[It was on March 23 seventy-five years back, the Muslim League, led by MA Jinnah, in its Lahore conference had passed the groundbreaking "Pakistan Resolution". The purported mission got accomplished some seven and a half years later. But confusions still reign as regards how sincere Jinnah or his Muslim League was in 1940 about having a separate independent homeland for the Muslims of the sub-continent. For one, the term "Pakistan", rather interestingly, does not f figure in the Resolution. (The term had very much been in circulation at least since the pamphlet,'Now or Never', penned by Choudhry Rahmat Ali back in 1933.) Then, the terms "autonomous" and "sovereign" both have been used with reference to the envisaged state(s) just side by side. Also, "independent". (Quite surprising given the fact that a highly accomplished barrister must had overseen the draft.) Be that as it may, the scholar has produced a well-researched tome, taking a very definitive position on this controversial issue. It deserves to be noted.
At sl. no. I below is a rather lengthy and self-contained excerpt from the book, followed by two reviews at sl. no. 2 & 3 below. One may also, for some meaningful glimpses into the track record of the author in the relevant area look up: <http://dilipsimeon.blogspot.in/2013/07/venkat-dhulipalas-lectures-on-muslim.html>.] I/III. http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/creating-a-new-medina/article6296505.ece Updated: August 9, 2014 02:29 IST EXCLUSIVE Creating a new Medina HISTORIC MEETING: The only solution to India's problem, Jinnah asserted, was 'to partition India so that both Hindus and Muslims could develop freely and fully according to their own genius.' (From left) Picture shows Jawaharlal Nehru, the Adviser to the Viceroy, Lord Ismay, Lord Mountbatten, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah at the historic conference in New Delhi in 1947 in which Lord Mountbatten disclosed Britain's partition plan for India. The Hindu Archives HISTORIC MEETING: The only solution to India's problem, Jinnah asserted, was 'to partition India so that both Hindus and Muslims could develop freely and fully according to their own genius.' (From left) Picture shows Jawaharlal Nehru, the Adviser to the Viceroy, Lord Ismay, Lord Mountbatten, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah at the historic conference in New Delhi in 1947 in which Lord Mountbatten disclosed Britain's partition plan for India. In his forthcoming book on the idea of Pakistan, the historian Venkat Dhulipala argues that Pakistan was not simply a vague idea that serendipitously emerged as a nation-state, but was popularly imagined as a sovereign Islamic state, a new Medina, as some called it. In this regard, it was envisaged as the harbinger of Islam's revival and rise in the twentieth century, the new leader and protector of the global community of Muslims, and a worthy successor to the defunct Turkish Caliphate. The following article has been excerpted from the book The basic reasoning behind the assumption that Pakistan was Jinnah's bargaining counter and not a demand for a separate sovereign state is that such a state would have been disastrous for the Muslim minority in Hindu India. As the argument goes, Jinnah as the Qaid of all of the Indian Muslims was hardly going to abandon the 'minority provinces' Muslims. However, his own public utterances on the matter seem to point to a different idea regarding the place of minorities. Never the abstract theoretician, the meticulous constitutional lawyer gave concrete examples to clarify what he meant by nations, sub-national groups or minorities. For Jinnah, Muslims in the 'majority provinces' were a nation with concomitant rights to self-determination and statehood since they constituted a numerical majority in a contiguous piece of territory. On the other hand, Sikhs, though distinct enough to be a nation, did not fulfill either of these criteria and hence were a sub-national group with no option but to seek minority safeguards in Pakistan. Jinnah specifically compared the position of Sikhs to that of U.P. Muslims. The U.P. Muslims, though constituting 14 per cent of the province's population, could not be granted a separate state because "Muslims in the United Provinces are not a national group; they are scattered. Therefore, in constitutional language, they are characterized as a sub-national group who cannot expect anything more than what is due from any civilized government to a minority. I hope I have made the position clear." Jinnah held out further hope for the Muslim minority in Hindu India by declaring that they could yet belong to Pakistan since they had the option of migrating to the new nation state. The Qaid was aware that his public utterances had created not just a slippage, but a cleavage between the purported Muslim nation and Pakistan. He therefore tried to bridge this crucial gap in a few ways. To begin with he lauded the great sacrifices made by 'minority provinces' Muslims for selflessly demanding liberation for their 60 million majority provinces brethren from Hindu Raj. They had readily supported the Lahore Resolution since they realized that they would remain a minority 'in perpetuity' and therefore did not want to reduce their brethren to the same fate. Indeed, Jinnah would call them 'the pioneers and first soldiers of Pakistan.' He further pointed out that he himself belonged to a minority province and that "as a self-respecting people, we in the Muslim minority provinces say boldly that we are prepared to undergo every suffering and sacrifice for the emancipation and liberation of our brethren in regions of Muslim majority. By standing in their way and dragging them along with us into a united India we do not in any way improve our position. Instead, we reduce them also to the position of a minority. But we are determined that, whatever happens to us, we are not going to allow our brethren to be vassalised by the Hindu majority." Jinnah's speech to the Muslim Students Federation at Kanpur a few weeks later went a little further causing a furore in the Urdu press in U.P. He declared that in order to liberate 7 crore Muslims of the majority provinces, 'he was willing to perform the last ceremony of martyrdom if necessary, and let 2 crore Muslims of the minority provinces be smashed.' At the same time though, Jinnah tried to soften the blow for them by arguing that Pakistan's creation would entail a reciprocal treaty with Hindu India to safeguard rights and interests of minorities in both states. He pointed to the presence of large Hindu and Sikh minorities in Pakistan who too would require similar protection and asserted that 'when the time for consultation and negotiations comes, the case of Muslims of the minority provinces will certainly not go by default.' ... Safeguards for Hindu minorities At the same time, Jinnah assured adequate safeguards for Hindu minorities in Pakistan. He was quick to reject the argument that Hindus in Pakistan could not trust these assurances since Muslims themselves had refused to accept them at an all-India level. Such reasoning was fallacious since it assumed that the whole of India belonged to the Hindus. As Jinnah noted, "Are the Muslim minorities in the Hindu majority provinces entitled to enforce their verdict that there should be no union of any kind just as the Congress puts forward the plea that the Muslim majority provinces should be forced into the union because of the Hindu minority verdict in these provinces? And it is quite obvious that the Muslim minorities in the Hindu provinces will be under the double yoke of Hindu raj both in Hindu majority provinces as well as in the centre under the proposed central government. Is the view or opinion of Muslim minority in the Hindu provinces to prevail? Is similarly the opinion of Hindu minorities in the Muslim provinces to prevail? In that case it will be the minority that will be dictating to the majority both in Hindustan and Pakistan which reduces the whole position to absurdity." Jinnah also quelled any talk of a loose federation or a confederation between Pakistan and Hindu India. Finally, if these assurances were not enough, Jinnah held out further hope for the Muslim minority in Hindu India by declaring that they could yet belong to Pakistan since they had the option of migrating to the new nation state. As he noted soon after the Lahore resolution, 'exchange of population, on the physical division of India as far as practicable would have to be considered.' It was a theme that he repeated over the next few years. In a later interview, he spelled out three courses available to the Muslim minorities in Hindu India. 'They may accept the citizenship in the state in which they are. They can remain there as foreigners; or they can come to Pakistan. I will welcome them. There is plenty of room. But it is for them to decide. Jinnah however recognized the limits of such a scheme which still entailed a substantial number of these Muslims being excluded from Pakistan. He therefore made it a point to repeatedly laud sacrifices made by the 'minority provinces' Muslims and their selfless support for Pakistan. As he declared in his Presidential Address to the annual session of the AIML held at Karachi in 1943, "Don't forget the minority provinces. It is they who have spread the light when there was darkness in the majority provinces. It is they who were the spearheads that the Congress wanted to crush with their overwhelming majority in the Muslim minority provinces, for your sake, for your benefit, and for your advantage. But never mind, it is all in the role of a minority to suffer." Defence and economic concerns If the creation of Pakistan was to provide the 'authoritative sanction' for the fulfilment of Muslim minority rights in Hindu India, Pakistan needed to be a viable and powerful entity. Jinnah squarely addressed questions regarding Pakistan's feasibility in terms of its defence capabilities as well as economic sustainability echoing the arguments adduced by ML propaganda. He first repudiated the charge that creating Pakistan would lead to a worsening security environment in the subcontinent, declaring that on the contrary it would improve the situation as Hindus and Muslims would settle down in their respective national states. He also rejected the argument that if Pakistan were to become a separate sovereign state it would soon overrun all of India. He found it ridiculous that a country of 200 million could fear being overrun by their neighbour with a population of 70 million. Jinnah also tried to damp down on fears of a pan-Islamic threat to Hindu India due to an alliance of Pakistan and Muslim states of the Middle East by rejecting the idea that Pakistan would harbour such extra-territorial affinities... On sovereignty Jinnah's unequivocal stance on Pakistan's sovereignty is brought out in his exchange with the Mahatma in 1942. Gandhi in response to a question as to whether he regarded the Andhra bid for separation from Madras province in the same light as Pakistan declared that "there can be no comparison between Pakistan and Andhra separation. The Andhra separation is a re-distribution on a linguistic basis. The Andhras do not claim to be a separate nation claiming nothing in common with the rest of India. Pakistan on the other hand is a demand for carving out of India a portion to be treated as a wholly independent state. Thus, there seems to be nothing in common between the two." To emphasize Pakistan's separate territorial entity, Jinnah repeatedly dismissed the idea that India constituted a geographical unity. Jinnah in response declared that Gandhi 'has himself put the Muslim demand in a nutshell.' The Qaid therefore had no difficulty in dismissing the plural 'states' in the Lahore Resolution as a typographical error when the convention of ML legislators was held in 1946. Even during the 1945-46 elections, he clearly stated that "geographically, Pakistan will embrace all of NWFP, Baluchistan, Sind, and Punjab provinces in northwestern India. On the eastern side would be the other portion of Pakistan comprising Bengal and Assam.... [The provinces would] have all the autonomy that you will find in the constitutions of U.S., Canada, and Australia. But certain vital powers will remain vested in the central government such as the monetary system, national defence, and other federal responsibilities." A separate territorial entity To emphasize Pakistan's separate territorial entity, Jinnah repeatedly dismissed the idea that India constituted a geographical unity. India, he insisted, was divided and partitioned by nature and Muslim India and Hindu existed on the 'physical map of India.' Besides, 'geography had been altered in the case of the Suez canal, the Panama canal, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Ulster in Eire, and Sudan in Egypt' and there was no reason why the same could not be done in the case of British India. There was thus no unified country that was being divided, no nation that was being denationalized, for India was composed of different nationalities and the singular nation existed only in the imagination of Congress leaders who were 'recklessly indulging in such mental luxuries.' It was only such critics, he derisively observed, who called Pakistan an impractical idea. Pakistan on the contrary, was indeed more practical than Ram Raj or Swaraj that Gandhi was advocating for India. Jinnah therefore had no trouble in dismissing Gandhi's warning about a civil war breaking out in India in the event of a Partition. He insisted that there would be no conflict unless the Congress and its peace-loving Mahatma desired it. Jinnah also quelled any talk of a loose federation or a confederation between Pakistan and Hindu India. As he noted, the question had been put forth by some constitutional pundits as to"why there cannot be some sort of loose federation or confederation? People talk like that. I shall read out to you what I have written on this point, because it is important. There are people who talk of some sort of loose federation. There are people who talk of giving the widest freedom to the federating units and residuary powers resting with the units. But they forget the entire constitutional history of the various parts of the world. Federation in whatever terms it is described and in whatever terms it is put, must ultimately deprive the federating units of authority in all vital matters. The units despite themselves, would be compelled to grant more and more powers to the central authority, until in the end the strong central government will have been established by the units themselves- they will be driven to do so by absolute necessity, if the basis of federal government is accepted. Taking for instance the United States and her history, the Dominion of Canada and Australia, the Union of South Africa and Germany, and of other lands where federal or confederal systems have been in existence, necessity has driven the component members and obliged them to increase and delegate their power and authority to the connecting link, namely the central government. These ideas are based entirely on a wrong footing... Therefore remove from your mind any idea of some form of such loose federation." The only solution to India's problem, he asserted, was 'to partition India so that both the communities could develop freely and fully according to their own genius.' (Venkat Dhulipala's book , Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India, will be published by Cambridge University Press.) II/III. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150313/jsp/opinion/story_8309.jsp#.VQJTP_mUcUQ Friday , March 13 , 2015 Borderline questions - It is often convenient to misread history to avoid harsh truths Swapan Dasgupta The public commemoration of anniversaries is drearily routine and, at best, a marketing opportunity for the publishing, postage stamp and collectibles industries. Yet, which birthdays, death anniversaries and momentous events a country chooses to remember often tells us more about contemporary realities than the past. Likewise, any landmark anniversary a society chooses to overlook is a commentary on collective awkwardness with a facet of the past. March 23 marks the platinum jubilee of the Muslim League's Pakistan resolution. On that day in Lahore, with Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah as the presiding deity, the Bengal peasant leader, Fazlul Huq, moved the momentous resolution that proclaimed that no future political settlement "would be workable... or acceptable to the Muslims" unless "geographically contiguous units... in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority as in the North-western and North-eastern zones of India should be grouped to constitute 'Independent States' in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign." The resolution triggered political developments that culminated in the Partition of India and the creation of Pakistan on August 14, 1947. It is understandable that today's India will be disinclined to remember that day in Lahore. Although time can be potentially a great healer, the wounds inflicted by Jinnah's successful advocacy of the two-nation principles still rankle in the collective psyche of India. The creation of Pakistan was a body blow to the idea of Indian nationalism and constituted a major defeat amid the triumph of Independence. Neither the vivisection of Pakistan in 1971 nor the existential agonies our troublesome neighbour is at present experiencing has quite served to sweeten the bitter pill the country had to swallow as a result of the Lahore resolution. However, it is not an acknowledgment of defeat - and barring B.R. Ambedkar, the nationalist pantheon was unanimous in seeing it as a colossal tragedy - that makes it embarrassing to address the hiccups of history. The sequence of events from March 1940 to August 1947 raises very awkward issues that seem best to run away from. After the creation of Bangladesh - an event that punctured the belief that Islam constitutes a sufficient basis of nationhood - there has been an increasing tendency to view Pakistan as an unintended consequence of the Lahore resolution. Jinnah, it has been contended, and not entirely without basis, was basically using the threat of Pakistan to press for a federal India where the powers of the Centre would be limited. By this argument, it was the determination of the Congress leadership - and particularly Jawaharlal Nehru - to ensure a strong Centre that thwarted Jinnah's attempt to achieve Hindu-Muslim parity. The Cabinet Mission Plan was a missed opportunity. Jinnah, it was also claimed, was using the Muslim community as the pressure point for his constitutionalist thrust and, consequently, never had too much time for abstruse debates on the proposed Pakistan's Islamic identity. For Jinnah, Pakistan meant a modern nation with a Muslim majority. Extending this argument to politics on the ground, it has been suggested that the idea of Pakistan was always kept utterly vague and confusing, so much so that Muslims in the 'minority provinces'- the Muslim League's core support - were completely unaware of what separation actually involved. Likewise, it has been suggested that the Muslim ulema was resolutely opposed to Pakistan and, had the franchise been extended to the poor Muslims, the social limitations of the Muslim League as a party of the landed gentry and the educated middle class would have been thoroughly exposed. According to this version of history, Partition was a knee-jerk response to Lord Mountbatten's hasty withdrawal timetable and the communal riots resulting from Muslim League's Direct Action Day in August 1946. In a just-published book, Creating A New Medina: State Power, Islam and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India, that may well be at the centre of a new bout of revisionism, a young historian, Venkat Dhulipala, has challenged the new orthodoxy. Basing his research on the speeches, writings and poetry of those who were actually involved in the hard slog of mobilizing Muslims, particularly in the United Provinces and Bihar, he has, in effect, resurrected a memory of the Pakistan movement that was shared by the participants (and opponents) but which has somehow not found place in recent history writing. First, Dhulipala has questioned the claim that Pakistan was insufficiently imagined. On the contrary, using evidence from the 'minority provinces' that were Muslim League strongholds, he has documented a vibrant engagement between the protagonists and opponents of Pakistan over the implications of separate statehood. This was a debate that touched not merely the clergy but also involved the participation of the Muslim professional classes. Almost every aspect of Pakistan ranging from Hindu-Muslim differences, the viability of the new country vis à vis India, the likelihood of an Islamic state and the boundaries of Pakistan were hotly discussed at different levels from March 1940 till the moment of Partition. Therefore, far from the idea of Pakistan being shrouded in deliberate vagueness, Dhulipala suggests it was "imagined... plentifully and with ambition". Second, contrary to the claims of a repentant and orphaned Muslim League regional leadership in the 'minority provinces' that it was unaware of the serious implications of separation, Dhulipala documents the openness with which the plight of Muslims in UP, Bihar and the Central Provinces was discussed. The anti-Pakistan Muslim politicians attached to both the Congress and the Jamiat-Ulema-e-Hind were quite explicit that there was nothing in Pakistan for the Muslims in the Hindu-majority provinces. Curiously, the Muslim League leadership did not disagree. Instead it posited the strong support for Pakistan among the Muslims in the Hindu heartland as evidence of "sacrifice" for a lofty cause: the creation of a new Medina that would become the focus of an international Islamic brotherhood. The Muslims there were assured that no harm would come their way after separation because the Hindu minority in Pakistan would be "hostage" to their security and well- being. In short, the Muslims in the 'minority provinces' waved the flag of Pakistan knowingly and with their eyes wide open. Their post-Independence repudiation of the Muslim League was born of sheer expediency. Third, contrary to the impression of the Muslim clergy opposing Pakistan, Dhulipala reveals a vertical split with only the Syed Hussain Ahmad Madani-controlled JUH endorsing the Congress, and the rest - including a large chunk of Deoband-trained maulvis - joining the Muslim League campaign for separation. The schism was essentially over two issues: composite nationalism versus Muslim nationalism, and the likelihood of an Islamic State in Pakistan. Indeed, both the pro-Congress and pro-Muslim League clergy were united in their endorsement of an Islamic State as the ideal for all Muslims. Contrary to what Jinnah said in his speech of August 11, 1947 to Pakistan's constituent assembly, the mood of the Muslim League's foot soldiers was unambiguously for a state that would replicate the early Islamic experience. Finally, it would seem that Pakistan struck a deep emotional chord among most of the Muslims in united India - a reason why established regional parties and regional leaders proved powerless to combat it. Jinnah may have kept the doors of a federation of self-governing states open till the last minute. However, the passions the Lahore resolution aroused meant that any last-minute compromise would not have endured. By 1946, Muslim India was unwaveringly committed to a separate Pakistan. The alternative was civil war. Dhulipala has raised a host of uncomfortable issues that politicians and intellectuals on both sides of the Radcliffe Line would prefer to shy away from. In the quest for an elusive modernity, this denial is understandable. Unfortunately, history often comes back to haunt the present. III. http://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/books/book-review-the-promised-land/99/ LIFESTYLE FRIDAY, MAR 13, 2015 Congress and Muslim League leaders with Lord Mountbatten (centre) discussing the Partition of India at a meeting in 1947. Jawaharlal Nehru is to the left of Lord Mountbatten and Mohammed Ali Jinnah to the right. Written by Pratap Bhanu Mehta | Published on:January 31, 2015 3:29 am Book: Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam and the Quest for Pakistan in Colonial North India Author: Venkat Dhulipala Publisher: Cambridge University Press Price: Rs 995 The ideological origins of the idea of Pakistan, and the political momentum that led to its creation, still remain deeply perplexing. Creating a New Medina will not resolve all perplexities. But it is arguably among the most important studies of the ideological origins of Pakistan published to date. It decisively demolishes Ayesha Jalal's idea that Pakistan arose in a fit of ideological absentmindedness, a stratagem in a bargaining game gone awry. Within the context of UP politics, it demolishes Paul R Brass's thesis that imagining Pakistan was merely instrumental to the goal of power, and it shows the insufficiency of the idea that Pakistan emerged merely in response to developments in representative politics after 1935. It argues, quite convincingly, that the idea of a new Medina, an Islamic state that is both a homeland for Muslims and the vehicle for a new regeneration in Islam, had deep roots in political, theological and literary debates. In some ways, this study is closer in spirit to Farzana Shaikh's book, Community and Consensus in Islam, which suggests that the idea of a political form that would be the vehicle for an umma was central to the prehistory of politics. The depth, texture and brilliance of Dhulipala's argument are hard to convey in a short review. This book is attentive to a range of positions on Pakistan in UP politics beginning with the quasi- Marxist positions of KM Ashraf, who tried to replace questions of religion with questions of class. But that project seemed almost doomed from the start. Dhulipala shows the range of forces arrayed against it and argues against the conventional idea that the Deobandi ulema were uniformly against Partition. He wades through an impressive array of polemics, pamphlets, treatises, theological tracts and poetry to establish the central thesis that the yearning for a new Medina was widespread despite the sociological dislocations it might cause. In some ways, the book tries to do what the single best thing ever written on Partition, BR Ambedkar's tract on the demand for Pakistan, tried to do: explore the logic behind this range of positions, without sentimentality, wishful thinking, political correctness or cant. Not the least of the book's virtues is that it provides one of the best readings of Ambedkar's Thoughts on Pakistan. Not since Edmund Burke on the American colonists, had anyone produced such a forensic piece of political analysis, absolutely clear-eyed about the premise behind every position. The tract is hard to read because it has an "if this, then this" quality to it. Every party from Jinnah to Hindu nationalists have used it for their purposes. In a sense, the tract laid out the tragedy of each position -- if there was Partition, the price was going to be homogenous nation states; if there was no Partition, the price was going to be perpetual tension. It urged the Congress to give up the delusion that Muslims did not have a separate sense of identity; it pointed out to Hindus that they overestimated their own capacity to live with difference. It relentlessly worked through every argument, cultural, strategic, economic, and political, to come to the fateful conclusion that Partition might even be good for Hindus. But Dhulipala's achievement is to show that the Congress could not accommodate the yearnings for a new Medina. Attempts like Maulana Hussain Madani's to fashion a composite religious nationality were flawed because they were, in a sense, premised on the idea of two separate legal and social orders within a single nation state; a claim that would immediately run up against the modernising pretensions of the nation state. In fact, so fixated have we been on the idea that the bad guys were the ones who wanted territorial Partition that we often forget that the cost of territorial unity was always going to be religious conservatism. Territorial unity required the partitioning of social orders; not the modern ideas of citizenship. Dhulipala could have done more with this tension had he dealt with the ideas of someone like Maulana Azad, whose absence in this book is rather striking. The other striking absence in this magnificent book is that of Iqbal, whose The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam most strikingly lays the argument for a political vehicle that could be the locus of a regenerated Islam. Arguably, Iqbal's text still remains the most incomparable guide to the philosophical tensions underpinning the idea of Pakistan: a state trying to be at once the locus of pan-Islamic, modern and South Asian identity, a trilemma it cannot solve; or rather, it can solve it the only way Iqbal did: by excluding the Ahamadiyyas and Sufis. In Indian intellectual history, there is still a tendency to treat "Islamic" and "Hindu" intellectuals as two separate streams. In some ways, this mirrors the most striking fact about Indian intellectual thinking during the 20th century. They did develop in parallel, with only rare references to each other or mentioned them as external problems to be tackled. This Partition of the mind, even if unstated, was deep. It is hard to see what would have resisted the allure of the new Medina, except perhaps as Ashraf alluded, the substantial attenuation of religion itself. The writer is president & chief executive, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
