CHAPTERS FROM HISTORY: Students’ role in the Pakistan movement
By Sharif al Mujahid
THE All India Muslim Students Federation (AIMSF) was the most formidable pressure group in League’s favour. Jinnah served as a role model to students who took to him as to no one else. Indeed, the adherence of the youth to the Muslim League had far reaching consequences in terms of building up the League as a mass organization and of vastly strengthening Jinnah’s claim to supreme leader of the Muslims.
Between 1937 and 1946 there were many occasions when the leading provincial chiefs such as Fazlul Haq, Khizr Hayat Khan Tiwana and G.M. Syed had revolted against the League and had challenged Jinnah’s leadership. Vocal and activist as they were, the students would issued hundreds of statements and pass scores of resolutions challenging the provincial leadership. They would organize protest meetings and marches, discrediting it in the process, in the process confirming the invincibility of Jinnah’s leadership. That is why, for fear of student demonstrations, the provincial leaders wouldn’t dare show themselves in public. In a large measure, the students served as a counterpoise to the rebel regional elites, and played a crucial role in sustaining Jinnah in his singular leadership.
Ancillary to this was their role in provinces, where the League was moribund, had become temporarily eclipsed, or, in those provinces where the League was torn by personal and factional feuds. In the former set of provinces — more notably in the Punjab and Bengal — the All India Muslim Students Federation served, in a sense, as a substitute to the provincial League. The Federation took upon itself the onerous task of advancing Jinnah’s marathon campaign to win over the Muslim masses for the Muslim League and for Pakistan, over the head of their traditional provincial leaders. The students helped to generate enthusiasm, galvanize the masses behind the League and its demand for Pakistan, providing momentum to the ongoing Pakistan movement. In the latter set of provinces, as in Madras, they steered themselves clear of the internal feuds and factions. Instead, they pressurised the feuding leaders to compose their differences. At the same time the Federation kept the central League abreast of the provincial developments, and worked to ensure justice to the aggrieved factions in the provincial Leagues in the award of League tickets in the 1945-46 elections. Because Jinnah listened to the students, as he did to no other organized group, the provincial leadership was ever anxious to keep their internal differences and feuds within the critical range and present a semblance of unity — a posture, which was crucial for the furtherance of the cause of Muslim unity and of Pakistan.
On another plane, the students helped to offset the consequences of a somewhat feudal-oriented provincial League leadership, by providing a progressive streak to the Pakistan movement. They injected new blood and new ideas into the League organization, giving it new dynamism. They worked for a change as against the status quoism of the old guard. They staged a demonstration in favour of the abolition of zamindari (absentee landlordism) when the UP League Working Committee was meeting at Allahabad in 1945. Members of the Federation influenced the Punjab League to draw up a progressive manifesto, while at the same time they presented the Pakistan demand in progressive and modernistic terms in their writings and speeches. In addition, all through the Pakistan movement they served as an interpersonal communication link between the supreme leadership at the top and the amorphous, faceless masses at the bottom of the political pyramid. And, as opinion leaders to elucidate the Pakistan ideal in local and immediate terms. This process came to be accelerated during the election campaign when they jumped into the foray on Liaquat’s call, given presumably on Jinnah’s behalf, at Aligarh on September 22, 1945. Thus, a camp was set up at Aligarh, to train student volunteers for election purposes.
Similar camps were shortly set up at Dacca University and at the Islamia College at Calcutta, Lahore and Peshawar. Even as the provincial elections neared, students from colleges and universities from elsewhere also fanned out in thousands, campaigning for the League. In the Punjab the entire countryside was literally swamped by student volunteers, and during the Christmas week (1945) over 2,000 students from Punjab alone were in the field. They were also to establish contact with the rural masses in a real sense. This explains why, apart from the League-oriented ulema, who were traditionally looked upon as opinion leaders, the students were in such a great demand in various constituencies for election work.
While on the one hand the students raised the tone and tenor of the political debate, on the other their participation energized the movement and exalted the image of the Muslim League. But for the enthusiastic support of the Muslim youth it is extremely doubtful whether Jinnah would have committed the League to the direct-action programme in July 1946. He largely depend on them for its success. This faith was vindicated to the hilt during the civil disobedience movements during early 1947 in Punjab, Frontier and Assam. Indeed, if any segment among the Muslim population served as the vanguard of the Pakistan movement, it was the Muslim youth. And that is saying a good deal.
