On 84th Anniversary of Anti-Pakistan 1940 Azad
Muslim Conference of Indian Muslims
The
search for the real culprits behind the Partition of India in 1947 seems to be
an endless exercise. It is despite the fact that there is no dearth of writings
on the Indian Freedom Struggle against the British rule in India and specially
partition of the country on the basis of religion.
Historians
have rightly held the Muslim League, led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, basically
responsible for this unnatural and tragic Partition which became a kind of
license for both Hindu and Muslim communal elements to indulge in mass butchery
of innocent children, women and men.
However,
there has always been a school of historiographers under the influence of
Hindutva which has been spreading the canard that all Muslims in pre-Partition
days supported the Muslim League’s call for Pakistan. Hindutva tries to cover
up the fact that it subscribed to the two-nation theory like Muslim League long
before the latter subscribed to it and wanted to have an exclusive ”Hindu
Rashtra” on the lines of ”Islamic State” of Muslim League.
Unfortunately,
this kind of discourse has secured more credibility specially among the Hindu
middle class with the recent upsurge of anti-minorityism led by Hindutva fascism.
The crucial fact should not be missed here that Hindutva has mainly succeeded
in its attempts because facts of significant contributions of those Muslim
individuals and organisations that opposed Muslim League with all their
resources and might remains buried even today. This criminal silence on the
part of the secular state and organisations has only galvanised the Hindu
communalists to malign the Muslims of India.
One
such example is of Allah Bakhsh who at the grassroots level among Muslims of
India organised an effective and massive opposition to the nefarious designs of
Muslim League in pre-Partition days. Allah Bakhsh was the Premier (those days
chief minister was known by this designation) of Sind during the eventful days
of ‘Quit India’ Movement of 1942 as head of the ‘Ittehad Party’ (Unity Party)
which did not allow Muslim League to have any foothold in the Muslim majority
province of Sind. Allah Bakhsh and his Party were not part of the Indian National
Congress but when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made a derogatory
reference to the Indian freedom struggle and the ‘Quit India’ Movement in a
speech in the British Parliament, Allah Bakhsh renounced in protest all titles
conferred by the British Government.
While
announcing this renouncement he stated: “It is the cumulative result of the
feeling that the British Government does not want to part with power. Mr.
Churchill’s speech shattered all hopes.” The British administration could not
digest this dissent of Allah Bakhsh and he was removed from office by the
Governor, Sir Hugh Dow, on October 10, 1942. This great sacrifice of a Muslim
leader for the freedom of the country remains unknown even today.
The
fact that Nathu Ram Godse, closely associated with Hindu Mahasabha, VD Savarkar
and the RSS killed MK Gandhi on January 30, 1948 is known by all but how many
of us know that Allah Bakhsh a great fighter for the independence of a united
India and prolific opponent of the idea of Pakistan was murdered on May 14,
1943, in Sind by professional killers hired by the Muslim League. Allah Bakhsh
needed to be liquidated because he was able to muster massive support of common
Muslim masses throughout India against Pakistan. Moreover, Allah Bakhsh as a
great secularist with massive support in Sind and opposed to the formation of
Pakistan could prove to be the greatest stumbling block in the physical formation
of Pakistan as without Sind, the ‘Islamic State’ in the west of the country
just could not have materialized.
It
is a well-known fact that dismissal of Allah Bakhsh Government in 1942 and his
murder in 1943 paved the way for entry of Muslim League in Sind. One could see
the open ganging up of the British rulers and Muslim League in political and
physical liquidation of Allah Bakhsh and his kind of anti-communal politics. It
is important to remember that after the assassination of Allah Bakhsh Hindu
Mahasabha led by Savarkar joined the coalition government in Sind led by Muslim
League.
Sind
Muslim League leader M A Khuhro was put on trial as the main conspirator in the
killing of Allah Bakhsh. He was found not guilty, as the state could not
produce an ‘independent’ witness to prove his involvement. Significantly, it
was the same ground on which Savarkar secured acquittal in Gandhiji’s murder
case later.
It
really needs a serious inquiry that why powerful anti-two nation political
trend led by Allah Bakhsh among Indian Muslims got pushed to oblivion. It
suited the British masters and both Hindu-Muslim communalists. They saw India
as a land of perpetual conflicts among religions. But the Indian secular state,
which has the name of Sind in its National Anthem, became totally unmindful to
this legacy which stood for a secular, united and democratic India. Allah Bakhsh
spent all his life countering communal politics of Muslim League and its
two-nation theory. In fact he laid down his life for this cause.
Within
5 weeks of the Pakistan resolution of the Muslim League at Lahore, Indian
Muslims organized MUSLIM AZAD CONFERENCE in Delhi (Queen's Park, Chandni Chowk)
between April 27-30, 1940 (it was to conclude on April 29 but was extended by
one day due to tremendous participation and large number of issues to be
deliberated) with 1400 delegates from almost all parts of India attending it.
The leading light of this conference was former Premier of
Sind, Allah Bakhsh who presided over the conference was one of such
heroes. The major Muslim organizations represented in this conference were
All India Jamiat-ul-Ulema, All India Momin Conference, All India
Majlis-e-Ahrar, All-India Shia Political Conference, Khudai Khidmadgars, Bengal
Krishak Proja Party, All-India Muslim Parliamentary Board, the Anjuman-e-Watan,
Baluchistan, All India Muslim Majlis and Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadis. The Azad Muslim
Conference was attended by duly elected delegates from United Province, Bihar,
Central Province, Punjab, Sind, NWF Province, Madras, Orissa, Bengal, Malabar,
Baluchistan, Delhi, Assam, Rajasthan, Delhi, Kashmir, Hyderabad and many native
states thus covering the whole of India.
There
was no doubt that these delegates represented “majority of India’s Muslims.” Apart
from these organizations a galaxy of leading intellectuals of Indian Muslims
like Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari (who was in the forefront of struggle against the
communal politics of Muslim League, died in 1936), Shaukatullah Ansari, Khan
Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Syed Abdullah Brelvi, Shaikh Mohammed Abdullah, AM Khwaja
and Maulana Azad were associated with this movement against Pakistan.
Jamiat and other Muslim organizations produced large number of booklets in Urdu
against Two-nation theory and in support of co-existence of Hindus and Muslims
in India.
The
conference resolved that Pakistan scheme was “impracticable and harmful to the
country’s interest generally, and of Muslims in particular.” The conference
called upon Muslims of India “to own equal responsibilities with other Indians
for striving and making sacrifices to achieve the country’s independence.” Muslims
like Allah Bakhsh who opposed the Muslim League and challenged its communal
politics had done thorough home work as will be clear from the contents of
presidential address delivered in Urdu by Allah Bakhsh at Delhi Conference. He
advanced historical facts to counter postulations of Muslim League and invited
its leadership to respond to the ideological issues raised.
While
decrying the concept of a theocratic state itself he said stated:
“It was based on a false understanding that India is
inhabited by two nations, Hindu and Muslim. It is much more to the point to say
that all Indian Mussalmans are proud to be Indian Nationals and they are equally
proud that their spiritual level and creedal realm is Islam. As Indian
nationals-Muslims and Hindus and others, inhabit the land and share every inch
of the motherland and all its material and cultural treasures alike according
to the measure of their just and fair rights and requirements as the proud sons
of the soil…It is a vicious fallacy for Hindus, Muslims and other inhabitants
of India to arrogate to themselves and exclusively proprietary rights over
either the whole or any particular part of India. The country as an indivisible
whole and as one federated and composite unit belongs to all the inhabitants of
the country alike, and is as much the inalienable and imprescriptible heritage
of the Indian Muslims as of other Indians. No segregated or isolated regions,
but the whole of India is the Homeland of all the Indian Muslims and no Hindu
or Muslim or any other has the right to deprive them of one inch of this
Homeland.”
He
made it clear that communalism was the creation of high castes among Muslims
and Hindus. According to him:
“These feelings and ambitions among those who hope to
constitute the ruling caste among Hindus or Muslims, as successors of the
present Imperial Rulers [the British], revive and invent excuses for popular
consumption from historical or other sources, and by securing the support of
groups, manoeuver themselves into a position to play the political chess, which
promises a possible prospect of success in their aim of becoming the rulers of
the masses either integrally of the entire country or of a delimited region.”
He
asked the Muslim Leagures and other flag-bearers of Muslim separatism a
question based on Islamic historical experiences:
“Had the imperialistic structure of society been a guarantee
of the prosperity of the Muslim masses and had empires not carried the germs of
their own decay in them, then the mighty Omaiyad, Abbasid, Sarasenic, Fatimide,
Sassanic, Moghal and Turkish empires would never have crumbled, leaving 1/5th
of the human race, who live by Islamic faith in the condition in which they
find themselves today-disinterested, and destitute in the bulk. Similarly those
Hindus who entertain similar dreams, and who out of tendentiously written pages
of history or out of the stimulating examples of the modern imperialists select
ingredients for the nourishment of their imperial dreams, or dreams of
exploitation, imposition and domination will be well advised to discard such
ideals.”
He
was right in complaining (which also throws light on how Muslim League got
prominence) that, ”Indian Mussalmans have a legitimate cause of complaint
against the Congress on the ground that it has not found it possible so far to
confer with them [anti-League Muslims of India] for a settlement of the
communal issue.”
Allah
Bakhsh in his address defended greatly the composite Indian culture,
“When they talk of Muslim culture they forget the composite
culture which the impact of Hindus and Muslims has been shaping for the last
1000 years or more and in which is born a type of culture and civilisation in
India in the production of which Muslims have been proud and active partners.
It cannot now merely by creating artificial States be withdrawn to segregated
areas. To art and literature, architecture and music, history and philosophy
and to the administrative system of India, the Mussalmans have been
contributing for a thousand years, their share of coordinated, composite and
syncretic culture which occupies a distinctly distinguished place in the types
of civilisations which hold a prominent place in the world. It would be a
disastrous loss to civilisation if it was proposed to withdraw all this to two
corners of India and leave nothing behind the ruins and debris of this
contribution. Such a proposal can only emanate from defeatist mentality. No,
gentleman, the whole of India is our motherland and in every possible walk of
life we are co-sharers with other inhabitants of the country as brothers in the
same cause, viz., the freedom of the country, and no false or defeatist
sentiment can possibly persuade us to give up our proud position of being the
equal sons of this great country.”
Allah
Bakhsh, while calling upon to guard against communalism, declared that the goal
of the anti-communal movement must be, “to build up a vigorous, healthy, progressive
and honoured India enjoying its well-deserved freedom.” It is really shocking
that we have Savarkar’s statue in Parliament who was an ideological co-traveller
of Muslim League but no place for Allah Bakhsh. It is only a living testimony
to the communal political structure which secular India is forced to live
today.
[For
detailed study of Azad Muslim Conference read author’s book MUSLIMS AGAINST
PARTITION OF INDIA: REVISITING THE LEGACY OF PATRIOTIC MUSLIMS (5th
edition published by Pharos Media & Publishing Pvt. Ltd. Delhi with
website: www.pharosmedia.com). It is also available in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Kannada, and
Punjabi.]
Shamsul
Islam
April
27, 2024
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