Chapter 23
The Loss of Kashmir
ONE-FIFTH of the area of India comprised the princely states. Some
two-fifths of the Indians, or 16 of the 40 crore (160 Of 400
Million), lived in those states. In all, there were about six
hundred states of various sizes. The Congress and the Muslim League
held almost opposite views on the determination of their future. The
congress had declared that the decision on a state's accession to
India or Pakistan should be made according to the wishes of the
people of the state. The Muslim League said no, that decision should
lie with the ruler of the state.
If we look at the map of British India, almost the whole country
would seem divided up among these princedoms. There were large areas
ruled by the rajahs and Maharajhas, princes and Nawab. There was one
as big as Nizam's Hyderabad Deccan-it was the size of Italy, and had
a population of almost two crores (20 Million).
Muslim League had in mind such states, as Hyderabad, Bhopal and
Rampur-ruled by Muslims but with a majority population of
non-Muslims. There were also the Kathiawar states of Junagarh,
Manavdar etc, of similar character. These states had no common
boundaries with Pakistan, yet they were not as far off as Dhaka was
from Karachi. So, according to the League logic, there was nothing
to bar them from acceding to Pakistan.
About its other view that it should be the rulers not the people who
should decide the fate of the states there could no surprise. The
Muslim League had never pressed for people's rights even against the
British; it couldn't now be expected to give precedence to the
wishes of Hindu subjects over Muslim Nawabs. Indeed, it had once
sought to impress of the British that the Muslims did not wish them
to leave India, but wanted them to stay on for some years. As Wavell
noted about Khan Liaquat Ali Khan:
He said that in any event we should have to stay for many years yet
and that the Muslims were not at all anxious that we should go.
Wavell: P/207
A majority in the Muslim League consisted of People who had been
siding with the British against the national aspirations. They were
not much concerned about the right of self-determination for the
common people. The curious thing was that even this issue of
accession of states was given a religious angle. It didn't occur to
them that in giving the rulers the last word they could be faced
with a problem in Kashmir. The maharajah there was a Hindu but the
majority of the populace was Muslim. Would there then be two
standards, one for Hyderabad Deccan, Bhopal, Rampur etc., and to
another for Kashmir?
In respect of Kashmir, the Indian too had a problem. Their
boundaries were not contiguous with the state. But that problem was
resolved for them by the Muslim League when it agreed on the
partition of Punjab. When the boundary Commission anounced its
award, it was seen that the Gurdaspur district has been given to
India. Thus India was provided a boundary with Kashmir. Since both
the Congress and the League had accepted the condition that they
would raise no objection about the commission's award, there was no
way that the decision over Gurdaspur could be called into question.
And when the Maharajah of Kashmir would declare his state's
accession to India, at least the Muslim League would be in no
position to denounce it as unacceptable. It had itself declared that
the rulers of the states had the right to decide on accession. Thus
it was the Muslim League itself had cleared the ground for Kashmir's
fate, and had, as it were, made a present of that state to India.
This was another Muslim majority area that the partition of Muslims
had caused to be lost for Pakistan.
Communal Politics and the Muslim League Ideology
Muslim League had emerged claiming to be the guardians of the rights
of India Muslims. The panacea it had proposed for all the
deprivations and hardships of the Muslims was separate state for
them, one which would not just be a Muslim state but an Islamic one.
There had to be a distinction between the two. There were scores of
Muslim states in the world, states where Muslims were in a majority.
An Islamic state on the other hand was one where Islamic rule would
prevail. The existing Muslim states had different forms of
government: there were kings, emperors, and dictators, as there were
political parties and parliamentary rule. The Muslim League had made
the claim that it wanted Pakistan to enforce a truly Islamic system
of justice and equality governing all social and economic relations,
and thus offer a model for the other Muslim countries of the world
to follow.
In support of its demand for a separate state Muslim League argued
that India had not one but two nations. It was thus for the first
time that the view was pressed that religious beliefs constituted
the basis of nationhood. Hindu and Muslims were two nations because
their beliefs were different, and so they must be partitioned on the
basis. Mr. Jinnah had offered that principle in explanation of the
Pakistan proposal in his speech of 1940.
The Hindus and Muslims belong to different civilisations which are
based mainly on conflicting ideas and conception… to yoke together
such two nations under a single system must lead to growing
discontent and finally to destruction of any fabric that may be sewn
up for the government of such a sate.
Chaudhry Mohammad Ali. The Emergence of Pakistan. P-39.
Until now the concept of nation had been related to state. A state
might have a number of communities, but the nation as a whole drew
its definition from the boundaries and the soil of the state. Take
Britain. People of a variety off faiths and communities live there.
They are all called British. Similarly everyone living in the U.S.
regardless of his belief, his origin, his community, is considered
an American, ditto in France, Germany, Italy etc. Even in the Middle
East, all the various religious groups are part of the nation that
is identified with their land. Lebanon's is a striking example where
Muslims and Christians have continued to live as Lebanese. Why go
any further than Iqbal himself who is credited with the concept of
Pakistan. In one of his couplets he has emphasised that religion
does not preach mutual hostility-we are all Hindi and our country id
Hindustan.
Let us go a little further and see what steps the Muslim League
adopted to have its views accepted, and what kind of conditions it
wished created in the country so that a state was formed in which
the rights of the Muslims were safeguarded and a bright future
assured for them. It was important for the latter objective to first
find out the causes for the Muslims' backwardness and deprivation;
in other words to identify the enemy.
The Muslim League had assumed the Hindu to be its enemy, and it was
on him that all its attention was concentrated. The honest fact,
however, was that the enemy of Muslims were the British. The first
historical reality was that it was the British who had seized the
country from the Muslims. And so, since the Muslims had been guilty
of insufficient care in maintaining the independence of the country
it was their responsibility to be vigilant against the usurpers
until they could take back the country from them and restore its
freedom. Thus instead of Hindus it should have been the British who
should have in the Muslim eye been the hostile element in the
country.
Secondly, Britain had not wronged the Muslims only in India. It was
chasing them all round the globe. Wherever it could, it destroyed
them. From the so-called crusades against Salahuddin Ayubi it had
fixed on the Muslims as its quarry. It had just split up the Ottoman
Empire and parceled it out amongst its own proteges.
Besides, after having seized India had the British wronged only the
Hindus? Made only Hindus their slaves? Snatched only the Hindu
child's share of bread to feed their own children? The fact was, the
whole nation was getting equally ground in the colonial millstone.
Hindus could not be separated from the Muslims. It thus looked
strange to students of politics that a political party had emerged
on the national scene which did not consider the British as the foe
but the Hindus who were themselves being crushed under the weight of
alien. Not only that. An atmosphere was created so that the
imperialist power was even being considered a friend and
well-wisher, and there was a readiness to do its bidding, even to
the extent that a Muslim soldier felt no qualm in training his gun
at the Holy Ka'aba at the behest of the British master.
One corollary of this anti-Hindu attitude of the Muslim League was
that all those opposed to the British became suspect in the League's
eye. On the one side were those ghazis and mujahideen who, blessed
by the teachings of Deoband Darul Uloom and the light of true Islam,
were lined up in jihad against the heretical British. On the other
side were the nationalist Muslims who, fired by the nationalist
spirit and the country's interests, were fighting to wrest freedom
from the foreign rulers. Both these categories were denounced by the
Muslim League as traitors and were declared ousted from the pale of
Islam.
This was thus the first flaw of Muslim League's communal politics-it
erred in identifying its enemy; its diagnosis of the ailment was
wrong. Naturally, the advantage of it all went to the British.
The Muslim League leaders claim in support of their two-nation
theory that its basis was laid by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan who had
founded the Aligarh Muslim University in opposition to the Islami
Darul Uloom of Deoband. But a little research would reveal a
different view. Several of his speeches are totally opposed to that
theory. Some of these speeches may be found in Makhdoomzada Hassan
Mehmood's book 'A Nation is born'. On page 339 there is this address
of January 27, 1884, in Gurdaspur.
We, that are Hindus and Mohammandans, should try to become one heart
and soul and act in Unison…
In old historical books and traditions you'll have read and heard,
and see it even now, that all the people inhabiting one country are
designated by the term one nation.
The different tribes of Afghanistan are termed as one nation and so
the miscellaneous hordes peopling Iran distinguished by the term
Persians, though abounding in a variety of thought and religious,
are still known as members of one nation. Remember that the words
Hindus and Mohammadan are meant for religious distinction, otherwise
all who reside in this country are all in this particular respect
belong to the same nation.
These are the different grounds upon which I call both these races
which inhabit India by one word, that is, Hindu, meaning to say that
they are the inhabitants of Hindustan.
Thus Sir Syed went to the extent of abandoning even the term
'Mohammadan' and declaring that whoever lived on the Indian soil, no
matter what his faith, could be described as Hindu.
A similar view is also taken by Sir Mohammad Iqbal. He calls
everyone 'Hindi' and the land as 'our Hindustan', and points out
that religion does not teach discord amongst people of the same
soil. Religion and religious teachings do not change: such at least
is the faith of the Muslims, who believe that after the Holy Prophet
our religion had been completed. How then could religious belief
change with political views?
This presents the model of the unity and amity he wanted to see
prevail between Hindus and Muslims. He envisaged the zinar, the Holy
thread worn by the Hindus across their shoulder, threading the beads
of tasbih sacred to the Muslims. That is the kind of religious
tolerance and co-existence he had in mind for two communities and
went on to add that anyone who looked on these symbols of the two
religions separately from each other had no sight in his eyes.
The fact however, is that the Muslim League through its various
resolutions and through Mr. Jinnah's numerous speeches had made the
two-nation theory the basis of its politics. Thus the party had
confined its politics to only the Muslims; the rest of the Indian
were not its concern; in other words it did not claim to be
nationalist in the Indian context.
The diagnosis in sum was that Hindus not British were the enemy of
Muslims and the cure was that following the two-nation theory India
should be divided and Pakistan formed. This was supposed to answer
all the problems of the Muslims. It should now be asked how well in
actual fact this diagnosis and the prescription proved a cure for
the ills of the Muslims.
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