TEXT: Pakistan celebrates its Independence Day on August 14. This date has more significance this year because Pakistan has completed 75 years of its independence. Its history of 75 years represents successes as well as disappointments.
Pakistan began its career as an independent state under extremely difficult conditions. New federal government and a new provincial government were established in Karachi and Dhaka, respectively.
The three provincial governments of Sindh, the then NWFP (now KP) and Punjab were linked with the new federal government in Karachi. The same was the situation of Balochistan. Communal riots and unplanned migrations created difficult administrative and human problems for the new state. The economy suffered from serious dislocation and disruption. Almost all parts of Pakistan were adversely affected by the two-way human migrations.
It was not surprising that many political observers in Great Britain and India thought that Pakistan would collapse under the weight of its initial problems.
Pakistan defied the “doomsday” predictions about its future. It tackled the initial problems and focused on turning the new state into a sustainable political and economic entity. By 1954-55, Pakistan had become a viable state. Pakistan further strengthened its credentials as an independent and sovereign state in the subsequent years, although the quality of performance often faltered and its leadership found it problematic to adequately cope with external security challenges and internal political, economic and administrative obligations.
There were many disappointments during the last seventy-five years. We could not create viable participatory political order that assigned priority to human development and welfare. The dream of a better and secure future for the people could not become a reality and the slogans of constitutionalism, the rule of law and socio-economic justice for all citizens irrespective of ethnicity, region, religion and gender did not fully materialize.
While celebrating the Independence Day this year we need to pay attention to three major issues. First, we must pay tribute to the leaders who articulated the idea of a separate homeland and then turned it into a reality. We should also remember the people who lost their lives in the communal riots and in the attacks on their convoys moving from India to Pakistan by railway trains, bullock carts and on foot. Second, there is a need to revisit the circumstances and factors that led the All India Muslim League to seek a separate homeland for the Muslims of British India. Third, we need to make a dispassionate analysis of why we faltered in creating a flourishing democracy and a just social and economic order. Why poverty and underdevelopment continue to haunt us?
These three issues can link the post-independence generations with the realities of the independence struggle and the violence and the refugee problem of 1947 to give them a better understanding of why and how the new state was created. This understanding will enable us to judge our successes and disappointments in the post-independence period and how to overcome our shortcomings. In this article we are focusing on the second issue which will also address the first issue of paying tribute to the makers of Pakistan.
The establishment of Pakistan can be appreciated by focusing on four inter-related aspects of the freedom struggle. These four aspects are the distinct socio-cultural identity of the Muslims that distinguished them from other communities in British India; the establishment of the modern state system in India by the British government and its impact on different communities in India; the Muslim political experience in British India; and the demand for a separate homeland.
The Muslims in British India were the descendants of the Arab traders or the migrants from Afghanistan, Central Asia, Iran or they were local converts. Their social disposition was rooted in the civilizational, historical and cultural heritage of Islam and their intellectual inspiration came from the teachings and principles of Islam. Their nostalgia of the glory was based on the period of the Muslim rule in India. Over time, they became different from the Muslims of Central Asia and the Middle East. Similarly, they turned different from local Hindu population as well. This brought in existence an identity, often described as ‘the Indian Muslim’.
No doubt, the Muslims and other communities lived together in pre-British India under Muslim as well as non-Muslim rulers. The situation changed under the British rule when a competition developed between the elite of the Muslims and the Hindus. Some Indian writers attribute the conflict between the Muslims and other communities in India to the British policy of ‘divide and rule.’ As a matter of fact, it was not the ‘divide and rule’ policy but the establishment of the modern state with legal-rational authority in India by the British that changed the socio-political, economic and administrative make up of India which created a new context for inter-communal interaction. Its imperatives diverged the two communities as their interests began to clash. The British gradually introduced modern education, system of limited elections and competitive recruitment to civil services. As the Hindus were the first to get modern British education, they had the advantage in fitting into the modern state system as compared to the Muslims who began to get modern education only in the last quarter of the 19th Century. The competition among the two communities by the electoral process and recruitment to government services made the two communities conscious of their identities and they began to think about their share in the elective bodies and civil services in the beginning of the 20th Century.
Some Muslims elite joined the Indian National Congress (the Congress) but most of them stayed away from it because they thought that the Congress was not adequately inclined towards protecting their rights and interests in the modern state system. The Muslim elite demanded separate electorate for electing Muslim representatives in October 1906 because they learnt from their experience that the INC did not help the Muslims to get elected to elective bodies. In December 1906, the Muslim elite established the All-India Muslim League as an exclusively Muslim party to articulate Muslims’ rights and interests and present them to the British. These two developments (demand for separate electorate and the establishment of the All India Muslim League (Muslim League)) were the first sold expression of a separate Muslim political identity and a strategy to protect their separate rights and interests in the modern state system. The British government granted separate electorate to the Muslims in 1909.
By 1909-10, the Muslims elite of British India had developed their political agenda which comprised protection and advancement of Muslim civilizational-cultural identity, political rights and interests. The strategies for achieving these goals changed over time but these objectives remained the same.
The Muslim elite changed its strategies in view of their political experience of interaction with the Congress that often attempted to by-pass the Muslim elite and adopted a dismissive disposition towards the Muslim demands for protecting and advancing their identity, rights and interests. With the passage of time their experience of interaction with the Congress ranged from negative to hostile. The Congress was not prepared to recognize the Muslims as distinct community with their own interests and rights that needed to be given special attention in policy making and policy implementation.
The Muslim elite talked of constitutional safeguards and guarantees for the protection of their socio-cultural identity, rights and interests. The Lucknow Pact of 1916 between the Congress and the Muslim League accommodated Muslim demands for representation in the elected bodies and government services. However, this agreement could not last long. The Congress reversed the political concessions given to the Muslims in the Lucknow Pact in the Nehru Report (1928) on constitutional reforms. Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah attempted to convince the Congress leadership to accommodate the Muslims demands in the Nehru Report. The Congress refused to change the report. The Nehru Report episode is viewed as the “parting of the ways” between the two communities. In 1929, Jinnah delivered his famous speech, outlining the Muslim demands, described as Jinnah’s Fourteen Points.
The Muslim League leadership was willing to accept a federal system with autonomy for the provinces and adequate guarantees for the Muslim rights and interests. However, the political experience of the Muslim League in the 1930s convinced them that the majority community and the Congress were not willing to give any guarantees for the protection of what the Muslims viewed as their cultural and religious identity and rights and interests as a distinct community. Their bitterest political experience was during the period of Congress ministries in non-Muslim majority provinces in 1937-39. These ministries subjected the Muslims to discrimination in government jobs and introduced an education system that incorporated Hindu culture and values under the rubric of Indian culture. The Muslim leadership was perturbed that Hindu religio-cultural values were being imposed on Muslim children through the state education system.
The accumulative impact of the Muslim experience of the behaviour of the Congress leadership was that the Muslim leadership began to think about the alternative to the federal system because the experience of the Congress ministries in non-Muslim majority provinces convinced them that the majority community wanted to overwhelm the distinct religio-cultural identity of the Muslims and ignore their rights and interests.
It was against the backdrop of the political experience of the Muslim elite that the Muslim League decided to discard the federal option and asked for a separate homeland to secure their future. Jinnah took the lead in arguing that the Muslims of British India were a separate nation and therefore needed a separate homeland in the Muslim majority areas in northwest and east. He argued that a separate homeland for the Muslims would not only secure their future but it would also promote peace and stability in the Sub-continent because both nations would live in accordance with their cultural values and political preferences in their separate homelands.
The demand for a separate homeland for the Muslims of British India was formally presented by the Muslim League in its annual session in Lahore on March 22-23-24, 1940. It was a new political path for them and represented a new nationalism -Two nations in British India – which challenged the conventional nationalism of the Congress that talked of one Indian nation. The ambiguities in the text of the Lahore Resolution were removed by 1943-1944, and the Muslim League leadership left no doubt that it stood for a single Muslim homeland of Pakistan.
Though the demand for a separate homeland of Pakistan was initiated by the Muslim elite but it turned into a popular demand after the Muslim elite mobilized the Muslims of British India in its favour. The mass mobilization resulted in a landslide victory of the Muslim League in the provincial elections in 1946. The Muslim League had contested these elections on a two-item agenda. That the Muslim League was the sole representative of the Muslims, and its demand was the establishment of Pakistan as a sovereign independent state. Had the Muslim League not demonstrated its popular support in the 1946 elections, the establishment of Pakistan would have been delayed. In other words, the establishment of Pakistan was linked with the democratic process.
The speeches and statements of Jinnah before and after establishment of Pakistan showed that he wanted Pakistan to be a modern democratic state that derived its ethical inspirations from the principles and teachings of Islam. He was against the notion of a theocratic or religious state dominated by orthodox clergy. He was convinced that the principles of modern democracy could be combined with the teachings and principles of Islam which emphasize participatory governance, the rule of law, equality for all and socio-economic justice. Further, the Lahore Resolution of March 1940 and speeches and statements of Jinnah offered religious and cultural freedom to religious minorities in Pakistan and that they would be free to practice their religion and maintain their educational institutions. The religious minorities were also promised equal citizenship and equal protection of law. The Objectives Resolution, March 1949, also gave religious and cultural freedom to religious minorities.
It was because of the selfless leadership of Jinnah and other Muslim League leaders and sacrifices of life and property made by several million Muslims that Pakistan came into being. Those born after the establishment of Pakistan must remember the nature and dynamics of the freedom movement. Pakistan is a gift from the pre-independence generation. However, its present and the future is in the hands of the present post-independence and the future generations.
About the Author: Hasan Askari is a Lahore-based political analyst. He holds the PhD Degree from the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He is a recipient of the Presidential Award “Sitara-i-Imtiaz.”
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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