The first permanent Muslim foothold in the South Asian Sub-continent was achieved
with Muhammad Bin Qasim's conquest of
Sind in 711 C.E. An autonomous Muslim state was established and Arabic was introduced
as official language. At the time of
Mahmud of Ghazna's invasion, Muslim rule still existed, though in a weakened
form, in Multan and some other regions. The
Ghaznavids (976-1148) and their successors, the Ghurids (1148-1206), were central
Asian by origin and outlook and they
ruled their territories, which covered mostly the regions of present Pakistan,
from capitals outside India. It was in early 13th
century that the foundations of Muslim rule in India were laid with extended
boundaries and Dehli as the capital. From 1206 to
1526 C.E., five different dynasties held sway. Then followed the period of Mughal
ascendancy (1526-1707), and their rule
continued, though nominally, till 1857.
From the time of Ghaznavids, Persian replaced Arabic as the official language.
The economic, political and religious institutions
developed by the Muslims bore their unique impression. The law of the state
was based on Shariah and in principle the rulers
were bound to enforce it.
The question of Muslims identity assumed seriousness during the decline of
Muslim power in South Asia. The first person to
realise its acuteness was the encyclopaedic scholar-theologian Shah Waliullah
(1703-62). He laid the foundations of islamic
renaissance in the subcontinet and became a source of inspiration for almost
all the subsequent social and religious reform
movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. His immediate successors, inspired
by his teachings, tried to establish a model
Islamic state in the north-west of India and they, under the leadership of Sayyid
Ahmad (1786-1831), waged an unsuccessful
Jihad against the Sikhs.
Meanwhile, the British had emerged as the dominant force in South Asia. Their
rise to power was gradual extending over a
period of nearly one hundred years. They replaced the Shariah by what they termed
as he Anglo-Muhammadan law. English
became the official language. Thes and other developments had great social,
economic and political impact especially on the
Muslims of South Asia.
The failure of the 1857 War of Independence had disastrous consequences for
the Muslims. Determined to stop such a
recurrence in future, they followed deliberately a repressive policy against
the Muslims. Properties and estates of those even
remotely associated with the freedom fighters were confiscated and conscious
efforts were made to close all avenues of honest
living for the Muslims.
The Muslims kept themselves aloof from western education as well as government
service. But their compatriots, the Hindus,
did not do so. They accepted the new rulers without reservation. They acquired
western education, imbibed the new culture
and captured positions hitherto filled in by the Muslims. If this situation
had prolonged, it would have done the Muslims an
irrepairable loss. The man to realise the impending peril was Sir Syed Ahmed
Khan (1817-1898), a witness to the tragic events
of 1857. His assessment was that the Muslims' safety lay in the acquisition
of western education and knowledge. He took
several positive steps to achieve this objective. He founded a college at Aligarh
to impart education on western lines. Of equal
importance was the Anglo-Muhammadan Education Conference, which he sponsored
in 1886, to provide an intellectual forum
to the Muslims for the dissemination of views in support of western education
and social reform. Similar were the objectives of
the Muhammadan Literary Society, founded by Nawab Abdul Latif (1828-93), but
its activities were confined to Bengal.
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was averse to the idea of Muslims participation in any
organised political activity which, he feared, might
revive British hostility towards the Muslims. He also disliked Hindu-Muslim
collaboration in any joint venture. His
disillusionment in this regard primarily stemmed from the Urdu-Hindi controversy
of the late 1860s when the Hindu enthusiasts
vehemently championed the cause of Hindi in place of Urdu. He, therefore, opposed
the Indian National Congress, when it was
founded in 1885, and advised his community to abstain from its activities. His
contemporary and a great scholar of Islam, Syed
Ameer Ali (1849-1928), shared his views about the Congress, but he was not opposed
to Muslims organizing themselves
politically. In fact, he organized the first significant and purely communal
political body, the Central National Muhammadan
Association. Although its membership was limited, it had above fifty branches
in different parts of the subcontinent and it
accomplished some solid work for the educational and political uplift of the
Muslims. But its activities waned towards the end of
the 19th century.
At the dawn of the 20th century, a number of factors convinced the Muslims
of the need to have an effective political
organization. One of the factors was the replacement of Urdu by Hindi in the
United Provinces. The creation of a Muslim
province by partitioning the Province of Bengal and the violent resistance put
up the Hindus against this decision was another.
But the most important factor was the proposed consititutional reforms. The
Muslims apprehended that under such a system
they would not get due representation. Therefore, in October 1906, a deputation
comprising 35 Muslim leaders met the
Viceroy at Simla and demanded separate electorates. Three months later, the
All-India Muslim League was founded at Dhaka
mainly with the object of looking after the political rights and interests of
the Muslims. The British conceded separate
electorates in the Government of India Act of 1909 which confirmed League's
position as an All-India Party.
The visible trend of the two major communities going in opposite directions
caused deep concern to leaders of all-India stature.
They struggled to bring the Congress and the Muslim League on one platform.
Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah
(1876-1948) was the leading figure among them. After the annulment of the partition
of Bengal and the European powers'
aggresive designs against the Ottoman empire and North Africa, the Muslims were
receptive to the idea of collaboration with
the Hindus. The Congress-Muslim League rapporchement was achieved at the Lucknow
session of the two parties in 1916 and
a joint scheme of reforms was adopted. In the Lucknow Pact, the Congress accepted
the principle of separate electorates and
the Muslims in return for 'weightage' to the Muslims of the Muslim minority
provinces agreed to surrender their slim majorities in
the Punjab and Bengal. The post-Lucknow Pact period witnessed Hindu-Muslim amity
and the two parties came to hold their
annual sessions in the same city and passed resolutions of similar content.
The Hindu-Muslim unity reached its climax during the Khilafat and the Non-cooperation
Movements. The Muslims of South
Asia, under the leadership of Ali Brothers, Maulana Muhammad Ali and Maulana
Shaukat Ali, launched the historic Khilafat
Movement after the First World War to protect the Ottoman empire from dismemberment.
Mohandas Karamchand Ghandhi
(1869-1948) linked the issue of swaraj (or self-government) with the Khilafat
issue to associate the Hindus with the
Movement. The ensuing Movement was the first country-wide popular movement.
Although the movement failed in its
objectives, it had far-reaching impact on the Muslims of South Asia. After a
long time they forged a united action on a purely
Islamic issue which created momentarily solidarity among them. It also produced
a class of Muslim leaders experienced in
organizing and mobilizing the public. This experience was of immense value to
the Muslims during the Pakistan Movement.
The collapse of the Khilafat Movement was followed by the period of bitter
Hindu-Muslim antagonism. The Hiu=ndus
organized two highly anti-Muslim movements, the Shudhi and the Sangathan. The
former movement was designed to convert
Muslims to Hiduism and the latter was meant to create solidarity among the Hidus
in the event of communal conflict. In
retaliation, the Muslims sponsored the Tabligh and Tanzim organizations.
In the 1920s the frequency of communal riots was unprecedented. In the light
of this situation, the Muslims revised their
constitutional demands. They now wanted preservation of their numerical majorities
in the Punjab and Bengal; separation of
Sind from Bombay; constitution of Baluchistan as a separate province and introduction
of constitutional reforms in the
North-West Frontier Province. It was partly to press these demands that one
section of the All-India Muslim League
cooperated with the Statutory Commission sent by the British Government, under
the chairmanship of Sir John Simon in 1927.
The other section of the League boycotted the Simon Commission for its all-white
character and cooperated with the Nehru
Committee to draft a constitution for India. The Nehru Report had an extremely
anti-Muslim bias and the Congress leadership's
refusal to amend it disillusioned even the moderate Muslims.
Several leaders and thinkers having insight into the Hindu-Muslim question
proposed separation of Muslim India. However, the
most lucid exposition of the inner feelings of the Muslim community was given
by Allama Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) in his
presidential address to the All-India Muslim League at Allahabad in 1930. He
proposed a separate Muslim state at least in the
Muslim majority regions of the north-west. Later on, in his correspondence with
Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, he
included the Muslim majority areas in the north-east also in his proposed Muslim
state. Three years after his Allahabad address,
a group of Muslim students at Cambridge, headed by Chaudhry Rahmat Ali, issued
a pamphlet Now or Never in which,
drawing letters from the names of the Muslim majority regions they gave the
nomenclature of Pakistan to the proposed state.
Meanwhile, three Round Table Conferences was convened in London during the
period 1930-32, to resolve the Indian
constitutional problem. The Hindu and Muslim leaders could not draw up an agreed
formula and the British Government had to
announce a 'Communal Award' which was incorporated in the Government of India
Act of 1935. Before the elections under
this Act, the All-India Muslin League, which had remained dormant for some time,
was reorganised by Muhammad Ali Junnah,
who had returned to India in 1935 after a self imposed exile of nearly five
years in England. The Muslim League could not win a
majority of Muslims seats since it had not yet been effectively reorganised.
However, it had the satisfaction that the
performance of the Indian National Congress in the Muslim constituencies was
bad. After the elections, the attitude of the
Congress leadership was arrogant and domineering. The classic example was its
refusal to form a coalition government with the
Muslim League in the United Provinces. Instead it asked the League leaders to
dissolve their parliamentary party in the
Provincial Assembly and join the Congress. ANother important Congress move after
the 1937 elections was its Muslim mass
contact movement to persuade the Muslims to join the Congress and not the Muslim
League. One of its leaders, Jawaharlal
Nehru, even declared that there was only two forces in India, the British and
the Congress. All this did not go unchallenged.
Quaid-i-Azam countered that there was a third force in South Asia constituting
the Muslims. The All-India Muslim League,
under his gifted leadership, gradually and skilfully started to consolidate
the Muslims on one platform. It did not miss to exploit
even small Congress mistakes in its favour.
The 1930s saw realization among the Muslims of their separate identity and
their anxiety to preserve it within separate territorial
boundaries. An important element that brought this simmering Muslim nationalism
in the open was the charater of the Congress
rule in the Muslim minority provinces during 1937-39. The Congress policies
in these provinces hurt Muslim susceptibilities.
These were calculated aims to obliterate the Muslims as a separate cultural
unity. The Muslims now abandoned to think in
terms of seeking safegaurds and began to consider seriously the demand for a
separate Muslim state. During 1937-1939,
several Muslim leaders and thinkers inspired by Allama Iqbal's ideas, presented
elaborate schemes of partitioning the
sub-continet on cummonal lines. The All-India Muslim League on March 23, 1940,
in a resolution at its Lahore session,
demanded separate homeland for the Muslims in the Muslim majority regions of
the subcontinent. The resolution was
commonly reffered to as the Pakistan Resolution.
The British Government recognized the genuineness of the Pakistan deman indirectly
in the proposals for the transfer of power
which Sir Stafford Cripps brought to India in 1942. Both the Congress and the
All-India Muslim League rejected these
proposals for different reasons. The principle of secession of Muslim India
as a separate dominion was, however, conceded in
these proposals. After the failure, a prominent Congress leader, C. Rajagopalachari,
suggested a formula for a separate Muslim
state in the Working Committee of the Indian National Congress, which was rejected
at the time but later on, in 1944, formed
the basis of the Gandhi-Jinnah talks.
The Pakistan demand was popularised during the Second World War. Every section
of the Muslim community - women,
students, Ulema and businessmen - was organised under the banner of the All-India
Muslim League. Branches of the party
were opened in the remote corners on the subcontinent. Literature in the form
of phamphlets, books, magazines and
newspapers was produced to explain the Pakistan demand and distributed largely.
The support gained by the All-India Muslim League and its demand for Pakistan
was tested after the failure of the Simla
Conference 1945. Elections were called to determine the respective strength
of the political parties. The Muslim League swept
all the thirty seats in the central legislature and in the provincial elections
also its victorywas outstanding. After the elections, on
April 8-9, 1946, the All-India Muslim League called a convention of the newly
elected League members in the central and
provincial legislatures at Dehli. This convention which constituted virtually
a representative assembly of the Muslims of South
Asia, on a motion by the Chief Minister of Bengal, Hussein Shaheed Suhrawardy,
reiterated the Pakistan demand in clearer
terms.
In early 1946, the British Government sent a Cabinet Misiion to the subcontinet
to resolve the constitutional deadlock. The
Mission conducted negotiations with various political parties but failed to
evolve an agreed formula. Finally, Cabinet Mission
announced its own plan which, among other provisions, envisaged three federal
groupings, two of them comprising the Muslim
majority provinces, linked at the Center in a loose federation with three subjects.
The Muslim League accepted the Plan, as a
strategic move, expecting to achieve its objective in a not-too-distant future.
The Congress also agreed to the Plan but soon
realising its implications to the Congress, its leaders began to interpret in
a way not visualised by the authors of the Plan. This
provided the All-India Muslim League an excuse to withdraw its acceptance of
the Plan and the party observed August 16 as a
'Direct Action Day' to show Muslim solidarity in support of the Pakistan demand.
In October 1946, an Interim Government was formed. The Muslim League sent its
representatives under the leadership of its
General Secretary, Mr. Liaquat Ali Khan, with the aim to fight for the party
objective from within the Interim Government.
After a short time the situation inside the Interim Government and outside convinced
the Congress leadership to accept
Pakistan as the only solution of the communal problem. The British Government,
after a last attempt to save the Cabinet
Mission Plan in December 1946, also moved toward a plan for the partition of
India. The last British Viceroy, Lord Louis
Mountbatten, came with a clear mandate to draft a plan for the transfer of power.
After holding talks with political leaders and
parties, he prepared a Partition Plan for the transfer of power which, after
its approval by the British Government, was
announced on June 3, 1947. Both the Congress and the Muslim League accepted
the plan. Two largest Muslim Majority
provinces, Bengal and Punjab was partitioned. The assemblies of west Punjab,
East Bengal, and Sind; and in Baluchistan, the
Quetta Municipality and the Shahi Jirga voted for Pakistan. Referenda were held
in the North-West Frontier Province and the
District of Sylhet in Assam which resulted in an overwhelming vote for Pakistan.
On August 14, 1947, the new state of
Pakistan came into existance.