Chapter 12
Lending League a Hand
WE HAVE seen that the first stones of the Muslim League structure in
NWFP were laid by the mullahs. Maulana Shakirullah of Nowshera and
Maulana Mohammad Shuaib of Mardan became the Muslim League president
and secretary respectively. Both these Maulanas had a direct link
with the provincial governor Sir George Cunningham as revealed by
the latter’s own diaries.
Gradually, however, the British considered it wiser to separate the
two fronts. The religious one they handed to mullahs and pirs and
the political to the landed and titled aristocracy, the Khan
Bahadurs and jagirdars. The latter by and by assumed the reins of
Muslim League. They included Khan Bahagur Kuli Khan, Khan Bahadur
Ghulam Haider Khan Sherpao, Nawab Zafar Ali and Taj Ali of Bannu.
Among the mullahs, some, like Pir Saheb Manki Sharif and Pir Zakori
Sharif, actually joined the Muslim League, but others decided to
play Britain’s political game from the religious platform.
There was one advantage for Britain in working through the latter.
They could also operate in the tribal areas which were closed both
to political workers and to political message through newspapers
etc.
Seeing that he could use the mullahs whenever and for whatever
purpose he liked, Cunningham set them up against the Khudai
Khidmatgars. In a report dated August 24, 1943 he writes:
As a result of this propaganda the Yousafzai mullahs, who used to be
professionally anti-government, became first anti-Russia and
anti-Germans and then anti-Japanese and natural consequence
anti-Hindu and anti-Congress… The Muslim League successes in these
by-elections are generally accepted as being a victory for the
British government over the subversive elements in the country.
The Khudai Khidmatgars were still creating problems for the British.
When alongside the civil disobedience movement they also resigned
from the provincial ministry, governor’s rule had to be imposed
here. Although this was predominantly a Muslim province, Muslim
League hadn’t existed here until the last election and thus had no
member in the provincial Assembly. This was a big handicap for the
British.
The viceroy wrote on January 16, 1940, that Mr. Jinnah had come to
see him, and he had asked him whether following the resignation of
Khan Sahib’s ministry there was a possibility of another government
being formed. Mr. Jinnah had said he could give an answer only after
consulting his colleagues. But he had also added that it would be
best if the provincial governor took interest in the matter. After a
month Mr. Jinnah met the viceroy again and reported that he had
arrived at the conclusion that it was not possible for the Muslim
League to form a ministry itself but if the governor gave help the
chances could develop. The viceroy’s letter dated February 6, 1940,
went on:
Mr. Jinnah added that he was most anxious, if possible, to put this
through, as he was convinced that there could be no more salutary
lesson for Congress, and no better advertisement of the real
position in India, whether before the country or throughout the
world, than that a non-Congress ministry should be established in
the NWFP. He was therefore most anxious to bring this matter to a
successful issue.
The Muslim League and the British both wanted it to be accepted that
the Congress was a Hindu organisation and Muslim League the sole
representative of the entire country’s Muslims. Obviously, this view
got upset by the fact that NWFP had a Khudai Khidmatgar ministry
which was nom-Muslim league and therefore both wanted that the
province was somehow placed safely in the League hands.
The viceroy reassured Mr. Jinnah and told him that he would have a
word with the governor along the lines suggested by Mr. Jinnah.
This story is taken up by Sikander Mirza who was then the deputy
commissioner of Peshawar. He relates an incident of March 1943 in
his autobiography. He says that once he went on a hunting trip with
the Nawab of Bhopal. On the way back they went to see Nawabzada
Liaquat Ali Khan who asked Sikander Mirza to go and see the
Quaid-i-Azam.
Sikander Mirza then gives details of this meeting with the
Quaid-i-Azam. After establishing acquaintanceship the Quaid asked
him if he was a Muslim. He replied that his Islamic antecedents sent
to the time of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) himself. Then the Quaid asked
if he recognised him as the leader of the Muslims. He replied in the
affirmative. Then Mr. Jinnah said that whereas Muslim League did not
have a government in a single province of the country, he had been
urged to form one in NWFP. If he, Mirza helped him this could be
possible. Mirza there upon pleaded that he was merely a deputy
commissioners; the right person to ask for help would be the
governor.
He says that he further pointed out that Muslim League had no
existence at all in NWFP. Besides, the League leader there, Sardar
Aurangzeb Khan, had a very foul reputation. The Quaid replied that
whatever Sardar Aurangzeb’s qualities and regardless of the Muslim
League’s position in the province, it was duty to the Muslims of the
country that a Muslim League ministry was formed in the Frontier.
Sikander Mirza recalls that the governor was away in Kabul at the
time but as soon as he returned he called him over. He hadn’t even
sat down when the governor began saying that the government of India
was pressing on him to have a ministry formed in the province
immediately, and the aim was to prove that NWFP was not with the
Congress. The moment was also opportune because several of the
provincial Assembly members were at the time in jails following the
quit-India movement. Seven of the Khudai Khidmatgar Assembly members
were also under detention, and seven others had either died or been
removed from the movement.
The road was thus clear for the governor, who, Sikander Mirza
continues, asked Sardar Aurangzeb to try and form a government.
Mirza was not happy with the choice. His own eyes were on only one
man from Peshawar – Sardar Abdur Rab Nishtar, who was then in the
Ahrar movement which was strongly opposed to the Muslim League, and
by that token close to the Congress. Sikander Mirza recalls that
Sardar Nishtar did not much like Mr. Jinnah at that time; in fact on
one occasion in the Mahabat Khan mosque he had spoken to him very
harshly of the Muslim League leader.
However, Sikander Mirza called over Nishtar and appealed to him in
the name of Islam to cooperate. He eventually relented, resigned
from Ahrar, joined Muslim League, and was taken as minister in
Aurangzeb’s ministry. Sikander Mirza relates how this same Aurangzeb
once used to come and sit on the carpet before him, and got elevated
to the seat of chief minister ship through his effort. About
Aurangzeb, Cunningham also writes disparagingly in his diaries. Thus
on July 19, 1943:
Aurangzeb is extremely amenable and anxious to do as I want. He
seems to have forgotten that the function of a minister is to advise
the governor. Nearly every file comes from him with a note, “I
solicit the advice of H.E. the Governor.”
The fact is Aurangzeb and his men knew that they were in the
government through the courtesy of the British. Forming a Muslim
League government when there was not a single Muslim League member
elected to the Assembly could be the handiwork only of the British
and their deputy commissioner. However these Muslim Leaguers were
deeply divided amongst themselves. In connection with the minister
formation, Aurangzeb and the president of the provincial Muslim
League, Khan Bahadur Sa’abdullah Khan, fell foul of each other. The
governor himself got deeply worried over the mutual bickering. He
wrote on May 27, 1944:
There is no doubt that the name of the Muslim League administration
is simply mud nowadays over the scandalous way in which they buy
votes.
Muslim League had been in office for a year. Cunningham, somewhat
assured of its position, began releasing Khudai Khidmatgars from the
jail in ones. However, the League had become bitterly divided
against itself. One was the government faction led by Aurangzeb
Khan; the other comprised the deprived ones headed by Khan Saadullah
Khan. The rivalry came to the point that “In November 1944 Saadullah
Khan informed Jinnah that he could no longer support the ministry
and that if a no-confidence motion was moved he would vote in favour
of it” (Erland Janson, India, Pakistan or Pukhtoonistan, P 131).
The governor was doing his best so that the ministry held together.
He went to the extent of not convening the Assembly’s 1944 autumn
session on the plea that there was no business to dispose of. The
secretary of the Congress’ parliamentary party presented a
memorandum signed by 20 Assembly members to the governor to call the
Assembly into session so that a no-confidence motion could be
debated. But the governor turned it down. Eventually when the
avoidance tactics could no longer be persisted in and the house met
for the spring session of 1945, sure enough the Aurangzeb ministry
fell. Khan Bahadur Saadullah, true to his warning, voted against the
Muslim League government.
Cunningham and his men knew that the Aurangzeb ministry was causing
a sharp rift in the Muslim League ranks and was earning a very bad
name for the party. But the British could not at any cost afford to
give the impression that only the Congress or the Khudai Khidmatgar
enjoyed support in the province. The British now started working
directly through their own officials in the province and the tribal
areas.
Election in NWFP was held in February 1946. Congress obtained an
absolute majority. Not only that. What disappointed the British even
more was that the Congress won even the traditional Muslim seats.
The Muslim League as usual won all its support from Hazara where it
obtained 8 out of 9 seats. The British had worked on its behalf
everywhere. Several of the Government officials were open in their
clumsy canvassing for the League. The deputy commissioner of Bannu,
for instance, toured the whole district with his wife, and when
invited to receptions he would say, give dopatta to my wife, which
was supposed to mean, vote for Muslim League’. Besides, a lot of
money poured in from the country’s princely states; so did all the
effort of the mullahs and the Khan Bahadurs. It was in a way the
British’s own defeat that from the entire Mardan district, only
Nawab Hoti Sir Mohammad Akbar Khan won a seat for the Muslim League;
Peshawar also yielded only one seat; Bannu came up with no more than
two dopattas; and Kohat gave none at all.
The defeat had a particular edge in that the League campaigning had
largely been done in the name of Pakistan, and the vote had even
been made a contest between Islam and kufr. All the pir and mullah
partisans of the British were canvassing for Pakistan in the name of
Islam.
See that they could not prop up the Muslim League through
constitutional and democratic means the British started thinking of
other methods.
Jamiat-ul-Ulema had two of its members elected in Dera Ismail Khan.
Including these two, Dr. Khan Sahib got the support of 33 members,
as against 17 of the Muslim League, and thus had to be asked to form
the ministry.
About this time Sir George Cunningham completed his long tenure of
governorship and was replaced Sir Olaf Caroe. Caroe has been the
deputy commissioner of Peshawar during the trying period of 1930,
when he had dealt harshly with the Khudai Khidmatgars. After that he
had gone to Delhi and for several years remained secretary in the
department of external affairs at the centre.
In Delhi too a change had taken place. Lord Linlithgow had yielded
place to Lord Wavell. While leaving Linlthgow had said:
I think I can claim to be handing over to Wavell a pretty well set
stage so far as the political position is concerned, though one that
would need constant attention and a careful handling.
It was true that during his viceroyalty Linlithgow had substantially
determined the political fate of the country. When in June 1945 Lord
Wavell called a conference of the political leaders in Simla the
objective once again was to demonstrate to the world that Hindus and
Muslims could not resolve their differences so whom the British
could hand over powers to. The conference in other words was not
expected to ensure a settlement but to aggravate mutual rift.
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