The Divide Is Complete

LEAVE the Muslims alone," warned Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the Muslim League president. His words were directed at Jawaharlal Nehru, president of the Congress, which had members of all communities among its ranks. Nehru’s sarcastic reply was: "What does the Muslim League stand for? Does it stand for the independence of India?" And Nehru himself went on to answer the question: "It represents a group of Muslims, no doubt highly estimable persons, in the higher regions of the upper-middle classes having no connection with the Muslim masses and few even within the lower-middle classes." His last sentence was acerbic: "May I suggest to Mr Jinnah that I come into greater touch with the Muslim masses than most members of the League." 

Jinnah neither forgot the words nor forgave Nehru for having uttered them. So, he tried to muster the support of all the Muslims. He thus approached different provinces. The exclusion of the League from the Congress United Provinces government after the 1937 elections had already reaped Jinnah a big harvest. Influential leaders like Khaliquzzaman, who still worked for amity between the Congress and the League, were now firmly on Jinnah’s side. So was Liaquat Ali Khan, who later became Pakistan’s first prime minister. The biggest catch was the Raja of Mohmudabad, a landlord who earned Rs 2 lakh a year at that time. He was appointed the League’s treasurer and it was at his house that Jinnah found a black Persian lamb cap, which came to be known as the ‘Jinnah cap’. It was distinctively different from the khadi ‘Gandhi cap’. Anything different, anything that made him convey a separate entity was to his liking.

With the United Provinces already in his bag, he went to Calcutta where the two state Muslim Leagues were vying for supremacy. He was able to get Dacca’s United Muslim League Party in his League. But Fazlul Haq, the Bengal premier, and his Krishak Proja Samiti were a hard nut to crack. He first joined the League but left it to carve out a separate entity. When he realised that he would lose the government, he joined the League.

Jinnah could not work out the same arrangement in Punjab. Sir Sikandar Hyat Khan, the prime minister of Punjab, was too powerful and too entrenched to be taken lightly. His Unionist Party, which had a majority in the Punjab legislature, included Hindus and Sikhs. The League, articulating the cause of Muslims, could not admit a party with a secular outlook. (Bengal was all right as it was too distant.) Jinnah struck a compromise. For Khan’s yes to his leadership, Jinnah gave full autonomy to the Unionist Party. It was a peculiar arrangement, but it was the price he had to pay.

I was a student at that time. My Muslim friends described how Jinnah sat glum and lonely when the Muslim League council passed the resolution for Punjab’s ‘autonomy’ amidst ‘thunderous cheers’. His plan was to bring all Muslim leaders on one platform to prove to the Congress, especially Nehru, that the League, and more importantly he himself, represented Muslims. He went about his business relentlessly and with an evangelist-like zeal. 

Once the best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, Jinnah was now an inveterate separatist. He said in his presidential address to the Lucknow meeting in 1937 that the Congress governments "were pursuing a policy which is exclusively Hindu" and that "the Muslims cannot expect any justice or fair play at their hands". He declared: "The present leadership of the Congress, especially during the last 10 years, has been responsible for alienating the Mussalmans of India." 

A year later, he appointed an inquiry committee to report on the omissions and commissions of the Congress governments—the Hindu Raj, as he used to say. What came to be known as the Pirpur Report (since the chairman of the committee was Raja Sayed Mohammed Mehdi of Pirpur) said that the Congress failed "in spite of its oft-repeated resolution of guaranteeing religious and cultural liberty to the various communities because its actions are not in conformity with its words". A Muslim League committee from Bihar, in the Shareef Report, gave an account of "atrocities perpetrated by Hindus at various places in Bihar". No doubt these reports were exaggerated but they did reflect the mood of the Hindus at the time. After centuries of subjugation, first by Muslims and then by the British, they felt emancipated though they were enjoying only limited self-rule. 

Maulana Azad of the Congress, in his book India Wins Freedom, criticised the Pirpur Report: "Stories of atrocities circulated by the Muslim League were pure invention but two things happened at that time which left a bad impression about the attitude of the Provincial Congress Committees." The Maulana mentions how Nariman, leader of the Congress in Bombay, was denied the state’s premiership because he was a Parsi. The position was given to a Hindu, B.G. Khar. Similarly, Dr Syed Mahmud should have been Bihar’s first Congress chief minister. But Sri Krishna Sinha, a Hindu, was asked to head the government.

 Jinnah used the Pirpur and Shareef Reports to highlight the differences between the Hindus and the Muslims and made it appear as if the Congress governments were wreaking vengeance on a "helpless Muslim minority". When Congress legislators began resigning in October ’39 to protest against Britain’s declaration of war in India’s name without consulting them, Jinnah celebrated it as a "day of deliverance and thanksgiving". To the surprise of the Congress, many non-Muslims, including Hindus, joined in the demonstration.

By this time Jinnah had already joined issue with Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru and had given ample evidence that he wanted to plough a parochial furrow. When Gandhi wrote to Jinnah to enquire: "Are you still the same Mr. Jinnah... the staunchest of nationalists and the hope of both Hindus and Muslims?" he wrote back: "Nationalism is not the monopoly of any single individual and in these days it is very difficult to define it." 

Again, when Gandhi conferred on Jinnah the title, Quaid-e-Azam, the latter merely said: "What is in a prefix? After all, a rose called by any other name smells just as sweet." In reply to Nehru’s letter of April 16, 1938, saying that "the Muslim League is an important communal organisation... but other organisations, though they might by younger and smaller, cannot be ignored," Jinnah said: "Your tone and language display the same arrogance and militant spirit, as if the Congress is the sovereign power. Unless the Congress recognises the Muslim League on a footing of complete equality and is prepared as such to negotiate for a Hindu-Muslim settlement, we shall have to wait and depend upon our inherent strength."