A look back at the partition

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Aditya_V
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by Aditya_V »

Paul, please correct your link
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by Atri »

This particular scene always has me in tears, everytime I watch it.



The final teachings of Bhishma to Yudhishthira from Shanti-Parva. Look how he strongly advises Yudhishthira to stand against the demand of partition and nip it in bud, when it arises.

Entire Shanti-Parva is an excellent glimpse at classical Hindu understanding and approach towards Politics, economics, jurisprudence and society. This "Pre-Chanakya" understanding of India of the "right-handed stream" of politics, jurisprudence and economics was put on back-burner when Chanakya developed the theories of Shukracharya and Aapaddharma (dharma during adverse times) rules of Shanti-Parva.
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by Paul »



Stumbled on this rare old Hollywood movie on partition that show the true colors of the Islamic scourge. Of course the Brits are the good guys here. Recommended watch. Twist at the end is good.
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by Kashi »

One of the major sins were losing Chittagong Hill tracts and Khulna to East Pakistan. I think Patel should have strongly protested about them, and also possibly Umerkot and Tharpakad.

If Punjab and Bengal could have been partitioned, why was a partition of Sindh not insisted upon?
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by Shanmukh »

Kashi wrote:One of the major sins were losing Chittagong Hill tracts and Khulna to East Pakistan. I think Patel should have strongly protested about them, and also possibly Umerkot and Tharpakad.

If Punjab and Bengal could have been partitioned, why was a partition of Sindh not insisted upon?
Chittagong Hill Tracts-I think many Congressmen did protest, but Brits were determined to sign away this piece of land to Pakistan. Short of threatening a full war if Chittagong Hill Tracts was given to Pakistan, Patel did what he could. But they should have pressed for full referendum, or at least, refused to recognise the boundaries of Chittagong Hill Tracts to Pakistan. Buddhists were about 80% of the region in 1947. Today, they are well below 50% and are being genocided by the Islamists.

Khulna-Wasn't Khulna exchanged for Murshidabad by the Congress, because India needed to control Murshidabad to keep Calcutta port open? Khulna was much bigger than Murshidabad. If districts like Nadia and Sylhet could be split because Muslims formed (tiny) majorities, then certainly Khulna could be split or even got outright, because Hindus formed a tiny majority there.

But as you say, it was in the case of Sindh that the Congress was completely cruel to Hindus. Tharparkar and Umarkot were both clearly Hindu majority, more importantly, both were adjacent to India, so the contiguity principle should have applied, and should have been given to India.
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by svenkat »

del
Last edited by svenkat on 17 Oct 2014 20:13, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by vishvak »

If Sindh had been partitioned well then it would be an obvious question so as to why India (name derived from sindhu ) has lost parts of Sindh. It is true that Sindh was attacked first on coastline however Sindh have had very strong Kshatriya tradition. Sindhi kings defeated invaders many times and as per traditions of Hindu warfare let go of invaders - only to be attacked again by the very same barbarians.

We need to find out how invaders could pose as civilized and avail to them barbarians the most kind of treatment in case of loss.
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by Shanmukh »

Does anyone know if there was population exchange in the British Nadia (Nabadwip) district after the district was split in 47?
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Re: A look back at the partition

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If one looks at Imperial gazzetter of India,the composite Tharparkar district had 58% muslim population and tharparkar included umarkot.Maybe,thats why it was not partitioned but included in pakhanastan.
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by Shanmukh »

svenkat wrote:If one looks at Imperial gazzetter of India,the composite Tharparkar district had 58% muslim population and tharparkar included umarkot.Maybe,thats why it was not partitioned but included in pakhanastan.
Hmm? Tharparkar had a 50-50 split in 1941, and that only because many Hindus moved out in 1930s. Census of India 1941 shows a 50-50 split. Can you please post the relevant part of the imperial gazetteer?

http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/prit ... 09app.html
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Re: A look back at the partition

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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by Supratik »

nageshks wrote:Does anyone know if there was population exchange in the British Nadia (Nabadwip) district after the district was split in 47?

Partially but that has been now reversed due to infiltration.
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by Shanmukh »

svenkat wrote:http://dsal.uchicago.edu/reference/gazetteer/pager.html?objectid=DS405.1.I34_V23_316.gif

nageshksji,
The figure is from 1906.No idea about 1947
Interesting. Thanks, SVenkat-ji. My understanding was that Umarkot and Tharparkar had a Hindu character, until many Hindus moved out in the 30s. But the imperial gazetteer clearly shows something different. Maybe someone with clearer knowledge could clarify, if anyone knows more definitively..
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by ramana »

X-post...
SSridhar wrote:
A_Gupta wrote:The saving grace may be that secularism of the state, despite being under threat from the now electorally popular and now rejected Hindutva, has managed to survive, but it has extracted a heavy toll all the same: no Iqbal . . .
I have not read the article, but what a lie in the first place !

Allama Iqbal was troubled by Western colonialism and felt that jihad was a legitimate Islamist tool to get rid of that. He echoed Waliullah’s approach and rejected the inclusive politics of the Indian National Congress. He appreciated the efforts of Syed Ahmed of Rae Bareli, who fought the Sikhs to establish a Muslim nation in the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP) in the period between 1826-1831. Allama Iqbal sowed the seeds of exclusivist ‘Muslim identity’ amongst the Indian Muslims, an approach that has ever since troubled the Pakistanis. He held in high esteem the illiterate 19-year old Ilm-ul-Din who killed a Hindu publisher, Raj Pal, in Lahore for publishing the book Rangeela Rasool. It is reported that Iqbal placed the body in the grave with tears in his eyes and said: “This young man left us, the educated men, behind.”

Allama Iqbal subscribed to a worldwide view of Islam. The national poet of later day Pakistan, Allama Iqbal, was declared a kafir by the clergy. But, that is a different matter because that is a fate that befalls all Islamists at some point of time as a much greener variety sprouts forth condemning everything before that as the Kharrajis prove eternally.

He termed democracy and elections as ‘sweet tasting Western soporofics’. He opined that since Islam was going through a period of great strain, accepting taqlid was better than laudable ijtihad. The first time that separate states for Hindu-populated and Muslim-populated areas was expounded in the 1930 Muslim League conference at Allahabad by him.

For those who want to know about Sheikh Waliullah Dehelvi, who influenced Allama Iqbal, let me recall the following: Waliullah's aim was to rid the low-church ajlaf Indian Muslims of their Hindu practices. He helped the Afghan king Ahmed Shah Abdali to overcome the Mahrattas in the Panipat war in 1761 He was educated in Makkah and Madinah and a contemporary of Ibn Abd-al Wahhab.; his argument was that the decline of Islam could be arrested only by making it more rigorous. He had a close relationship with ibn Abd Al Wahhab. Both were born in the same year and Waliullah spent considerable time in the company of Wahhab in Saudi Arabia. He wanted an intensification of Aurangzeb’s efforts. His thoughts led to the formation of the Berelvi sect later on. Shah Waliullah’s contribution was the linkage he formed between Deobandi Islam and the Hanbali Islam of Saudi Arabia during his sojourn in Hijaz. Ahmed Berelvi was a disciple Waliullah’s son. Deoband, of UP, largely teaches Islam based on the interpretation of Waliullah. Shah Waliullah was attracted to Ibn Taimiyya whose teachings were also to inspire Abdul Wahab, the spiritual guide of the House of Saud. This 'confluence' gave rise to a new strict fundamentalism in India. Waliullah founded his Madrassah-e-Rahimyya where he strove for the removal of bida’a (innovation and ecclecticissm of other religions) The followers of Sheikh Waliullah are known as Dehelvi Ulema. From his thoughts emerged four different schools of thought in India, Deobandis, Ahl-e-Hadiths, Tableeghis and the Berelvis.
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by Shanmukh »

Folks,
A question about population exchanges in Punjab (whether forced or voluntary). In Indian Punjab, in most places, Muslims were expelled. Malerkotla was an exception due to the local ruler. But Gurgaon (and to an extent even, Kangra) escaped the worst of the Muslim expulsions. Does anyone have any insight into why this happened? How come the Meos of Gurgaon, (a region where a large number of Hindus from W. Punjab settled - especially around Faridabad), escaped the worst of the atrocities? Can anyone shed some light on the matter?
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by Supratik »

The Meos were always an indeterminate community i.e. neither Hindu nor Muslim exclusively till the arrival of Tablighis. Many were however expelled during partition riots - from undivided Punjab as well as Bharatpur and Alwar districts of RJ. Some were subsequently allowed to return under advice of Vinobha Bhabe to JLN. Sadly this usually peaceful community got fully Islamised by the Tablighi Jamat. It is proposed that Meos are converted Meenas or an agglomeration of converted agrarian castes of the region.
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Re: A look back at the partition

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by Vishvasak
It is true that Sindh was attacked first on coastline however Sindh have had very strong Kshatriya tradition. Sindhi kings defeated invaders many times and as per traditions of Hindu warfare let go of invaders - only to be attacked again by the very same barbarians.
The correct rules of engagement as Per Indian Traditions are

1. Fight only from Sunrise to Sunset.
2. Fight only the armed person of the opposing army. (Hathyar daal dene means to surrender., striking that person was forbidden).
3. Not to chase the person running away (literally same as 2. above)
4. Not to attack and/or loot farmers, children women. (It is said that the often times there would be onlookers checking out the tactical battle)
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by Shanmukh »

Supratik wrote:The Meos were always an indeterminate community i.e. neither Hindu nor Muslim exclusively till the arrival of Tablighis. Many were however expelled during partition riots - from undivided Punjab as well as Bharatpur and Alwar districts of RJ. Some were subsequently allowed to return under advice of Vinobha Bhabe to JLN. Sadly this usually peaceful community got fully Islamised by the Tablighi Jamat. It is proposed that Meos are converted Meenas or an agglomeration of converted agrarian castes of the region.
Thanks, Supratik-ji. From a quick reading of the analysis, the drop of Muslims in Gurgaon was from 33% to ~18%. I tried to find a link to Vinoba Bhave's helping the Meos return, but there doesn't seem to be any clear statistics about how many returned & whether it was spread out. Is there any link or reference that you can adduce to that matter? Thanks.
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by Supratik »

The figure I got is about 1 lakh returned. It was from a google search. Can't say how authentic it was. However, the nos are in line with the estimated nos of Meos in HY currently if you factor in the very high growth rate.
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by member_19686 »

nageshks wrote:
Thanks, Supratik-ji. From a quick reading of the analysis, the drop of Muslims in Gurgaon was from 33% to ~18%. I tried to find a link to Vinoba Bhave's helping the Meos return, but there doesn't seem to be any clear statistics about how many returned & whether it was spread out. Is there any link or reference that you can adduce to that matter? Thanks.
From Bhave himself:
At that time (in April 1948) I was working for the resettlement of the refugees and the Meos...

http://www.mkgandhi.org/movedbylove/chap11.htm
A recent tweet about conditions in Gurgaon for kaffirs:

https://twitter.com/avarakai/status/554268363455606784

Thank Bhave.

For more info see:

http://past.oxfordjournals.org/content/ ... 3.citation

It of course has the usual whitewash of Muslim crimes.
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Re: A look back at the partition

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Gurgaon is already experiencing heavy immigration mostly Hindus. It is Mewat which is in trouble. Apparently fertility is very high if not the highest in India, literacy and education extremely low and very backward.
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Re: A look back at the partition

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http://www.dawn.com/news/1157340/footpr ... in-umerkot
Once upon a time in Umerkot
The boundary wall is damaged in many parts. The signboards that should give information to visitors have faded in the sun. The staircase leading to the top of a watchtower has many missing steps.This is the fort of Umerkot or, as it was once called, Amarkot. Not only has its history been ‘Islamised’ by overlooking its original builder, Amar Singh, who used to rule this region, the heritage site is also facing slow extinction.Vikram Singh, who is from the Sodha family, a sub-tribe of the Rajputs who settled in Umerkot in the 11th century, calls the official history of the fort, inscribed on signboards around the place, “a bunch of lies”. Pointing to the fort, he slams the government for not “giving credit to our ancestors for building this”.
Just a few kilometres from the fort is the birthplace of Mughal emperor Akbar. Humayun was given refuge by Vikram’s ancestors when he was on the run after Sher Shah Suri overthrew him.
“We gave protection to many Muslims seeking refuge, and the person who went on to become one of the greatest rulers of the region was born here. Yet today, the Hindus in this region are on the run,” Vikram remarks.Vikram’s first-cousin, Hamir Singh, is the present Rana of what was once the kingdom of Amarkot.Hamir’s grandfather, Rana Arjun Singh, had opted for Pakistan at the time of the partition of the subcontinent. The family says their historical roots in Sindh made Rana Arjun Singh choose Pakistan over India. “He loved Sindh and did not join Congress even though Nehru had personally approached him,” Hamir tells us.But now the family appears to regret that decision.“This area used to have a Hindu majority,” Vikram explains. “But migration has been on the rise.” He mentions the persecution of the Hindu community, religious intolerance, and the government’s lack of interest in improving inter-faith harmony for Hindus, especially the trading community, as factors making them want to leave. “Many of them are now settled in India,” Vikram says.Most households have strong connections with India as the Hindus here tend not to marry within their community and try to find a bride or a groom across the border. Currently, the population of Umerkot is estimated to be equally divided between Hindus and Muslims. At the time of partition, Umerkot was estimated to be 80 per cent Hindu.“Unlike Punjab, Sindh’s border regions remain neglected,” says Sohail Sangi, a teacher at Sindh University who belongs to Umerkot.According to Sangi, the military has been in control of most of this region under the pretext of it being next to India, but has not bothered developing it. He blames this on their “paranoia of anyone not Muslim, and not from Punjab”.Umerkot’s rich culture and history is something to be proud of, Sangi says, but instead Pakistan continues to forget the diversities it has.
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by Prem »

http://www.dawn.com/news/1157340/footpr ... in-umerkot
Once upon a time in Umerkot
The boundary wall is damaged in many parts. The signboards that should give information to visitors have faded in the sun. The staircase leading to the top of a watchtower has many missing steps.This is the fort of Umerkot or, as it was once called, Amarkot. Not only has its history been ‘Islamised’ by overlooking its original builder, Amar Singh, who used to rule this region, the heritage site is also facing slow extinction.Vikram Singh, who is from the Sodha family, a sub-tribe of the Rajputs who settled in Umerkot in the 11th century, calls the official history of the fort, inscribed on signboards around the place, “a bunch of lies”. Pointing to the fort, he slams the government for not “giving credit to our ancestors for building this”.
Just a few kilometres from the fort is the birthplace of Mughal emperor Akbar. Humayun was given refuge by Vikram’s ancestors when he was on the run after Sher Shah Suri overthrew him.
“We gave protection to many Muslims seeking refuge, and the person who went on to become one of the greatest rulers of the region was born here. Yet today, the Hindus in this region are on the run,” Vikram remarks.Vikram’s first-cousin, Hamir Singh, is the present Rana of what was once the kingdom of Amarkot.Hamir’s grandfather, Rana Arjun Singh, had opted for Pakistan at the time of the partition of the subcontinent. The family says their historical roots in Sindh made Rana Arjun Singh choose Pakistan over India. “He loved Sindh and did not join Congress even though Nehru had personally approached him,” Hamir tells us.But now the family appears to regret that decision.“This area used to have a Hindu majority,” Vikram explains. “But migration has been on the rise.” He mentions the persecution of the Hindu community, religious intolerance, and the government’s lack of interest in improving inter-faith harmony for Hindus, especially the trading community, as factors making them want to leave. “Many of them are now settled in India,” Vikram says.Most households have strong connections with India as the Hindus here tend not to marry within their community and try to find a bride or a groom across the border. Currently, the population of Umerkot is estimated to be equally divided between Hindus and Muslims. At the time of partition, Umerkot was estimated to be 80 per cent Hindu.“Unlike Punjab, Sindh’s border regions remain neglected,” says Sohail Sangi, a teacher at Sindh University who belongs to Umerkot.According to Sangi, the military has been in control of most of this region under the pretext of it being next to India, but has not bothered developing it. He blames this on their “paranoia of anyone not Muslim, and not from Punjab”.Umerkot’s rich culture and history is something to be proud of, Sangi says, but instead Pakistan continues to forget the diversities it has.
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by Paul »

http://indianexpress.com/article/lifest ... ised-land/
Book review: The Promised Land




Written by Pratap Bhanu Mehta | Posted: January 31, 2015 3:29 am
Book: Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam and the Quest for Pakistan in Colonial North India
Author: Venkat Dhulipala
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Price: Rs 995
The ideological origins of the idea of Pakistan, and the political momentum that led to its creation, still remain deeply perplexing. Creating a New Medina will not resolve all perplexities. But it is arguably among the most important studies of the ideological origins of Pakistan published to date. It decisively demolishes Ayesha Jalal’s idea that Pakistan arose in a fit of ideological absentmindedness, a stratagem in a bargaining game gone awry. Within the context of UP politics, it demolishes Paul R Brass’s thesis that imagining Pakistan was merely instrumental to the goal of power, and it shows the insufficiency of the idea that Pakistan emerged merely in response to developments in representative politics after 1935. It argues, quite convincingly, that the idea of a new Medina, an Islamic state that is both a homeland for Muslims and the vehicle for a new regeneration in Islam, had deep roots in political, theological and literary debates. In some ways, this study is closer in spirit to Farzana Shaikh’s book, Community and Consensus in Islam, which suggests that the idea of a political form that would be the vehicle for an umma was central to the prehistory of politics.
The depth, texture and brilliance of Dhulipala’s argument are hard to convey in a short review. This book is attentive to a range of positions on Pakistan in UP politics beginning with the quasi- Marxist positions of KM Ashraf, who tried to replace questions of religion with questions of class. But that project seemed almost doomed from the start. Dhulipala shows the range of forces arrayed against it and argues against the conventional idea that the Deobandi ulema were uniformly against Partition. He wades through an impressive array of polemics, pamphlets, treatises, theological tracts and poetry to establish the central thesis that the yearning for a new Medina was widespread despite the sociological dislocations it might cause.
In some ways, the book tries to do what the single best thing ever written on Partition, BR Ambedkar’s tract on the demand for Pakistan, tried to do: explore the logic behind this range of positions, without sentimentality, wishful thinking, political correctness or cant. Not the least of the book’s virtues is that it provides one of the best readings of Ambedkar’s Thoughts on Pakistan. Not since Edmund Burke on the American colonists, had anyone produced such a forensic piece of political analysis, absolutely clear-eyed about the premise behind every position. The tract is hard to read because it has an “if this, then this” quality to it. Every party from Jinnah to Hindu nationalists have used it for their purposes. In a sense, the tract laid out the tragedy of each position — if there was Partition, the price was going to be homogenous nation states; if there was no Partition, the price was going to be perpetual tension. It urged the Congress to give up the delusion that Muslims did not have a separate sense of identity; it pointed out to Hindus that they overestimated their own capacity to live with difference. It relentlessly worked through every argument, cultural, strategic, economic, and political, to come to the fateful conclusion that Partition might even be good for Hindus.
But Dhulipala’s achievement is to show that the Congress could not accommodate the yearnings for a new Medina. Attempts like Maulana Hussain Madani’s to fashion a composite religious nationality were flawed because they were, in a sense, premised on the idea of two separate legal and social orders within a single nation state; a claim that would immediately run up against the modernising pretensions of the nation state. In fact, so fixated have we been on the idea that the bad guys were the ones who wanted territorial Partition that we often forget that the cost of territorial unity was always going to be religious conservatism. Territorial unity required the partitioning of social orders; not the modern ideas of citizenship. Dhulipala could have done more with this tension had he dealt with the ideas of someone like Maulana Azad, whose absence in this book is rather striking.
The other striking absence in this magnificent book is that of Iqbal, whose The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam most strikingly lays the argument for a political vehicle that could be the locus of a regenerated Islam. Arguably, Iqbal’s text still remains the most incomparable guide to the philosophical tensions underpinning the idea of Pakistan: a state trying to be at once the locus of pan-Islamic, modern and South Asian identity, a trilemma it cannot solve; or rather, it can solve it the only way Iqbal did: by excluding the Ahamadiyyas and Sufis.
In Indian intellectual history, there is still a tendency to treat “Islamic” and “Hindu” intellectuals as two separate streams. In some ways, this mirrors the most striking fact about Indian intellectual thinking during the 20th century. They did develop in parallel, with only rare references to each other or mentioned them as external problems to be tackled. This Partition of the mind, even if unstated, was deep. It is hard to see what would have resisted the allure of the new Medina, except perhaps as Ashraf alluded, the substantial attenuation of religion itself.
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by A_Gupta »

Need to read: Dhulipala (PDF file):
http://www.sacw.net/IMG/pdf/IESHRdhulipala.pdf
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by A_Gupta »

This Deobandi vision of Pakistan as described by Dhulipala in the paper referenced above, and this may be a root cause of the Pakistani cognitive dissonance. It is a long excerpt, but important to post here I think.

Begin excerpt:

The 1945-46 Elections and Islamic Arguments for Pakistan

ML {Muslim League} propaganda had declared that Pakistan would be an Islamic state, but the lack of specificity in this claim had invited fierce critiques from nationalist ulama such as Seoharvi.

In response, the elaboration and defense of Pakistan as an Islamic state was seriously taken up by another respected Deobandi alim Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani.

A long time functionary of the JUH, he broke away from his parent organization to form the Jamiatul-ulama-i-Islam on the eve of the 1945-46 elections in order to organize pro-Pakistan ulama and support the ML in its final push towards its declared goal.

Usmani‟s support for Pakistan was crucial for the ML‟s success in these elections, not just in the UP but also in the Muslim majority provinces.

Usmani first put the ML‟s two-nation theory beyond the pale of critique by arguing that it was not the invention of any man but that its origins lay in the Quran.

The Quran, he argued, decreed that the only valid classification by which the world could be ordered was one between Momin and Kafirs and that tribe, clan, race, nationality, had no such place in such a scheme. Hence, the ten crore sons of Islam were a distinct qaum which no fallacious doctrines of Muttahida Qaumiyat could ever obscure.

However, he still had to make a case for a territorial state in the form of Pakistan which implicitly stood in tension with the ideas of a universal community of believers transcending narrow local identifications. Usmani therefore began by characterizing Pakistan as the first Islamic state in history that would attempt to reconstruct the Prophet's utopia of Medina. He indeed used Pakistan (also meaning "pure land") and Medina interchangeably to solidify their identification in the public mind.

Invoking powerful metaphors from Islamic history, Usmani explained Pakistan‟s significance by pointing out that instead of establishing Pakistan in his native Mecca, the Prophet had migrated to Medina. The Prophet's decision, he asserted, was based on his conviction that Pakistan could be established only in an area where Muslims could practice their religion with complete freedom, for it was only in such a land that the Muslim community could develop to its fullest potentiality. Given the unrelenting hostility to his teaching among influential sections of Meccan society, this would not have been possible in Mecca, thus compelling the hijrat.

Usmani consequently argued that an Islamic state resembling Medina could never be established in an undivided post-British India even with extensive devolution of powers to the provinces, since the Hindus would always control power at the federal center due to their numerical majority. Pakistan therefore needed to be a separate, sovereign Islamic state where Muslims could live under the sharia, free from non-Islamic control.

Usmani outlined Pakistan‟s significance to Islam in the modern world by declaring that Pakistan was the first step in the process of self purification of Muslims, purging them of all their earlier narrow identities based on race, class, sect, language and region and creating an equal brotherhood of Islam as had been the case in Medina. Usmani here pointed to the many resemblances between the unity that developed between the various Arab tribes comprised of the first followers of the Prophet and the dramatic solidarity that had developed among Indian Muslims as a result of the struggle for Pakistan.

Usmani therefore declared that just like Medina was created due to the hard work and close co-operation between the muhajirin and the ansar, Pakistan would similarly come into existence due to the close co- operation between Muslims from "minority provinces" such as the UP and the inhabitants of the Pakistan areas. Thanking the former for their great sacrifices in creating Pakistan even though they were aware that their current homelands would remain outside it, Usmani assured them that their sacrifices would not go in vain. Invoking a glorious chapter from Islamic history, he declared that just as Medina had provided a base for the eventual victory of Islam in Arabia and the wide world beyond, Pakistan would pave the way for the triumphal return of Islam as the ruling power over the entire subcontinent.

Usmani made it clear that Pakistan would be an Islamic state in which the ulama would have primacy in matters of passing legislation, administering law, besides regulating the religious and cultural life of Muslims. He laid out the different Islamic offices that would be part of the institutional fabric of Pakistan - the office of Shaikhul Islam who would "act as the ecclesiastic head of the Muslim Millat", the Grand Mufti working under the Shaikhul Islam and responsible for guiding and regulating Islamic Qazi courts adjudicating cases of every recognized Muslim sect according to its own school of Fiqh, a Baitul Mal to administer Zakat, Sadaqat, Muslim charities and communal properties and manage the public finances, the Diwan-us-Shariat etc. etc.

Indeed the JUI‟s founding charter declared that it was "against the evils of Gandhism, Communism, and Godless politics of Kemalism called Laicism or secularization of the state and economy, and divorce of life from the universal moral laws of the Shariat.‟

While dwelling at length on the Islamic functionaries of the state, Usmani did not go into any great detail about the kind of Islamic laws that he envisaged for Pakistan. He further made it clear that an Islamic state implementing Islamic laws could not materialize overnight. It could only emerge out of a process of gradual evolution. As Usmani noted,
Just like the night withdraws slowly and the light of the day spreads, just like an old chronic patient takes a step towards health and does not at once become healthy, in the same way, Pakistan is a step in the direction of our national health (qaumi sehat), towards our high noon (nisfun nihar); but a gradual step (tadriji kadam).
In order to defend this approach, Usmani noted that even Madina had reached its crest only in a gradual way. The Prophet could have crushed his enemies in an instant and established Pakistan immediately, but then it was God‟s will that the umma had to arrive at it gradually receiving guidance from the Prophet at every step.

Usmani therefore reminded his followers that Pakistan was only the first step in the eventual establishment of such an Islamic state. His theory of the gradual development of the Islamic state therefore further dovetailed neatly with the declared aims of Jinnah and the ML leadership since it left room for deliberation and negotiation in the process of its eventual establishment.

But more importantly, Pakistan was seen as the first step in a new glorious chapter of Islam‟s triumph in the modern world. Within the subcontinent it would liberate Muslims in the "majority provinces" while also extending a protective umbrella over Muslims who would be left behind in Hindu India. At the same time Pakistan would act as a bulwark against an expanding Hindu imperialism thus protecting Muslim countries of west Asia. Here Usmani waxed eloquent on Pakistan's possession of all the attributes of sovereignty which were required of a nation-state by seamlessly utilizing arguments put forth by the ML leadership. But more importantly what was implied was its potential to emerge as a great power on the world stage just as Medina was the locus point from which the triumphal spread of Islam all over the world got underway.

No other place was as well positioned as Pakistan to blend the riches of Islamic heritage with the blessings of modernity. The strategic location of this new Medina would enable it spread to spread its influence both eastwards over the remaining parts of the subcontinent and westwards over the Muslim countries of west Asia. As the fountainhead for a global Islamic renaissance, Pakistan would take the lead in the rejuvenation and consolidation of new global umma, within a few decades after the formal burial of the Ottoman Caliphate.

Usmani‟s insistence of Pakistan as a first step, as a work in progress in a larger project involving the Islamic world meshed perfectly with the Pan-Islamist rhetoric of the ML leadership. As Khaliquzzaman emphatically declared, "Pakistan is not the final goal of the Muslims. We want more. Pakistan is only the jumping off ground. The time is not far distant when Muslim countries of the world will have to stand in line with Pakistan and then only the jumping off ground will have reached its fruition.‟

Consecration of Pakistan's territory as a modern powerful Medina, taking care of both material and spiritual concerns of Muslims, effectively crushed competing narratives that sought to make a case for an undivided India by claiming superior sacredness for Muslim lands in the "minority provinces".

For the interim, Usmani invoked the ML's "hostage population‟ theory as well as visions of a powerful Pakistan‟s protective umbrella over them, to reassure "minority provinces" Muslims over their security concerns. As he tersely noted, "just like we are worried about our minority in Hindustan, don't you think the Hindus are worried about their 3 crore Hindu minority in Pakistan?"

If Usmani borrowed the language of realpolitik from the ML's "secular" leadership, his theological arguments in turn were utilized by ML leaders to burnish their advocacy of Pakistan. This osmosis of ideas between these two groups and the successful intertwining of secular and theological arguments in favor of Pakistan proved decisive in the elections of 1945-46.

End excerpt.
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Re: A look back at the partition

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A_Gupta, many thanks for the above. Wonderful.

Jinnah & ML were able to 'recruit' such key conspirators as Usmani or the Pir of Manki Sharif (who won NWFP for the ML and also sent jihadists into J&K in October 1947) for their pet Pakistan project. Jinnah conceded space to these Islamists in order to win their support. In the previous page we saw how Jinnah promised allegorically to Mawdudi that the land he was acquiring can be used to build a mosque. But, with the Pir of Manki Sharif, who was more rustic and not sophisticated like Mawdudi, Jinnah was forced to spell out the exact details. The letter that Jinnah wrote to the Pir of Manki Sharif, in Naushera of NWFP, in which he said that Shariah will be imposed in Pakistan to manage the affairs of the Muslim Community, was produced in the Constituent Assembly in 1949 to support the Objectives Resolution.

In fact, the two Usmani brothers (Zafar Ahmed Usmani & Shabbir Ahmed Usmani) became the lynchpin during the critical phase before and after Independence. They became very close to Jinnah. Maulana Shabbir Ahmed Usmani had already apostatized Shi'a (and Jinnah was a Shi'a !). This Usmani was asked by Jinnah himself to raise the Pakistani flag in Karachi, the then capital, on August 14, 1947. It was this same Usmani who later drafted the Objetives Resolution. He also led the janazaa prayers of Jinnah (in the Sunni way) in public after Ms. Fatima Jinnah had secretly conducted the same in a Shi'a way. Maulana Usmani famously demanded ‘jiziya’ from non-Muslims in the Constituent Assembly and told Pakistan’s first Minister for Law and Labour, Jogendra Nath Mandal, a Hindu, that non-Muslims should not hold such key posts in an Islamic state, an advice that a disgusted Mondal took to heart and resigned.
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Re: A look back at the partition

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Thanks, SSridhar!

What you wrote now connects many dots for me. Usmani's role is generally downplayed in the Pakistani histories that want Jinnah to be defined by his Aug 11 1947 speech.
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Re: A look back at the partition

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I think it would be dangerous to ignore this book. It should be studied, and any inaccuracies should be refuted.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/opinion/12 ... qus_thread
With the publication of this Urdu translation of my book, The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed: Unravelling the 1947 Tragedy through Secret British Reports and First-Person Accounts, a milestone has been achieved not only by me as a researcher and an academic but also in terms of the research on the history and politics of the Punjab partition of 1947. I know of no other people in the world who are so grossly uninformed on either side of the Punjab border about their shared past. On both sides, nationalist narratives highlight the crimes and injustices of the other side and more or less absolve their own. For the first time now, the truth is available far beyond the narrow English-speaking Pakistani elite. Since most Pakistanis, including of course Punjabis, receive education in the Urdu language, they can now read for themselves and learn about the events that transpired in undivided Punjab until the Radcliffe Award laid down the international border in Punjab between what became Pakistani west Punjab and Indian east Punjab, and also of what happened when power was transferred to the two Punjabs.

....
With this book now available in Urdu in Pakistani Punjab, at least on this side, an antidote to one-sided narratives is now available. The great news is that a Gurmukhi translation has been completed and the Hindi translation will soon start. As a Punjabi who grew up battling with the greatest tragedy that befell my people, my life’s mission will then be complete.
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Re: A look back at the partition

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With the publication of this Urdu translation of my book, The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed: Unravelling the 1947 Tragedy through Secret British Reports and First-Person Accounts, a milestone has been achieved not only by me as a researcher and an academic but also in terms of the research on the history and politics of the Punjab partition of 1947. I know of no other people in the world who are so grossly uninformed on either side of the Punjab border about their shared past. On both sides, nationalist narratives highlight the crimes and injustices of the other side and more or less absolve their own. For the first time now, the truth is available far beyond the narrow English-speaking Pakistani elite. Since most Pakistanis, including of course Punjabis, receive education in the Urdu language, they can now read for themselves and learn about the events that transpired in undivided Punjab until the Radcliffe Award laid down the international border in Punjab between what became Pakistani west Punjab and Indian east Punjab, and also of what happened when power was transferred to the two Punjabs.


They can appreciate for themselves the enormity of the calamity that struck hapless men, women and children who were dehumanised and became legitimate targets as Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. Out of Punjab’s total population, including that of British-administered Punjab and the Punjab princely states, of almost 34 million, 10 million had to flee hearth and home to save their lives. That meant that nearly 30 percent of Punjab’s population was forced into flight. At the end of the day, the first case of massive ethnic cleansing was achieved because virtually no Hindu and Sikh was left in Pakistani Punjab and no Muslim in Indian Punjab. Anywhere between 500,000 to 800,000 Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, men, women, the old and children were killed, and 90,000 women were abducted, oftentimes raped.


It goes to the credit of Saadat Hasan Manto, Krishan Chander and a host of other great writers who have, in their Urdu fiction, captured some of the most shattering aspects of the Punjab partition. Now, for the first time, after labouring for nearly 12 years, some 230 accounts of what hell Punjabis went through in 1947 are presented. Additionally, British secret reports and newspaper accounts are examined in detail.


One of the reasons for undertaking the Urdu translation has been to facilitate further research on Punjab. We have ensured that an identical reference system is maintained. Young Pakistani researchers can learn the methodology that was employed as well as the theoretical framework devised to make sense of the empirical material that is examined and analysed. Unlike historians who focus on individuals, this book sheds light on the thick cultural and structural objective reality that both defined and circumscribed the ability of individuals and groups to act in such disturbed circumstances. In other words, the orientation of the book is definitely towards social science and not just descriptive history. The Punjab partition is shown as a process constituted by actions and reactions, and intended and unintended consequences. Thus, high politics are connected to provincial politics and their consequences traced deep into the towns, mohallas (neighbourhoods) and villages of Punjab.


In a special section called Izhar-e-Tashakur (thanks), which is actually a second preface for the Urdu edition, I have included three more stories. One is about the stranger-than-fiction story of Harbhajan Kaur and her five Pakistani Muslim children, who were reunited after some of us made special efforts to facilitate this task. The second story is about my meeting with Mr Lalit Jain in Delhi in 2013. He tells us a fascinating story of pre-partition friendship between his father and the father of my dear friend in Stockholm, Riaz Ahmed Cheema. Both had studied at Law College, Lahore, and served in the judicial branch of the Provincial Civil Services (PCS) cadre. He also narrated the heart-wrenching story of a West Punjabi Hindu family that shifted to Karnal. The addition of these two stories underscores that the Punjab partition inflicted unbearable pain and sorrow, and yet there were those who held on to their humanity and took great risks to reaffirm it.


A philosophical question does come to mind though in regards to whether the wounds of the past should be reopened or should be left to heal on their own. My conviction is that these wounds have been open all along and people have been suffering in silence. Perhaps in another 10-15 years the generation that directly experienced the trauma will be gone and thus the wounds will naturally cease to matter. I doubt that very much. I think, instead, one-sided narratives will get entrenched in official and communal histories and consequently the coming generations of Punjabis will be brainwashed to continue the victimhood syndrome, and blame the other side for the excesses of the past.


With this book now available in Urdu in Pakistani Punjab, at least on this side, an antidote to one-sided narratives is now available. The great news is that a Gurmukhi translation has been completed and the Hindi translation will soon start. As a Punjabi who grew up battling with the greatest tragedy that befell my people, my life’s mission will then be complete.




The writer is a visiting professor, LUMS, Pakistan, professor emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University, and honorary senior fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. Latest publications: Winner of the Best Non-Fiction Book award at the Karachi Literature Festival: The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed, Oxford, 2012; and Pakistan: The Garrison State, Origins, Evolution, Consequences (1947-2011), Oxford, 2013. He can be reached at: billumian@gmail.com
Posted in full for sake of clarity.

I too have heard of stories of people uprooted from West Punjab.
One sardar uncle came as a refugee aged 7 years from Sialkot and went on to join IIT Kharagpur first batch. He joined the Indian Railways and retired as a Divisional manager. And had a post retirement career in BART!

Another pediatrician lost her ancestral home in Lahore built by her uncles. Her father passed away in Aurangabad near Nanded!
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by Prem »

ramana wrote:I too have heard of stories of people uprooted from West Punjab.
One sardar uncle came as a refugee aged 7 years from Sialkot and went on to join IIT Kharagpur first batch. He joined the Indian Railways and retired as a Divisional manager. And had a post retirement career in BART!Another pediatrician lost her ancestral home in Lahore built by her uncles. Her father passed away in Aurangabad near Nanded!
Ramana Ji
Prof. K. L. Chopra ( Another Sialkotia Kharagpuri IITian, he is retired now. Once he refused to see IG as he did not have appointment )
http://www.iitkgp.ac.in/top-awardees/causa1.php?Sl=85
Born in W.Punjab, now Pakistan, Professor Chopra pursued studies in Physics at Delhi University to obtain BSc (Hons) and MSc, and thereafter at University of British Columbia, Canada under World University Fellowship to earn a PhD degree.He served in several senior R&D positions for about 14 years at Royal Military College, Canada, as Max Planck Fellow at Fritz Haber Institute, W Germany, as Staff Scientist at Philco-Ford Scientific Lab and Ledgemont Lab, Kenecott Corp, USA. Invited to the position of Senior Professor, Solid State Physics at IIT , Delhi in 1971, Prof Chopra also served as the Head, Physics Department , Thin Film & Solid State Technology Cell ,and Centre for Energy Studies,. He was the Dean, PG studies for two terms and Founder Dean of Industrial R&D.He has also been a Visiting Prof at Cornell and Northeastern Universities,USA In 1987, he was offered a challenging position of Director , IIT , Kharagpur which, as a unique case, he served for two terms of ten years and revived the institute into a number one position among the IITs.His numerous innovations at IIT such as a Mangement School named after its donor, Vinod Gupta , S&T Park with faculty-held enterprises, Technology Foundation , Sanyal School of Telecommunications donated by an alumnus, Optical cable wired campus, Multi-crore Corpus Fund, e- Library,IIT Extension Centres at Kolkata and Bhhubeneshwar have now been emulated by other IITsAfter retirement from Kharagpur , Prof Chopra occupied the newly created IREDA Chair at IIT Delhi. Presently , he is advisor/ consultant to several academic , government, and industrial organisations , besides being the President , Society for Scientific Values and Associate Editor of International Journal of Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells.Thin Film Laboratory at IIT Delhi and Microscience Lab at IIT Kharagpur founded by Prof Chopra and his colleagues are unique research centres and are known worldwide for their pioneering R&D contributions in the field, now popularly known as Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. Prof Chopra has supervised 60 PhD theses; published about 430 research papers ; authored/edited 8 books, including the treatise“ Thin Film Phenomena” considered as the Bible of the field by the world community , He holds 5 US patents and has transferred 8 know-hows to the industry. Prof Chopra has lectured extensively in various international institutions and has also consulted various international and national industries in the areas of Thin Film S&T , Vacum Science , Nanomaterials , Solar Energy, and Surface Engineering .Prof Chopra is a Fellow of all the four science and engineering Academies of India and Honorary Fellow , Punjab Science AcademRecognised as one of the seven “most highly cited” scientists of India during a period of over two decades , the Institute of Scientific Information(ISI) of USA, has conferred “Citation Laureate” award on him . UP Technical university has conferred an Honorary D Sc , and the Government of India has conferred Padma Shri on Prof Chopra for his distinguished contributions to science and engineering.
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by ramana »

Two X-posts...
KLNMurthy wrote:
RoyG wrote:Just let them all torch each other. Whether they're 10-20-30%, it doesn't matter. There seems to be enough that once pushed completely against the wall, they will hit back if someone supplies them.

Ismailis, Sufis, etc are like Jesuits. They just soften the target before the invasion. As such, they deserve to perish along with the Sunnis.
Ismailis are now considered "soft power" Muslims. Once upon a time they were feared dope-smoking assassins. Now they represent the mercantile arm of the feudal Islamic social model.

Their leader Aga Khan was a huge bankroller of Pakistan and continues to be heavily involved in its economy.

They are the equivalent of the "high kultur" Germans who backed up the Nazi project to take over Europe. Till the actual war started, British upper classes were very comfortable and sympatico with this face of Nazi Germany. You can work out the parallels with India.

WW 2 spelled the growth of democratization and the effective decline of the aristocracies in both Britain and Europe. That may be a historical pointer for India: end the DIE if India is to survive the nexus of RAPE and DIE classes. It's class warfare but DIE is firmly in control of class narrative in India, the plebians and proletariat are portrayed as class enemies.

and
Surasena wrote:For those who want to import Ismailis and accelerate the genocide of Hindus in India itself:
Aga Khan and Pakistan
FROM THE NEWSPAPER — PUBLISHED NOV 02, 2014 06:24AM

APROPOS the news item ‘Role of various leaders in Pakistan Movement highlighted’ (Oct 17), I would like to point out the efforts of Sir Aga Khan III for the creation of Pakistan. Born in Karachi on Nov 2, 1877, Sir Sultan Mohammed Shah Aga Khan was a visionary leader who guided the Muslim nationalist movement, nursing the All-India Muslim League into a strong, united organisation which played an important role in the evolution of Pakistan.

In 1906, he helped in founding the Muslim League and remained its president for seven years. On Oct 1, 1906, the Aga Khan led a delegation of 35 Muslim leaders of India to Shimla and presented a memorandum on behalf of the Muslims of South Asia.

He presented an address to the Viceroy with a clear message which was as follows: “Muslims of India should not be regarded as a mere minority community but a separate nation, whose rights and obligations should be guaranteed by a statue and this was sought to be achieved through adequate and separate representation for Muslims both on local bodies and in legislative councils.”– The Memoirs of Aga Khan

On Oct 24, 1906, he wrote a letter to Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk, which went down in the history of South Asian Muslims because it ignited the Muslim League under whose banner the Muslims won their freedom and Pakistan was created.

Sir Sultan contributed vast amounts of personal wealth and energy toward the creation of Pakistan.

His contacts with the heads of state and the international elite helped gather world support. Prince Aly Khan, his eldest son, served as Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN.


In 1911, the Aga Khan took it upon himself to collect funds to establish the Aligarh Muslim University. Subsequently, he also established and funded education and health institutions across South Asia.We must at least recognise the great Muslim leader by remembering his name amongst the list of leaders responsible for the creation of Pakistan.

Hussain Bux

Karachi

Published in Dawn, November 2nd, 2014

http://www.dawn.com/news/1141881
Aga Khan also contributed towards buying Gwadar from Oman.

Anyone who understands something as simple as what Jan Assmann terms as the Mosaic distinction would know why they should never be let in.
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Re: A look back at the partition

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http://www.thefridaytimes.com/tft/early-islamists-ii/

some highlights of Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman’s role in propagating political Islam before Partition. This man was the gov of what used to be east Pakistan (Bangladesh). the article is written by a Pak author and is from a pak magazine
The concept of Islamism or political Islam was developed in the early twentieth century in different parts of the world mainly in response to the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate. In the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Caliph propagated the idea of Pan-Islamism, which can be branded as a precursor to political Islam. The Ottoman Sultan used the Pan-Islamist card in face of dwindling political power in territories that formed his Sultanate. The Islamist movement was spearheaded separately by two influential figures Syed Qutb from Egypt and Abul Ala Maududi from India. Their teachings provided the intellectual platform for expression of Islamism in form of political parties and even terrorist groups. Browsing through the archives of history, one encounters figures that have been all but forgotten for the roles they played in the grand scheme of things. One such character that needs to be credited for Islamist tendencies was Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman, a political figure from United Provinces (UP).

Early in his political career, he had visited Turkey as part of Red Crescent Society’s medical mission to Turkey led to Dr. M.A. Ansari during the Balkan Wars (1912-13). During the First World War, Ottoman Turkey (ruled by Pashas) decided to side with Kaiser Wilhem’s Germany (part of the Central Powers). Following the defeat of Central Powers, Ottoman Turkey was deprived of its territories and this sparked a furious reaction amongst Muslims in India. A ‘Khilafat Movement’ was led by clerics from India to pressurise the British Government into restoring the Ottoman territories. Khaliq was actively involved in the movement during the early 1920s and led Indian Muslim delegations in the 1930s to international conventions organised to defend Palestinian Arab rights in the face of the Zionist movement and the perceived British attempt to appease world Jewry.


He believed the communal problem could be solved by force

In 1935, British Government introduced the ‘Government of India Act’ which proposed a Federal Structure for running the country under limited Indian rule and elections in provinces. Khaliquzzaman was a member of All India Congress for many years before officially joining All India Muslim League (AIML). He was the Secretary of Muslim Unity Board (MUB) comprising mostly of Muslim politicians with close links to the Congress party, and Ulema belonging to the Jamiatul Ulama-i-Hind. He was involved in a power struggle for leading the Muslim League Parliamentary Board in UP with Raja of Salempur. Before the 1937 Elections, Khaliquzzaman, was parleying with the Congress leadership over ministry making, against Mr. Jinnah’s wishes. He started an Urdu newspaper named Tanveer for propagating pro-AIML’s message.

Speaking at the Pakistan session of the Punjab Muslim Students Federation conference in March 1941, Khaliq said that, “Just as the Prophet had created the first Pakistan in the Arabian Peninsula the ML now wanted to create another Pakistan in a part of India.”

Addressing a gathering in his hometown of Lucknow, he explored the relationship between territorial nationalism and Islam. The Hindus, he noted, saw nationalism as a Hindu Goddess (Devi) that needed to be worshipped. This practice was abhorrent to a Muslim for even though he loved his nation, he could never worship this Devi and become a slave of nationalism. In May 1942, he stated his Islamist goals in following words, “Pakistan is not the final goal of the Muslims. We want more. Pakistan is only the jumping off ground. The time is not far distant when the Muslim countries will have to stand in line with Pakistan and then only the jumping ground will have reached its fruition.”


“Pakistan is not the final goal of the Muslims. We want more”

Soon after the Lahore Resolution, Nawab Ismail Khan convened a conference of Ulema and prominent Muslim intellectuals to draft a blueprint for an Islamic Constitution that would inaugurate an Islamic state in Pakistan. The first meeting was held at the Nadwatul Ulama, Lucknow and was attended by Ismail Khan, Khaliquzzaman, Syed Sulaiman Nadwi, Azad Subhani and Abdul Majid Daryabadi. He firmly believed that a solution to the communal problem can be found by use of force. At a public meeting at Fyzabad, he said: “If the Musalmans of India pursue the policy of tooth for tooth, eye for an eye, nail for a nail, no power on earth can dominate them.” On the question of the Muslims in the ‘minority provinces’ such as the U.P., Khaliq subscribed to the ‘Hostage population theory’ which he explained in the following words: “After Pakistan is established, the Hindu majority provinces will think a hundred times before they resort to any tyrannical act. They know the Indian Muslim who can shed his blood for his Muslim brethren of Turkey can also do something to save his Indian Muslim brethren of the minority provinces.”

He was fond of recalling past Muslim victories in the subcontinent for furthering political causes. Before the 1946 Elections to the UP Assembly, Khaliq asked Muslims to win the fourth and fifth battles of Panipat corresponding to the central and provincial assembly elections, by casting their votes in favour of the All India Muslim League. After the elections, Khaliquzzaman joined the Constituent Assembly as the leader of the opposition and pledged his loyalty to the Indian Union (although he resigned and left for Pakistan after Partition. Once in Pakistan, he resumed his Islamist activities. He was a founding member of the ‘Islamic World Brotherhood’ alongside Molana Shabbir Usmani. They convened a ‘World Muslim Conference’ in January 1949. A brochure at the conference titled ‘Muslims of the World Unite’ stated that ‘it was but natural that such an effort is made by Muslims of a country who do not subscribe to the theory that a nation is based on geography or race, but whose country’s very foundation is laid on a theory of religious nationality.’

Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman was appointed the President of Pakistan Muslim League a year after he moved from UP. Khaliq affirmed the World Muslim Conference promoted by Shabbir Usmani, as the first step in the creation of a permanent world organization, which would have branches not only in Muslim countries of the world but also in countries with Muslim minorities. It could soon be extended to become an organization similar to the Organization of American States. Expressing the long term aims of the Conference, he noted that in the context of the failure of the Arab League and Arab racial sentiment, he expected the ‘natural reaction’ of Muslims in Arab countries to work for the creation of a ‘central authority for Muslim States which can protect them against further political and economic inroads of other powerful States.’ He conceived this supervening authority in terms of the ‘Quranic State’, which he believed could be brought about through ‘political associations, social contacts, economic co-operation, and linguistic changes.’ This state would embrace any and all Muslim countries that wished to join and would be structured as ‘a loose federation of autonomous states bound together alike by adherence to the principles of Islam and mutuality of interests.’

His last political appointment was to the Governorship of East Pakistan. He passed away in 1973, two years after East Pakistan seceded. Religion did not play the role of ‘glue’ between the two halves of Pakistan, despite the claims of Islamists from UP.
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by SanjayC »

I am struck by the terrible mismatch between what Muslims leaders professed on one side and what Hindu leaders professed on the other. While Muslim leaders were all the time threatening Hindus with war and violence to achieve political goals, the Hindu leaders (Gandhi and Nehru) were grovelling and talking non-violence and peace 24/7.

If force and threats from Muslims had been met with force and threats from Hindus, the results would have been different and Muslims would have been more respectful. How the leadership of Hindus went into the hands of people fanatically non-violent and pro-Muslim is something that needs to be investigated further, especially the role of British in ensuring this (perhaps they learnt a lesson from the 1857 war and did some active social engineering and promoted a certain kind of leader as representative of Hindus).
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by johneeG »

SanjayC wrote:I am struck by the terrible mismatch between what Muslims leaders professed on one side and what Hindu leaders professed on the other. While Muslim leaders were all the time threatening Hindus with war and violence to achieve political goals, the Hindu leaders (Gandhi and Nehru) were grovelling and talking non-violence and peace 24/7.

If force and threats from Muslims had been met with force and threats from Hindus, the results would have been different and Muslims would have been more respectful. How the leadership of Hindus went into the hands of people fanatically non-violent and pro-Muslim is something that needs to be investigated further, especially the role of British in ensuring this (perhaps they learnt a lesson from the 1857 war and did some active social engineering and promoted a certain kind of leader as representative of Hindus).
Gandhi & Nehru were secular leaders and not Hindhu leaders. Savarkar...etc were Hindhu leaders. Gandhi & Nehru needed the support of Hindhus because Hindhus are in majority. Thats all.

Gandhi's ahimsa theory applied only to Hindhus against muslims. Did Gandhi ever teach ahimsa to muslims against Hindhus? And did muslims ever accept it? Did Gandhi ever teach ahimsa to British against Bhaarath? Did British ever accept it? Gandhi was clever only. He wanted Hindhus to be his docile followers and accept him as a messiah.

Actually, it shows the power of propaganda and the foolishness of masses that Gandhi and Nehru have become such icons(specially for Hindhus).
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by vishvak »

It also shows that secularism and rest of such constructs are due to Hindu majority in India. Even today, in Indian subcontinent certain ideas like "balance" i.e. equal==equal stuff perpetrated by certain foreign power have audience because the majority is averse to being violent towards others. It is not difficult to see that British/ML at that time were hand in glove for some reasons (themselves without any standard within the Indian subcontinent) that led to massacres of Hindus in many regions. Now these goalposts seem to have shifted only, to more regions populated with Hindus like Kashmir, and MORE propaganda is needed for current shifted goalposts.
svenkat
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by svenkat »

via Twitter
The mysterious ideologue on Jinnah’s left-NADEEM F. PARACHA
The AIML had performed dismally in the two elections that were held in the Punjab in the 1930s. Desperate to bag widespread support for the AIML in the province, Jinnah agreed to a suggestion made to him by Mumtaz Daultana — a leading member of the party in the province.

Daultana recommended that certain sympathetic Muslim ideologues belonging to the Communist Party of India (CPI) be brought into the AIML fold. The CPI had exhibited support for the AIML and saw the party as being revolutionary and anti-colonial (as opposed to communal); and that it was more in a position to carry out radical reforms and policies compared to the INC that the CPI termed as being ‘counter-revolutionary.’

Investigating CPI’s thesis in this regard is not the purpose of this piece.

Nevertheless, according to Daultana, the CPI men had the experience and the skills to organise AIML in the Punjab and successfully disseminate its message and appeal.

In 1944, after getting the go-ahead from Jinnah, Daultana brought in a few CPI ideologues that immediately joined the AIML in the Punjab.

One of them was a slightly-built but intense and high-strung lawyer called Danial Latifi.

Latifi was born in Lahore and travelled to Oxford University in England to study law. After returning to India, he joined the CPI. He was one of the most vocal members of the CPI who advocated that the party support AIML. In 1944 he resigned from the CPI and joined the AIML.

A committed Marxist and socialist ideologue, Latifi urged AIML to draft a strong message that could immediately get the attention of Muslims in Punjab. As a result, Daultana asked him to author the party’s manifesto.

Latifi did that. The manifesto was approved by Jinnah in 1944. It’s a remarkable piece of writing in which Latifi tries to tackle claims made by the INC and the Unionists as well as by the Islamic parties that were opposing the League.

In this pursuit Latifi married ideas of bourgeoisie Muslim economic advancement (through meritocracy) to Mohammad Iqbal’s idea of ‘spiritual democracy’.


According to the manifesto, the League would promote policies that would benefit and encourage the enterprising economic spirit of the Muslim middle-classes, and at the same time protect the Muslim masses from the oppression of the Hindu, Muslim and British Colonial elites.

Latifi also expressed the League’s idea of a separate Muslim state as an organ that would eventually transcend and resolve religious differences in the region, because a Muslim-majority state (or a state constructed by a minority community in India) was inherently more equipped to appreciate religious plurality, harmony and diversity than a state dominated by a large Hindu majority.

Furthermore, Latifi envisaged the League’s idea of the state as something that had a soul. According to him the state (under the League) “will be the alter-ego of the national being and in good time the two would merge to form an ordered and conflict-free society …”

Latifi’s manifesto was put in the forefront of AIML’s campaign during the 1946 provincial election in the Punjab. Latifi used CPI’s contacts in the province’s student and peasant communities and this helped AIML to successfully organise its own organs within these communities. The influential Muslim spiritual leaders (pirs) of the province quickly fell in line, abandoning the Unionist Party.

On the eve of the 1946 election, AIML had been dramatically turned into a robust and populist party that went on to defeat the Unionists. It won 73 seats. Unionists could only win 20.

This victory finally propelled the party into becoming India’s largest Muslim outfit and eventually helped it carve out a separate Muslim country called Pakistan (1947).

Ironically, Latifi, who was one of the architects of this victory and a passionate supporter of Pakistan’s creation, did not move to the new country. He was constantly asked why, but he always refused to answer this question.

Latifi was a good friend of famous Indian writer, Khushwat Singh
. In fact, one of the main characters in Singh’s celebrated novel about India’s partition (1956’s Train to Pakistan) is entirely based on Latifi.

Singh described Latifi to be a man who ate very little but who was always absorbed by his own thoughts and just could not stop talking about Marxism!

Latifi married a Syrian Christian woman and after Pakistan’s creation he remained in India and began to study Islamic law. He quit politics and became a prominent lawyer representing trade unionists, leftist activists and working-class Muslims.

After his first wife passed away, he married Pakeezah Begum — a descendant of the last Moghul emperor.

Latifi passed away in 2000 at the age of 83. Most in the know claim that he never visited Pakistan. But none of them seem to know why.
chetak
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by chetak »

Paul wrote:

Stumbled on this rare old Hollywood movie on partition that show the true colors of the Islamic scourge. Of course the Brits are the good guys here. Recommended watch. Twist at the end is good.
you can download the movie from this link, directly from youtube. At 360p it's a 466MB download.
svinayak
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by svinayak »

svenkat wrote:via Twitter
The mysterious ideologue on Jinnah’s left-NADEEM F. PARACHA

Ironically, Latifi, who was one of the architects of this victory and a passionate supporter of Pakistan’s creation, did not move to the new country. He was constantly asked why, but he always refused to answer this question.

Latifi was a good friend of famous Indian writer, Khushwat Singh
. In fact, one of the main characters in Singh’s celebrated novel about India’s partition (1956’s Train to Pakistan) is entirely based on Latifi.

Latifi passed away in 2000 at the age of 83. Most in the know claim that he never visited Pakistan. But none of them seem to know why.
Indians by now should be smarter now to understand why the supporters of Pak did not move to Pakistan.
The secret code and long term plan is to have muslim families in both sides and then at the right time in the future help to dominate Islam and Muslims in the entire sub continent. Between 1946-1957 the prevailing narrative was that all the princely states would come back and create a separate states in the sub continent.

In 1947 they had no idea that India would grow to a strong country as one country.

UN was created specifically for the sub continent so that all the 500 princely states would have a voice and redress mechanism!
Pak supporters wanted a strong Muslim state in between so that it could bully other smaller states.

Latifi kind of people are the smartest of that generation.
One of the motive also was to have a Muslim head of state who would negotiate with the world power for the future of Indian Muslims and also about Future of Islam. Sub continent muslims were always in the forefront of the middle east politics during the WWI and crumbling of the Caliphate. The sense of loss was recognized by Churchill and British govt and Jinnah/Pak were given space to bring back the glory of Ottoman and Caliphate. The modern day version is the ISIS.

The other motive for people like Latifi was to make sure that Hindu dominance and Indian/INC leadership do not take the prominance in world politics and create a geo political dominance and advantage which will become permanent. Nehru and VP Menon ensured that Indian state and Indian political leadership remains prominent in Asia and also in the world politics(NAM).

Once Nehru and INC were able to avoid the challenge the colonial powers created People Republic of China under Mao in 1949.
That is a different story and needs a different thread.
SanjayC
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Re: A look back at the partition

Post by SanjayC »

svenkat wrote:via Twitter
The mysterious ideologue on Jinnah’s left-NADEEM F. PARACHA
Ironically, Latifi, who was one of the architects of this victory and a passionate supporter of Pakistan’s creation, did not move to the new country. He was constantly asked why, but he always refused to answer this question.

Latifi was a good friend of famous Indian writer, Khushwat Singh
. In fact, one of the main characters in Singh’s celebrated novel about India’s partition (1956’s Train to Pakistan) is entirely based on Latifi.

Latifi married a Syrian Christian woman and after Pakistan’s creation he remained in India and began to study Islamic law.

Latifi passed away in 2000 at the age of 83. Most in the know claim that he never visited Pakistan. But none of them seem to know why.
All these bigoted turds who stayed back in India after campaigning for Pakistan became beer buddies of Nehru.


A Dialogue With Prime Minister Nehru
http://janasangh.com/jsart.aspx?stid=415
Yuvraj Krishan was one of the first officers to be selected for the IAS in 1948. While on probation at Metcalfe House in Delhi, the new recruits hosted Jawaharlal Nehru. Krishan cornered the prime minister and questioned him.

Background to the Dialogue

It was a hot summer evening in 1948. The Indian Administrative Service (LA.S.) Probationers of the first batch recruited through the competitive examination and undergoing training in the I.A.S. Training School, in what was then known as the Metcalfe House in Old Delhi, were playing host to the Prime Minister invited to meet the Probationer Officers were waiting expectantly on the open grassy lawns of the Metcalfe House grounds.

The Prime Minister arrived at about 6.30 P.M. accompanied by his Secretary K. Ram, I.C.S.

After exchange of greetings, the Prime Minister expressed anguish at the bloodshed and the mass migration that had attended Partition and Independence of India. A war was going on between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. The two Governments were struggling with the problems of refugees and their rehabilitation. Even though the migration of population by that time had become a trickle, there was acute tension between India and Pakistan and there was absence of cordial relations between the Muslim and the non-Muslim population of the two countries. The Indian nation was still in the throes of the trauma that accompanied Partition.

Having been uprooted from my home in Lahore, Pakistan, I had been pondering a lot on what the nation and I had gone through. My mind was particularly exercised by the continued stay in India of the leaders of the Muslim League who had brought about Partition and had worked for the establishment of Pakistan. This made me react to the observations made by the Prime Minister and provoked a dialogue.

The Dialogue:

Y. KRISHAN (Y.K.) Probationer : Well sir, those who have brought about Partition have been left behind in the partitioned India. The Muslim League had declared that the Hindus and Muslims were two nations and had asked for partition because they feared that the Muslims, being a minority, would suffer oppression and atrocities at the hands of the Hindu majority. Pakistan was to be their homeland where they could live in freedom from tne tyranny of the non-Muslim majority. But lo! and behold! the vast majority of the Muslims of U.P., Bihar, Central Provinces, Bombay, etc. remained behind in India and did not migrate to the homeland (Pakistan) created for them.

P.M.: We never accepted the two-nation theory though we were driven to accept Partition to avoid bloodshed and to achieve independence. We are not a communal State. The Muslims, who have decided to stay in India, are as much honourable citizens of the country as the members of the majority community. They cannot be victimised in the riew situation for their actions and conduct before and at the time of Partition.
We connot and must not live in the past.

Y.K.: True sir, but the immense suffering the people have undergone and the problems the country is facing are the direct result of the past, of the two-nation theory. In fact, Partition has solved no problems; only it has created new ones.

P.M. : You are too young to understand.
The overwhelming majority of the Indian Muslims are politically backward and have been misled by the pernicious and poisonous propaganda of the Muslim League. So it will be wrong to treat the vast majority of Indian Muslims as being responsible for the ills of our country.

Y.K.: True sir, the vast majority has been misled by the two-nation theory. But this does not absolve the Muslim League leadership: they are the authors* of Partition. And yet, the majority of this leadership has also stayed back in India. The Muslims of Pakistan, West Punjab, N.W.F.P.,Sind and Baluchistan, as such, never wanted or asked for Pakistan. In fact, they did not need to.

There was a pause and silence for a couple of, minutes.

Y.K.: The Raja of Mahamudabad, Begum Aizaz Rasul, Raja of Pirpur, Maulana Hasrat Mohani, etc. from U.P., Syed Hossain Imam from Bihar, M. Mohd. Ismail from Madras, etc., to name a few of the host of Muslim League leaders, have stayed back in India though they had actively worked for the creation of Pakistan as the homeland for the Indian Muslims. There is not an iota of justification for such leaders being allowed to stay in India after having got the country partitioned on the basis of the two-nation theory. They ought to have gone to the homeland they asked for and obtained.

There was again a pause.

P.M. Nehru's face was flushed. After a brief silence, he resumed.

P.M. : We cannot abandon the nationalist Muslims who had fought and sacrificed for India's Independence.

Y.K. : But the Congress has already abandoned the true nationalist Muslims, the Khudai Khidmatgars led by the Frontier Gandhi.

P.M. : This was a most painful decision forced on us by the geo-political realities.

Y.K. : I am not sure of the loyalty of the so-called nationalist Muslims after the creation of Pakistan, considering the speeches, ('mischievous and rabble rousing) of the nationalist Muslim leaders (those who were opposed to Partition) like Dr. Syed Mahmud, Maulana Hafizur Rahman (of Jamiat-ul-ulema-e-Hind) etc. at the Lucknow conference of Mussalman.i.Hind'l (Dec. 1947).

P.M. : This is false, mischievous, a canard intended to defame and denigrate the nationalist Muslims who have played a glorious role in India's Independence.

Y.K. : The P.M. must be correct on this point. I have perhaps been wrongly informed. But the basic fact remains that the Muslim League leaders and workers from Western U.P.-Meerut, Moradabad, Aligarh, Saharanpur, etc. organised the riots in Rawalpindi in March, 1947 which set the Punjab ablaze. It was not the work of the local Muslims of Rawalpindi in the initial stages but of the Muslim League leaders from U.P. Is it also not shocking that the Muslim League leaders of Rampur State in U.P. should have launched a violent agitation by setting on fire several Government buildings demanding accession of the Rampur State to Pakistan?

The face of the Prime Minister turned red in anger. He started puffing at his silver cigarette-holder.

At this point I had a very strong urge to recall the advice P.M. Nehru had given to the Kashmiri Pandits in 1945 at a meeting in Sopore in the Kashmir Valley that if non-Muslims wanted to live in Kashmir, they should join the National Conference (which was overwhelmingly a Muslim party) or bid good-bye to the country (Kashmir). But sensing the mood of the Prime Minister I was sullen and kept quiet.

The Principal of the Training School M.J. Desai, I.C.S. was visibly feeling uncomfortable and edgy. As there was palpable tension in the atmosphere and Prime Minister Nehru was silent and red faced, the Principal asked for the dinner bell to be rung. This relieved the tension in all of us. We collected our plates and made a bee-line for the dining table.

Post Script:

In retrospect the author believes that if those Muslim League leaders, who had actively worked for the division of the country and the creation of Pakistan on the basis of the two-nation theory and who did not migrate to Pakistan, had publicly denounced the two-nation theory, admitted that the Pirpur Report was false and that the creation of Pakistan was against the interests of the Indian Muslims, this would have gone a long way to heal the wounds of Partition, and promoted reconciliation between the Hindus and Muslims. This would also have softened the hostile Hindu Muslim relations which, unfortunately, continue to be haunted by the ghost of Partition.
Reading this, one realizes how delusion that Nehru turd was, refusing to accept reality that went against his woolly headed worldview, and what a fundamentalist supporter of Muslims he was, compromising the interests of Hindus at every opportunity. How did such a rabid anti-Hindu man managed to become the leader of a Hindu majority India?
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