Opinion On the record: ‘It is not easy to mend relations after rhetoric, rioting, displacement’

VD: It comes from a phrase used by Maulana Shabbir Ahmed Usmani, a Deobandi alim aligned to Jinnah and the Muslim League. Usmani asserted that Pakistan was going to be only the second Islamic state in history, the first being Medina created by the Prophet Muhammad. Usmani, who was later acclaimed as Pakistan’s Shaikhul Islam, and the man who presided over Jinnah’s state funeral, pointed out that the Prophet had not created the first Islamic State in his native Mecca since there was significant opposition to his teaching there. Instead, he had migrated to Medina for that purpose thus demonstrating that a truly Islamic state could be created only in an area where Muslims had sovereign power. Using this analogy, Usmani argued that in an undivided India where Muslims would be under Hindu domination, there could never be an Islamic State even if the provinces were given maximum autonomy. Only where the Muslims were in a majority and would enjoy sovereign power could such a State be created. Hence the necessity of creating Pakistan. Moreover, Usmani happily prophesized that just as Medina became the focal point for Islam’s spread and rise as a great global power, Pakistan would herald Islam’s triumphal rise as the ruling power in the subcontinent and indeed as a great power in the world. Pakistan would emerge as a successor to the defunct Ottoman Caliphate that had ceased to be the Islamic world’s leader at the end of World War I. Moreover, Pakistan would unify all Muslim countries to create a grand Islamic State.

Now Usmani is a major figure whose lasting contributions to shaping of the idea of Pakistan have not yet been acknowledged in history since we are so obsessed with Jinnah. He created Jamiatul Ulama-i-Islam, that continues as one of Pakistan’s two main religious parties- the other being the Jamaat-i-Islami of Mawdudi. This organization campaigned hard for the Muslim league during the 1945-46 elections that became a referendum on Pakistan. He was the biggest alim that Jinnah had on his side, a man who after Pakistan’s creation, was the driving force behind the Objectives Resolution passed by Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly that proclaimed that sovereignty belonged to Allah alone and that the authority He had delegated to the State of Pakistan through its people would be exercised within limits prescribed by Him- thus indicating that Pakistan would be some kind of an Islamic State.

Q How has your research put forth a totally different view from the prevailing historiography on partition?

VD: Partition has been looked at in two ways so far. First, you have historians who focus on the tactics, the motivations, and actions of the top political players in this game — Jinnah, Gandhi, Nehru, Mountbatten etc. They are mainly interested in pinning the blame on who was responsible for the Partition. An influential figure here has been the historian Ayesha Jalal who in her 1985 book argued that Pakistan was never Jinnah’s real demand and that he was using it as a bargaining counter to secure for the Muslims political equality with the numerically preponderant Hindus in an undivided India. The Cabinet Mission Plan, she says, was what he ultimately wanted but the Congress rejected it and forced Pakistan down an unwilling Jinnah’s throat. She thus places the blame of partition on the Congress leadership.

Jalal’s opponents on the other hand have tried to show that it was not the Congress leadership but Jinnah who was responsible for the Partition. But the focus here too is on the actions of top actors, and this sort of History is primarily based on the twelve massive Transfer of Power volumes containing declassified documents of the British government that were published in the 1980s.

The Subaltern school in Indian history started another way of understanding the Partition- from the viewpoint of those who suffered, refugees, women, children…Toba Tek Singh, protagonist of Manto’s famous story, becomes their mascot. But what is striking is that there remained a fundamental consensus between these two sides- that Pakistan was a vague idea in the public mind. Nobody knew what it was about: just a vague emotional slogan behind which Indian Muslims rallied without being aware of its meaning or implications. My book questions this dominant idea and shows how the idea of Pakistan was articulated and debated in public sphere and how this was crucial for popular mobilization that was behind the successful realization of Pakistan.

If you look at the evidence in the press, public meetings, election campaigns, pamphlets and books, you see a very rich, contentious, and sophisticated debate on Pakistan. Its meaning and implications are thrashed out in public– whether it is good or bad for Indian Muslims, and how is it going to play out in international context. The Muslim League is able to sell Pakistan to its supporters by arguing that it is going to be the largest and most powerful Islamic state in the world, that it would play a dominant role in Islam’s global regeneration and renaissance in the 20th century.

Q Jinnah has been often portrayed as this secular person who somehow ended up creating a Muslim state. How do you appraise Jinnah?

VD: Even if in personal life Jinnah was an unobservant Muslim, he had no qualms in employing religious rhetoric quite regularly or utilizing the services of the Ulama in his quest for Pakistan. Several times Jinnah callously talks about transfers of population between Hindustan and Pakistan as if people are cargo which can be transported hither and thither. To describe Jinnah as a secularist is quite misleading and I would argue that his 11 August speech, often hailed as the shining example of his secularism was more of a tactical statement in the context of enormous violence.

Remember, in December 1947 when asked to open the doors of the Muslim League to all of Pakistan’s communities, he said that Muslims were not ready for it yet. So if you wanted to be a member of the Muslim League, you still had to be a Muslim.

Q Your book analyzes at great length the role of Dr. B.R Ambedkar in defining the terms of public debate on Pakistan. Can you say something about it here?
VD: Ambedkar is the forgotten pioneer of partition studies. His Thoughts on Pakistan, published in 1941, truly inaugurates a sophisticated, intelligent and coherent debate on Pakistan. Ambedkar positions himself as a realist chastising a sentimentalist, starry-eyed Congress leadership for refusing to accept the reality of Pakistan.

He exhorts the Congress leadership to concede Pakistan saying that it is going to be good riddance. If India did’nt let go of Pakistan, it would be reduced to the Sick Man of Asia. He puts up a series of arguments as to why Congress should concede Pakistan and here, one of the reasons he says is that the army dominated by Punjabi and Pashtun Muslims could not be trusted to be loyal to India. He also saw the Muslim League as a retrograde organization whose communal, backward brand of politics would thwart the birth of secular and modern politics in India. Moreover, he assailed the Muslim League’s ever escalating set of demands saying that its demand for a 50 percent share in everything would not just reduce the Hindus from a majority to a minority in India but also cut into the rights of other minorities, including the Depressed Classes or Dalits.

Q. Do you see any parallels between communal mobilization in UP between 1937 and 1947 and contemporary Indian politics?

VD: Yes, we do see an attempt at mobilization of communities and communal polarization, using emotive symbols. We need to be extremely careful as this is a rather slippery slope and it is not easy to again mend relations after a whole lot of rhetoric, rioting and displacement of population has taken place. You have seen riots in part of Western UP and this is something to be greatly concerned about. Mobilisation along communal lines must be shunned and the story of creation of Pakistan is a cautionary tale India would well do to heed.