Communists and the Making of Pakistan

Our Party is the only organization that has actually worked for Congress-League Unity. We alone have tried to explain the view-point of one to the other during the last two and a half years. We have popularized the Muslim demand for Pakistan among Congress men, and the Congress demand for National

Government and the need for the release of Congress leaders among the Leaguers… Anti Unity, pro-sabotage and pro-Hindu elements among the Congressmen have tried to stop us getting a hearing by spreading the slander that we were government agents and in private paying the compliment (not meant to be such) that we were able to work out the case for Pakistan better than even the Leaguers. Joshi P C, They Must Meet Again, People’s Publishing House Bombay, January 1945.

General Zia’s ideological Islamisation in the 1980s disconnected the Pakistanis from their history, not just ancient but recent history i.e. events leading up to the creation of Pakistan. Most notable of this was amnesia induced vis a vis the left elements in Pakistan. The communist left which had played a very important role in Muslim League’s victory in Punjab was presented as the group that had always opposed Pakistan, whereas the right wing Islamic clerical class which had opposed the creation of Pakistan were championed as its true ideologues.

These claims of the Military regime in the 1980s flew in face of the real facts. It remains a little known fact that the only organized political party which supported the Pakistan Movement other than the Muslim League was the very secular and non-communal Communist Party of India. The coveted prize was Punjab where a non-communal alliance of Muslim, Sikh and Hindu feudal elites- which called itself the Unionist Party- had its firm grip on power. Indian National Congress and the Communist Party had been unable to make inroads into the feudal heartland of Punjab, which consisted of collaborators and pro-British zamindars. A lot of this had to do with how Punjab was actually ruled by the British. Punjab’s importance to the British was two-fold:

1. From West of Delhi to Potohar Plateau Punjab had some of the most fertile lands in all of the Indian Subcontinent and was therefore the agricultural hub of the subcontinent.

2. From Potohar Plateu to the rugged North West Frontier, Punjab produced the “martial race” of soldiers that made the bulk of the cannon fodder for the armies of the British Empire in the two world wars.
Therefore the British preferred to deal with local notables through the bureaucracy with wide ranging political powers.

A deputy commissioner was the king in his jurisdiction dealing with notables – choosing who to acknowledge, who to offer a chair etc. In no small way did this help dwarf any genuine political development in this region. In a way this was also natural given that Punjab did not have the industrial bourgeoisie that other areas of the subcontinent did. It was therefore natural that All India Parties – organized on no matter what agenda- were unable to make a dent on the political landscape of the province. The stalwarts of the Unionist Party which included such capable men as Sir Fazli-Hussain, Sir Chotu Ram and Sir Sikandar Hayat kept the Congress, the Communists and the Muslim League at bay. Congress’ push for independence found no support in a sufficiently collaborated Punjab. The local communist movements such as inquilab, Gadar, Naujawan Bharat Sabha and the Kirti Kissan Party were too weak to mount a counter and Sir Chotu Ram’s theory of Jatt consciousness and identity was far too deeply entrenched in the Unionist Party for any Muslim leader to seriously consider Jinnah and his Muslim League in UP and Bombay as a serious ally. Still, by 1938 Sir Sikandar Hayat thought it prudent to enter into what is referred to as the “Sikandar-Jinnah Pact” which benefitted the Unionists more than it did the Muslim League as the latter failed to get any real organization going in the presence of the dubious allies in form of the Unionist Party. The pact fell apart in the 1940s and Muslim League was up in arms against the Khizer-led Unionist Party.

In Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan the Communists saw the first really potent slogan that could be used to upstage the Unionist Party in Punjab. For accuracy and in all fairness, it must be remembered that the Muslim League itself had made a similar calculation after 1937. The 1937 elections had shown that Muslim League was essentially a party of the Muslim minority in Hindu Majority provinces which enjoyed little support in the Muslim Majority areas in North West and North East of India. This considerably compromised the effectiveness of the Muslim League to negotiate as the main organization of the Muslim minority in India. League needed a slogan that would have appeal in the Muslim Majority areas. The idea of a separate Muslim state had been talked about for a while and even crudely referred to as “Pakistan our fatherland” by Ch. Rahmat Ali. Since the idea had found enough currency for a major political leader in Punjab to sponsor the publication of “A Confederacy of India” by “A Punjabi” (ironically the original name of the book “Pakistan” was changed on the request of Mahomed Ali Jinnah, the president of the Muslim League), it was adopted as Muslim League’s central creed through the Lahore Resolution on 23rd March, 1940.

Muslim League’s case was based on the premise that the unitary centre for India was a British creation and India consisted of many nationalities and creeds who had to be brought together through a compact that recognized its diverse character. This was endorsed by the Communist Party. P C Joshi, a stalwart of the Communist Party wrote:
We were the first to see and admit a change in its character when the League accepted complete independence as its aim and began to rally the Muslim masses behind its banner. We held a series of discussions within our party and came to the conclusion in 1941-1942 that it had become an anti-imperialist organization expressing the freedom urge of the Muslim people that its demand for Pakistan was a demand for self determination and that for the freedom of India, an immediate joint front between the Congress and the League must be forged as the first step to break imperialist deadlock. A belief continues to be held that League is a communal organization and what Mr. Jinnah is Pro-British.

But what is the reality? Mr. Jinnah is to the freedom loving League masses what Gandhiji is to the Congress masses. They revere their Qaid-e-Azam as much as the Congress do the Mahatma. They regard the League as their patriotic organization as we regardthe Congress. This is so because Mr. Jinnah has done to the League what Gandhi did to the Congress in 1919-1920 i.e., made it a mass organization. Congress and the Communists, PC Joshi, People’s Publishing House Bombay, p 5.

G. Adhikhari explained the soundness of the Two Nation Theory in the following words:

In 1938, were yet wrapped in the theory like the rest of the nationalists, that India was one nation and that the Muslims were just a religious cultural minority and that the Congress-League United Front could be forged by conceding ‘protection of cultural and religious rights and demands’. We stood on the same basis as the Congress leadership, and were guilty of the charge of denying the peoples of the Muslim nationalities their just right to autonomy in free India. Since 1940, the party began to see that the so called communal problem in India was really a problem of growing nationalities and that it could be solved on the basis of the recognition of the right of self determination, to the point of political secession of the Muslim nationalities as in fact of all nationalities which have India as their common mother land. In those days many comrades were shocked by the formulation that India was not one nation and its development was in the direction of a multinational unity… the demand for Pakistan if we look at its progressive essence is in reality the demand for self determination and separation of the areas of Muslim nationalities of the Punjab, Pathan, Sindh, Baluchistan and the Eastern Provinces G.Adhikari, Pakistan and National Unity, People’s Publishing house, August 1942, pp. 29-30

The break up of Sikandar-Jinnah pact in 1944 had come about after Sir Chotu Ram- the leader who succeeded the then departed Sikandar Hayat- declared that he would have nothing to do with Muslim League and would not be dictated policy by Jinnah. Muslim League leader Shaukat Hayat, Sikandar Hayat’s son, was snubbed by the Governor of Punjab for declaring the Punjab ministry was in effect a Muslim League ministry. This break between the League and the Unionists was widely held to be turning point by the Communist Party.

Sajjad Zaheer wrote explaining why the Governor had a problem with the Muslim League ministry:
Behind this conflict of names was hidden a bigger reality. So long as the League acquiesced in whatever the Unionists chose to do in its name, the Unionists, that is to say, the Governor and his fellow bureaucrats had no objection to Unionists being also called Muslim Leaguers; but when it was a question of submitting to the democratic discipline of a rapidly growing people’s party and of carrying out its policy and acting according to its instructions, it could not possibly be tolerated by the bureaucracy. It is precisely this conflict long brewing- which finally came to ahead in March, April, 1944… the task of every patriot is to welcome and help this democratic growth which at long last is now taking place among the Muslims of Punjab. The last strong hold of imperialist bureaucracy in India is invaded by the League. Let us all help the people of Punjab capture it. Zaheer, Sajjad, Light on League Unionist Conflict, People’s Publishing House, Bombay, July, 1944, pp 26-33
Many young communists, like Daniyal Latifi, Abdullah Malik and Mian Iftikharuddin (the major leader of the Congress Party in Punjab) now joined the Muslim League, viewing it as a truly people’s party waging a valiant war against the feudal aristocracy of Punjab.

The elections of 1946 brought about the following results:
1. Muslim League 75 seats
2. Congress 51 seats
3. Unionists 20 seats
4. Panthic Sikhs 23 seats
5. Miscellaneous 4 seats

The Communists now sponsored the idea of a people’s ministry supported by the League, Congress, Akali and the Communists. A Congress-Muslim League coalition at this point would have been a terrific blow to the British control over Punjab. What is more is that it could have made a compromise between the Muslim League and Congress easier at the centre and a settlement on the basis of Pakistan would have come about in terms qualitatively different from the terms on which it was eventually achieved.

Shortsightedness on the part of the Congress made sure such a ministry would never come about. Congress chose instead to join up with the Unionists and the Akalis to form their own ministry, which dealt a death blow to the Communist expectations. The British encouraged and egged the Congress on, seeing in its actions a new lease of life for itself. The Congress-Unionist-Akali coalition instead of soothing the tensions amongst communities only exacerabated the issues since it was viewed by Muslims of Punjab as a great betrayal by the Hindus and the Sikhs. Muslim League described those who entered the ministry as traitors in cahoots with the British and launched a civil disobedience movement against the ministry.

The Communist role in the entire thing was the most positive of them all. They had hardest to bring together a coalition of Indian peoples against the British raj but had failed due to petty and selfish considerations of those who had long donned the mantle of being the champions of independence and United India. History would have been different, had the Congress Party paid heed to the Communists then.