The Pakistan Movement or Tehrik-e-Pakistan (Urdu: تحریک پاکستان) refers to the successful historical movement against British Raj and Indian Congress to have an independent Muslim state named Pakistan created from the separation of the north-western region of the Indian subcontinent, partitioned within or outside the British Indian Empire. It had its origins in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (present day Uttar Pradesh). Muslims there were a minority, yet their elite had a disproportionate amount of representation in the civil service and a strong degree of cultural and literary influence. The idea of Pakistan spread from Northern India through the Muslim diaspora of this region, and spread outwards to the Muslim communities of the rest of India.[1] This movement was led by lawyer Muhammad Ali Jinnah, along with other prominent founding fathers of Pakistan including Allama Iqbal, Liaqat Ali Khan, Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, Aga Khan III, Fatima Jinnah, Bahadur Yar Jung, Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar, Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman, A.K. Fazlul Huq, Sardar Abdur Rab Nishtar, Jogendra Nath Mandal, Victor Turner, Ra'ana Liaquat Ali Khan, and Dr. Sir Ziauddin Ahmed.
The movement ultimately achieved success in 1947, when part of northwest India was partitioned, granted independence and renamed Pakistan.
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History of the movement
Muslims minority
The 1882 Local Self-Government Act had already troubled Syed Ahmed Khan. When, in 1906, the British announced their intention to establish Legislative Councils, Muhsin al-Mulk, the secretary of both the All India Muhammadan Educational Conference and MAO College, hoped to win a separate Legislative Council for Muslims by making correspondence to several prominent Muslims in different regions of the sub-continent and organising a delegation led by Aga Khan III to meet with Viceroy Lord Minto,[4][5][6][7] a deal to which Minto agreed because it appeared to assist the British divide and rule strategy.[citation needed]. The delegation consisted of 35 members, who each represented their respective region proportionately, mentioned hereunder.
For Jinnah, Islam laid a cultural base for an ideology of ethnic nationalism whose objective was to gather the Muslim community in order to defend the Muslim minorities. Jinnah's representation of minority Muslims was quite apparent in 1928, when in the All-Party Muslim Conference, he was ready to swap the advantages of separate electorates for a quota of 33% of seats at the Centre. He maintained his views at the Round Table Conferences, while the Muslims of Punjab and Bengal were vying for a much more decentralized political setup. Many of their requests were met in the 1935 Government of India Act. Jinnah and the Muslim League played a peripheral role at the time and in 1937 could manage to gather only 5% of the Muslim vote. Jinnah refused to back down and went ahead with his plan. He presented the two-nation theory in the now famous Lahore Resolution in March 1940, seeking a separate Muslim state,[9][not specific enough to verify]
The idea of a separate state had first been introduced by Allama Iqbal in his speech in December 1930 as the President of the Muslim League.[10] The state that he visualized included only Punjab, Sindh, North West Frontier Province (NWFP), and Balochistan. Three years later, the name Pakistan was proposed in a declaration in 1933 by Choudhary Rahmat Ali, a University of Cambridge graduate. Again, Bengal was left out of the proposal.[11]
In his book Idea of Pakistan, Stephen P. Cohen writes on the influence of South Asian Muslim nationalism on the Pakistan movement:[12]
"It begins with a glorious precolonial state empire when the Muslims of South Asia were politically united and culturally, civilizationally, and strategically dominant. In that era, ethnolinguistic differences were subsumed under a common vision of an Islamic-inspired social and political order. However, the divisions among Muslims that did exist were exploited by the British, who practiced divide and rule politics, displacing the Mughals and circumscribing other Islamic rulers. Moreover, the Hindus were the allies of the British, who used them to strike a balance with the Muslims; many Hindus, a fundamentally insecure people, hated Muslims and would have oppressed them in a one-man, one-vote democratic India. The Pakistan freedom movement united these disparate pieces of the national puzzle, and Pakistan was the expression of the national will of India's liberated Muslims."
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Further information: Provincial Assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
In NWFP, the Muslim League faced its hardest challenge yet. It had
intense competition from Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan dubbed as the "Frontier
Gandhi" due to his efforts in following in the footstepsof Gandhi. The
popularity of the Congress, along with the strong Paktoon identity
created by Ghaffar Khan in the cultural and the political arenas made
life hard for the Muslim League. With the support of Ghaffar Khan, the
Congress was able to contain the Muslim League to the non-Pakhtoon
areas, particularly, the Hazara region. The Muslim League could only
manage to win 17 seats, against the 30 won by Congress, in the 1946
elections. The efforts was made by Jalal ud din khan Jalal Baba then,
who was renowned leader of Pakistan that time. He won the seats in
Hazara, due to active involvement of him the Muslim League captured all
the Hazara District assembly seats except one in the crucial elections
of 1946 against the than ANP who wanted to accede with India.[citation needed]Other regions
During the Pakistan Movement in the 1940s, Rohingya Muslims in western Burma had an ambition to annex and merge their region into East Pakistan.[13] Before the independence of Burma, in May 1946, Muslim leaders from Arakan addressed themselves to Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, and asked his assistance in annexing of the Mayu region to Pakistan which was about to be formed.[13] Two months later, North Arakan Muslim League was founded in Akyab (modern: Sittwe, capital of Arakan State), it, too demanding annexation to Pakistan.[13] However, the proposal never materialised after it was reportedly turned down by Jinnah.Conclusion
Further information: Partition of India and Indian Independence Act 1947
Muslim nationalism became evident in the provinces where the Muslim
minorities resided as they faced social and political marginalization.
The desire of the significant Muslim minorities to for self government
and self determination, became obvious when a clause in the Lahore
Resolution which stated that "constituent units (of the states to come)
shall be autonomous and sovereign" was not respected. The Two-Nation Theory
became more and more obvious during the congress rule. In 1946, the
Muslim majorities agreed to the idea of Pakistan, as a response to
Congress's one sided policies,[14][15] which were also the result of leaders like Jinnah leaving the party in favour of Muslim League,[16]
winning in seven of the 11 provinces. Prior to 1938, Bengal with 33
million Muslims had only ten representatives, less than the United
Provinces of Agra and Oudh, which were home to only seven million
Muslims. Thus the creation of Pakistan became inevitable and the British
had no choice but to create two separate nations, Pakistan and India, in 1947.[17][18][19][20]According to Pakistan Studies curriculum, Muhammad bin Qasim is often referred to as the first Pakistani.[21] Muhammad Ali Jinnah also acclaimed the Pakistan movement to have started when the first Muslim put a foot in the Gateway of Islam.[22]
Non-Muslims contribution and efforts
Jinnah's vision also benefited the Hindus, Sikhs, Parsis, Jews and Christians existed lived in the Muslim dominated regions of undivided India.[23][24] Most notable and extremely influential Hindu figure in Pakistan Movement was Jogendra Nath Mandal from Bengal, and Jagannath Azad from the Urdu-speaking belt.[25] Mandal represented the Hindu representation calling for independent state of Pakistan, and was one of the Founding-fathers of Pakistan.[23] After the independence, Mandal was given ministries of Law, Justice, and Work-Force by Jinnah in Liaquat Ali Khan's government.[23]The Christian composition also stand behind Jinnah's vision, playing a pivotal role in the movement.[26] The notable Christians included Sir Victor Turner and Alvin Robert Cornelius.[27] Turner was responsible for carrying the economic, financial planning of the country, after gaining the independence.[27] Turner was among one of the founding fathers[27] of Pakistan, and guided Jinnah and Ali Khan on economic affairs, taxation and to handle the administrative units.[27] Alvin Robert Cornelius was elevated as Chief Justice of Lahore High Court bench by Jinnah and served as Law secretary in Liaquat Ali Khan's government.[27] The Hindu, Christian, and Parsi communities had also played their due role for the development of Pakistan soon after its creation.[26]
Timeline
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Notable quotations
I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India.[30]
At this solemn hour in the history of India, when British and Indian statesmen are laying the foundations of a Federal Constitution for that land, we address this appeal to you, in the name of our common heritage, on behalf of our thirty million Muslim brethren who live in Pakistan – by which we mean the five Northern units of India, Viz: Punjab, North-West Frontier Province (Afghan Province), Kashmir, Sind and Baluchistan – for your sympathy and support in our grim and fateful struggle against political crucifixion and complete annihilation.[11]
It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religious in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders, and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality, and this misconception of one Indian nation has troubles and will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in time. The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, literatures. They neither intermarry nor interdine together and, indeed, they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspect on life and of life are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Mussalmans derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, different heroes, and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other and, likewise, their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built for the government of such a state.”[31][32]
Leaders and Founding fathers
- Muhammad Ali Jinnah
- Allama Muhammad Iqbal
- Liaquat Ali Khan
- Aga Khan III
- Muhammad Zafarullah Khan
- Ghulam Bhik Nairang
- Syed Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari
- Khwaja Nazimuddin
- Jalal-ud-din Jalal Baba
- Chaudhry Naseer Ahmad Malhi
- Maulana Zafar Ali Khan
- Ra'ana Liaquat Ali Khan
See also
- A Short History of Pakistan, a book edited by I H Qureshi
- History of Pakistan
- National Monument, Islamabad
- Raja, Masood Ashraf. Constructing Pakistan: Foundational Texts and the Rise of Muslim National Identity, 1857–1947, Oxford 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-547811-2
- Nawab Mohammad Ismail Khan
- Pakistani nationalism
- Pakistan Zindabad
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