This obvious display of disdain towards people continues to be a significant
feature of many ‘traditionalist’ ulema. Strikingly, those entrusted with the spiritual well-being of society were marred by an elitist attitude towards others. Perhaps
this explains their inability to gather significant grass-roots support and provide
effective political leadership during the Pakistan movement – and even now.
However, there is strong evidence that this, today, is no longer the situation.
Now, the Jamaat-Islami remains, after Pakistan’s Justice Movement party, the
only other party that chooses its leadership democratically. 34 In addition, the
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103
historic aversion of these religious groups to the Pakistan movement does not
reflect their current perspectives.
Yet, taking those three major religious forces into consideration, a single,
important question remains: why did many of the religiously educated classes
of scholars formerly refuse to support the Pakistan movement? According to
Qureshi, the ‘ulema were opposed to Pakistan on two grounds: 1) Islam is a
universal religion and therefore must not be confined to and identified with a
national state; and 2) the leadership of the Muslim League, mainly comprising
the westernized Muslims, could not work for Islam’.35 The majority of ulema, who had organized themselves in the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Hind, had thrown
their lot in with the Indian National Congress party and opposed the demand
for Pakistan. In other words, they accepted a narrative that did not resonate
in the hearts of the majority of Muslims. Maudoodi went so far as to say that
if the Muslims did not stop supporting the demand for a separate homeland,
he would leave them and the people could ‘all go to hell’.36 Nevertheless, once Pakistan came into being these groups joined a hectic race to convert it into a
theocratic state.
The religious parties, run by the religious scholars, lacked a consensus-based
program for Muslims in the British Raj. Not only did they not support the
creation of Pakistan, they vehemently opposed it and offered no alternatives
to address Muslim concerns. Qureshi states that the ‘ulema were respected
by the Muslim masses and even followed them in their religious matters, but
these same Muslim masses had followed the politicians in their politics and
fought to the bitter end for the achievement of Pakistan in spite of opposition to
Pakistan and vilification of Jinnah by the more reputed and generally respected
ulema of pro-Congress leanings’.37 Here, what is of utmost significance is that people chose to ignore their religious leaders. Why? Clearly, the narrative
presented by traditionalists did not resonate with them. By failing to present
the moral directives of Islam into their contextual realities, they were unable
to gain popular acceptance.
The secularists
The ‘secularist’ leadership type includes individuals who were thoroughly
secularist in their philosophical outlook. By definition, they were not overly
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concerned about Muslim identity or religious doctrine. Malik characterizes
this type of Muslim leadership as ‘non-communal’ and provides three sub-
classifications: ‘First, the secular/trans-communal rightist provincial politics
that included the Unionists Party in Punjab, and various political groups in
Sindh; second, secular non-communal provincial politics such as the Krishak
Proja Party in Bengal; third, the secular non-communal nationalists such
as the ruling Congress party in the North West Frontier Province’.38 Subtleties aside, all these secularist elites shared a commonality in considering religion as
unimportant for political identity. Ultimately, by doing so, they disassociated
themselves from the social currency of their own environment. By refusing to
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consider the importance of Islamic moral directives they alienated themselves
from all the people who are attached to their religion. Similar to ‘traditionalists’, these leaders often viewed the masses as inferior and looked down upon their
practice of faith as ‘backward’.39 The only difference, in this respect, between them was one condemning improper faith, and the other condemning it
altogether.
Secular elites such as the Unionist Party in the province of Punjab, Khudai
Khidmatgar in the North West Frontier Province, and the Krishak Proja
Party in Bengal, concentrated policies and strategies in their respective
regions.40 Malik suggests: ‘the Krishak Proja Party led by Fazl ul-Haq was quite different than the Punjabi Unionists, but both maintained an essentially
regional characteristic’. 41 Accordingly, the wider appeal of these leaders was negligible. Not only did their refutation of religious norms isolate them from
people, but also their emphasis on regional loyalties further disqualified them.
By refusing to clothe their ambitions, regional or otherwise, in the framework
of accepted social values, they ultimately became inconsequential. Moreover,
many ‘secular’ elites came from the feudal/land-owning class that, Gardezi
argues, ‘owes its origin primarily to the colonial policy pursued by the British’.42
As the administrative and economic needs of the British Raj dictated, they
superimposed, on the indigenous stratification systems, ‘small groups of
functionaries and privileged classes whose orientations and interests were
deflected from the common concerns of their own people to serve the interests
of the Empire’.43 To solidify their power base, the British authorities granted permanent land-settlement programmes to reward loyal subjects. ‘Large tracts of
land were in some instances awarded to people who were ruthless enough to
indenture masses of labourers to dig a canal or build a strategic road. These
landowning gentry came to be known as zamindars, talukdars, jagirdars,
mansabdars, nawabs, and so forth’. 44 Many of the landowning gentry eventually supported the movement for Pakistan; yet this does not negate the fact that
political leaders from this class emphasized a regional political agenda.
By not focusing on the moral directives of Islam, and its manifestation in
society, these secularists failed to capture the imagination of the majority of
the masses and delegitimized their qualifications for leadership. Thus they
failed to muster the support of the people; this is not surprising as they often
viewed them and their traditions as impediments to growth, prosperity and
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progress. 45
The revivalists
Lastly, the ‘revivalist’ type of leadership attempted to contextualize the moral
directives of Islam and eventually demanded a separate homeland for Muslims
in the British Raj. This leadership type includes the poet-philosopher Muhammad
Iqbal, considered to be the ‘ideologue’ of Pakistan, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah,
known as the Quaid-e-Azam. Of course there were others, such as secular
Muslim nationalists like ‘Humayun Kabir and Mian Iftikhar ud-Din who,
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105
unlike the regional-provin
cial secular elites, moved in the mainstream nationalist-
ideological movements’.46 The definitive characteristic of this typology is not commitment to religious ritual, but rather an appreciation of the established
social narrative of their society. Ahmed states:
Muslim society, in responding to modernity, and when confronted by two
clear choices of leadership in the last century, rejected both. The first was
traditionalist, orthodox and exemplified by the ‘ulema,’ the clerics and
religious figures of Islam. The second type of leadership rejected Islam
altogether either by adopting extreme forms of Sufistic or unorthodox
behaviour or by mimicking other cultures like the British or Hindu. There
was a third way: a synthesis of many principles.47
That, precisely, is how we describe both Jinnah and Iqbal, who
attempted to re-evaluate the moral directives of Islam while being cognizant
of their contextual realities. Unlike others, they believed in their people,
cherished their civilization and honoured tradition. That allowed them to
secure the support of the people, who eagerly followed them on their
quest to create a homeland for Muslims.
Muhammad Iqbal
Muhammad Iqbal was born into a middle-class Kashmiri family in the city of
Sialkot. He studied at Cambridge and obtained a British law degree and a
PhD in Persian metaphysics from Germany.48 His poetic talent catapulted him into the limelight, granting him enormous mass appeal. He emerged as a
leading Muslim thinker, known throughout the entire Muslim world. However,
Ahmed suggests that ‘despite great vigour and force in his reflections it is
difficult to identify any one particular comprehensive message that he gave to
his audience. That he looked toward Islam, as a civilizational force, for solutions
to the problems facing the Muslim community is probably the best way to
describe his theoretical propensity’.49 Through his respect for the common person, Iqbal secured the appreciation of the masses, cherishing their traditions,
beliefs and values.
Iqbal’s perspective on the individual and society was against unbridled
individualism, which may ignore human responsibility to one another, and a
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totalitarian state, which undermined individual creativity. Both the individual
and society are supposed to submit to higher ethics – in Islamic parlance, a
submission to revelation.50 Here, two important points need clarification.
First, the individual and society are not seen as antagonistic towards one
another and this is a result of the peculiar amalgamation of certain moral
directives and society. Second, this higher ethics seeks to streamline the efforts
of individuals in order to create a unified social vision, and, at the same time,
create a social environment that would allow its members to realize their
personal potential in the most effective way.51 Political leadership, then, is the
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vehicle responsible for carrying out that responsibility by defining what that
‘code’ actually amounts to in society. Iqbal’s most important intellectual
contribution articulated this necessity in Muslim society – the requisite ability
to reconstruct its enduring principles conducive to space-time.52
Furthermore, Iqbal offered poignant reflections condemning capitalism and
its consequential exploitation of people. He was emphatic about his preference
for social democracy, which he believed was commensurate with Islam. ‘The
acceptance of social democracy in some suitable form is not a revolution but
a return to the original purity of Islam’. 53 His praise for socialism stemmed from his concern for social justice. In this regard he came out openly in favour of
the ‘rights of the workers and peasants, expressing abhorrence for any economic
system that exploited the labour of the working people. Pertaining to land, he
emphasized that, in Islam, land belonged to God and, therefore, the fruits of
agricultural labour should rightly go to the tiller’.54 However, even while insisting on ethics and politics, he did not suggest a theocratic form of governance. Rather,
he believed that if moral principles, like accountability, are absent in political
leadership then the result is tyranny. Supportive of this, he stated: ‘In Islam,
the spiritual and temporal are not two distinct domains … Islam is a single
unanalyzable reality which is one or the other as your point of view varies … the
State, according to Islam, is only an effort to realize the spiritual in a human
organization. It is in this sense alone that the State in Islam is a theocracy, not
that it is headed by a representative of God on earth who can always screen
his despotic will behind his supposed infallibility’.55
Clearly, Iqbal’s concept of Muslim politics was religio-political: ‘Islam does
not bifurcate the unity of man into an irreconcilable duality of spirit and matter.
In Islam, God and the universe, spirit and matter, church and state are
organic to each other’. 56 With these critical reflections on the moral directives of Islam, their impact on society and the responsibility of human agency to
uphold that, it is unsurprising that ‘political separatism found its most explicit
expression in the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal’s Presidential Address
to the Muslim League in 1930’. 57 In that presidential address at the thirtieth annual session of the Muslim League, Iqbal asserted that Muslims had every
right to full and free development of their culture and traditions. The situation
was dire, and in his latter years he would pass the torch of leadership to none
other than Muhammad Ali Jinnah. 58
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Muhammad Ali Jinnah
The undisputed political leader of the Pakistan movement was Mohammed Ali
Jinnah, called Quaid-i-Azam or Great Leader, born in the ethnic minority of
Khoja Shias, though committed to Sunni Islam early in his life.59 He, too, understood that the moral directives emanating from the Qur’an and Prophetic
sayings required contextualizing. As such, he championed the cause of a
separate homeland for Muslims with great perseverance and resolution. This
is, exactly, where many academics who argue Jinnah had ‘little to do with
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107
religious dogma in his life’ misrepresent the entirety of his narrative.60 His acceptance of the dominant social narrative, represented through its values, was
more important than, simply, adhering to religious rituals. He was committed
to a narrative that unified the secular and sacred, understood the ethical
foundations of a polity and supported the indigenous value system that
exemplified those ethics. Therefore, it resonated with people. Naturally, his
primary concern was for the rights of his community, who increasingly lived
as oppressed people living in the British Raj. Jinnah said, ‘Musalmans are a
nation according to any definition of a nation, and they must have their
homelands, their territory, and their state’. 61 As Abbott remarks, this was the beginning of the infamous two-nation theory. 62 Malik concurs and suggests that, for Jinnah, ‘Islam was a sol
idifying and activating force, which gave an
identity to the community whose only alternative was to accept the position
of a permanent minority’. 63 That minority position frightened Jinnah, as he felt uneasy about the future treatment Muslims would endure under a Hindu
majority. That fear of injustice compelled Jinnah to accept the helm of the
Muslim League, the political party organized specifically to safeguard Muslim
interests.
Events, including communal violence and coercive institutionalized ‘Hin-
dunization’ throughout the British Raj, convinced Jinnah that Muslims had
no choice but to demand their own homeland. 64 Recognizing the lack of support coming from the ulema, he organized another religio-political organization, the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-i-Islam, headed by Maulana Shabbir Ahmed
Usmani. 65 However, he was particularly cautious of not creating a theocracy.
On August 11th, 1947, while addressing members of the constituent assembly
in Pakistan, he said:
Now, if we want to make this great state of Pakistan happy and prosperous
we should wholly concentrate on the well being of the people, and specially
of the masses and the poor … You are free, you are free to go to your
mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You
may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with
the business of the State. 66
This demonstrates Jinnah’s aspirations for the direction of the new State of
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Pakistan. Three days after this speech, on 14 August 1947, Pakistan became a
new state.
Jinnah and Iqbal’s concepts were simple and precise. They wished to protect
the interests of their constituency from the perceived hegemony of the majority
Hindu community. Both came to the conclusion that Muslim interests could
only be safeguarded within the confines of a separate state. To that end, they
were instrumental in conceiving of the Muslim League as a political party.
‘Polarized as we are between the liberals and the theocrats, between the pro-
gressives and the sectarians, between the modernists and the orthodox, very
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