December 30, 2006

The centenary of the formation of the Muslim League will go largely unnoticed in this country. Attitudes towards the Muslim League can be placed within a narrow band that range from an aloof indifferent hostility to a more vicious outright hatred. The very mention of the Muslim League carries with it associations of Jinnah and partition. On this side of the border there are many who rather simplistically put the complete blame of partition on the Muslim League, which is seen as an illegitimate party as it stood opposed to the more catholic, all encompassing nationalism represented by the Congress.

However, in the centenary year of the Muslim League it may be important to reassess it and thereby widen the rather narrow band in which attitudes towards it are to be found. This needs to be done for the sake of understanding the partition in clearer terms.

The leadership of the Muslim League came from the upper class landed Muslim aristocracy and the upper middle class English educated Muslims. The politics of the Muslim League did not concern itself with matters of religious significance. A significant section had received a modern secular education and was westernised enough to invite the charge of being thoroughly deracinated.

Yet it was precisely this westernised, secularised and deracinated class that raised the demand for Pakistan. Increasingly strident and rather raucous tones of religiosity came to be attached with the demand for Pakistan in the 1940s as a matter of political expediency. This ‘political elite’ had as its centre the historical educational institution in Aligarh which served as its intellectual support base. The politics of the ‘political elite’ was thus ‘separatist’. It found its embodiment in the Muslim League and it also found a home in the college at Aligarh.

There was another political strand among the Muslims which was more consciously and overtly religious. This was the ‘nationalist’ politics of the ‘religious elite’ which found its home in another great educational institution of northern India, not too far away from Aligarh, the madarsa at Deoband. The class differences between these two elites were striking. While the upper class and upper middle class base of the Muslim League have already been referred to, the religious elite of Deoband drew upon Muslims who were also predominantly urban and ashraf (belonging to the upper castes among the Muslims), but who belonged to the lower middle class and were petit bourgeois. More importantly, it was where the graduates of these two educational institutions wanted to find themselves which tells us a great deal about the totally different politics that emerged from these two centres. The Aligarh graduate had his gaze fixed firmly on employment in the government.

The Deoband graduate was cut off from any such prospective employment in the government owing to the heavily theological curriculum followed there. The politics of the ‘political elite’ and its political embodiment the Muslim League were not accommodated within the Congress led national movement. In contrast, the ‘religious elite’ of Deoband and its politics were so easily accommodated by the Congress led national movement. What explains this? Was it because the demands made by the Muslim League in the form of representation for Muslims in legislatures and government jobs were too difficult for the Congress to accept? Remember, this meant sharing scarce resources like jobs and legislative representation. Were the demands of the ‘religious elite’, couched as they were in a predominantly religious idiom, easier to accept? It is in answer to such questions that a reassessment of the Muslim League can be done.

The demands that were made by the Muslim League were considered to be so non-negotiable that they finally culminated in the most unacceptable consequence of all, the partition, dismemberment and vivisection of the country. The Congress completely rebuffed the Muslim League after the 1937 provincial elections in which the latter fared especially poorly even in the Muslim dominated Punjab and Bengal. Yet, between the years 1937 and 1946 the Muslim League was able to make major advances. In 1937 the Muslim League was not such an important player in Indian politics. Yet by 1946 it had emerged as a force to reckon with in the politics of the subcontinent. What happened in these years? A number of political developments took place like the failed Mass Contact Programmes of the Congress and the beginning of the Second World War. The Muslim League used these political developments to tactically advance itself at the expense of the Congress, thereby giving the Muslim League a new found strength to assert itself. More significantly, there happened a major transformation in the politics of the League in these years as a result of this new found strength. This was a transformation almost in the nature of a ‘paradigm shift’.

In 1937 the Muslim League was certainly in favour of a distinct Muslim identity but not separate statehood. The demand for outright statehood and hence the crystallisation of separatism happened by the year 1946. It is this transformation in which the Muslim League’s demands graduate from being mere demands for minority protection to outright separate nationhood that represents the paradigm shift referred to above. The Lahore resolution of 1940 is probably an important, the most important indicator of this paradigm shift. In a reassessment of the Muslim League it might be important to try to understand how this paradigm shift happened and how broad, inclusive and encompassing the Congress led national movement was. On the contrary was it not broad and capacious enough to prevent this from happening? In a re-reading and reassessment of the politics of the Muslim League can we find an important critique of the politics of the Congress led national movement? Moreover, how intractable and non-negotiable were the demands of the Muslim League?

In such a reassessment the Indian National Congress might have to share more of the guilt than we in India have so far been willing to give it. Perhaps opinion in India has been far too quick to dismiss the politics of the League as ‘separatist’. This dismissal has been so abrupt that many of the demands of the League like separate electorates are simplistically and conveniently brushed aside without taking into consideration the fact that the Congress many a times did actively consider accepting them. To the credit of the Muslim League it can be argued that many of the demands raised by it, demands that pertained to minority Muslim representation and which were viewed with such vehemence and denial by the Congress led national movement at the time, are today considered to be viable and perfectly legitimate safeguards and protective mechanisms for minorities. The demands made by the Muslim League pertaining to minority representation and safeguards seem extremely farsighted. Indeed, many of Jinnah’s apprehensions regarding the certainty and security of provisions for minority safeguards in independent India turned out to be true if one looks at the Constituent Assembly debates and the fact that provisions for minority rights were systematically watered down and diluted on the insistence of Congress leaders like Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.

Further, the Congress, especially at the lower provincial and district levels, where the influence of Nehru and Gandhi was more attenuated, was associated too closely with majoritarian Hindu communalism. This must have been a factor driving many of the Muslim masses into the waiting arms and welcoming embrace of the Muslim League. And how sincere and determined were the Congress attempts to prevent partition? There are many who would argue that partition was not a historical inevitability. There is one theory that suggests that Jinnah was using the demand for Pakistan as a bargaining counter to improve the political prospects of the Muslims League. Could the Congress have gone just that extra length to prevent the terrible tragedy of partition from having happened?

To go back to the paradigm shift that was just mentioned. This graduation to the demand for separate nationhood is precisely where the Muslim League needs to be faulted. It may not be right to attack the Muslim League for raising issues like minority safeguards, which to reiterate seem perfectly legitimate, judged especially in the light of the present day acceptance of such provisions. However, the demand for separate nationhood on the basis of religion was a recipe for disaster. As the demand for Pakistan acquired an unstoppable momentum the Muslim League, in a very Machiavellian fashion, raised religious frenzy to a fever pitch.

To understand just how fallacious and ill conceived the whole idea was it might be helpful to use a contrast. While the Muslim League can be credited for having been far-sighted in raising demands for minority safeguards, especially as these demands have become a subject of discussion for political theorists much later, its escalation of this demand to the level of separate nationhood was short sighted, myopic and indeed imprudent. Even as the demand for Pakistan was reaching its culmination there was no clarity in the League as to what this new nation would stand for. It was all things to all men; Islamist to some, secular to some others; capitalist for some and socialist for yet others.

The Muslim League must continue to bear a significant burden of the guilt for initiating and imparting momentum to an idea which should probably have been buried at the very moment of its birth. Many in the Muslim League, Jinnah included, dismissed with contempt the idea of Pakistan when it was conceived by the Cambridge student Chaudhary Rahmat Ali. Their contemptuous dismissal was on the lines that the idea of Pakistan was a crazy, chimerical and impractical scheme dreamt up by an over ardent Cambridge student and explained in a pamphlet entitled ‘Now or Never’. Yet the leaders of the Muslim League succumbed to the temptation of this idea. The fact that they succumbed to this idea is again a reflection of the western influences on the leadership of the League, the fact that they could be easily susceptible to western ideas of territorial nationhood. Remarkably the territory of this new state was not only ‘moth eaten’ according to some, but also divided by the vast stretch of ‘Hindu India’. It was a state that was doomed to failure right from the beginning. The follies of the separate nationhood theory of the Muslim League became obvious immediately after the creation of Pakistan. The most glaring and obvious instance of the innate weakness and outright imprudence of this nationhood based on religion was the breaking away of East Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh. Perhaps Jinnah should have obstinately stuck to the idea of a united India, whatever may have been the roadblocks. Perhaps, Jinnah should never in his politics have made the paradigm shift from the demand for minority rights to separate statehood. Had he kept his and the politics of the Muslim League confined to the framework of minority rights he would never have become the Quaid-e-Azam, but he would definitely have made a significant and lasting contribution to Indian secularism. This would have been a contribution that might have just made Indian secularism that much more secure. He could indeed have imparted that strength, vigour and vitality to Indian secularism, which Nehru alone could not give.

Partition: a fresh appraisal

 In considering whether Jinnah and the League were responsible for the partition of India by raising the cry of Pakistan, it is necessary to ask, and answer, two questions: First, were the fears of the Muslim community that it would be permanently dominated by a `Hindu Raj' genuine? If so, was the community entitled to effective and not mere paper safeguards against such permanent domination? That the fears of the Muslim community were genuine is beyond dispute. The Desai-Liaquat Ali Pact, the Sapru Committee Report, Azad's letter to Gandhi, as well as his interview with the Cabinet Mission, and the interview of the Nationalist Muslims with members of the Mission, all recognized that those fears were genuine.

The Cabinet Mission was also satisfied that those fears were acute and genuine, and underlay the Muslim League's demand for Pakistan. But the Sapru Committee, Azad, the Nationalist Muslims and the Cabinet Mission whilst recognizing those fears, nevertheless rejected Pakistan as a solution for removing them. All the witnesses before the Cabinet Mission, except the Muslim League, had supported a Constitution for a united India. Equally, most of them had recognized that the fears of the Muslims of being dominated by a `Hindu Raj' required effective safeguards, and `parity', or near `parity', with a minimal federation appeared to furnish effective safeguards.

The Cabinet Mission Plan, as intended by the Mission, if worked in the spirit of goodwill, supplied effective safeguards, and Jinnah recognized this when he accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan. However, the Hindu Mahasabha, and eminent Hindu leaders of the Congress, like Gandhi, Nehru and Patel (disregarding the views of Sapru, Azad and the Nationalist Muslims) considered parity as `undemocratic' because they took democracy to mean `one man, one vote.' They forgot that if, as they firmly held, the unity of India was the paramount object to be achieved in framing a new Constitution, theory would have to yield to the need to provide effective safeguards for a community of nine crores.

When Dr S.P.Mukherji and Mr Bhopatkar, as representatives of the Hindu Mahasabha, met Cripps and Alexander on 15 April 1946, Cripps made this point when he told Dr Mukherji that:

.... The Hindus were in an overall majority in India and must be prepared to make the maximum concessions. The principle of majority rule, which the Mahasabha invoked in their Memorandum, could not be applied in an unmodified form where there was a perpetual majority and a perpetual minority.

It is reasonably clear that it was the Congress which wanted partition. It was Jinnah who was against partition, but accepted it as the second best...

...In 1985, Dr Ayesha Jalal published The Sole Spokesman Jinnah, The Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan. Her carefully researched and well documented thesis propounded the paradox that `It was the Congress that insisted on partition. It was Jinnah who was against it.' In this context she developed a related theme, namely, that what Jinnah was really after was `parity' between Hindus and Muslims in the Central Legislature and the Central Executive as the only effective safeguard against a permanent domination of the Muslims by an overwhelming and permanent Hindu majority...

Was partition inevitable?

The question has been asked, was the partition of India inevitable? Opinions on this point have differed. After the Congress committed the grave error of refusing to form Coalition Ministries in 1937, the first opportunity of avoiding partition was after the 1937 Elections when Jinnah showed that he was not thinking of a separate State of Pakistan and made a public appeal to Gandhi to tackle the question of Hindu-Muslim unity. We have seen that Gandhi's reply was depressing because he said that he was in total darkness and cried to God for help to solve the problem and Gandhi's cry remained unanswered. The second opportunity of avoiding partition was the Desai-Liaquat Ali Pact which, had it been implemented with goodwill, might have broken the deadlock. The repudiation of Bhulabhai Desai by the Congress put and end to the hope of repairing the damage which had been done in 1937. One more opportunity remained. It was seized by Azad when he put his ideas before the Cabinet Mission, and succeeded in persuading the Congress Working Committee to adopt his plan. The Cabinet Mission Plan remained substantially the same as Azad's, it would have secured a untied India, and the compulsory grouping scheme in the three sections would have given the Muslims all that they could get from Pakistan, without the penalties, perils and burdens flowing from a Pakistan separated from India. It was this idea which, when propounded by Azad, commended itself to the Cabinet Mission. This opportunity of keeping India united was lost, first, because the Congress accepted the plan with a qualification which destroyed its value for the Muslim League; secondly, because of the failure of the Mission and, later, of the British Government to make their intention clear before damage had been done by allowing the Congress reservations about the Cabinet Mission Plan to remain outstanding for over months. Patel rightly complained about this delay, and expressed.. regret the HMG did not state their position earlier if their present statement (of 6 December 1946) represented their intention Congress is now put in a very difficult position vis-a-vis Assam and Sikhs. In any rational sense, partition was not inevitable. It became inevitable because Hindu leaders, including a leader as eminent as Nehru failed to realize that by 1946 `the Muslim League dominated the Muslims as the Congress dominated the Hindus, and that the Congress and the League would have to live and work together if India was to remain united.

— H. M. Seervai

Partition of India Legend and Reality

(The author was Advocate General of Maharashtra, India. His magnum opus The Constitutional Law of India has been acclaimed has a classic.

In 1994, the International Bar Association conferred on Seervai the award of Recognition as a Living Legend of Law)

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