Events in
the late 1920s and 1930s led Muslims to begin to think
that their destiny might be in a separate state, a concept
that developed into the demand for partition. Motilal
Nehru convened an "all-party" conference in
1929 to suggest changes that would lead to independence
when the British took up the report of the Simon Commission.
The majority of the delegates demanded the end of the
system of separate electorates. Jinnah, in turn, put
forward fifteen points that would satisfy Muslim interests--in
particular, the retention of separate electorates or
the creation of "safeguards" to prevent a
Hindu-controlled legislature. Jinnah's proposals were
rejected, and from then on cooperation between Hindus
and Muslims in the independence movement was rare.
In his presidential address to the Muslim League session
at Allahabad in 1930, the leading modern Muslim philosopher
in South Asia, Sir Muhammad Iqbal (1876-1938), described
India as Asia in miniature, in which a unitary form
of government was inconceivable and religious community
rather than territory was the basis for identification.
To him, communalism in its highest sense was the key
to the formation of a harmonious whole in India. Therefore,
he demanded the establishment of a confederated India
to include a Muslim state consisting of Punjab, North-West
Frontier Province, Sindh, and Balochistan. In subsequent
speeches and writings, Iqbal reiterated the claims of
Muslims to be considered a nation "based on unity
of language, race, history, religion, and identity of
economic interests."
Iqbal gave
no name to his projected state. That was done by a group
of students at Cambridge in Britain who issued a pamphlet
in 1933 entitled Now or Never. They opposed the idea
of federation, denied that India was a single country,
and demanded partition into regions, the northwest receiving
national status as a "Pakistan." They explained
the term as follows: "Pakistan . . . is . . . composed
of letters taken from the names of our homelands: that
is, Punjab, Afghania [North-West Frontier Province],
Kashmir, Iran, Sindh, Tukharistan, Afghanistan, and
Balochistan. It means the land of the Paks, the spiritually
pure and clean."
In 1934 Jinnah returned to the leadership of the Muslim
League after a period of residence in London, but found
it divided and without a sense of mission. He set about
restoring a sense of purpose to Muslims, and he emphasized
the Two Nations Theory.
The 1937-40 period was critical in the growth of the
Two Nations Theory. Under the 1935 Government of India
Act, elections to the provincial legislative assemblies
were held in 1937. Congress gained majorities in seven
of the eleven provinces. Congress took a strictly legalistic
stand on the formation of provincial ministries and
refused to form coalition governments with the Muslim
League, even in the United Provinces (Uttar Pradesh
in contemporary India), which had a substantial Muslim
minority, and vigorously denied the Muslim League's
claim to be the only true representative of Indian Muslims.
This claim, however, was not substantiated because the
Muslim League had done poorly in the elections, especially
in the Muslim-majority provinces such as Punjab and
the North-West Frontier Province. The conduct of Congress
governments in the Muslim-minority provinces permanently
alienated the Muslim League.
By the late 1930s, Jinnah was convinced of the need
for a unifying issue among Muslims, and Pakistan was
the obvious answer. At its annual session in Lahore
on March 23, 1940, the Muslim League resolved that the
areas of Muslim majority in northwestern and eastern
India should be grouped together to constitute independent
states--autonomous and sovereign--and that any independence
plan without this provision was unacceptable to Muslims.
Federation was rejected. The Lahore Resolution was often
referred to as the "Pakistan Resolution";
however, the word Pakistan did not appear in it.
An interesting aspect of the Pakistan movement was
that it received its greatest support from areas in
which Muslims were a minority. In those areas, the main
issue was finding an alternative to replacing British
rule with Congress, that is, Hindu, rule.
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