What Maulana Azad Proposed for Undivided India in 1946 is What Pakistan Needs in 2012
By Haider Nizamani
Feb 28, 2012
YOU have to take a Maulana
seriously when he says that founding a modern state on the basis of religion is
no guarantee of its success.
Maulana Abul Kalam
Azad was one such person whose 54th death anniversary passed quietly by on Feb
22. The life and works of this multidimensional man have indispensable value
for aficionados of Urdu, students of the Independence movement and those concerned
with the future of South Asia. My intention here is not to write a hagiographic
portrait of Azad, but to pick up vignettes to shed light on his personality and
relevance.
Azad was a firm
believer in unity in diversity but the unwavering nationalist was let down by
key Congress leaders in the run-up to Partition, a disappointment he did not
divulge during his lifetime but that he instructed be incorporated in the
posthumous edition of his book India Wins Freedom. His assessment of the
personal and political characteristics of the domineering figures of the 1940s
helps us understand not just the high politics of Partition but also the
resultant bitterness that afflicted Azad until his death.
Jawaharlal Nehru and
Azad were more than lifelong political comrades. Azad’s affection for Nehru was
based on a personal bond that evolved over years of friendship. But he was
mindful of Nehru’s weaknesses which at crucial times clouded his political
judgment. He felt Nehru was an ‘impulsive’ man, prone to succumbing to flattery.
In his Ghubar-i-Khatir
(1946), a masterpiece of Urdu prose, Azad mentions how in Ahmednagar Fort
prison he would be up before dawn and at that quiet hour, the only disturbance
would be Nehru’s mild snores and sleep-talk — always in English. Azad observes
that sleep-talk is often the trait of people guided more by emotions than
reason. “Whether awake or asleep, Jawaharlal’s actions are dictated by
emotions,” he wrote.
Azad was saddened when
his favourite, Nehru, conceded to the idea of Partition. He warned that
“history will never forget us if we agree to Partition. The verdict would be
that India was divided not by the Muslim League but by Congress”. Moreover, for
Azad, “Vallabhbhai Patel was the founder of Indian partition”. Patel was a
pro-Hindu Congress leader who became independent India’s first home minister
and deputy prime minister. These harsh assessments, as Azad had willed, appear
in posthumous editions of India Wins Freedom. To avoid cracks in Congress
unity, he chose not to make disagreements public during his lifetime.
Mohammad Ali Jinnah
and Azad followed divergent political paths. Both towering Muslim politicians,
they often clashed politically about the future of India and the place in it of
Muslims. According to Azad, “Pakistan was for Jinnah a bargaining counter” and
the division of India, instead of resolving the communal problem, would turn it
into inter-state rivalry with Muslims in Hindu-majority regions being in a
state of permanent disadvantage.
Azad chose to remain
quiet about the role of Congress stalwarts in expediting Partition and blamed
Jinnah for India’s division. In retrospect, a more valuable contribution may
have been calling the bluff of the likes of Patel instead of staying quiet in
the name of party unity.
Partition continued to
haunt Azad after 1947. Presciently, he warned that dividing India on religious
grounds would turn the communal conflict into inter-state rivalry leading to
militarisation at the expense of human development. He reminded the Muslims who
were leaving for Pakistan that religious affinity would not override cultural
differences between the migrants and the natives. For him, a shared religion
was an inadequate foundation for a state in South Asia given the religious and
cultural diversity of the region.
In Pakistan, the elite
did not heed the pitfalls identified by Azad. He blamed Congress for not
accommodating the demand for regional autonomy as propounded by the Muslim
League. Post-Independence Pakistan’s ruling elite repeated that mistake, leading
to the break-up of the country in 1971. The event also proved Azad right in his
belief that religion cannot be the foundation of a state in ethnically,
denominationally and religiously diverse societies.
The Islamisation of
Pakistan has strengthened sectarianism, leaving Muslim and non-Muslim in a
state of perpetual vulnerability. Over-centralised states identified with a
particular religion cannot come together to form a peaceful region for South
Asians. The Muslims in Bharatiya Janata Party’s Hindutva-inspired India, Hindus
in Buddhist-dominated Sri Lanka or non-Sunnis in Islamic Pakistan will always
be vulnerable citizens, and states not at peace within will not be at peace
with each other as neighbours.
Azad dreamt of a
decentralised subcontinent where diverse ethnic and religious groups could live
without fear in a composite culture. Partition shattered his dream and today’s
Pakistan, with its rising tide of religious intolerance, would be Azad’s nightmare.
What he proposed for undivided India in 1946 — a decentralised state with equal
respect for all religions — is precisely what Pakistan needs in 2012.
I would conclude with
two assessments, one about Azad and one that he made. Azad was president of the
Congress party in 1940 and wanted to start a dialogue with Jinnah about the
future of India. Jinnah refused to engage in parleys, dubbing Azad a Congress
‘show boy’. Observers may point out that the description would not fit Azad who
earned his place in the frontline of the anti-colonial movement.
Ghubar-i-Khatir
remains readable not only for its flowing prose but also for its superb
collection of quoted Persian and Urdu couplets. Being a lover of Urdu and
Persian poetry, Azad nevertheless chose to ignore Iqbal and did not include any
of his work. Jinnah’s assessment and Azad’s omission might be seen by some as
having been dictated by political partisanship.
The writer is a Canada-based academic.
Source: The Dawn, Karachi