Adil Najam
Ordinarily, I might have just posted this photograph below as a comment on yesterday’s post on Diwali celebrations in Karachi (also here). But please, just look at the people in this photograph; its way too interesting to be relegated to a comments section.
The occasion is a Diwali celebration at the Islamabad Headquarters of the Pakistan Muslim League, standing (and clapping) extreme left is Syed Mushahid Hussain, Secretary General of the Pakistan Muslim League, next to him is Ijaz ul Haq (Minister of Religious Affairs, and son of Gen. Zia ul Haq), fourth from left is Tariq Azim, State Minister for Information.
The Daily Times (31 October, 2006) provides more details of the event:
Members of the Hindu community from across the country participated in the event where they performed their religious rituals and traditional dances in candlelight to mark the event… A number of office bearers of the party and ministers, including PML Secretary General Mushahid Hussain Syed, Minister for Religious Affairs Ijaz-ul-Haq, State Minister for Information Tariq Azim, Minister for Minorities Affairs Mushtaq Victor and members of the National Assembly (MNAs) Bindara, Donia Aziz, Akram Masih Gill and others were present on the occasion. Officials of the Indian High Commission also participated in the event.
Hussain said that Quaid-e-Azam had envisioned a Pakistan where all the religious minorities enjoyed equal rights. He underlined the importance of inter-faith harmony for the greater prosperity of the nation and announced that the PML would also celebrate the birthday of Baba Gurunanak next week. He said that the minorities played a vital role in building any nation. He said that the present government was allocating high importance to giving all minorities’ equal. Hindus are playing a leading role in country’s economic development and the present government will leave no stone unturned to ensure their safety and well being, he added.
This is, of course, a political gesture – some might even say a gimmick. But if so, let us have more such gestures and gimmicks. They will, in time, hopefully help change our perceptions and treatment of religious minorities in Pakistan.
Dear Sridhar,
I agree that historical facts can be interpretted in many ways. Ultimately we must accept that it all depends on our point of view and perspective.
I look forward to your comments and a civilised debate on this issue.
Thanks for the response. There is a lot of content in your latest post and it will take me some time to digest it. Also, today happens to be an especially busy day. I therefore reserve comment (and will comment only if I think there is a need to respond to something).
I will only say this much for now – that there are several historical details that can only be inferred and for which there is no concrete objective evidence. Hence, at the end of this discussion, there may still be multiple viewpoints on historical events. I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing.
Sridhar sahab,
I am afraid I cannot agree with this view at all. Here are my views:
1. Maulana Mufti Mahmood was the father of Maulana Fazlurrahman, the Kingpin of Deoband Movement and the “father of Taliban”. Maulana Mufti Mahmood was Maulana Madni’s main man in NWFP and was against the Pakistan Movement and his son to this day – and I appreciate his intellectual honesty in this matter- always distances himself from the Pakistan Movement. So your purported difference may just be a difference of opportunity. In 1980s, the same deobandis were coopted by CIA and ISI (much in the Congress fashion) to fight against Russians. You will find that there were no Barelvis involved in that.
Your view that the deobandis of the 1940s were the best is – my friend- very honestly simply a matter of convenience. The same deobandis attacked Jinnah’s personal life and abused him for marrying a “kafira” i.e. Ruttie Petit Jinnah. So much for composite nationalism… One should be unbiased in one’s analysis. Maulana Madni’s “composite nationalism” aside…. I am sure you will appreciate that it was this unholy matrimony between the religious “Puritanical” right and Congress Party that even today plagues Muslim progress… was it not to preserve this old vote bank, that the Congress Party overturned the Shah Bano judgment of the Supreme Court of India?
You continously view the whole thing from an all India angle… but what were these deobandis’ views on women and their empowerment? Indeed- this was the original sin. Coopting them in the Khilafat movement – against wise counsels of Mahomed Ali Jinnah- was Gandhi’s first and biggest mistake vis a vis the Independence movement. Pakistan Movement was a massive rebellion of sorts by the Muslim masses against the clergy. The leadership of the Pakistan Movement was almost entirely worldly and unconcerned with religious theology. Infact… only by keeping religious theology away, did Jinnah manage to unite the deeply divided Shias, Sunnis, Ahmadis, Aga Khanis and others as one Muslim people…
2. I reject your contention that because Muslims were 1/3rd (actually their demand was 1/3rd representation – they were 22%-25% of the total population… it was always 3 to 1… ) they did not constitute a minority. Instead they constituted a significant minority that could change things when voting enmasse. The fact that this minority constituted a majority in 5 or 6 contigious provinces gave it a prima facie claim to right of self determination for a national homeland (given that British India itself was not one unified state) within or without India.
3. There is no comparison between BJP’s ideology which is essentially a majoritarian nationalism (and by definition fascism) … and Muslim League’s minoritarian nationalism which was essentially the best foot forward to meet Congress on its own ground. This new trend of equating pre-1947 Muslim League to BJP is easily rejected when one considers that Congress and Muslim League- with the mask off- simply represented the Hindu and Muslim Bourgeoisie interests respectively. BJP on the other hand represents only a section of the Hindu bourgeoisie and shares the lime light with the Congress Party. Here again the distinction between Majoritarian nationalism and minoritarian nationalism is important.
Here the most important distinction is that League pre-1947 was more a movement than a party… which is why it had the left, right, center and all sections of Muslim society.
4. I reject your contention of the causes behind Muslim League’s decay… ideally what should have happened- and for a while it looked like it would- that Muslim League should have been transformed into a Pakistan League … (which essentially the current Muslim League is) … and for a while it seemed like it would in post 1947 phase. However.. on 17th December 1947… a strange turn of events occured… whereby Muslim League did not change itself into Pakistan League and instead Jinnah resigned at its leader (because he opined as the head of the state he could not be associated with a “Muslim” League) passing the leadership to Khaliquzzaman.
However.. the subsequent bumbling of events has more to do with how long Muslim League had been going. Muslim League was founded in 1906 but in reality remained more or less an annual conference/platform type thing till 1936 … with the brief intervening period of 1927-1929 when it was itself divided into two factions pro-Congress Jinnah League and pro-British Shafi League. In 1936, after his return from England… Jinnah began to reorganise the Muslim League on Congress lines as a political party with an organisation and a hierarchy and a manifesto …. Hence as a proper political party, Muslim League only really was 11 years old when Pakistan came into being. 11 years is hardly any period to develop proper second tier leadership and after Jinnah, there were a few brilliant charismatic men and women but no one was as uncontroversial as Mahomed Ali Jinnah… Subsequently … we see that major political parties of Pakistan…
Awami League, Pakistan Peoples Party and even sections of the National Awami Party (which also had old Congress elements) all emerged out of the Muslim League. Similarly the Punjabi and Sindhi landowners and others- late entrants into the Muslim League… fashioned their own Muslim Leagues… Thus one cannot conclude that PML+ PML-N+ PML-F = Erstwhile Muslim League. Infact these three groups PML, PML-N and PML-F actually are more or less the old Unionist Party that had made its way into the Muslim League. Just to give you an example… the Tiwana Family is today gungho PML-Q …
This flip flop is not unique to the subcontinent… read the history of the United States and you’ll find a rather interesting flip flopping and twisting and turning there. For example… I am sure you are aware that in the 19th century it was the republicans who essentially led the emancipation of black people and Southern Democrats were the biggest proponents of slavery.
There is a difference between “puritanical” and “fanatical”. The Deobandis have always been more puritanical, but they have not uniformly been more fanatical either over time or across geographies. There is a world of difference between Deobandi scholars based in India today, and those based in Pakistan. There worldviews of an Indian Deobandi scholar like Maulana Madani and the Taliban are worlds apart. And as I said, the Deobandis of the 1940s were the best that we have seen of the religious movement in decades. The statement issued by the JUH where they explained their reasons for supporting the Congress is something any liberal today would embrace.
Secondly, a minority which is 1/3rd of the population is no minority, but one of the main majorities. This 1/3rd was not monolithic, but the same was the case with the so-called 2/3rds majority. The identity of a pre-1947 Indian was complex – based on language, caste/biradari, sect and of course religion. A monolithic definition of all Muslims in India as a monolithic “minority” was politically convenient, but as inaccurate and fictional as the definition by the BJP of a monolithic Hindu majority today.
It is my conjecture that just like the BJP’s narrow political definition could achieve success temporarily but eventually had to retreat (though it is not fully defeated yet), the AIML’s political definition would have had to retrait if not fail, if events had not been pushed along by a variety of factors unrelated to India, most important of which was the end of World War II and Britain’s inability/unwillingness to hold on to its colonial possessions. But of course, that is my conjecture and there is nothing I can present in the way of support for this, except perhaps to point to the disintegration of the AIML once its two strongest personalities were gone as tangential support.
PS: Anyone who has studied the differences between Barelvi and Deobandi Islam… knows that Deobandi Islam is much more religious fanatical than Barelvi religion can ever be. Other supporters of the Muslim League were Shias, Aga Khanis, Ahmadis etc.
Secondly Barelvis were part of the Muslim League… but religious parties Jamiat-e-Ulema-Hind, Jamaat-e-Islami, Majlis-e-Ahrar-e-Islam all stood against the League… these were the real forces of theocracy it must be remembered and taliban were ultimately recruited from the Deobandi Islam.