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Pakistan
Index
The uprising of 1857-58 was the last fitful assertion
of an
all but moribund Mughal Empire. Mutinous sepoys had
marched from
Meerut, the site of the first outbreak, to Delhi
proclaiming
their intention to restore the poet-emperor Bahadur Shah
II to
imperial glory. British forces with Punjabi sepoys
recaptured
Delhi and banished the emperor to Burma, where he died in
penury
in 1862. British distrust of Muslim aristocracy resulted
from the
rebellious sepoys' attempt to restore the power of the
emperor.
Muslim leaders were alleged to have had a major role in
planning
and leading the revolt, although the revolt itself was a
series
of badly planned and uncoordinated uprisings and the
principal
leaders, Nana Sahib and Tantia Topi, were Hindus. In the
eyes of
British rulers, Muslim leaders had been discredited.
As a consequence, the landed Muslim upper classes in
the
north Indian heartland retreated into cultural and
political
isolation, while fellow Muslims in Punjab were rewarded
for
assisting the British. The former failed to reemerge
economically
and produced no large group comparable to the upwardly
mobile
British-educated Hindu middle class. They did not revise
the
doctrines of Islam to meet the challenges posed by alien
rule,
Christian missionaries, and revivalist Hindu sects, such
as the
Arya Samaj, attempting reconversion to Hinduism. The
former
Muslim rulers of India were in danger of becoming a
permanent
noncompetitive class in the British Raj at the very time
the
forces of Indian nationalism were gathering strength.
One response to British rule came to be known as the
Deoband
Movement, which was led by the ulama, who were expanding
traditional Islamic education. The ulama also sought to
reform
the teaching of Islamic law and to promote its application
in
contemporary Muslim society. They promoted publications in
Urdu,
established fund-raising drives, and undertook other
modern
organizational work on an all-India basis. While most
Deobandis
eventually were to support the Indian National Congress
and a
united India, a group that favored the creation of
Pakistan later
emerged as the core of the Jamiat-ul-Ulama-i-Islam party
(see Political Dynamics
, ch. 4).
Another response was led by Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-98,
known
as Sir Syed) and was called the Aligarh Movement after the
Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College (now Aligarh Muslim
University), which he founded in 1875 at Aligarh in
north-central
India
(see Education
, ch. 2). Sir Syed considered access
to
British education as the best means of social mobility for
the
sons of the Muslim gentry under colonial rule.
Meanwhile, the beginnings of the Indian nationalist
movement
were to be discerned in the increasing tendency to form
all-India
associations representing various interests.
English-speaking
Indians, predominantly middle-class but from different
parts of
the country, were discovering the efficacy of association
and
public meetings in propagating their views to a wider
audience
and in winning the attention of the British government. In
1885
the Indian National Congress (also referred to as
Congress) was
founded to formulate proposals and demands to present to
the
British.
A national, all-India forum, Congress was an umbrella
organization. Many of its members envisioned a long
British
period of tutelage and advocated strictly
constitutionalist and
gradualist reforms, but after World War I, Congress argued
for a
speedy end to alien rule. The idea of the territorial
integrity
of India and opposition to any sectarian division of
India,
however, always remained sacrosanct to Congress.
Although Sir Syed often voiced demands similar to those
made
by the founders of Congress--local self-government, Indian
representation on the viceroy's and the governors'
councils, and
equal duties for Indian members of the Indian Civil
Service and
the judicial service--he remained aloof when Congress was
founded
and advised his followers not to join Congress, because he
thought the organization would be dominated by Hindus and
would
inevitably become antigovernment. It has been argued that
Sir
Syed's fear of Hindu domination sowed the seeds for the
"Two
Nations Theory" later espoused by the All-India Muslim
League
(also referred to as Muslim League), founded in 1906, and
led to
its demand for a separate state for the Muslims of India--
reinforcing his view that the British were the only
guarantor of
the rights of the Muslims. Sir Syed argued that education
and not
politics was the key to Muslim advancement. Graduates of
Aligarh
generally made their careers initially in administration,
not
politics, and thus were not greatly affected by the
introduction
of representative institutions at the provincial level by
the
India Councils Act of 1892.
Events in Bengal proved that agitation was as useful as
politics. Lord Curzon (George Nathaniel Curzon), the
viceroy,
partitioned the large province of Bengal (which then
included
Bihar and Orissa) in 1905. Although the province was
unwieldy,
Curzon's plan divided the Bengali speakers by creating the
new
province of Eastern Bengal and Assam and reducing the
original
province to western Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. The eastern
province had a Muslim majority.
A massive antipartition campaign was launched against
the
British by Hindus in Bengal, using constitutional methods
as well
as terrorism spearheaded by revolutionaries. The partition
of
Bengal was annulled in 1911. The province of Eastern
Bengal and
Assam was dissolved, Bengal proper was reunited, Assam was
separated, and a new province of Bihar and Orissa was
created.
Although the reunited Bengal province had a small Muslim
majority, ambitious Muslims in the province were
disgruntled and
looked to the Muslim League for better prospects.
In 1906 the All-India Muslim League had been founded in
Dhaka
to promote loyalty to the British and "to protect and
advance the
political rights of the Muslims of India and respectfully
represent their needs and aspirations to the Government."
It was
also stated that there was no intention to affect the
rights of
other religious groups. Earlier that same year, a group of
Muslims--the Simla Delegation--led by Aga Khan III, met
the
viceroy and put forward the concept of "separate
electorates." If
the proposal were accepted, Muslim members of elected
bodies
would be chosen from electorates composed of Muslims only,
and
the number of seats in the elected bodies allotted to
Muslims
would be at least proportional to the Muslim share of the
population, but preferably "weighted" to give Muslims a
share in
seats somewhat higher than their proportion of the
population.
The principles of communal representation, separate
electorates,
and weightage were included in the Government of India Act
of
1909 and were expanded to include such other groups as
Sikhs and
Christians in later constitutional enactments.
Data as of April 1994
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