslims Institute of Calcutta. The Bengali Muslims mourned Iqbal as their own.
The one reason that attracted a Bengali Muslim to a Punjab- Lahori Iqbal was that his poetry had electrified the consciousness of the Bengali people. They loved their national poet, Nazrul Islam, more than any other poet. And poets like Mir Musharraf Hussain, Muzammel Huq, Kaikobad, Ismail Hussain Shirazi, through their writings inspired the Bengali Muslims to realize that past Muslim heroes were more than just a backdrop; they were the living reservoir from which all living values of the Muslim society could be deduced.
Qazi Nazrul Islam was their main inspiration. But, in the words of Syed Ali Ahsan, “In Nazrul Islam’s poetry, there was something which appeared to be missing, and that was ‘Towhid’, and reflections of Islamic beauty and conviction. There is a vivid picture of agony born of misery and there are fiery notes of revolt, but for want of self-analysis there has not been determined an antidote for the sense of wretchedness and frustration.” Iqbal gave them this antidote.
His Jawab-i-Shikwa gave the message to them to “hold fast to the eternal truth of Islam and to the never-failing life-giving saying of the Holy Qur’an. …at one place Iqbal said, ‘In times of crisis in their History, it is not Muslims that saved Islam, on the contrary, it is Islam that saved Muslims’. Justice Moudud of East Pakistan High Court a few months before the fall of Dacca, called Iqbal ‘ A Luther in the world of Islam’. So Bengali Muslims had never been absent from the mind or heart of Iqbal. Nor was he an alien to them. He might have lost his Nobel Prize to Robindranath Tagore in 1913 because of his zest for Islam or due to the adverse propaganda against him, but he did not fail to extract such words from Rabindranath Tagore as, “India, whose place today in the world is too narrow, can ill afford to miss a poet whose poetry had such universal value,” Star of India, April 21, 1938; or even from Revolutionary Subhash Chandra Bose, the then President of All India Congress, “The passing away of Sir Mohammad Iqbal means the disappearance of one of the brightest stars from the literary firmaments of India…”
Iqbal was a poet for all, and the Bengali Muslims had special fancy for him because very few in human history have suffered more than they have.
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