The Islamic Roots of Pakistan

A Nation Insufficiently Imagined? Debating Pakistan in Late Colonial North India
by Venkat Dhulipala
Indian Economic Social History Review July/September 2011 vol. 48 no. 3 377-405

This paper is a must-read.   But here is an excerpt, emphasis and {} added.  This is about how Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani put the idea of Pakistan in a Quranic/historic context, that helped the Muslim League win the 1945-46 elections

I'm told by a respected BRFer that

Jinnah & ML were able to 'recruit' such key conspirators as Usmani or the Pir of Manki Sharif (who won NWFP for the ML and also sent jihadists into J&K in October 1947) for their pet Pakistan project. Jinnah conceded space to these Islamists in order to win their support. In the previous page we saw how Jinnah promised allegorically to Mawdudi that the land he was acquiring can be used to build a mosque. But, with the Pir of Manki Sharif, who was more rustic and not sophisticated like Mawdudi, Jinnah was forced to spell out the exact details. The letter that Jinnah wrote to the Pir of Manki Sharif, in Naushera of NWFP, in which he said that Shariah will be imposed in Pakistan to manage the affairs of the Muslim Community, was produced in the Constituent Assembly in 1949 to support the Objectives Resolution.

In fact, the two Usmani brothers (Zafar Ahmed Usmani & Shabbir Ahmed Usmani) became the lynchpin during the critical phase before and after Independence. They became very close to Jinnah. Maulana Shabbir Ahmed Usmani had already apostatized Shi'a (and Jinnah was a Shi'a !). This Usmani was asked by Jinnah himself to raise the Pakistani flag in Karachi, the then capital, on August 14, 1947. It was this same Usmani who later drafted the Objectives Resolution. He also led the janazaa prayers of Jinnah (in the Sunni way) in public after Ms. Fatima Jinnah had secretly conducted the same in a Shi'a way.  Maulana Usmani famously demanded ‘jiziya’ from non-Muslims in the Constituent Assembly and told Pakistan’s first Minister for Law and Labour, Jogendra Nath Mandal, a Hindu, that non-Muslims should not hold such key posts in an Islamic state, an advice that a disgusted Mondal took to heart and resigned.

Review of Dhulipala's Creating a New Medina

Pratap Bhanu Mehta's review of Dhulipala's new book is here.

Venkat Dhulipala v Ayesha Jalal

It is a popular theory in some circles that the demand for Pakistan was merely a bargaining position that Jinnah took, and it was the stupidity of everyone else that they did not realize this, and ended up giving Jinnah Pakistan.   The most prominent exponent of this point of view is Ayesha Jalal.

Venkat Dhulipala has a book forthcoming, "Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India", and an excerpt from it was published in the Hindu.  It takes on the idea of Pakistan as a bargaining position head-on.

Connecting minor dots...

One of the small pleasures of this work is the connecting of minor dots.  In this case,  this is about some statement about Pakistan that M.A. Ispahani mentioned in a letter to M.A. Jinnah.

Briefly, in the Second Series, Volume X of Z.R. Zaidi's Jinnah Papers, item #28 is a letter from Ispahani to Jinnah, dated October 23, 1943. An excerpt:

At the last Food Conference in Delhi, Chhotu Ram and Baldev Singh, who attended the Conference on behalf of Punjab would not give in on the point of food supply to Bengal on the question of price. This had a very bad effect, so much so that you must have read in the papers what Lord Hailey had to say about Pakistan.

Muslim League nominees to the Interim Government 1946

A story of the Muslim League nominees to the Interim Government in October 1946,  and its later (mis)remembrance by Maulana Azad is spelled out here.

Jinnah-Suhrawardy April 1946

 In March 1946, the British impression was that Jinnah did not hold H.S. Suhrawardy in high regard.  The break between Jinnah and Suhrawardy became explicit and public only later in 1947.

The following is from The Transfer of Power, Volume VII, editors Mansergh and Moon, 23 March – 29 June, 1946, item #17 “Record of Meeting between Field Marshall Viscount Wavell, Cabinet Delegation and Provincial Governors on Thursday, 28 March 1946″.

Excerpt:

The Governor of Bengal (Sir Frederick Burrows) said that the election results would not be complete until the end of March…..Unfortunately, now that Sir Nazimuddin had withdrawn from politics there was no honest politician left. The probable Prime Minister in a Muslim League Government was Mr. Suhrawardy, though neither Mr. Jinnah nor anyone else thought very highly of him. The Governor thought it possible that Sir Nazimuddin might return to the leadership of the Provincial League party with Mr. Jinnah’s support, in which case Mr. Suhrawardy might go over to Congress.

An incident with Jinnah

M.S.M. Sharma was the editor of The Daily Gazette, Karachi, at the time of Partition.  He lasted in Pakistan till around January 1948, when he packed up and left for India, where he subsequently became the editor of The Searchlight, Patna.

Sharma wrote a book, published in 1954,  Peeps Into Pakistan.  The author's preface begins:

On my return to India from Pakistan in 1948, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel of beloved memory suggested that I should write a volume of my experiences in Pakistan in a reminiscent vein.  But the "Iron Dictator" qualified his command with a grave warning.  It was not until the last vestige of bitterness had subsided I should take up my pen.  I flatter myself I am not temperamental.  But it took me more than thirty months to expel every trace of bitterness that had taken possession of my soul as a result of my experiences of the early days of Pakistan.

Here is an incident Sharma relates regarding Jinnah.

Sind did become a separate and individual unit in its own right on the All Fools' Day, 1936.  Sir Lancelot Graham was appointed first Governor.....

Jinnah had hoped for much from Sir Lancelot Graham whom he had known pretty intimately in the Central Assembly in New Delhi.   The common bond between them was their hatred of Vithalbhai Jhaveribhai Patel, the elder brother of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.  An imperialist to his fingertips, Sir Lancelot who was then Secretary of the Legislative Assembly department in Delhi wagged his tail to Vithalbhai who was then President of the Central Legislative Assembly.  Vithalbhai cut the wagging tail.

In the old days, Jinnah and Vithalbhai had been inseparable friends.   That was in the heydays of the Home Rule movement.   Both of them also figured as fellow signatories of the famous Memorandum of the Nineteen—a document signed by 19 members of the Imperial Legislative Council and asking for a measure of provincial autonomy for India.  This was before 1919.  In the year 1919, Vithalbhai was in England in connection with the Government of India Bill on the parliamentary anvil.   So was Jinnah.   For the story I am repeating here I am obliged to the late Lord Burnham, the proprietor of the Daily Telegraph who, it would be recalled, toured India nine years later as a member of the Simon Commission.  I had to cover the early part of the Commission's tour and had good opportunities of knowing the commissioners, particularly Lord Burnham and Mr. Attlee.

Burnham's story was this.  He was the host at a party at which both Jinnah and Vithalbhai were guests among others.  Jinnah said something about beards.  The irrepressible Vithalbhai retorted in his usually lighthearted manner and referred to Jinnah as a Muslim renegade.  Jinnah himself never claimed to be an orthodox Muslim.   In fact, he prided himself that there was nothing in common between himself and "these fellows", as for instance, he told me at Gaya on July 9, 1939 when I saw him for a brief while when he had just emerged from the Bihar provincial league conference over which he had just presided.   It was one thing to crack a joke with Jinnah in strict privacy but it was a risk to do it in company.  Anyhow, the fact was that from that time onwards he looked upon Vithalbhai as his arch-enemy.   Sir Lancelot had no reason to be kind to Vithalbhai's memory. Jinnah thought that he and Lancelot Graham together could make strange bed-fellows, nevertheless bed-fellows for all that.

But what Jinnah did not realise was that, with all his faults, Lancelot Graham was a strictly constitutional governor.  he would not call the League to form the ministry.