...................continued from part 36
Betrayal of Islam by the Nationalists: Pakistan
The Pakistan movement was based on the thirst for Islam. When the British wrested power from Muslim rule in India, resentment naturally brewed, marked by the advent of two great figures - Shah Walli-ul ALlah (1703-81) in the intellectual field and Sayyid Ahmad Shahib (1786-1831) in the political field.
Shah Walli-ul Allah revived the idea of Islam as a polity and emphasised that it must be practised as a code of society. Sayyid Ahmad Shahib led a revolt against the British. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan started the dubious Aligarh movement in 1875, and hatched the two-nation theory. Another movement, the khilafat, under the leadership of Muhammad Ali, advocated the Hindu-Muslim unity, but ended in dismay when it ordered, under the direction Gandhi, the migration of 50,000 Muslims en masse from India to Afghanistan and further north (Hussain, 1966; pp. 17)
Syed Ahmad Khan's campaign for western education created the men who founded the Muslim League in 1906. The Pakistan scheme had been proposed by Iqbal ten years before the so called Pakistan Resolution was passed at the Lahore session of the Muslim League in March 1940.
Earlier, the Government of India Act of 1935 was passed by the British parliament which gave self rule to the provinces but kept the powers of the Viceroy and the provincial governors supreme.
In 1937, the Muslim League of India broke the alliance with the Indian Congress (Siddique, 1972) and from then on , Muhammad Ali Jinnah rode on the idea proposed by Iqbal to gather the Muslims support of a seperate nation called Pakistan, after Rahmat Ali coined the letters of the names of the provinces.
In 1940 the All-India Muslim League passed a resolution for the creation of seperate sovereign state for the Muslims. The Muslims naturally were joyful and supportive of the call, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah has become an institution himself (Saiyid, 1962; pp. 321)
..................to be continued
