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IT is often said that the twentieth is the century of nationalism as it witnessed a phenomenal growth in national feelings, especially in Asia and Africa.
In the Indo-Pak subcontinent, in the early decades of the 20th century some historical events and political occurrences, such as the Jalianwala Bagh Tragedy and Khilafat Movement, gave rise to nationalism. But the short-lived Hindu-Muslim unity during the Khilafat Movement ended when nationalist feelings of both Hindus and Muslims took religious turn for certain reasons and the concept of cultural and religious identity was in place firmly. This notion of separate identity based on culture and religion proved to be one of the contributing factors in the creation of Pakistan. As put by Dr Khalid Bin Sayeed in his Pakistan: The Formative Phase: “The creation of Pakistan was the end product of Muslim anxiety at first to attain cultural and political autonomy within the framework of a federal India and later of bold assertion that Muslims, being a separate nation, must have a sovereign state” (Karachi, 1960, page 4).
While discussing the conflicting views about the creation of Pakistan, Dr Sayeed’s final analysis is: “But perhaps a dominant or decisive cause of Pakistan is that there has never taken place a confluence of the two civilisations in India — the Hindu and the Muslim. They have meandered towards each other here and there, but on the whole the two have flowed their separate courses — sometimes parallel and sometimes contrary to one other.” (page 9).
This rise of an intense sense of a separate Muslim identity can be traced back to the 1857 war of freedom and even beyond. The year 1867 will always be remembered as watershed in the history of the subcontinent as it was the year when Hindi-Urdu controversy was kicked up, sowing the seeds of a schism between Hindus and Muslims that was only to widen with the passage of time. It was perhaps a spillover effect of the growing revivalism in the 19th century as both Hindus and Muslims had launched revivalist movements. The Hindi-Urdu controversy, as wrote Aziz Ahmed in his Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment, “emphasised in their parallel and rival growths not fusion, but the deep-rooted spiritual antagonism of the two cultures” (Oxford, 1970, page 259).
Hindus began pressing for the exclusive use of Hindi as the language of administration at the lower level at the expense of Urdu. For the purpose, a movement was launched at Benares and Babu Fateh Chand formed a committee. Much to the dismay of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, who had long been advocating a unity between Hindus and Muslims for the joint efforts for the benefit of India, Babu Shiv Prasad, a writer of Urdu and a member of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s Scientific Society, asked Hindu members of the society to use Hindi instead of Urdu for carrying out the work of the society. Supporters of Hindi also opposed Sir Syed’s plan for a Muslim university. At this moment, Sir Syed realised that it was no more possible for the ‘two nations’ to go together, paving the way for his famous two-nation theory. In the words of Aziz Ahmed, “these developments lit the first spark of modern Muslim separatism in the mind of Sayyid Ahmed Khan” (page 260). So, Urdu, too, played a vital role in the creation of Pakistan.
Mentioning all those religious scholars, reformers, journalists, poets and writers who strengthened this sense of a separate Muslim cultural and political identity is simply not possible here. But we must remember Abul Kalam Azad whose initial message was the spread of Quranic teachings and solidarity with the Muslims fighting the Balkan wars and who played a role in instilling the idea among the Muslims that they were the part of a much larger world Muslim population. But what followed was nothing short of a total metamorphosis as Abul Kalam Azad joined the Indian National Congress and was convinced of a united Indian nation not based on religion, instead of united Muslim ummah that he previously favoured.
Poets of Urdu like Altaf Husain Hali, Akber Allahabadi, Allama Muhammad Iqbal and Zafar Ali Khan had been promoting the Muslim narrative of an identity since long and when Muslim League launched the idea of a separate Muslim country on the basis of a separate identity, it struck the chord with Muslims. Earlier, Muslims did have such an idea somewhere at the back of their mind but it was all vague. Iqbal’s 1930 Allahabad address was the earliest methodical presentation of the concept of a separate country for the Muslims of the subcontinent, although such ideas had been floated as early as in 1890s when Abdul Haleem Sharar, a journalist and novelist of Urdu, discussed in his magazine Dil Gudaaz the idea of establishing a separate Muslim state in the north-western parts of India.
Published in Dawn, May 12th, 2025
