NWFP, Sikander Mirza, Abdur Rab Nishtar, Islam, Jinnah

Sikander Mirza was asked by Jinnah in the name of Islam to cook up a Muslim League government in NWFP. This had the support of the British establishment.

Honest people who read history instead of misrepresenting it would not rant day in and day out that for briefly cooperating with Sikander Mirza in the 50s, Dr Khan proved himself to be pro-establishment.

Also, honest people would not argue that in opposing Khudai Khidmatgars in the name of Islam with the help of the British, Abdur Rab Nishtar and Jinnah were being anti-establishment, secular and progressive, esp. when it was the Maulanas in the pay of the British governor Cunningham who first established the Muslim League in NWFP.


Wali Khan’s book Facts are Sacred quotes Sikander Mirza himself on this.

http://www.anp.org.pk/factsAreSacredchapter9.htm


It is significant that the Muslim League was founded in the Frontier in Abbottabad in September 1937, at the hands of mullahs. The President of Jaimat-ul-Ulema, Maulana Shakirullah of Nowshera, was the leading figure in the ceremony who also became the League’s first president, and the Jamiat’s Secretary, Maulana Mohammad Shuaib of Mardan, became its first secretary. It is also notweorthy that the ministry of Sir Sahibzada Abdul Qayyum formed in April 1937, broke up in September 1937 on a vote of no-confidence.


http://www.anp.org.pk/factsAreSacredchap ter12.htm

WE HAVE seen that the first stones of the Muslim League structure in NWFP were laid by the mullahs. Maulana Shakirullah of Nowshera and Maulana Mohammad Shuaib of Mardan became the Muslim League president and secretary respectively. Both these Maulanas had a direct link with the provincial governor Sir George Cunningham as revealed by the latter’s own diaries.

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The Khudai Khidmatgars were still creating problems for the British. When alongside the civil disobedience movement they also resigned from the provincial ministry, governor’s rule had to be imposed here. Although this was predominantly a Muslim province, Muslim League hadn’t existed here until the last election and thus had no member in the provincial Assembly. This was a big handicap for the British.

The viceroy wrote on January 16, 1940, that Mr. Jinnah had come to see him, and he had asked him whether following the resignation of Khan Sahib’s ministry there was a possibility of another government being formed. Mr. Jinnah had said he could give an answer only after consulting his colleagues. But he had also added that it would be best if the provincial governor took interest in the matter. After a month Mr. Jinnah met the viceroy again and reported that he had arrived at the conclusion that it was not possible for the Muslim League to form a ministry itself but if the governor gave help the chances could develop. The viceroy’s letter dated February 6, 1940, went on:

Mr. Jinnah added that he was most anxious, if possible, to put this through, as he was convinced that there could be no more salutary lesson for Congress, and no better advertisement of the real position in India, whether before the country or throughout the world, than that a non-Congress ministry should be established in the NWFP. He was therefore most anxious to bring this matter to a successful issue.

The Muslim League and the British both wanted it to be accepted that the Congress was a Hindu organisation and Muslim League the sole representative of the entire country’s Muslims. Obviously, this view got upset by the fact that NWFP had a Khudai Khidmatgar ministry which was nom-Muslim league and therefore both wanted that the province was somehow placed safely in the League hands.

The viceroy reassured Mr. Jinnah and told him that he would have a word with the governor along the lines suggested by Mr. Jinnah.

This story is taken up by Sikander Mirza who was then the deputy commissioner of Peshawar. He relates an incident of March 1943 in his autobiography. He says that once he went on a hunting trip with the Nawab of Bhopal. On the way back they went to see Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan who asked Sikander Mirza to go and see the Quaid-i-Azam.

Sikander Mirza then gives details of this meeting with the Quaid-i-Azam. After establishing acquaintanceship the Quaid asked him if he was a Muslim. He replied that his Islamic antecedents sent to the time of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) himself. Then the Quaid asked if he recognised him as the leader of the Muslims. He replied in the affirmative. Then Mr. Jinnah said that whereas Muslim League did not have a government in a single province of the country, he had been urged to form one in NWFP. If he, Mirza helped him this could be possible. Mirza there upon pleaded that he was merely a deputy commissioners; the right person to ask for help would be the governor.

He says that he further pointed out that Muslim League had no existence at all in NWFP. Besides, the League leader there, Sardar Aurangzeb Khan, had a very foul reputation. The Quaid replied that whatever Sardar Aurangzeb’s qualities and regardless of the Muslim League’s position in the province, it was duty to the Muslims of the country that a Muslim League ministry was formed in the Frontier.

Sikander Mirza recalls that the governor was away in Kabul at the time but as soon as he returned he called him over. He hadn’t even sat down when the governor began saying that the government of India was pressing on him to have a ministry formed in the province immediately, and the aim was to prove that NWFP was not with the Congress. The moment was also opportune because several of the provincial Assembly members were at the time in jails following the quit-India movement. Seven of the Khudai Khidmatgar Assembly members were also under detention, and seven others had either died or been removed from the movement.

The road was thus clear for the governor, who, Sikander Mirza continues, asked Sardar Aurangzeb to try and form a government. Mirza was not happy with the choice. His own eyes were on only one man from Peshawar – Sardar Abdur Rab Nishtar, who was then in the Ahrar movement which was strongly opposed to the Muslim League, and by that token close to the Congress. Sikander Mirza recalls that Sardar Nishtar did not much like Mr. Jinnah at that time; in fact on one occasion in the Mahabat Khan mosque he had spoken to him very harshly of the Muslim League leader.

However, Sikander Mirza called over Nishtar and appealed to him in the name of Islam to cooperate. He eventually relented, resigned from Ahrar, joined Muslim League, and was taken as minister in Aurangzeb’s ministry. Sikander Mirza relates how this same Aurangzeb once used to come and sit on the carpet before him, and got elevated to the seat of chief minister ship through his effort. About Aurangzeb, Cunningham also writes disparagingly in his diaries. Thus on July 19, 1943:

Aurangzeb is extremely amenable and anxious to do as I want. He seems to have forgotten that the function of a minister is to advise the governor. Nearly every file comes from him with a note, “I solicit the advice of H.E. the Governor.”

The fact is Aurangzeb and his men knew that they were in the government through the courtesy of the British. Forming a Muslim League government when there was not a single Muslim League member elected to the Assembly could be the handiwork only of the British and their deputy commissioner. However these Muslim Leaguers were deeply divided amongst themselves. In connection with the minister formation, Aurangzeb and the president of the provincial Muslim League, Khan Bahadur Sa’abdullah Khan, fell foul of each other. The governor himself got deeply worried over the mutual bickering. He wrote on May 27, 1944:

There is no doubt that the name of the Muslim League administration is simply mud nowadays over the scandalous way in which they buy votes.

Muslim League had been in office for a year. Cunningham, somewhat assured of its position, began releasing Khudai Khidmatgars from the jail in ones. However, the League had become bitterly divided against itself. One was the government faction led by Aurangzeb Khan; the other comprised the deprived ones headed by Khan Saadullah Khan. The rivalry came to the point that “In November 1944 Saadullah Khan informed Jinnah that he could no longer support the ministry and that if a no-confidence motion was moved he would vote in favour of it” (Erland Janson, India, Pakistan or Pukhtoonistan, P 131).

The governor was doing his best so that the ministry held together. He went to the extent of not convening the Assembly’s 1944 autumn session on the plea that there was no business to dispose of. The secretary of the Congress’ parliamentary party presented a memorandum signed by 20 Assembly members to the governor to call the Assembly into session so that a no-confidence motion could be debated. But the governor turned it down. Eventually when the avoidance tactics could no longer be persisted in and the house met for the spring session of 1945, sure enough the Aurangzeb ministry fell. Khan Bahadur Saadullah, true to his warning, voted against the Muslim League government.

Cunningham and his men knew that the Aurangzeb ministry was causing a sharp rift in the Muslim League ranks and was earning a very bad name for the party. But the British could not at any cost afford to give the impression that only the Congress or the Khudai Khidmatgar enjoyed support in the province. The British now started working directly through their own officials in the province and the tribal areas.

Election in NWFP was held in February 1946. Congress obtained an absolute majority. Not only that. What disappointed the British even more was that the Congress won even the traditional Muslim seats. The Muslim League as usual won all its support from Hazara where it obtained 8 out of 9 seats. The British had worked on its behalf everywhere. Several of the Government officials were open in their clumsy canvassing for the League. The deputy commissioner of Bannu, for instance, toured the whole district with his wife, and when invited to receptions he would say, give dopatta to my wife, which was supposed to mean, vote for Muslim League’. Besides, a lot of money poured in from the country’s princely states; so did all the effort of the mullahs and the Khan Bahadurs. It was in a way the British’s own defeat that from the entire Mardan district, only Nawab Hoti Sir Mohammad Akbar Khan won a seat for the Muslim League; Peshawar also yielded only one seat; Bannu came up with no more than two dopattas; and Kohat gave none at all.

The defeat had a particular edge in that the League campaigning had largely been done in the name of Pakistan, and the vote had even been made a contest between Islam and kufr. All the pir and mullah partisans of the British were canvassing for Pakistan in the name of Islam.

See that they could not prop up the Muslim League through constitutional and democratic means the British started thinking of other methods.

Jamiat-ul-Ulema had two of its members elected in Dera Ismail Khan. Including these two, Dr. Khan Sahib got the support of 33 members, as against 17 of the Muslim League, and thus had to be asked to form the ministry.