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This article shows how Pakistan looks at itself. Particularly in context of
the two (three?) nation theory.
Dawn, Karachi, 09 November 1997 The ideology of Pakistan by Sharif al Mujahid
During the ninety years (1858-1947) of British imperial rule over the
subcontinent, four leaders dominated the Indo-Muslim scene and gave Muslim
India a voice of its own, a sense of direction and leadership. They were
Syed Ahmed Khan, Maulana Mohammad Ali, Allama Iqbal and Quaid-i-Azam
Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
While Syed Ahmed Khan (and his Aligarh school), Maulana Mohammad Ali and
Jinnah headed the three different phases of royalism, romanticism and
political realism in the transformation of Indian Muslims from a "broken
reed" during 1857-58 to a fullfledged nation - one determined to carve out
its due place in the Indian dispensation in 1947, Iqbal took upon himself
the onerous task of setting the intellectual tone for the Muslim struggle
for identity after the previous one set by Syed Ahmed Khan and the Aligarh
school had tapered off in an avalanche of cataclysmic convulsions and
revolutionary developments around 191 0. In addressing himself to this
task, Iqbal wrought a revolution in Muslim thinking at various levels.
Iqbal's contribution to the intellectual and political emancipation of
Muslims was fourfold. He drew their attention, through the powerful medium
of his poetry, to the depths of degradation to which they had fallen; he
diagnosed their ailments and the cause of their decline; he warned them of
the consequences if they failed to mend their ways in good time. Above all,
Iqbal spelled out a destiny for Indian Muslims at a critical juncture in
their history.
In so doing, he proved himself to be a man of vision, an outstanding
intellectual, who had the ability to analyse their situation in the light
of their past history and current developments, and give serious thought to
their short-term and long-term problems. And he envisioned for them a
destiny which, while congruent with their ideological legacy, provided an
answer to their current problems and predicaments. Allama Iqbal spelled out
his vision and delineated the contours of Muslim India's destiny in his
famous presidential address to the annual session of All India Muslim
League in Allahabad in December 1930. The most important of his political
pronouncements concerning the Muslim destiny in India, this address was as
significant as the Quaid-i-Azam's presidential address to the League Lahore
session in March 1940 which set forth the concept of Pakistan and
proclaimed it to be the final destiny of the Muslims of India.
In his 1930 address, Iqbal, if only because of his wide-ranging
scholarship, his clear understanding of Muslim history (both in the
subcontinent and elsewhere), his insightful grasp of the Muslim ethos, was
able to work out the philosophical and intellectual basis of Muslim
nationhood, and justification for a separate Muslim nationalism, and for a
separate Muslim national and cultural home within the subcontinent. Iqbal
justified Muslim India's claim to nationhood on the basis of the "moral
consciousness" created among the Muslims by their allegiance to Islam, its
ethics and ethos, and its institutions. He argued: "Islam, regarded as an
ethical ideal plus a certain kind of polity - by which expression I mean a
social structure regulated by a legal system and animated by a specific
ethical ideal - has been the chief formative factor in the life-history of
the Muslims of India. It has furnished those basic emotions and loyalties
which gradually unify scattered individuals and groups, and finally
transform them into a well-defined people, possessing a moral consciousness
of their own.
"Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that India is perhaps the only
country in the world where Islam, as a people-building force, has worked at
its best. In India, as elsewhere, the structure of Islam as a society is
almost entirely due to the working of Islam as a culture inspired by a
specific ethical ideal. What I mean to say is that Muslim society, with
its remarkable homogeneity and inner unity, has grown to be what it is,
under the pressure of the laws and institutions associated with the culture
of Islam."
Iqbal, it is important to remember, had "not despaired of Islam as a living
force for freeing the outlook of man from its geographical limitations".
He also believed that "religion is a power of the utmost importance in the
life of individuals as well as states". Above all, he believed that 'Islam
is itself destiny and will not suffer a destiny."
Despite all this, he could not possibly ignore what was happening to Islam
and the Muslims' in India and elsewhere. "True statesmanship", he told his
Allahabad audience, "cannot ignore facts, however unpleasant they may be.
The only practical course is not to assume the existence of a state of
things which does not exist, but to recognize facts as they are, and to
exploit them to our greatest advantage."
Hence Iqbal took due cognizance of the fact that in an attempt to get rid
of foreign domination, the Muslim countries had gone in wholesale for
nationalism and nationalist movements, that the nationalist prepossessions
were racializing the outlook of Muslims everywhere, and that the growth of
racial consciousness might mean "the growth of standards different from and
even opposed to the standards of Islam". Iqbal recognized that the Muslim
countries could organize themselves on national, that is, territorial
lines, and yet he the chief decision-makers in their respective countries
since they were practically wholly Muslim in population. But the Muslims of
India were differently placed. Although comprising some 70 million and
constituting the largest bloc of Muslims anywhere in the world, they were
still a minority within the subcontinent. Hence their adoption of undiluted
nationalism would undermine their distinct political identity in the
subcontinent and deprive them of the opportunities of "free development",
unthwarted by the interference of the other larger, dominant community in
the subcontinent.
Since the people of India had refused to pay the price for the formation of
the kind of moral consciousness which, according to Renan, constitutes the
essence of national feeling and nationhood, as evidenced by the failure of
Akbar, Kabir and Nanak to seize the imagination of the Indian masses, India
at the moment could not be considered a "nation" in the Western sense. And
since, on the other hand, Islam had provided the Indian Muslims with a
moral consciousness of their own, Iqbal argued, they were the only Indian
people who could aptly be described as a "nation" in the modem sense of the
word.
Having thus made out a cogent case for Muslim nationhood, Iqbal went on to
suggest a viable solution to India's communal problem: "a redistribution of
British India", and territorial readjustment, which would yield a stable
Muslim province in the north-western India. It is in this context that
Iqbal suggested the amalgamation of Punjab, North-West Frontier Province,
Sindh and Balochistan into a single state and the formation of a
consolidated North-West Indian Muslim state. He also suggested the
exclusion of Ambala Division and perhaps some of the districts where
non-Muslims predominated, with a view to making it less extensive and more
Muslim in population.
Iqbal's reasons in favour of his solution were unassailable. Since Indian
nationalism was pro-Hindu and predominantly Hindu-oriented, the Muslims
should construct a separate "nationalism" of their own. Since the whole of
India could not be won for Islam, if only because of the overwhelming Hindu
majority, "the life of Islam as a cultural force" in India must he saved by
centralizing it "in a specified territory".
This goal must be realized by setting up "a consolidated North-West Indian
Muslim state", comprising "the most living portion of the Muslims of India".
It is also significant that Iqbal demanded "the creation of autonomous
states" on the basis of "the unity of language, race, history, religion and
identity of economic interests", and that "in the best interests of both
India and Islam".
Iqbal's elucidation of this last point is important: "For India, it means
security and peace resulting from an internal balance of power, for Islam,
an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian imperialism was
forced to give it, to mobilize its laws, its education, its culture, and to
bring them into closer contact with its own original spirit and with the
spirit of modem times."
Thus, while the attributes of nationalism such as language, race, history,
identity of economic interests and viable territorial frontiers (and
territorial unity) were sought to be incorporated into what later came to
be known as the "Pakistan" demand, religion was retained as the leavening
factor, and the consequences were to be spelled out in essentially Islamic
terms. Thus was laid the intellectual foundation of Muslim nationalism in
India.
Iqbal gave his people an ideal - something to live and die for. He
fostered in them the moral fibre and the determination to realize that
ideal through his deeply inspired notes that almost worked like magic. He
donned the role of an ideologue, besides being the national poet.
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