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H I S T O R Y
Punjabi
Muslims and Creation of Pakistan-4
Professor J.S.
Grewal
 Jinnah
was quick to see the importance of the Punjabi Muslims for the All-India Muslim
League in its struggle against the Congress. He was able to persuade Sikandar
Hayat to form a Pact with him. The implication of this Pact was that Jinnah
became the spokesman of Punjabi Muslims at the pan-Indian level. Sikandar saw in
the Pact the security of the Unionist Party and his own leadership. No Muslim
League could be formed in the Punjab independently of the Muslim members of the
Unionist Party. This Pact proved to be a political time-bomb. The significance
of the Pact began to be revealed gradually, stage by stage.
Sikandar was
thinking of a constitution with a weak centre and large measure of autonomy for
political units consisting of 'blocs' of provinces. In his political
imagination, an improved version of the Act of 1935 could serve Muslim interests
by ensuring Muslim political dominance in Muslim majority areas. The country
could remain one as a federation of regional entities, safeguarding the
interests of all majorities and minorities at the regional as well as the pan-lndian
level. His proposal was modified by the Muslim League and adopted at Lahore in
1940.
The Lahore
Resolution made no mention of 'Pakistan', but many newspapers started referring
to it as the Pakistan Resolution. There is a paragraph in the resolution which
refers to the basic principle 'that geographically contiguous units are
demarcated into regions which should be so constituted, with such territorial
readjustments as may be necessary, that the areas in which the Muslims are
numerically in a majority, as in the North- Western and Eastern Zones of India,
should be grouped to constitute Independent States in which the constituent
units shall be autonomous and sovereign'. This principle could meet the demands
of the Muslim majority provinces.
The resolution
was deliberately silent on the issue of an all India centre. Jinnah expected the
Congress and the British to raise this issue. In another paragraph,
constitutional safeguards were visualized for minorities of 'Independent States'
Yet another paragraph mentioned safeguards for Muslim minorities in units
outside the Muslim sphere.
The Lahore
Resolution was useful to Jinnah in his attempts to control followers more
powerful than himself, and to negotiate with rivals who were more formidable and
better organized. Above all, this, resolution enabled him to be recognized as
the third party in all constitutional schemes for India. The ideological, moral,
and pragmatic blinkers of the Congress leadership concealed from its eyes the
real significance of the Lahore Resolution.
However, the
Lahore Resolution was unpalatable to the Hindu and the Sikh Unionists of the
Punjab as well as to the Akalis and others. Sikandar denounced it and denied
that it was his doing. He wanted to tell the rest of India that 'we in the
Punjab stand united and will not brook any interference', and to tell busy
bodies from outside to keep their ‘hands off the Punjab'. At this stage,
Jinnah raised no objection to this sentimental assertion of regional automony.
In 1941, however, he asked Sikandar to resign from the National Defence Council
to which he had been nominated as a member of the Muslim League without Jinnah's
approval. Sikandar resigned, as directed. His resignation raised
Jinnah’s prestige as the sole spokesman of Muslims, including the Punjabi
Muslims.
The Cripps
Mission to India in 1942 could be awkward for Jinnah paradoxically because his
proposals contained an option for the Provinces to stay out of an independent
Indian Union. It could expose the contradiction between the claims of the region
and the concerns of the Muslim 'nation'. By making a provincial and not a
communal offer Cripps could encourage defection from the Muslim League among
those very constituents which were important to Jinnah’s strategy at the
all-India level.
The Viceroy for
his own reasons did not like Cripps's initiative. Concerned much more with the
arrangements at the Centre than in the Provinces, the Congress discovered that
Cripps had little to offer and turned down his proposals. Jinnah was quick to
declare that the principle of 'Pakistan' was the only solution, and its
acceptance was the precondition for any advance at the Centre. Sikandar could
see that the demand for Pakistan threatened the unity of his province. He
resigned from the League's Working Committee in May 1942. He died before the
year ended.
Sikandar was
succeeded by Khizar Hayat Tiwana as the Unionist leader. Jinnah had no intention
of making any changes in the Punjab, but Khizar had opponents in the party
itself. Sikandar's son Shaukat Hayat was supported by Mamdot and Daultana
against Khizar. The Governor dropped Shaukat Hayat from the Ministry to
encourage Khizar Hayat to continue to perform his duties. Apart from official
backing, he had the votes of most Muslim members in the Assembly and the support
of Hindu and Sikh Unionists. Jinnah met Khizar Hayat in September 1943 and
settled for the old terms. He instructed the anti-Khizar group to patch up
differences, and Khizar Hayat accepted all his suggestions. It was decided to
incorporate the Sikandar-Jinnah Pact into the constitution of the Assembly
Party.
Some of the
Muslim League members in the Punjab were more enthusiastic than their leader and
they put pressure on Jinnah to make the League more active. He visited the
Province again in March 1944, and asked Khizar Hayat that the ministry should
call itself the Muslim League ‘coalition’ and that the League members of the
Assembly should belong to one and not to both the Parties. Khizar Hayat was not
prepared to accept these terms. Jinnah expelled Khizar Hayat from the League,
ending an alliance which had served his purpose for seven years. Three other
Muslim ministers resigned from the League. Now the League had to create
its own base in the Punjab. The Punjabi Muslim leaders, sensing the
increasing popularity of the idea of Pakistan, felt inclined in self-interest to
discard the Unionist badge in favour of the crescent flag of the League.
A few months
before the elections of 1946 in the Punjab a journalist observed that the
results would determine ‘not only the future course of politics in this
province, but also to a large extent the future of India’. The elections were
held in view of the urgent ‘reform’ in the constitution for India. The
Muslim League contested the elections on the issue of Pakistan. It won all the
eleven urban seats and 64 of the 75 rural seats reserved for Muslims, completely
routing the Unionist Muslims. Jinnah was gratified to remark: ‘we have already
won the battle of Pakistan in the Punjab’. However, like the Muslim League,
the Indian National Congress and the the Shiromani Akali Dal had improved their
position in the Punjab elections. The provincial leaders of the Congress were
inclined to form a coalition with the League. Nehru and Azad were not opposed to
the idea, but Sardar Patel was. And so were the Akalis. The Congress and the
Akalis supported the rump of less than a dozen Unionists under Khizar Hayat as
leader of the Unionist-Congress-Akali coalition. This infuriated the League
leaders.
Within a
fortnight came the Cabinet Mission to India. Its May proposals were accepted by
the Muslim League in June. But this acceptance was withdrawn before the
end of July because Jinnah rightly felt that the Cabinet Mission was modifying
its own terms in favour of the Congress. Therefore, he had no faith in the
‘trusteeship’ of the Congress or the British. The only trustee of the
Muslims was ‘the Muslim nation’. The Muslim League resolved on 29 July that
the time had come for ‘the Muslim nation’ to resort to Direct Action ‘to
achieve Pakistan’ in order to get rid of ‘the present British slavery and
the contemplated future Caste-Hindu domination’. In Jinnah’s own words, this
historic decision bade ‘good-bye to constitutions and constitutional
methods’.
When Jawahar Lal
Nehru met Jinnah on 15 August 1946 to explore if the Muslim League would join
the Interim Government, Jinnah rejected his proposal. The five days that
followed witnessed large scale killings in Calcutta. Communal tension inevitably
increased, making it all the more difficult for the Muslim League and the
Congress to come to terms at the all-India level. The Congress took office in
the Interim Government in the beginning of September. The Muslim League came in
before the end of October, but its entry was recognized by the Congress as ‘a
declaration of war’. Before the end of January 1947, the Muslim League
resolved not to enter the Constituent Assembly. Jinnah declared that the Cabinet
Mission’s Plan had failed.
The British
Government took note of his declaration and decided on 20 February to replace
Lord Wavell by Lord Mountbatten and to transfer power to Indians by June 1948 at
the latest. This announcement induced Khizar Hayat to resign from the
Premiership of the Punjab on 2 March 1947.
Khizar's
resignation deepened the political crisis. The Congress and Akali legislators
were opposed to the idea of coalition with the Muslim League; they made
strong speeches to this effect in March. Rioting broke out in Lahore on the day
following, and spread to Amritsar, Jalandhar and Sialkot. Non-Muslims were
massacred in the villages of the districts of Attock, Jhelum and Multan. This
was the beginning of a process which was to continue on a varying scale till
after Independence.
The Governor
took direct charge of the province but felt increasingly helpless to handle the
deteriorating situation. He found it impossible to prevent ‘conflict between
communities interlocked in villages over wide areas of the country’. In his
words, the ‘two nations’ were fighting one another ‘in the streets, in the
markets, in the fields and in the villages’. When it was found
that rioting could not be checked, ‘the fighting took form of mass
terrorism’. The Governor liked to explain the ‘disturbances’ almost
exclusively in terms of the definite prospect of succeeding to power in the near
future. His alibi concealed the failure of the colonial administration to
prepare for meeting the emergency.
In any case, by
April 1947 the Congress and the new Governor-General, Lord Mountbatten, were
prepared to accept the Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan. It became
necessary to define its territorial extent and its status. Jinnah’s intention
was to have the largest possible area under Pakistan, and links with the centre
on terms of parity between the ‘two nations’. The idea of the Congress was
to have no formal links with Pakistan.
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