While Iqbal articulated the demand for a Muslim state, it took Mohammed Ali Jinnah to put it into practice. The British were initially reluctant to divide the subcontinent, but through a mixture of brilliant advocacy skills and sheer obstinacy Jinnah got his way. Jinnah is a universally revered figure in Pakistan. You will see his image and his name depicted on buildings all over the country. He is often referred to as Quaid-i-Azam or the Quaid (Leader of the People or Great Leader).
At the turn of the century the Hindus and Muslims had been united in their struggle against the British. The Indian National Congress, which was formed in 1885 to put demands to the British, included members from both faiths. Nevertheless, in 1906 the Muslims founded another political organisation, the All-India Muslim League, ‘to protect and advance the political rights of the Muslims of India and respectfully represent their needs and aspirations to the Government’.
For a time the emphasis remained on unity. In 1916 Congress and the Muslim League agreed to the Lucknow Pact, under which they were to campaign for constitutional reform together. After the British massacred a crowd of unarmed protestors at Amritsar in 1919, the demands for greater self-governance turned into an insistence on full independence. The British responded with limited concessions, increasing the number of Indians in the administration and in self-governing institutions.
The Indian leaders could see that they were making progress. But as an independentIndia became a realistic prospect, tensions between the Muslims and Hindus grew. Mohammed Iqbal first raised the issue of a separate Muslim homeland in 1930. He argued that India was so diverse that a unitary form of government was inconceivable. Religion rather than territory, he said, should be the foundation of national aspirations. It was the first coherent expression of the ‘two-nation theory’ to which Pakistan still adheres.
Iqbal gave no name to his proposed nation. That was done by a student at Cambridge University, Chaudhry Rahmat Ali, who suggested it be called Pakistan. Taken as one word Pakistan means ‘Land of the Spiritually Clean and Pure’. But it was also a sort of acronym standing for Punjab, Afghania (North-West Frontier Province), Kashmir,Sindh and Balochistan.
By the late 1930s, Jinnah, who had previously argued for Hindu-Muslim unity, was convinced of the case for Pakistan. At its annual session in Lahore on 23 March 1940, the Muslim League formally demanded that the Muslim majority areas in northwestern and northeastern India should be autonomous and sovereign. With Congress strongly opposed, it was an issue only London could resolve. The man given the task was Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was appointed Viceroy of India in 1947. Shortly after arriving in Delhi he became convinced that the demand for Pakistan would not go away and that, despite all its objections, Congress would accept it as the price for independence.
Creating two new independent nations out of one imperial possession was not easy. Assets were divided, and a boundary commission appointed to demarcate frontiers. Cyril Radcliffe, a civil servant who had never visited India, bisected the complicated and deeply connected border areas in little over a month. British troops were evacuated and the military was restructured into two forces. Civil servants were given the choice of joining either country.
As the moment of Independence approached, huge numbers of people went on the move. Hindus, fearful of living in the new Pakistan, headed east. So too did the Sikhs. In the period before the British extended their influence to Punjab and Kashmir, the Sikhs had been the dominant power, controlling territory right up to the Afghan border. By 1849 the British military had defeated them and now, with Partition looming, they decided to move and make their future in India. The Muslims, meanwhile, were also leaving their villages and making for their new homeland.
It was the largest mass migration in modern times. Around eight million people gave up their jobs, homes and communities. Most travelled on foot or by train and in doing so risked their lives. Many never made it, becoming victims of the frenzied violence triggered by Partition. The scale of the killing was terrible: it’s estimated that up to a million people were butchered in communal violence. Trains full of Muslims, fleeing westwards, were held up and slaughtered by Hindu and Sikh mobs. Hindus and Sikhs fleeing to the east suffered the same fate. For those who crossed the rivers of blood that separated the two new nations and survived, the feeling of relief was intense. And on 14 August 1947, Pakistan and India achieved independence.
While the new leaders in India were able to pick up where the British left off, their counterparts in Pakistan had to build state institutions from scratch. The task was made all the more difficult because the one man in Pakistan who could command unquestioning loyalty – Jinnah – died 13 months after Independence. His successors were both incompetent and corrupt. It took them nine years to pass Pakistan’s first constitution. When General Ayub Khan took over in a coup in 1958, most Pakistanis were relieved that the politicians were being kicked out of office.
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