|
Pakistan
The Seeds of Muslim Nationalism
The uprising of 1857-58 was the last fitful assertion of an all
but moribund Mughal Empire. Mutinous sepoys had marched from Meerut,
the site of the first outbreak, to Delhi proclaiming their intention
to restore the poet-emperor Bahadur Shah II to imperial glory.
British forces with Punjabi sepoys recaptured Delhi and banished
the emperor to Burma, where he died in penury in 1862. British
distrust of Muslim aristocracy resulted from the rebellious sepoys'
attempt to restore the power of the emperor. Muslim leaders were
alleged to have had a major role in planning and leading the revolt,
although the revolt itself was a series of badly planned and uncoordinated
uprisings and the principal leaders, Nana Sahib and Tantia Topi,
were Hindus. In the eyes of British rulers, Muslim leaders had
been discredited.
As a consequence, the landed Muslim upper classes in the north
Indian heartland retreated into cultural and political isolation,
while fellow Muslims in Punjab were rewarded for assisting the
British. The former failed to reemerge economically and produced
no large group comparable to the upwardly mobile British-educated
Hindu middle class. They did not revise the doctrines of Islam
to meet the challenges posed by alien rule, Christian missionaries,
and revivalist Hindu sects, such as the Arya Samaj, attempting
reconversion to Hinduism. The former Muslim rulers of India were
in danger of becoming a permanent noncompetitive class in the
British Raj at the very time the forces of Indian nationalism
were gathering strength.
One response to British rule came to be known as the Deoband
Movement, which was led by the ulama, who were expanding traditional
Islamic education. The ulama also sought to reform the teaching
of Islamic law and to promote its application in contemporary
Muslim society. They promoted publications in Urdu, established
fund-raising drives, and undertook other modern organizational
work on an all-India basis. While most Deobandis eventually were
to support the Indian National Congress and a united India, a
group that favored the creation of Pakistan later emerged as the
core of the Jamiat-ul-Ulama-i-Islam party (see Political Dynamics
, ch. 4).
Another response was led by Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-98, known as
Sir Syed) and was called the Aligarh Movement after the Muhammadan
Anglo-Oriental College (now Aligarh Muslim University), which
he founded in 1875 at Aligarh in north-central India (see Education
, ch. 2). Sir Syed considered access to British education as the
best means of social mobility for the sons of the Muslim gentry
under colonial rule.
Meanwhile, the beginnings of the Indian nationalist movement
were to be discerned in the increasing tendency to form all-India
associations representing various interests. English-speaking
Indians, predominantly middle-class but from different parts of
the country, were discovering the efficacy of association and
public meetings in propagating their views to a wider audience
and in winning the attention of the British government. In 1885
the Indian National Congress (also referred to as Congress) was
founded to formulate proposals and demands to present to the British.
A national, all-India forum, Congress was an umbrella organization.
Many of its members envisioned a long British period of tutelage
and advocated strictly constitutionalist and gradualist reforms,
but after World War I, Congress argued for a speedy end to alien
rule. The idea of the territorial integrity of India and opposition
to any sectarian division of India, however, always remained sacrosanct
to Congress.
Although Sir Syed often voiced demands similar to those made
by the founders of Congress--local self-government, Indian representation
on the viceroy's and the governors' councils, and equal duties
for Indian members of the Indian Civil Service and the judicial
service--he remained aloof when Congress was founded and advised
his followers not to join Congress, because he thought the organization
would be dominated by Hindus and would inevitably become antigovernment.
It has been argued that Sir Syed's fear of Hindu domination sowed
the seeds for the "Two Nations Theory" later espoused by the All-India
Muslim League (also referred to as Muslim League), founded in
1906, and led to its demand for a separate state for the Muslims
of India-- reinforcing his view that the British were the only
guarantor of the rights of the Muslims. Sir Syed argued that education
and not politics was the key to Muslim advancement. Graduates
of Aligarh generally made their careers initially in administration,
not politics, and thus were not greatly affected by the introduction
of representative institutions at the provincial level by the
India Councils Act of 1892.
Events in Bengal proved that agitation was as useful as politics.
Lord Curzon (George Nathaniel Curzon), the viceroy, partitioned
the large province of Bengal (which then included Bihar and Orissa)
in 1905. Although the province was unwieldy, Curzon's plan divided
the Bengali speakers by creating the new province of Eastern Bengal
and Assam and reducing the original province to western Bengal,
Bihar, and Orissa. The eastern province had a Muslim majority.
A massive antipartition campaign was launched against the British
by Hindus in Bengal, using constitutional methods as well as terrorism
spearheaded by revolutionaries. The partition of Bengal was annulled
in 1911. The province of Eastern Bengal and Assam was dissolved,
Bengal proper was reunited, Assam was separated, and a new province
of Bihar and Orissa was created. Although the reunited Bengal
province had a small Muslim majority, ambitious Muslims in the
province were disgruntled and looked to the Muslim League for
better prospects.
In 1906 the All-India Muslim League had been founded in Dhaka
to promote loyalty to the British and "to protect and advance
the political rights of the Muslims of India and respectfully
represent their needs and aspirations to the Government." It was
also stated that there was no intention to affect the rights of
other religious groups. Earlier that same year, a group of Muslims--the
Simla Delegation--led by Aga Khan III, met the viceroy and put
forward the concept of "separate electorates." If the proposal
were accepted, Muslim members of elected bodies would be chosen
from electorates composed of Muslims only, and the number of seats
in the elected bodies allotted to Muslims would be at least proportional
to the Muslim share of the population, but preferably "weighted"
to give Muslims a share in seats somewhat higher than their proportion
of the population. The principles of communal representation,
separate electorates, and weightage were included in the Government
of India Act of 1909 and were expanded to include such other groups
as Sikhs and Christians in later constitutional enactments.
Data as of April 1994
|
