ANOTHER MUSLIM ALIENATION - INDIAN SEPERATION?

[Muna123]

Archive-name: scph.4
Posting-Frequency: monthly
Last-modified: 1997/02/26
Version: 1.0
Organization: Alumni Association, Caltech, Pasadena, California. U.S.A.
X-URL: http://alumni.caltech.edu/~mughal/pakistan/pakistan.html

Copyright 1996, 1997

INDIAN SEPERATISM: WHY MUSLIMS WERE ALIENATED IN PRE-INDEPENDENCE
INDIA ?
Muslims like Hindus are not a monolithic group in India. Quaid-e-Azam
Mohammad Ali Jinnah was able to mold these diverse groups on one platform,
and no Muslim leader was able to compete with Jinnahs message in terms of
popularity or Muslim vote.

Muslims are certainly there in India, but a common ideology ? Hamza Alavi
lists seven broad classes of ideology prevalent among Muslims in India before
Partition :
1. Islamic Traditionalism : The Deobandi Ulema

2. Islamic Non-Traditionalism: Barelvi and Pir
3. Islamic Modernism: Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Muhammad Iqbal
4. Islamic Fundamentalism : Abul Ala Maududi of the Jamaat-i-Islami and
Jamiat-e-Ulema-Hind

5. Secular Provincial Noncommunal Transactionalism :Landlord dominated
right-wing Punjab Unionist Party and various political groups in Sind, being
the ruling groups/parties
6. Secular Provincial Noncommunal Radicalism :The ruling Krishak Proja Party
of Bengal, led by A. K. Fazlul Haq
7. Secular noncommunal nationalism:The Congress Party, being the ruling party
in the Northwest Frontier Province.
In the princely states, the National Conference of Sheikh Abdullah probably
falls into category 6.
>From the point of view of an undivided India :1, 4, 5, 7 for various reasons
were for an undivided India.
>From the point of view of a secular India : 3, 5, 6, 7 were for it.
In supporting the Khilafat struggle, the Congress did make the mistake of
allying with 1 and 4, and alienating 3, Islamic Modernism. Islamic Modernism
started being closely allied with the Congress, and was later disenchanted
with it. The Congress basically neglected 5 & 6 (you may have seen my
earlier posting of Durga Das on the Unionist Sir Fazli), and once partition
seemed inevitable, abandoned 7.
Islamic Modernism served to create Pakistan, but thereafter was submerged in
1,2 & 4 as successive non-democratic rulers of Pakistan sought to make their
rule legitimate by invoking Islam.
Now, where is the generic Muslim mind in all of this ?

In addition to the above six groups, we would like to add two other groups
that must be mentioned

8) The Indian nationalist Muslims like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Hasan
Sheed Suhrawardy

9) The modern and Sufi Muslims of Frangi Mahal of Lucknow who supported the
Muslim League

FUNDEMANTALIST BRAHAMANIC PARTIES EXECERBATE SEPERATIST IDEAS
What did Hindus do to exacerbate the condition of India for the Muslims? Both
Muslims and Hindus are to blame for the creation of Pakistan. The period
prior to 1947 gave a good inkling to the Muslims of what was to come.
Kushwant Singh in an interesting article titled “Maligning Indian Muslims”
reprinted in the Pakistan Link in December 1994 says:

“In Maharashtra, there was Tilak who made Ganapati festivals an essential
part of mass agitation and gave a boost to the Shivaji cult, making
Chattrapati into a national hero. Neither of these could. In Bengal, the
Muslims were almost treated as outcasts by Hindu national organization.
Bengal’s terrorist organizations, the Anusilon Samitis, restricted their
membership to Hindus and members took oath in the name of the Godess Kali.
Their patriotic Bande Mahtaram was taken from Bankin Chandra Chatterjee’s
novel Anand Math which had strong anti-Muslim overtones.

A sharp Hindu Muslim divide came over the attitudes of the two communities
over Lord Curzon’s plan to partition Bengal into Muslim majority eastern
province with its capital in Dhaka and the Hindu majority area of West Bengal
with its capital in Calcutta. Muslims supported the partition. Hindu
nationalists were bitterly opposed to it. After a violent agitation sponsored
entirely by Hindu terrorist organizations, the partition was annulled without
consent of the Muslims. If the partition then made had been allowed to stay,
it is more than likely that the Muslims of East Bengal would not have later
supported the call for Pakistan and an independent Bangladesh would have come
into being without bloodshed.

Muslim support for the state of their own came slowly and much later. A sense
of alienation from the Indian mainstream there certainly was but it did not
crystallize into a demand for separation till World War Two.”

MUSLIM SEPARATISM:
The period from the Mutiny to Mountbatten is of interest to all historians.
This subject of separatism has been discussed in detail by almost all
historians of repute. What transformed the British Indians subjects so that
they voted overwhelmingly for the Muslim League with its separatist agenda.
Francis Robisnson's Indian Separatism is not a seminal work on the subject,
but it is worth reading. Wolpert and Barbara Metcalf each have written many
books on the subject. Metcalf deals with the subject from a religious
Deobandi perspective. The works of Ira Lapidus and David Gilmartin give us
insights into the minds of the Muslims of that era. The transformation of
Alama Iqbal from the Indian nationalist to a vociferous supporter of the
separatist Muslim League gives us material on why and how the transformation
took place.

THE THREE PHASES OF IQBAL AND THE MUSLIM NATION IN INDIA

1) “HUM BULBULAIN HAIN IS CHAMAN KI , YEH WATAN HAI HUMARA. HINDUSTAN
HUMARA”. The first phase of Iqbal was as an Indian nationalist. Was this
attitude a reflection of the times or was Iqbal in the minority. An analysis
of the thinking of the Muslims of the subcontinent clearly show that Iqbal
was simply projecting the popular point of view in his poetry.

During this phase of his life Iqbal believed that both the Hindus and the
Muslims could live together to return the subcontinent of India to its
pre-British Moghul glory. This belief was made under the hypothesis that the
two-century British period was an aberration in the thousand year history of
the country. Iqbal believed that after the British left ‘Indians’ could live
together in peace and harmony and make the country of India great. At the
time Muslims were about 40% of the population of ‘India’ and Hindus were in
slight majority. However the cultural and social centers of India were in the
hands of the Muslims. During this phase of his life Iqbal believed that India
is as big as Western Europe could compete as a great nation against Europe,
America and China. Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah at the time also
experimented with unity and was called “The ambassador of Hindu-Muslim
unity“.

It was the Indian Nationalist Muslims who supported the idea of Pan-India

2) CHEEN - O ARAB HUMARA, HINDUSTAAN HUMARA, MUSLIM HAIN HUM, WATAN HAI SARA
JAHAN HUMARA. Disappointed by the Hindu attitudes, Iqbal began to think
himself as a Muslim first, and an ‘Indian’ second. During this stage of his
thinking, Alama Iqbal began believing in Pan-Islamism. Iqbal worked with
Mohammed Ali and Shaukat Ali and Abul Kalaam Azad. He actively wrote poems on
his belief that all Muslims should think of themselves as Muslims first.
Caste and Creed were to be given up, and nationalism was shunned for the
crescent and star. The Khilafat Movement was an important part of the
thinking. With the demise of the Ottoman Empire, Iqbal and the Muslims of the
Subcontinent adopted a more pragmatic approach to politics in South Asia.

The Pan-Islamists supported the idea of Hindustaan under Muslim rule. German
influence in Iqbal’s writings: Iqbal was greatly influenced by the German
philosophers of his time, Soren Kierkegaard, Fredrick Wilhelm Nietzsche, and
Schopenhauer. During his stay in Germany the ‘country’ (the Austro-Hungarian
Empire and Prussia) was going though its great nationalistic binge. .....The
Nazis used Zietzsche for building a nation that was defeated in war, was
disarmed, was occupied and was split up into small portions. German states
were trying to come together as a nation.

Iqbal was greatly influenced by this German nation constructing attempt. He
thought he could transfer the concept to his homeland India. Iqbal is said to
have been particularly affected by the German philosopher Nietzsche. Some
have even accused him of plagiarizing German concepts. In Nietzsche’s
famous Thus Spake Zaratustra (1883-85) Nietzsche “introduced in eloquent
poetic prose the concepts of the superman and the will to power .... such a
heroic man of merit has the courage ... to rise above the masses. Some
scholars compare Iqbal’s concepts of Mard-e-Momin to the Nietzsche
‘superman’, and Iqbal’s Khudi to Nietzsche’s will to power. There is no
denying the influence of Nietzsche on Iqbal poetry. Iqbal was intelligent
enough to use the German concepts for a positive purpose for his own people.

3) “KHANJAR HILAL KA HAI QAUMI NITAAN HAMARAH.”This is the third and final
stage of Iqbal’s’ thinking patterns. Influenced by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan
writings, Iqbal changed his thinking. During this phase of his life, Iqbal
worked for the All India Muslim League, whose sole purpose was the creation
of a separate homeland for the Muslims of the Subcontinent. The Muslims of
the Subcontinent supported the Muslim League, Iqbal and Jinnah.

The All India Muslim League and many other of the former Indian nationalist
Muslims began voting and working for the creation of Pakistan

Of his different phases Iqbal himself wrote:

“ I have myself been of he view hat religious differences should disappear
from this country, and even now act on the principle, in my private life. But
now I think that the preservation of their national identities is desirable
for both the Hindus and the Muslims. The vision of a common nationhood for
India is a beautiful idea, and has a poetic appeal, but looking to the
present conditions and the unconscious trends of the two communities, appears
incapable of fulfillment”.

THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT SUPPORTING PAKISTAN
Some of the very best Muslim minds of “India” supported the Pakistan
movement. This article would be totally incomplete without mentioning an
institution that was instrumental in propagating and supporting the Pakistan
movement in Northern India. In fact Maulana Azad mention Abdul Bari Farangi
Mahli in his book. It seemed that even the mighty Jauhar brothers could not
take a decision without consulting the Farangi-Mahlis of Lucknow. The
Quaid-e-Azam and all freedom fighters of India were always indebted to the
generous political support of the Farangi Mahalis. These holy men of Farangi
Mahal were an excellent counter to the extremism of some fundamentalist
Muslims.

This what Ihsan bin Ahsan says:

The Farangi Mahallis of Lucknow were a family of prominent Islamic scholars
and mystics. Here's a brief intro I've extracted from an article entitled
"Problems in the history of the Farangi Mahall: Family of learned and holy
men" by Francis Robinson _in_ "Oxford University Papers on India, Vol. 1 Part
2" by Allen, NJ _et al._ (Eds; 1987, OUP, Delhi).--Ihsan

THE FARANGI MAHALLIS OF LUCKNOW By Francis Robinson: The Farangi Mahall
family trace their ancestory through the great scholar and mystic, ‘Abd Allah
Ansari of Herat (1006-88), to Ayub Ansari, the Prophet’s friend and standard
bearer, whose tomb is the focus of the great Ottoman shrine centre at Eyup on
the Golden Horn just outside the land walls of Istanbul. We do not know when
the family migrated to India but, according to the family biographers, in the
fourteenth century one ‘Ala al-Din settled at Sihali in Awadh. His
descendant, Mulla Hafiz, was acknowledged as a distinguished scholar by the
emperor Akbar who made a generous "madad-i ma’ash" grant in his favour in
1559.
In 1692 the great-great-grandson of Mulla Hafiz, Mulla Qutb al-Din, was
murdered in a squabble over land and his library burned [and the Mulla
killed]...The emperor Awrangzeb recompensed the Mulla’s four sons by
assigning them a European [Farangi] indigo merchant’s house in Lucknow and by
making grants to support their work. Around 1695 the family moved Sihali to
that house, which was known as Farangi Mahall [the European’s Palace].
Once established in Lucknow, the descendants of Mulla Qutb al-Din built up a
reputation for scholarship, indeed they have good claim to be the leading
learned family of the past three centuries. Teaching was their first
occupation; they made Farangi Mahall into a centre of learning which
attracted scholars not only from all parts of India but also from places as
far away as Arabia, Central Asia and China. In the early eighteenth century
it must have been one of the largest centres of learning in India. Students
from outside Lucknow stayed with the family or were boarded at the city’s
Tila Mosque, which had room for seven hundred, and their expenses were met in
part from the Mughal treasury.

At this time, it seems, there was no madrassa or school in Farangi Mahall,
no central organizing institution; members of the family simply taught those
who came to them in the porches and front rooms of their homes. There was a
madrassa for a few years in the late nineteenth century. But it was only in
1905 that the efforts of the family were finally co-ordinated in an
institutional framework, the Madrassa-i ‘Aliya Nizamiyya, which continued the
work of teaching until 1969.
The atmosphere of the Farangi Mahall quarter, wedged in between Lucknow’s
Chowk and Victoria Road, was evidently striking: “This is the very Cambridge
of our India” declared Shibli Nomani after a visit in 1896.
IQBAL THE KASHMIRI POET WAS JINNAHS SUPPORT IN THE PUNJAB
Iqbal was born in the social, and political backwaters of the subcontinent,
Sialkot, and achieved greatness in spite of his humble beginnings. Iqbal was
one of the greatest sons of the Punjab. He galvanized a subdued and defeated
nation who were under the yoke of British colonialism. The Muslims of the
subcontinent of had lost their Mughal empire to the British, and lost the
economic and educational battle against the Hindus. The Hindus had gained a
status in India that was of greater importance. The Muslims were truly third
class citizens of India. Iqbal attempted and succeeded in combining the
Muslims of different creeds, castes, and linguistic groups into a concept of
nationhood based on Islam. Pakistan was but the inevitable result of his
efforts

Iqbal had been propagating the idea for a separate homeland for the Muslims.
He had been writing to Jinnah, asking him to be the lawyer to defend the
cause of the Muslims of India. Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammed Ali Jinnah took the
challenge, and the rest as they say is history.

QUAID-E-AZAM MOHAMAMD ALI JINNAH AND TNT:
Stanley Wolpert in his book Jinnah of Pakistan says the following about
Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammed Ali Jinnah:

“ Few Individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still
modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a
nation-state. Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all three. Hailed as ‘Great Leader’ of
Pakistan and its first governor general, Jinnah virtually conjured that
country into statehood by the force of his indomitable will”.

Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammed Ali Jinnah said that:

“ the differences in India, between the two major nations, the Hindus and the
Muslims are a thousand times greater when compared with the continent of
Europe. India is not a national state, India is not a country, but a
sub-continent composed of nationalities, the two nations being Hindus and
Muslims whose culture and civilization, language and literature, art and
architecture, name and nomenclature, sense of value and proportion, laws and
jurisprudence, social and moral codes, customs and calendar, history and
traditions, aptitudes and ambitions, outlook on life and of life are
fundamentally different nay in many respects antagonistic”.

Jinnah was clearly proclaiming that Muslim majority areas must be given
autonomy to form their own destiny. The original proposal was to form various
Muslim and Hindu, and Buddhist states in India, returning India to its
pre-colonial condition. In fact the Lahore Resolution called for more then
one Muslim state in the subcontinent.

According to Stanley Wolpert and Dominique La Peirre Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammad
Ali Jinnah was constantly trying to get ALL of Bengal and ALL of Punjab for
Pakistan. He in fact had seduced the Hindu states of Jaiselmer and Junagarh
to join Pakistan. They had agreed. Our Quaid fought tooth and nail for a
Pakistan that included Hyderabad, Junagarh, Jaiselmir, and ALL of Bengal and
Punjab. He called Pakistan with partitioned Bengal and Punjab as a “moth
eaten Pakistan”. In Freedom at Midnight Collins prolifcaly describes Lord
Montbatten’s ultimatum to Jinnah. Take the “moth-eaten Pakistan” or “go to
hell”. Jinnah accepted the “moth eaten Pakistan” as a last resort. He had no
choice. If was either this or NO PAKISTAN at all. Mountbatten had made his
very clear. If Pakistan had been created according to the Quaid’s dream, we
would have a more tolerant subcontinent.

While asking for Pakistan Mohommad Ali Jinna's said "you have seen the ruled
Hindus and not the
ruler Hindus". His words are ringing true.

QUIAD-E-AZAM, MOHAMAMD ALI JINNAH THE MUSLIM ADVOCATE
What did Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah say when questioned on his
“Muslimness” by a delegation of young Muslims in 1943?
“You want to know if I observe the tenets of Islam? Most emphatically I do,
and it is my sincere desire that I should follow Islam in letter and spirit
which I consider to be a perfect religion applying to every aspect of our
life. But I am not a Maulana. I am simply an advocate who is pleading the
Muslim case for Pakistan with the British Government. Like an honest lawyer,
I am arguing the case in the most forceful manner I can. I am not fleecing my
clients by charging them excessive fees, nor do I grudge time in preparing my
case. I cannot be overawed by the British Government as I have a strong
conviction about the justice of the cause I plead.
If there is any other Muslim or Maulana who is prepared to take up the Muslim
case and plead it more forcefully, let him come forward. I will withdraw,
make room for him and extend him my full support. But so long as the Muslims
continue to repose confidence in me, I will continue to guide the destinies
of my nation. As regards my private or public life, it is open for all. I
conceal nothing from my people. Of course, I avoid unnecessary publicity and
do not seek opportunities for it. You call me Quaid-i-Azam out of respect,
but I do not insist on being called so. It is a matter that concerns my
people. They may address me in any way they like.”
This is taken from a booklet by MS Toosy, who was a political writer of the
Muslim League and wrote numerous articles in the early 40s. He worked
closely with Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah and collected a few of his
interviews and talks with him during Nov 1942 to May 1943 under the title “My
Reminiscences of Quaid-i-Azam” (1976; National Book Foundation,62pp).

Until and unless the Hindus of the subcontinent ACCEPT the two nation theory,
they will not understand the Pakistani mind or the Pakistani quest for a
separate homeland. Till that point the chances of peace in the subcontinent
are dim.

The GEOGRAPHIC TWO NATION THEORY:
Many modern Indus Valley historians have said that what the Sumerians called
“Mulhella” and what we call the Harappan or the Indus Valley Civilization or
"Indus-Valley-istan" (modern day Pakistan) would have been formed, even if
there had been no Arab and Turkish invasion of "India". These historians say,
that Pakistanis are the natural inheritors of the Indus Valley Civilization
which existed in the Valley of the Indus (modern day Pakistan). In 2500 B.C.
the existence of the IVC was separate and distinct from the rest of India,
just like Pakistan is separate and distinct from the rest of India. The
existence of "Pakistan" (Indus Valley Civilization) 5000 years ago gives
credence to the secularist Indians who want Pakistan to be a secular state.
The IVC was destroyed by hydrological or climatic factors, or geological
reasons or barbaric hordes of Aryans who destroyed one of the original
civilizations on this planet. Hinduism that was imported from Central Asia
destroyed the IVC about 5000 years ago. Today the IVC lives as Pakistan.