These anti-Shia and anti-Ahmadi groups were opposed to the two nation theory and remained opposed to it even after partition. A summation of what party stood where on the issue of partition and religion is given by the Munir Report of 1953.
Source/Credit: Pak Tea House
By Yasser Latif Hamdani | May 20th, 2014
Just to give a backgrounder to the rejoinder to Ms Fair captioned “backgrounder” to Shia killings in Pakistan: After reading her blog, I tweeted to her saying that while the article was fairly accurate, some of her conclusions I disagreed with. This elicited a rather unbecoming response from Ms. Fair who till now I had held in some esteem. First she told me that her work is peer reviewed. Then she told me that I should read Ayesha Jalal’s Sole Spokesman (!!!). Those who have followed my writings know that I take Ayesha Jalal’s view on history and agree with her conclusions which I have reproduced many times. Not content with this, she even asked me if I wanted Two Nation Theory to be the ideology of Pakistan. I would not have responded to her condescending tweets but she went ahead to challenge me to write a counter-piece. Consequently I am writing this rejoinder to point out the gaping holes in her narrative and her conclusion.
Here is what Christine Fair admits:
1. However, the idea that the Two Nation Theory ineluctably meant partition is flawed. Jinnah explained the lineaments of the Two Nation Theory in a March 23, 1940 speech in Lahore. He argued that Muslims and Hindus comprised equal nations
2.In fact, the Two Nation Theory was a rhetorical and political argument through which Jinnah sought first to receive equal representation in the national parliament of an independent India. (My comment: partially accurate – more accurate would be to say “constituent assembly” because parity was sought not in perpetuity but for the framing of the constitution).
3. Jinnah explained that “If the British Government are [sic] really in earnest and sincere to secure [the] peace and happiness of the people of this sub-continent, the only course open to us all is to allow the major nations separate homelands by dividing India into ‘autonomous national states.’” Historians note that this expression is ambiguous and left open the possibility of a federal solution. Nowhere did the address mention the word Pakistan or partition. (Despite these facts, Pakistanis refer to this speech as the “Pakistan Resolution” and celebrate March 23 as a national holiday to commemorate its passage.)
These three points are accurate and need to repeated not just for Pakistanis but all those who criticize the Two Nation Theory as being the “heart of the problem” which Ms. Fair says is the case in her tweets.
Here is what she has got completely wrong:
1. “Jinnah’s dual claims that he was the “sole spokesman” for India’s Muslims and that his Muslim League best aggregated their interests were contested. In the 1937 elections, the League suffered a thrashing. The Muslim-majority areas that are now a part of today’s Pakistan either voted for the Congress or provincial parties. ”
Error 1: Jinnah did not claim to be sole spokesman of Muslims till after the Sikandar-Jinnah Pact. He did not claim it in 1937. To quote Percival Spear’s 4th edition of Vincent Smith’s Oxford History of India – page 818:
”Jinnah fought the 1937 elections on the basis of independent cooperation with the Congress in Hindu majority provinces by means of coalitions. ‘There is really no substantial difference between League and the Congress… We shall always be glad to co-operate with Congress in their constructive programme’, said the new leader in 1937. The Congress’ policy of absorption instead of cooperation particularly in the United provinces was a bitter blow to this policy. At a stroke it destroyed hopes of friendly independent cooperation and in a moment revived the simmering Muslim suspicions…”
Error 2: “Muslim majority areas either voted for Congress…” This is wrong. Congress did even more poorly on Muslim seats than Muslim League. Unionists defeated both Congress and the Muslim League in Punjab. In Bengal A K Fazlul Haq and his party won the election. In Sindh, Allah Bux Soomro and his confederates – none of whom were ever part of the Congress though some of them were coalition allies in early 1940s- won. These included people like Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto whose party supported Muslim League later. Ironically Sindh passed a resolution for Pakistan before 1940. In NWFP, the Khudai Khidmatgars – again not part of Congress though they allied themselves with Congress later- were the leading party. All in all Congress lost Muslim majority provinces on both Muslim reserved seats and general seats quite badly. Congress also lost Muslim reserved seats in UP and Bombay to the Muslim League which won most of the Muslim seats in UP and all of the seats in Bombay.
Other gaping holes in Christine Fair’s conclusion that two nation theory (not supported by her own earlier arguments) is some how to blame for the mess in 2014:
1. Jinnah himself was a Shia. His most trusted lieutenant – Sir Zafrulla was an Ahmadi.
2. The anti-Ahmadi and anti-Shia sentiment was created by Majlis-e-Ahrar in Lucknow. To quote Ayesha Jalal from her book “Self and Sovereignty”:
“There was something peculiar about a ‘secular’ nationalist party counting on the vocal support of anti-imperial cultural relativists of Ahrar and Madani to claim a Muslim following. A spate of pamphlets published by Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind and Ahrar delighted in exposing League’s lack of Islamic credentials, pointing to Jinnah’s emphatic assertions about Pakistan being a democracy in which Hindus and Sikhs would have an almost equal population. Substantiation that pro-Congress Muslims did much to weaken the Muslim League’s case on equal citizenship rights is the rejection by Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind and Ahrar laity of any possible equation between a democratic and an Islamic government….Throughout the run-up to the 1945-1946 elections and beyond, Punjabi leaders like Shaukat Hayat and Mumtaz Daultana not to mention Iftikharuddin and Communists tried reassuring Hindus and Sikhs that their citizenship rights would be protected in Pakistan. They had considerable backing from the Punjab League and the Press.”
And then on bottom of page 457 and then on Page 458 Ayesha Jalal writes:
“Yet it (Ahrar) felt no pangs of conscience spreading sectarian hatred amongst Muslims. While Bashiruddin Mahmud was excoriated for being a ‘drunkard’ and a ‘womaniser’, Ahmadis were ‘warned’ that they would cease to exist once the British quit India. Mazhar Ali Azhar’s threat to restart the Madha-i-Sahaba against the Shias of Lucknow aimed ‘at retarding Muslim League by creating internal religious differences.’… Hailing Dr Khan sahib’s (Bacha Khan’s brother and Congress Premier-YLH) Congress ministry as a step in the direction of Hukumat-e-Illahaya, Ahrar demanded more emphatic evidence of Shariat rule in the province. The Frontier Jamiat-e-Ulema-Hind also claimed to be the only representative Muslim party. It believed that ‘Hindus and Muslims belonged to the same race” but it still wanted the Congress to sanction a department of Qazis to prove its Islamic credentials”.
Congress’s biggest Islamist supporter Madani did not attack Jinnah personally but attacked him for having supported the right to civil marriage between Hindus and Muslims and for watering down Shariat bills. On Pages 459-460 ibid Jalal says:
“He (Madani) recalled how the lawyer turned leader of India’s Muslims had consistently watered down Shariat bills in the Central Assembly. During the debate on Child Marriage Act, Jinnah had supported the right of educated Hindu and Muslim youth to contract a civil marriage. He had dismissed the contention that this was contrary to the principles of Islam, noting that laws were constantly being passed which ran counter to the Quran… Intrepid in the face of his religious opponents,,Jinnah’s attittude is a reflection of the crisis of moral authority in the Muslim community. Hoping to lead it in some unison on the negotiating table, he was not ready to give quarter to men who could live the contradictions in the Congress but not with those of a political party trying to extract maximum benefits for Indian Muslims.”
The foregoing proves that at the root of the issue of sectarian violence in Pakistan are the parties that supported the Congress. The sectarian divide was exploited by them to weaken the league which they said was led by Shias and Ahmadis. These anti-Shia and anti-Ahmadi groups were opposed to the two nation theory and remained opposed to it even after partition. A summation of what party stood where on the issue of partition and religion is given by the Munir Report of 1953.
Ayesha Jalal’s view:
Even though C. Christine Fair prescribes Ayesha Jalal, it is clear that she has failed to appreciate the very thrust of Ayesha Jalal’s argument which was that the link between Pakistan’s pre-history and the present mess is not as straightforward as some would want it. Her lectures at LUMS are available on YouTube. Ms. Fair is advised to listen to those before trying to appropriate Ayesha Jalal for her own claims which are in any event the exact opposite of Ayesha Jalal’s point of view. Furthermore in a lecture during the Lahore Literary Festival 2013, Ayesha Jalal made two very important, provocative points:
1. Pakistan was not based on a religious idea.
2. The view that Pakistan would have necessarily followed this path given its history is completely inaccurate.
In 2005 Ayesha Jalal wrote a piece in Outlook India and I quote:
Advani’s unexpected intervention in labelling Jinnah as a secularist should be seen as a welcome opportunity to reopen the debate on the causes of Partition. Neither religious differences between Hindus and Muslims, nor ideological disagreements between a ‘secular’ Congress and a ‘communal’ Muslim League explain the subcontinent’s lunge towards Partition. Instead, it may be more fruitful to take account of the interplay of politics at the regional and central levels in British India. A close study of the historical record makes plain that Partition might have been averted if Congress had arrived at a power sharing arrangement that accommodated the demands of the Muslim majority provinces as articulated by Jinnah and the Muslim League. This entailed accommodating the interests of different religious communities at the federal and the regional levels. An emphasis on the role of individuals like Jinnah and developments at the all-India level has obscured the critical part played by regions like the Punjab and Bengal in both Congress and League calculations during the final decade of British rule in India.nce the spotlight is shifted from Jinnah to broader historical dynamics, it becomes apparent that Muslim opposition to the Congress’s methods and goals was not the brainchild of the Quaid-i-Azam alone. Nor did Jinnah switch horses mid-stream, abandoning his secular beliefs for self-serving bigoted communitarian ones. What explains the transition from Sarojini Naidu’s famous depiction of Jinnah as the ‘ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity’ to the ‘evil genius’ of Mountbatten’s time was the context of politics in colonial India. The narrow British framing of the political Indian within the religious category going hand in hand with the gradual extension of limited electoral representation had monumental consequences for relations between Hindus and Muslims. This was especially true in regions like Punjab and Bengal where religiously informed cultural differences required much more imaginative political accommodations than were on offer from the colonial masters or Indian politicians with unitary visions of nationhood.
It was religion as a demarcator of difference rather than religion as faith – and certainly not the dream of an Islamic theocracy – that led to the All-India Muslim League demanding a Pakistan. Although caricatured as ‘religious communalism’ and the pejorative ‘Other’ of Congress’s ‘secular nationalism’, the Indian Muslim claim to nationhood was a revolt against minoritarianism.
Compare this Ms. Fair’s claim “that Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who is widely considered to be the founder of Pakistan, propounded a minoritarian and communal discourse called the “Two Nation Theory.” Clearly Ms. Fair’s opinion is at odds with Ayesha Jalal’s who she claims is her source.
Read original post here: A rejoinder to C.Christine Fair’s “backgrounder”
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