All-India Muslim League

The All-India Muslim League (Bengali: নিখিল ভারত মুসলিম লিগ, Urdu: آل انڈیا مسلم لیگ), founded at Dacca (now Dhaka, Bangladesh), Bengal Presidency, in 1906, was a political party in British India that played a decisive role during 1940s in the Indian independence movement and developed into the driving force behind the creation of Pakistan as a Muslim state on the Indian subcontinent.^[1] After the independence of India and Pakistan, the League continued as a minor party in India, especially in Kerala, where it is often in government within a coalition with others. In Pakistan, the League formed the country's first government, but disintegrated during the 1950s following an army coup. One or more factions of the Muslim League have been in power in most of the civilian governments of Pakistan since 1947. In Bangladesh, the party was revived in 1976 and won 14 seats in 1979 parliamentary election. Since then its importance has reduced, rendering it insignificant in the political arena.

Background

Muslim rule was established across India between the 8th and the 14th centuries. The Muslim Turkic Mughal Empire ruled most of India from the early 16th century, but suffered a major decline in the 18th century. The decline of the Mughal empire and its successor states like Avadh led to a feeling of discontentment among Muslim elites . Muslims represented about 25-30% of the population of British India, and constituted the majority of the population in Baluchistan, East Bengal, Kashmir valley, North-West Frontier Province, West Punjab, and the Sindh region of the Karachi Presidency.

In the late 19th century an Indian nationalist movement developed with the Indian National Congress being founded in 1885 as a forum, that became a political party subsequently. The Congress made no conscious efforts to enlist the Muslim community in its struggle for Indian independence. Although some Muslims were active in the Congress, majority of Muslim leaders did not trust the Hindu predominance and most of the Muslims remained reluctant to join the Congress Party.

A turning point came in 1900 when the British administration in the largest Indian state, the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh), acceded to popular demands and made Hindi, written in the Devanagari script, the official language. This seemed to aggravate minority fears that the Hindu majority would seek to suppress their religion in an independent India. A British official, Sir Percival Griffiths, wrote of these perceptions: "the minority belief that their interest must be regarded as completely separate from those of the majarity, and that ethnic tensions between the two communities was possible."

Founding Fathers

Nawab Sir Khwaja Salimullah

Nawab Waqar-ul-Mulk Kamboh

Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk

Syed Ameer Ali

Foundation

The Muslim League was founded by the admirers, companions, and followers of Aligarh Movement. The founding meeting of the League was held on 30 December 1906 at the occasion of the annual All India Muhammadan Educational Conference, at the Ahsan Manzil Palace, Shahbagh, Dhaka that was hosted by Nawab Sir Khwaja Salimullah. The meeting was attended by three thousand delegates and presided over by Nawab Waqar-ul-Mulk Kamboh. Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk, and Ameer Ali were also the founding fathers, who attended this meeting.

All India Muhammadan Educational Conference, at Dhaka, which led to the foundation of Muslim League, 1906.

Early years

Sir Aga Khan was appointed the first Honorary President of the Muslim League. The headquarters were established at Lucknow. There were also six vice-presidents, a secretary and two joint secretaries initially appointed for a three-years term, proportionately from different provinces.^[2] The principles of the League were espoused in the "Green Book," which included the organisation's constitution, written by Maulana Mohammad Ali. Its goals at this stage did not include establishing an independent Muslim state, but rather concentrated on protecting Muslim liberties and rights, promoting understanding between the Muslim community and other Indians, educating the Muslim and Indian community at large on the actions of the government, and discouraging violence.

The search for a solution

Muhammad Ali Jinnah became disillusioned with politics after the failure of his attempt to form a Hindu-Muslim alliance, and he spent most of the 1920s in Britain. The leadership of the League was taken over by Sir Muhammad Iqbal, who in 1930 first put forward the demand for a separate Muslim state in India. The "Two-Nation Theory", the belief that Hindus and Muslims were two different nations who could not live in one country, gained popularity among Muslims. The two-state solution was rejected by the Congress leaders, who favoured a united India based on composite national identity. Iqbal's policy of uniting the North-West Frontier Province, Baluchistan, Punjab, and Sindh into a new Muslim majority state united the many factions of the League.

The League, however, rejected the proposal that the committee returned (called the Nehru Report), arguing that it gave too little representation (one quarter) to Muslims, established Devanagari as the official language of the colony, and demanded that India turn into a de facto unitary state, with residuary powers resting at the center – the League had demanded at least one-third representation in the legislature and sizeable autonomy for the Muslim provinces. Jinnah reported a "parting of the ways" after his requests for minor amendments to the proposal were denied outright, and relations between the Congress and the League began to sour.

Conception of Pakistan

On December 29, 1930 Sir Muammad Iqbal delivered his monumental presidential address to the All India Muslim League annual session. He said^[3]:

Sir Muammad Iqbal did not use the word "Pakistan" in his address. According to some scholars, that Iqbal had not presented the idea of an autonomous Muslim State; rather he wanted a large Muslim province by amalgamating Punjab, Sindh, NWFP and Baluchistan into a big North-Western province within India.^[4] They argued that "Iqbal never pleaded for any kind of partition of the country. Rather he was an ardent proponent of a 'true' federal setup for India.... And wanted a consolidated Muslim majority within the Indian Federation".^[5]

Another Indian historian Tara Chand also held that Iqbal was not thinking in terms of partition of India but in terms of a federation of autonomous states within India.^[6] Dr. Safdar Mehmood also fell a prey to the same misconception and in a series of articles he asserted that in Allahabad address Iqbal proposed a Muslim majority province within the Indian federation and not an independent state outside the Indian Federation.^[7]

On January 28, 1933, Choudhary Rahmat Ali, founder of Pakistan National Movement voiced his ideas in the pamphlet entitled "Now or Never;^[8] Are We to Live or Perish Forever?" The word 'Pakstan' referred to "the five Northern units of India, viz., Punjab, North-West Frontier Province (Afghan Province), Kashmir, Sind and Baluchistan"". By the end of 1933, the word "Pakistan" became common vocabulary where an “I” was added to ease pronunciation (as in Afghan-i-stan). In a subsequent book Rehmat Ali discussed the etymology in further detail.^[9] "Pakistan' is both a Persian and an Urdu word. It is composed of letters taken from the names of all our South Asia homelands; that is, Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh and Balochistan. It means the land of the Pure".

According to some scholars,^[10] "Rehmat Ali’s concept of Pakistan was nebulous, impractical and fantasy-ridden. It was to include the entire northwest of India, Kashmir, the Kathiawar peninsula, Kutch, and several enclaves deep within UP, including Delhi and Lucknow. There were to be two independent Muslim states besides Pakistan: Bangistan comprising Bengal and Assam in the east and Osmanistan in the south. These two were to form a federation with Pakistan. The 243 principalities or Rajwaras were to be divided among caste Hindus and “others” and then herded together in a ghetto called Hanoodia. As for the Sikhs, they were to be pushed into an enclave called Sikhia. Other races and religions were to inhabit an encampment by the name of Hanadika. Every non-Muslim was to remain subservient to the master race he called “The Paks”. And yes, the subcontinent was to be renamed Dinia. He did not say how he was going to bring all that about."

The British and the Indian Press vehemently criticized these two different schemes and created a confusion about the authorship of the word "Pakistan" to such an extent that even Jawahur Lal Nehru had to write:

^[11]

Sir Muhammad Iqbal disapproved the scheme of Ch. rahmat Ali because there were seven or eight other imaginary and utopian ‘…stans’ linked with this scheme. He wrote to Prof. Edward John Thompson of Oxford University, that^[12];

Like Iqbal, Jinnah also disapproved this scheme and considered it^[14];

In his presidential address to the All India Muslim League annual session at Delhi on 24 April 1943, Muhammad Ali Jonnah said:^[15]

Campaign for Pakistan

Muslim League Working Committee at the Lahore session

At a League conference in Lahore in 1940, Jinnah said: "Hindus and the Muslims belong to two different religions, philosophies, social customs and literature.... It is quite clear that Hindus and Muslims derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, different heroes and different episodes.... To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a state."

At Lahore the League formally recommitted itself to creating an independent Muslim state, including Sindh, Punjab,Baluchistan, the North West Frontier Province and Bengal, that would be "wholly autonomous and sovereign". The resolution guaranteed protection for non-Muslim religions. The Lahore Resolution was adopted on March 23, 1940, and its principles formed the foundation for Pakistan's first constitution. Talks between Jinnah and Gandhi in 1944 in Bombay failed to achieve agreement. This was the last attempt to reach a single-state solution.

Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman seconding the Resolution with Jinnah presiding the session.

In the 1940s, Jinnah emerged as a leader of the Indian Muslims and was popularly known as Quaid-e-Azam (Great Leader). In the Constituent Assembly elections of 1946, the League won 425 out of 496 seats reserved for Muslims (and about 89.2% of Muslim votes) on a policy of creating an independent state of Pakistan, and with an implied threat of secession if this was not granted. Gandhi, Maulana Azad and Nehru, who with the election of another Labour government in Britain in 1945 saw independence within reach, were adamantly opposed to dividing India.

See also

• Direct Action Day
• Indian Independence Movement
• Indian Muslim nationalism
• Indian Nationalism
• Indian National Congress
• Muslim League (Pakistan)
• Pakistan Movement
• Pakistan Muslim League

References

External links

• Government of Pakistan website
• The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
• Chronicles Of Pakistan
• Jinnah at a Meeting of the Muslim League 16-second QuickTime film clip
• Colloquium on the One Hundred Years of Muslim League at the University of Chicago, Nov 4, 2006