Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam 129. The Partition of India - 5
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
The overarching political context of the times was British imperialism, uncompromising in its determination to keep India in bondage despite the bloodletting of the First World War.
As late as 1935, the Secretary of State for India, Samuel Hoare, reiterated in the British parliament that the goal of British policy was to provide for the gradual development of self-governing institutions with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire. The declarations, conferences and commissions were all directed towards ensuring a continuance of colonial rule. The power equations in Asia changed only as a result of the Second World War. Britain, exhausted by the War realized that its imperial hold on the Indian army was slipping and it could no longer subjugate an India which had become conscious of its own self.
Imperial British aims were reflected in the Simon Commission report of 1930. As stipulated in the Government of India Act of 1916, the British promised to look into further measures towards the attainment of a dominion status for India.
The Simon Commission consisted of six members of the British Parliament, including Clement Attlee who was to become the British prime minister when India finally gained its independence in 1947. Indian political opinion was outraged at the absence of even a single Indian on the Commission that was to decide the fate of India. The Indian National Congress as well as the Muslim League boycotted the Commission. The voluminous Simon report recommended (1) the abolishment of diarchic rule, and (2) limited representative government in the Indian provinces. A separate electorate for Muslims was maintained as in the Government of India Act of 1919 but for a limited period. India was to remain a colony with the possibility of dominion status sometime in the undefined future.
It is in the context of the growing communal polarization in North India and the intransigence of Great Britain on the question of India’s independence that one has to assess the address of Allama Iqbal to the Indian Muslim League at Allahabad in 1930. It was in this historic address that he laid out his vision of an autonomous homeland for Muslims in northwestern India. Iqbal was one of the most influential Islamic thinkers of the 20 th century. His rousing poetry inspired generations of Muslims in the Urdu and Farsi speaking world. In his earlier years Iqbal was a national poet. His Taran e Hind, composed in 1904, sang of the beauty of the Indian homeland and the love of its people for their country. However, in his later years he shifted his focus to Islamic civilization and was convinced that Islam held the key to the moral emancipation of humankind. His inspiring poetry held up a memory of a glorious past and the vision of a lofty future and sought to rejuvenate a sullen Islamic community. In his Allahabad address, Allama Iqbal said:
“I would like to see the Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State, self-governing within the British Empire, or without the British Empire. The formation of a consolidated North-Western Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims at least of north-west India.”
“We are 70 million, and far more homogenous than any other people in India. Indeed, the Muslims of India are the only Indian people who can fitly be described as a nation in the modern sense of the word.”
The address was a crystallization of Iqbal’s political thinking. Even though he was deeply influenced by the tasawwuf of Mevlana Rumi and the ego of the German philosopher Nietzsche, Iqbal stayed within the framework of his heritage as an Indian Muslim. His political thinking follows the intellectual lineage of Shaikh Ahmed Sirhindi and Shah Waliullah of Delhi. Indian Islam had turned away from its universal Sufi heritage during the reign of the Mogul emperor Aurangzeb (d 1707) and had sought its fulfillment in the extrinsic application of the Shariah. As elaborated in his book, “Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam”, Iqbal accepted the premise that jurisprudence (as opposed to spirituality and ethics) was the foundation on which the edifice of Islam was to be erected. For him, the Shariah was not just a set of static rules and regulations but a dynamic tool in an evolving, expanding universe. Ijtihad was the “principle of movement” in the structure of Islam. India, with its vast non-Muslim majority presented a special problem in the application of this principle. Iqbal wrote: “In India, however, difficulties are likely to arise; for it is doubtful whether a non-Muslim legislative assembly can exercise the power of Ijtihad”. Hence, his deduction that only an autonomous Muslim state in northwest British India could discharge this function.
Allama Iqbal left some questions unanswered. His address called for the establishment of a state in the northwestern portion of British India consisting of Punjab, NW Frontier, Sindh and Baluchistan. In 1931 the Muslim population of these areas was only 25 million in a total Indian Muslim population of 70 million. What was to become of the other 45 million Muslims? Iqbal was silent on this issue. Noticeably, Bengal, a Muslim majority province, was absent in his address. While his prescription called for legislative autonomy for the Muslim majority areas of NW India, Iqbal offered no solution for Muslims who would stay as a minority in a non-Muslim or a secular state. He left this task to future generations of Muslim minorities in India, China, Europe and America.
The Allahabad address was a milestone on the road to partition. Iqbal gave a concrete philosophical foundation for the two-nation theory and was a source of inspiration for Jinnah. Iqbal was the principal figure who convinced Jinnah to return to India in 1935 from his retirement in England and lead the Muslim League. Upon Iqbal’s death in 1938, Jinnah eulogized him: ‘He was undoubtedly one of the greatest poets, philosophers and seers of humanity of all times…to me he was a personal friend, philosopher and guide and as such the main source of my inspiration and spiritual support’.
Meanwhile the British sponsored a series of round table conferences in London to hammer out a compromise between the various contestants on the Indian scene. These conferences revealed how deep were the divisions between the principal religious communities on how to share power in an independent India. The first-round table conference in 1930 was attended by Gandhi, Jinnah, Ambedkar, Agha Khan, Malaviya, Sarojini Naidu as well as representatives from the Akali Dal and Hindu Mahasabha. The main issues on the table were a dominion status for India, separate electorates and electoral weights for Muslims and other minorities, preservation of statutory Muslim majorities in the Punjab and Bengal, federal structure in a future constitution, and separate representation for the so-called untouchables. There was no meeting of the minds on these issues and the conference broke down.
Gandhi launched a civil disobedience movement and many Congress workers were arrested. A labor government came to power in London in 1931, released the Congress workers and called a second-round table conference. Jinnah was by now fed up with Indian politics and he did not attend. The second conference also broke down. A third-round table conference called in 1932 was boycotted by the Congress party and nothing was accomplished.
The failure of the Indian parties to come to an agreement prompted the British to advance their own ideas for self-government. The communal award of 1932 accepted the principle of separate electorates for the Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. Bowing to the demand of the Muslim Leaguers from UP for greater representation, the communal award increased Muslim representation in the UP legislature to 30 percent while their population was only 20 percent. To compensate for this increase, the representation of Muslims in the Muslim majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal was decreased. In the Punjab, Muslims constituted 60 percent of the population and their representation in the provincial legislature was decreased to 50 percent. In Bengal, the Muslims constituted 55 percent of the population and their representation was decreased to 40 percent. Muslim politics in north India was as yet immature, dominated by zamindari interests in UP. The end result of their bargaining with the British was a loss of majority in all of the erstwhile provinces. It showed the futility of political horse trading to achieve increased representation for Muslims in regions where they were a small minority. The process worked both ways. Increased power for the Muslim nawabs and zamindars of UP would mean decreased power for the Muslims of the pivotal states of Punjab and Bengal.
The communal award also accorded a minority status to the so-called Untouchables and awarded them separate electorates. Gandhi saw in this a grave threat to the cohesiveness of Hindu society. If the depressed classes were classified as a separate minority, the Hindus who constituted over 65 percent of the population in British India would be reduced to 49 percent, thereby losing their electoral majority. Gandhi started a fast unto death if this stipulation was not reversed. The fast applied tremendous pressures on Dr Ambedkar and there were threats on his life if Gandhi died. Protracted negotiations took place between Ambedkar and representatives of Gandhi and an agreement was reached whereby seats would be reserved for the Untouchables in the provincial as well as central legislatures but only as a part of the overall seats allocated to the Hindus. The Gandhi-Ambedkar Pact of 1932 was a major triumph for Gandhi. It confirmed his status as a social reformer of the first rank. The so-called Untouchables stayed within the Hindu fold and in independent India have made noticeable gains in education, employment and politics.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
Back to Pakistanlink Homepage
