Fighting to the End

by C Christine Fair

  In 1906, the All India Muslim League (henceforth the Muslim League) was founded as a Muslim communal party. It would become the Congress’ principal rival at the national level, and the fate of the subcontinent eventually rested in the outcome of their contest. The Congress Party and the Muslim League competed not only with each other but also with deeply entrenched provincial parties. As independence seemed ever more likely, the Muslim League leaders began to fear for the fate of South Asia’s Muslim minority in a Hindu-dominated independent India governed by the Congress (Moore 1983). Their apprehensions became ever more acute as they perceived the Congress to have retrenched from its commitment to secular democratic principles (Riaz 2002). The Muslim League began considering the best options to secure Muslim communal interests; one of these was an independent Muslim state.

  One of the important Muslim personalities was the philosopher and poet Muhammad Iqbal. Also known as Allama Iqbal, Pakistanis believe that he inspired the Pakistan movement, a point that can surely be debated with reference to his varied writings. Nonetheless, Iqbal’s picture frequently appears alongside that of Mohammad Ali Jinnah in public spaces in Pakistan.3 Jinnah is officially recognized in Pakistan as the founder of the nation and is referred to as Quaid-i-Azam (lit. “Great Leader,” often shortened to “the Quaid”). But Pakistanis believe that Iqbal imagined Pakistan. Pakistan’s first military dictator, Gen. Mohammad Ayub Khan (1960), described Iqbal as a philosopher who undertook a “careful study of human affairs, both East and West, and focused the light of his inquiry on the causes of economic and cultural subjugation to which the Muslims of India had been systematically subjected since their first abortive struggle for independence in 1857” (547). According to Ayub, he “spelt out the broad outlines of a plan under which the Muslims of India were led to aspire to an independent state in which they would be free to follow their own way of life” (ibid.).

  While most Pakistanis herald Iqbal, along with Jinnah, as the forces behind an independent Pakistan, their positions were more complicated than contemporary perceptions suggest. For example, Jinnah had not always supported an independent Muslim state. In fact, until about 1946 he worked to preserve Muslim interests within a united India. Before embracing a separate state for Muslims, Jinnah used Islam as “a cultural basis for an ideology of ethnic nationalism that was intended to mobilize the Muslim community in order to defend the ‘minoritarian Muslims’ ” (Jaffrelot 2002c, 11; see also Jalal 1985; Moore 1983).

  Iqbal’s thinking was equally complicated. He was most certainly anxious about Muslims’ future constitutional status as a minority in a future India, dominated by the Congress. He eventually concluded that the “only practical solution lay in Muslim self-government managed through territorial arrangement that involved the consolidation of ‘a Northwest Muslim Indian State’” (Shaikh 2009, 25–26). This formulation of Muslim politics suggests a regional or even ethnic understanding derived principally from the Muslim communities that resided in the northwest of the Raj, rather than all of the Muslims in British India. Iqbal’s solution called for an autonomous Muslim state “within the British empire or without” which further suggests that Iqbal first and foremost imagined “the immediate community of Muslims in the north-western provinces of India, comprising Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Balochistan” (26). This practical understanding of a Muslim political community that considered the importance of geography among other factors sat uneasily with his notion of a universal Muslim community (umma). More difficult to reconcile was Iqbal’s discomfort with territorial Islam. In fact, he “harboured strong reservations about separate Muslim territorial statehood” because he understood it to be a “blow to communal solidarity” (33). Despite the complexity of Iqbal’s imagination of India’s Muslim communities and the best political order to best secure their interests (see Iqbal 2002), the Pakistan Army and other Pakistanis have tended to fetishize the “liberating thrust” of this vision that contributed to the ultimate emergence of Pakistan (Shaikh 2009). Pakistani defense publications frequently cite the poetry of Iqbal on a variety of themes ranging from the notions of faith and community to that of jihad.

  The Muslim League was formed in 1906, but the appellation Pakistan (which translates literally as “Land of the Pure”) came into use in 1933. The relatively late appearance of this moniker reflects the simple fact that, for much of the Muslim League’s history, it focused not on communal separatism but rather on communal politics in which Muslims would receive affirmation of their difference and recognition of their nationhood (Moore 1983; Riaz 2002).4 During a famous session of the Muslim League in Lahore in March 1940, Jinnah articulated his belief that Muslims and Hindus comprise separate nations, the so-called two-nation theory. According to Jinnah, “Islam and Hinduism are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but are; in fact, different and distinct social orders. … The Hindus and the Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literatures. … 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 the final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a state” (Jaffrelot 2002c, 12).

  While this meeting is often described as witnessing the birth of the Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan, in fact it saw no mention either of the word Pakistan or even of the necessary Partition of the subcontinent. Rather, the Muslim League simply called for all subsequent constitutional dispensations to be reconsidered in light of the claim that Indian Muslims constitute a nation. The Muslim League argued in vague terms that the Muslim-majority provinces of the northeast and northwest should “be grouped to constitute Independent States in which the constituent units. … [would] be autonomous and sovereign” (All India Muslim League Resolution of March 23, 1940, cited by Jalal 1990, 15). (The wording of this resolution would later be used by advocates of an independent Bangladesh, who argued that the resolution called for independent states, not a single independent state.)

  Although the appeal of the notion of Pakistan continued to grow in both Muslim-minority and -majority provinces during World War II (1939–1945), the concept did not at first attract widespread support among Muslims. Muslims in the Muslim-majority provinces that would later become Pakistan had little interest in divisive rhetoric because they did not feel acutely threatened by Hindus and because many of their commercial and other interests depended on communal harmony. The idea of Pakistan resonated most intensely in the United Provinces,5 where Muslims were a minority and thus most disquieted by Hindu numerical domination. These areas, however, remained within India (Jaffrelot 2002b, 2002c; Jalal 1990; Talbot 1980).

  The Muslim League, by design, never clearly articulated what kind of state Pakistan would be (secular or Islamic), what modes of governance it would have, which territories it would occupy, or even what the basis of Pakistani citizenship would be. Jinnah deliberately preserved this ambiguity because he had opposing goals. He had to bolster support for the Muslim League and some notion of Pakistan at the national or all-India level. But the Muslim League and the two-nation theory had little appeal in the Muslim-majority provinces that would eventually become Pakistan. In areas like the Punjab, Sindh, and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP, now known as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Jinnah had to forge political deals with provincial political elites to secure their support for the League as well as for some ill-defined notion of Pakistan (Talbot 1980). Conversely, the two-nation theory had the most appeal in north India’s United Provinces where Muslims were a minority and feared Hindu dominance most acutely. Thus, Jinnah kept the idea of Pakistan vague as long as possible to cobble together a tentative coalition for the Muslim League and Pakistan made up of diverse constituencies with fundamentally different priorities and concerns (Jalal 1990).

  The Congress, which hoped to inherit and govern a united India, opposed the idea of an independent Pakistan and strenuously fought the Muslim League.6 To secure
the Muslim vote in the 1937 elections, Jinnah sought to link Muslim League concerns with those of Muslims in the critical Muslim-majority provinces, which would likely form the territory of any future Pakistan. With strong support in the Muslim-majority areas, and thus significant representation at the center, the league could safeguard the interests of Muslims in the Muslim-minority provinces. However, Muslims in the Muslim-majority areas had no reason to link their political futures to the Muslim League without concrete evidence that the British would in fact devolve sufficient power to make such an arrangement viable, and Jinnah’s strategy failed to convince Muslims in either the Muslim-minority or -majority provinces. In the 1937 elections, the league won a meager 4.4 percent of the total Muslim vote. (This figure is all the more astonishing because, under the constitutional reforms of 1919, Muslims actually had separate electorates. Thus, Muslims could vote only for Muslim candidates.) Instead, most of the Muslim voters in the provinces voted for the candidates of provincial parties rather than of parties that had a presence at an all-India level. The Congress fared the best among the national parties, owing to its massive civil disobedience campaigns in the 1920s and early 1930s and its increasing grass-roots presence across India (Jalal 1990, Talbot 1990).7

  By 1945, the Muslim League was still struggling to establish itself in the provincial legislatures. Muslim League governments in the North-West Frontier Province and Bengal had been ousted. The league had no support in the Punjab, which was perhaps the most important province from a strategic perspective. (Today, Pakistan’s Punjab remains the “strategic heartland” of the country.) Only in Sindh did the league have a shred of support. With no political platform other than a demand for a nebulous Pakistan, Jinnah and the Muslim League fought to capture the Muslim vote in the 1945–1946 elections by negotiating deals with provincial power brokers. Stunningly, the league won all Muslim seats in the central assembly and captured three-quarters of the Muslim votes cast in elections for provincial assemblies. The league could finally legitimately claim to speak on behalf of South Asia’s Muslims. Jinnah saw the vote as a referendum on the league’s demand for a Pakistan “based on undivided Punjab and Bengal. … The stridently communal overtones of the League’s election propaganda, specifically the role of local religious leaders in stirring Muslim passions, had embittered relations between communities beyond repair” (Jalal 1990, 20; see also Khan 2007).

  The two-nation formula is not a forgotten part of Pakistan’s distant history or merely part of a strategy for achieving an independent Pakistan. Despite the battering the concept has sustained virtually from the beginning, it persists as a strong ideological basis for contemporary Pakistan (Cohen 2004). The Pakistan Army’s professional journals continue to refer to the two-nation theory as a critical element of the so-called ideology of Pakistan, of which the Pakistan Army is the defender. While the prominence of this concept is often attributed to the Islamizing efforts of Zia ul Haq, in fact its importance predates Zia. Khan (2006) explained in his biography that “[man’s] greatest yearning is for an ideology for which he should be able to lay down his life. … Such an ideology with us is obviously that of Islam. It was on that basis that we fought for and got Pakistan, but having got it, we failed to order our lives in accordance with it. The main reason is that we have failed to define that ideology in a simple and understandable form” (221–222). Khan devotes an entire chapter to laying out his understanding of Islam as an ideology of and for Pakistan and its role with respect to Pakistan’s constitution (209–251). The evolution of this concept will be detailed at length in Chapter 4.

  The Problem of the Princely States

  In 1945, Clement Attlee’s Labor party came into power in war-weary Britain and began to accelerate the end of British rule in India. On February 20, 1947, Prime Minister Attlee announced that Britain would transfer power by June 1948. However, the British ultimately expedited the timeline for departure. In June 1947, the British promulgated the Indian Independence Act of 1947, calling for the creation of two independent dominions, known as India and Pakistan, starting from August 15, 1947. It further elaborated that the “the territories of India shall be the territories under the sovereignty of His Majesty which, immediately before the appointed day, were included in British India except the territories which, under subsection (2) of this section, are to be the territories of Pakistan” (Indian Independence Act of 1947). The act stated that the territories of Pakistan would be composed of the provinces of East Bengal and West Punjab as well as the territories included in the province of Sind (as it was then known) and the chief commissioner’s province of British Balochistan and, subject to a referendum, the territories of the North-West Frontier Province (Indian Independence Act of 1947).

  These provisional territorial awards to India and Pakistan pertained only to those areas that were British territories. However, at the time of Partition, the South Asian subcontinent was home to two kinds of territories: those under British rule; and the more than 560 princely states, which were under the rule of Indian princes.8 Taken together, the latter comprised nearly 41 percent of the Raj’s territorial landmass, but they ranged widely in size: whereas the states of Kashmir and Hyderabad were the size of a large European country, others were mere fiefdoms, with no more than a dozen villages (Guha 2007; Ramusack 2003). While the rulers of these principalities exercised near autonomy in their internal affairs, they recognized the paramountcy of the Crown.9 When the British tried to persuade them to join the All-India Federation, they demurred, opting for quasi-independence under the Crown in preference to the increasingly raucous provincial political environments (Copland 1991).

  As independence loomed, Lord Mountbatten—at the urging of the Congress leadership—sought to persuade the princes to cast their lot with either India or Pakistan and to abandon any thoughts of independence. On July 25, 1947, Mountbatten addressed the Chamber of Princes,10 telling his audience that the Indian Independence Act had released “the States from all of their obligations to the Crown” (Guha 2007, 41). However, while they were technically independent, he warned that chaos would “hit the States first” should they fail to act prudently (ibid.). Mountbatten advised them to join those states to which they were proximate, cautioning them that they “cannot run away from the Dominion Government which is your neighbor any more than you can run away from the subjects for whose welfare you are responsible” (ibid., 42). The princes were told that the instruments of accession to either state would cede their powers over defense and external affairs. But, Mountbatten reminded them, they would have access neither to modern weapons nor to the resources to post diplomats around the world. Thus, they would give up responsibility for those matters that they could not possibly manage while retaining internal authority (Guha 2007).

  By August 15, almost all of the princely states had agreed to accede to one of the new countries, largely on terms similar to those they had previously rejected (Copland 1991). Three princely states remained problematic: Junagadh; Hyderabad; and Kashmir. Junagadh was on the Kathiawar peninsula in Western India, surrounded by India on three sides and with a long seacoast on the Arabian Sea. Even though the Muslim sovereign governed over a Hindu majority, he elected to join Pakistan and announced his intention to do so on August 14, 1947. Because Junagadh was a Hindu-majority area, Pakistan delayed responding to the request for weeks, finally accepting Junagadh’s accession on September 13. Guha (2007, 50) suspects that Pakistan accepted this Hindu-dominated state in hopes of using it as a bargaining chip with India in the struggle for Kashmir. Soon thereafter, under considerable pressure from India, the Nawab fled to Pakistan, leaving one of his courtiers to reverse course. The transfer of power to India took place on November 9, 1947. It should be noted that Junagadh is depicted as Pakistani territory on many Pakistani maps.

  The Nizam of Hyderabad, a Muslim sovereign who ruled over a Hindu-majority population of more than 16 million and a territory spanning more than 80,000 square miles, wanted to retain his independence af
ter the British left. For the new Indian state, it was unthinkable that Hyderabad, which was nestled deep within Indian territory on the plateau of the Deccan, should remain independent. India began to apply coercive instruments, most notably an economic blockade intended to signal to the residents of Hyderabad that they were economically dependent on India but also to restrict the Nizam’s ability to provide his army with weapons. As the threat of forceful annexation by India loomed, a militant organization evolved. This organization, comprised of so-called razakars (“volunteers”), first assisted the Muslim political party, the Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen, in upholding Muslim interests in the state. However, they evolved into a serious militia with the intent of defending Hyderabad and Muslims against raids on Hyderabad’s border or outright invasion. While the economic blockade was also intended to limit their ability to procure weapons, they were able to obtain them from the black market (Eagleton 1950). After Mountbatten resigned from post of governor general and the violence in Hyderabad deepened, the Indian government took decisive action to end the impasse. On September 13, 1948, it dispatched troops, which took full control of the state in fewer than four days. As with Junagadh, Pakistani maps still lay claim to Hyderabad, even though the prince never evinced any interest in joining Pakistan and fought tenaciously to remain independent.

  Of the three problematic princely states, Kashmir proved the most enduring challenge: the conflict between India, Pakistan, and various Kashmiri groups over the state’s disposition persists even today. With more than 84,471 square miles, the state of Kashmir was even larger than Hyderabad (Guha 2007) and was notable for the considerable heterogeneity of its 4 million thinly dispersed residents. Kashmir had five principal regions. Jammu, abutting the Punjab, had a slight Muslim majority (53 percent) before Partition. However, following a wave of panic sparked by Partition, many Muslims fled, leaving Jammu with a Hindu-majority population. The second major part of Kashmir was the so-called Valley of Kashmir. Unlike Jammu, it was dominated by Muslims. To the east of the valley was Ladakh, which bordered Tibet and was (and still is) populated largely by Buddhists. To the west were the territories of Gilgit and Baltistan. While Gilgit and Baltistan were Muslim majorities, their inhabitants were mostly Ismaili Shia, rather than Sunni Muslims, who dominated in the valley. These disparate regions came under the rule of a single sovereign, a member of a clan of Dogra Rajputs, in the mid-nineteenth century. What became known as “Jammu and Kashmir” shared borders with Tibet, China’s Xinjiang region, and Afghanistan (Copland 1991; Guha 2007).