The 1947 partition of India remains a pivotal moment in South Asian history, etched in blood and displacement. The story is often painted in stark black and white – Hindus versus Muslims.
While this simplistic view overlooks the complexities of the era and the rise of the two-nation theory, a crucial question lingers: Were the majority of Muslims actually in favor of partition?
This article delves into the lesser-known stories of prominent Muslim organizations who vehemently and fiercely opposed the partition of India, advocating instead for a united, secular India based on socioeconomic reforms, egalitarian precepts and freedom of religion for all.
We’ll investigate their arguments, motivations, and the significant role they played in a crucial yet often forgotten chapter of Indian history.
All India Azad Muslim Conference
The Azad Muslim Conference was formed in 1929 by Allah Bakhsh Soomro, a Sindhi and supported major Sunni Scholars and Clerics. Its purpose was advocacy for composite nationalism and a united India and thus “ferociously opposed the Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan as well as its underlying two-nation theory”.
The conference included representatives from various political parties and organizations such as Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, Majlis-e-Ahrar-ul-Islam, All India Momin Conference, All India Shia Political Conference, Khudai Khidmatgar, Krishak Praja Party, Anjuman-i-Watan Baluchistan, All India Muslim Majlis, and Jamiat Ahl-i-Hadith.
In the session of the Azad Muslim Conference held in Delhi, from April 27 to April 30, over 1400 nationalist Muslim delegates and organisations participated.
The participants primarily belonged to the working class of Muslims in British India, unlike the All India Muslim League, whose membership was largely composed of the elites.
Allah Baksh Soomro, the leader of the conference, stated “No power on earth can rob anyone of his faith and convictions, and no power on earth shall be permitted to rob Indian Muslims of their just rights as Indian nationals.”
The Bombay Chronicle documented on 18 April 1946 that “The attendance at the Azad Muslim Conference meeting was about five times than the attendance at the Muslim League meetings.”
The Canadian orientalist Wilfred Cantwell Smith as well as the British Press likewise reported that the attendees at the Delhi session of Azad Muslim Conference in 1940 represented the “majority of India’s Muslims“ and thus alarming the British powers and sending shock waves in elite Camps.
Meetings of the Azad Muslim Conference were frequent in the 1940s, especially in 1942, and continued in several cities, which worried the rival Muslim League.
From 27 December 1947 to 28 December 1947, the Azad Muslim Conference was convened in Lucknow by Hafiz Mohamad Ibrahim and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. This meeting was also supported by leaders like Zahid bin Maulana Shaukat Ali of Khilafat Movement.
The Azad Muslim Conference concluded that the creation of Pakistan would be “impracticable and harmful to the country’s interest generally, and of Muslims in particular.”
It called on Indian Muslims to work with Indians of other faiths to gain Indian independence from British rule. Jawaharlal Nehru praised the Azad Muslim Conference as “very representative and very successful”.
The Azad Muslim Conference had support from the Deobandi school of Islam and their Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind.
The Azad Muslim Conference used several slogans, among them being: “Inquilab Zindabad”, “Hindustan Azad”, “Pakistan Murdabad”, “Freedom through National Unity”, and “We are Indian and India is our Home“. On 19 April 1940, the Azad Muslim Conference celebrated “Hindustan Day”, in contrast to the pro-separatist Muslim League’s “Pakistan Day“.
The All India Azad Muslim Conference, despite its political strength, was sidelined by British officials, who referred to the organisation as “so-called” in their correspondences.
Victor Hope, 2nd Marquess of Linlithgow, had referred to the organisation as “stage managed” in 1942 and eventually, the British were only willing to recognize the pro-separatist All India Muslim League as being the sole representative of Indian Muslims – a development that led to the partition of India.
Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind
Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (Council of Indian Muslim Theologians”) is a leading organizations of Islamic scholars in Indian Subcontinent.
It was founded in November 1919 by a group of prominent Muslim scholars including Abdul Bari Firangi Mahali, Kifayatullah Dehlawi, Muhammad Ibrahim Mir Sialkoti and Sanaullah Amritsari.
It also vehemently opposed the partition of India arguing it was against the principles and mandate of Islam and instead taking the position of composite nationalism that Muslims and non-Muslims form one nation.
On 8 September 1920, the Jamiat issued a religious edict, called Fatwa Tark-e-Mawalat, boycotting British goods. This was authored by Abul Muhasin Sajjad and signed by 500 scholars.
During the British Raj, the Jamiat opposed British rule in India and participated in the Quit India Movement. Since its inception in 1919 it aimed for a “British-free and united India”.
It formed an institution called “Idārah Harbiyyah” (The War Council) during the civil disobedience movement and supported anti-British agitations.
The Jamiat’s scholars were arrested frequently, and its general secretary Ahmad Saeed Dehlavi spent fifteen years of his life in jail.
The Jamiat secured pledges from the Muslim community that they would avoid using British cloth and enrolled thousands volunteers to participate in the Salt March agitation.
Kifayatullah Dehlawi, the co-founder of the Jamiat, was imprisoned in Gujarat jail for six months in 1930 for participating in the civil disobedience movement.
On 31 March 1932, he was arrested again for leading a procession of over a hundred thousand people and imprisoned in Multan jail for eighteen months.
Hussain Ahmad Madani, the principal of the Darul Uloom Deoband (from 1927 to 1957) and the leading Deobandi scholar of the day, held that Muslims were unquestionably part of a united India and that Hindu-Muslim unity was necessary for the country’s freedom. He worked closely with the Indian National Congress until the Partition of India was carried out.
The Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind was a member of the All India Azad Muslim Conference, which included several Islamic organisations standing for a united India.
Darul Uloom Deoband continues to oppose the two-nation theory, instead advocating for composite nationalism and a united India.
Majlis-e Ahrar-e Islam
Majlis-e Ahrar-e Islam is a Muslim religious organisation formed on 29 December 1929 at Lahore. The party was primarily based in Punjab and gathered support from the urban lower-middle class.
Prominent leaders included Chaudhry Afzal Haq, Syed Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari, Habib-ur-Rehman Ludhianvi, Mazhar Ali Azhar, Maulana Zafar Ali Khan and Dawood Ghaznavi. Religious leaders and scholars from all sects Sunni Barelvi, Deobandi, Ahle Hadith, Shia Progressive and even Communists were the members of Majlis-e-Ahrar.
Majlis-e-Ahrar-ul-Islam or simply called ‘Ahrars’ had an anti-imperialist, anti-feudal and Indian nationalist ideology. It worked to free India from the British rule.
The party, being a member of the All India Azad Muslim Conference, is associated with opposition to Muhammad Ali Jinnah and establishment of an independent Pakistan.
It stood strongly against the partition of India, with its leader Afzal Haq stating that the “Partition of India is, in fact, the cry of upper classes…It is not a communal demand as some people think but a stunt in order that the poor classes may not concentrate their thought and energies on all important questions of social and economic justice.”
Their agitation also centred against the princely states, and was predicated on mobilisation around socio-religious issues.
After 1947, it separated into the Majlis-E-Ahrar Islam Hind, based in Ludhiana and was led by descendants of Maulana Habib-ur-Rehman Ludhianvi.
After the creation of Pakistan, the party faction based there was banned several times by the Pakistani Government.
Sunni Deobandi Scholars and Clerics
Sunni Muslim scholars and clerics of the widespread Deobandi school of thought in the subcontinent regarded the proposed partition and formation of a separate, majority Muslim nation state as a conspiracy of the colonial government and elites to prevent the emergence of a strong united India.
Deobandis therefore helped to organize the Azad Muslim Conference, to condemn the partition of India. They also argued that the economic development of Muslims would be hurt if India was partitioned, seeing the idea of partition as one that was designed to keep Muslims backward.
They also expected “Muslim-majority provinces in united India to be more effective than the rulers of independent Pakistan in helping the Muslim minorities living in Hindu-majority areas.”
Deobandis pointed to the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, which was made between the Muslims and Qureysh of Mecca, that “promoted mutual interaction between the two communities thus allowing more opportunities for Muslims to preach their religion to Qureysh through peaceful tabligh.”
Deobandi Sunni scholar Sayyid Husain Ahmad Madani argued for a united India in his book Muttahida Qaumiyat Aur Islam (Composite Nationalism and Islam), promulgating the idea that different religions do not constitute different nationalities and that the proposition for a partition of India was not justifiable, religiously.
Khudai Khidmatgars
This was a party of Afghans and Pashtuns of North-Western India. Pashtun politician and Indian independence activist Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan of the Khudai Khidmatgar viewed the proposal to partition India as un-Islamic and contradicting a common history in which Muslims considered India as their homeland for over a millennium.
Khaskar Movement of Allama Mashriqi
Khaksar Movement leader Allama Mashriqi opposed the partition of India because he felt that if Muslims and Hindus had largely lived peacefully together in India for centuries, they could also do so in a free and united India.
He reasoned that a division of India along religious lines would breed fundamentalism and extremism on both sides of the border.
Mashriqi thought that “Muslim majority areas were already under Muslim rule, so if any Muslims wanted to move to these areas, they were free to do so without having to divide the country.“
To him, separatist leaders “were power hungry and misleading Muslims in order to bolster their own power by serving the British agenda.” All of Hindustan, according to Mashriqi, belonged to Indian Muslims (Nazim Yousuf 2004).
British CID and Intelligence Reports
In 1941, a CID report states that thousands of Muslim weavers under the banner of Momin Conference and coming from Bihar and Eastern U.P. descended in Delhi demonstrating against the proposed two-nation theory. A gathering of more than fifty thousand people from an unorganized sector was not usual at that time, so its importance should be duly recognized. The majority of both Ashraf and non-ashraf class Muslims constituting a majority of Indian Muslims were opposed to partition but sadly they were not heard. They were firm believers of Islam yet they were opposed to Pakistan (Fazal, Tanweer 2014)
All India Momin Conference
The All India Momin Conference also known as Jamaat-ul-Ansar was a political party founded by Ali Hussain Aasim Bihari in 1911. It was formed to articulate the interests of the socioeconomically backward Muslims in general and Momin Ansari community in particular.
It saw itself as articulating the interests of common, rather than upper-class Muslims and passed a resolution against the partition of India in 1940.
It said: “the Partition scheme was not only impracticable and unpatriotic but altogether un-Islamic and unnatural, because the geographical position of the different provinces of India and the intermingled population of the Hindus and Muslims are against the proposal and because the two communities have been living together for centuries, and they have many things in common between them.
All India Jamhur Muslim League
The All India Jamhur Muslim League was formed in 1940, to counter the Lahore resolution, passed by the All-India Muslim League, for a separate Pakistan based on Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s Two nation theory.
The first session of the party was held at Muzaffarpur in Bihar. The Raja of Mahmoodabad was elected president and Dr. Maghfoor Ahmad Ajazi was elected General Secretary.
Later, however, the Raja of Mahmoodabad changed his mind under influence of Jinnah, who was a long time family friend, and rejoined Jinnah in 1941. A major faction of the Jamhur Muslim League under the leadership of Dr. Ajazi merged with Congress to strengthen its view of opposing the partition of India.
Muslim Scholarly Opinion
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (an Arab-Indian Muslim), a key player in the Indian independence movement, stated in India Wins Freedom that “as a Muslim, I for one am not prepared for a moment to give up my right to treat the whole of India as my domain and share in the shaping of its political and economic life. To me it seems a sure sign of cowardice to give up what is my patrimony and content myself with a mere fragment of it.” He argued that if India were divided into two states, “there would remain three and half crores of Muslims scattered in small minorities all over the land. With 17 per cent in UP, 12 per cent in Bihar and 9 per cent in Madras, they will be weaker than they are today in the Hindu majority provinces. They have had their homelands in these regions for almost a thousand years and built up well known centres of Muslim culture and civilisation there.
Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi
Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi advocated a joint Hindu-Muslim revolution and called everyone to “all rise against” the “conspiracy” of a partition plan (Malik, Muhammad Aslam 2000).
Mashriqi saw the two-nation theory as a plot of the British to maintain control of the region more easily, if India was divided into two countries that were pitted against one another.
Mashriqi even argued to convince fellow Muslims that since the Muslims had ruled India for a long time, abandoning the land where many Muslims continued to live and allowing solely Hindus to rule a major part of the land, should be opposed.
Nevertheless, once the partition plan had been formalized, Mashriqi opposed partition of provinces including of Punjab.
Khwaja Abdul Hamied
Khwaja Abdul Hamied, a pharmaceutical chemist, opposed the partition of India and suggested “an armed struggle against the Muslim League to keep India united”. He felt that Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s views were held only by a minority of Muslims in India.
Khwaja Abdul Hamied was against the idea of separate electorates based on the religious faith of an individual, declaring that they were a manifestation of divisive communalism.
He argued that “if people were told that those who vote for Pakistan had to go to that country then nobody would vote for the partition”.
Malik Khizar Hayat Tiwana: Punjab Premier
Malik Khizar Hayat Tiwana, the Premier of Punjaband leader of the Unionist Party, opposed the partition of India, referencing the pain that it would cause if the Punjab Province were divided.
He felt that Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus of the Punjab all had a common culture and was against dividing India to create a religious segregation between the same people.
Malik Khizar Hayat Tiwana (Jat) remarked to the separatist leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah: “There are Hindu and Sikh Tiwanas who are my relatives. I go to their weddings and other ceremonies. How can I possibly regard them as coming from another nation?”
Tiwana advocated for amity between the religious communities of undivided India, proclaiming March 1st as Communal Harmony Day and aiding in the establishment of a Communal Harmony Committee in Lahore presided over by Raja Narendra Nath with its secretary being Maulvi Mahomed Ilyas of Bahawalpur.
Maulana Syed Abul Ala Maududi: Partition against Islam
Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, actively worked to prevent the partition of India, arguing that the concept violated the Islamic doctrine of the brotherhood and ummah.
Maulana Maududi saw the partition as creating a temporal border that would divide Muslims from one another. He advocated for the whole of India to be reclaimed for Islam to build a fair, just and egalitarian society and polity as envisaged in Islam.
Ubaidullah Sindhi argued on similar lines and organised a conference in 1940 in Kumbakonam to stand against the separatist campaign to create Pakistan, stating “if such schemes were considered realistically, it would be apparent at once how damaging they would be not only for Indian Muslims but for the whole Islamic world.“
Saifuddin Kitchlew
Saifuddin Kitchlew, a Kashmiri Muslim leader and President of the Punjab Provincial Congress Committee, was strongly opposed to the partition of India, calling it “a surrender of nationalism in favour of communalism”.
Kitchlew was an Indian nationalist who opposed British colonial rule and held “that a divided India would only debilitate the Muslim cause, in terms of its political emancipation and economic prosperity.
Syed Habib-ul-Rahman of the Krishak Praja Party also said that partitioning India was “absurd” and “chimerical”. Criticising the partition of the province of Bengal and India as a whole, Syed Habib-ul-Rahman said that “the Indian, both Hindus and Muslims, live in a common motherland, use the offshoots of a common language and literature, and are proud of the noble heritage of a common Hindu and Muslim culture, developed through centuries of residence in a common land”
Maulana Syed Ataullah Shah Bukhari: Declared Jinnah an Infidel
Maulana Syed Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari was the creator of the Majlis-e-Ahrar-ul-Islam, which passed a resolution in 1943 declaring itself to be against the partition and “introduced a sectarian element into its objections by portraying Jinnah as an infidel in an attempt to discredit his reputation”.
Maulana Mazhar Ali Azhar also referred to Jinnah as Kafir-e-Azam (“The Biggest Disbeliever”). He, as with other Ahrar leaders fiercely opposed the partition of India.
Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani Asadabadi advocated for the same; he held that Hindu-Muslim unity in India as opposed to unity between Indian Muslims and foreign Muslims, would effectively combat British colonial rule, leading to an independent India.
Also Read| Who is Kafir in Islam? Know the characteristics of disbelief
Zakir Naik: Partition Advocates were Non-Practicing Muslims
Zakir Naik, the controversial Muslim scholar and currently a wanted fugitive in India too has criticized the partition of India and creation of Pakistan, calling it a tragedy, against Islam, Muslims and Indians in general.
Naik holds that those who advocated the creation of Pakistan out of the northwestern provinces of colonial India were “not even practising Muslims”.
British Conspiracy Theorists: Other Opinions
Markandey Katju
Markandey Katju views the British as bearing responsibility for the partition of India; he regards Jinnah as a British agent who advocated for the creation of Pakistan in order “to satisfy his ambition to become the ‘Quaid-e-Azam’, regardless of the suffering his actions caused to both Hindus and Muslims.”
Katju claimed that after witnessing Hindus and Muslims joining hands in the First War of Independence in 1857, the British government implemented a divide and rule policy to cause them to fight one another rather than rise up to fight against colonial rule.
He also claims that the British government orchestrated the partition of India in order to prevent a united India from emerging as an industrial power that would rival the economy of any western state
Ted Grant: Crime of British Imperialism
Ted Grant, founder of the International Marxist Tendency, heavily criticized the partition of India, calling it “a crime carried out by British Imperialism” that was done in order “to divide the subcontinent to make it easier to control from outside once they had been forced to abandon a military presence.”
Tarek Fateh
Tarek Fatah, a Pakistani Canadian author and journalist, has criticized the partition of India, calling the division of the country “tragic” and lamenting that his homeland of Punjab “was sliced in two by the departing British to create the new state of Pakistan.”
He states that the British government partitioned India so that they would be able to combat Soviet influence through the establishment of British military installations in what was then northwestern colonial India (now Pakistan).
Nathu Singh: To Weaken India
Nathu Singh, an officer of the British Indian Army who opposed the partition of India, felt that the British decided to deliberately divide India in order to weaken it in hopes that Indians would ask the British to lengthen their rule in India.
Singh said that the armed forces of undivided India were not affected by the “virus of communalism” and “were capable of holding the country together and thereby avoiding Partition.“
Simgh was unable to forgive the politicians for failing to consult with the Indian Army before accepting the partition of India.
Leopold Weiss and Pakistan: The Curious Case
Muhammad Asad, originally named Leopold Weiss, was an Austro-Hungarian Jew who embraced Islam and became a significant figure in the Pakistan Movement. Asad’s conversion to Islam and subsequent dedication to Islamic thought led him to play a crucial role in the intellectual and political foundations of Pakistan. After the creation of Pakistan in 1947, he was appointed as the country’s first Director of the Department of Islamic Reconstruction, where he worked closely with Muhammad Ali Jinnah and other founding figures to shape the ideological direction of the new nation.
Also interesting is the case of Ravindra Kaushik also known as the Black Tiger, he is considered as one of India’s greatest spies. Kaushik converted to Islam, underwent circumcision and was given the cover name “Nabi Ahmed Shakir”. After successfully getting admission in Karachi University, he completed his LL.B. After his graduation, he joined the Pakistan Army as a commissioned officer and was eventually promoted to the rank of major. He married a local girl named Amaanat and even fathered a boy. Kaushik was later captured, and tortured for two years at an interrogation center in Sialkot. According to Ravindra’s family, the Indian government had refused to recognise him and had made no effort to help him.
Conclusion
In conclusion, majority of Indian Muslims, clerics and scholars were against the Partition of India and fiercely opposed it till the end.
They argued that partition of the nation on religious lines on the basis of two-nation theory was squarely against Islamic egalitarianism and that it was a conspiracy of global elites and deep state against Islam and to pre-empt the rise of India and to weaken Indians, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
They also argued that partition of India on religions lines was also squarely against the socioeconomic interest of the vast majority of Indian Muslims especially the backward and marginalised classes.
As regards the class and caste composition of Muslims who were for or against the partition of India on the basis of two-nation theory of Muslim League, nothing definite can be said or claimed due to lot of intersectionalities, complexities and contradictions because both groups were composed of all classes of Muslims, elites and non-elites alike.
It is true, however, that secessionist elements were mostly sponsored and led by elite and minority Muslims like Shias, Ahmadis, Rajputs, Brahmins and Banias, etc. For instance, Allama Iqbal, the ideological guru of the two-nation theory had a Brahmin background, Muhammad Ali Jinnah was Shia (with Bania background and allegedly was a also non-Practicing Muslim), Liaquat Ali Khan was a Ranghar Rajput, Raja of Mahmoodabad who financially supported Muslim League was also a Shia and so were Nizams of Hyderabad and many Zamindars across length and breadth of India. Even then, League Politics and Policies were not always pro-elite or anti-poor. For instance, its budget proposals of 1946 interim government was termed most radical, populist and anti-capitalist. Further, its post-partition cabinet where it held absolute powers was also not entirely composed of elites.
That being said, most of the Jats, Gujjars, Afghans, Pashtuns, Syeds (alleged descendants of Prophet PBUH), Sindhis, Punjabis, Kashmiris, Deccanis, Bengalis, Awadhi, Bihari, and other common Muslims were vehemently opposed to the Partition of India as is evidenced from their proactive role and representation in anti-partition organisations like Azad Muslim Conference, Jamiat Ulema e-Hind, Ahrar Movement, Momin Conference, Khudai Khidmatgars, etc.
Then what about secessionist Muslim League getting lion’s share of seats reserved for Muslims in the 1946 election? With regard to that one must note 2-3 things.
- Before 1946 elections, League always performed poorly.
- Elections were not based on adult franchise in which all Muslims were equally entitled to vote. Only a tiny percent of propertied class was allowed to vote.
- There were sheer propaganda and manipulations both at the behest of British, Elites, League and Deep State. Thus, even if the voting was free and fair (though it was not), the mandate was tainted as it was not based on informed consent, will, and considerations of those who voted.
Finally, did those who wanted Pakistan enjoyed it? Not really, because political power in Pakistan soon got transferred to Punjabi generals in the West Pakistan and Bengalis in the East Pakistan and influence of those who migrated from Indian side with the ulterior motive political power, domination and prestige gradually and considerably waned. Socioeconomic progress and political journey of Pakistan since independence has also not been very welcoming or inspiring so to say. As Holy Quran points out-
وَمَكَرُوْا وَمَكَرَ اللّٰهُ ؕ وَاللّٰهُ خَیْرُ الْمٰكِرِیْنَ
And they plan. God also has planned and God is the best of planners.
Holy Quran 3:54