- The British in India
- By 1614, British East India Company opens its first office in Bombay
- By 1700s, British had begun ruling Indian subcontinent
- In 1850s, Indians started rebelling, with Gandhi, etc leading the mutiny movement. 1857: first war of independence...and lost
- Indian National Congress was started to end British rule.
- Our main character: Muslim lawyer named Mohammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948) joined, even though he had studies law and British political system in London. He became a leader in this organization, working tirelessly for the rights of the Indians
- Jinnah, the character
- Some controversy: Most Pakistani Muslim sources refuse to believe that he was not the paragon of virtue and nobility, whereas if you look at more Western and historically distanced sources, you find some interesting things
- No one knows when exactly when he was born but he says it was on Christmas Day
- Hardly a devout Muslim: he ate pork, drank alcohol
- Some interpretations of his actions could make him look power-hungry but you have to go in-depth to see that side
- Family was recently converted to Islam
- Protecting Muslim Interests
- 1906: At annual Mohammadan Educational Conference, Nawab Salim ullah Khan presents a proposal to establish a political party, All India Muslim League, to safeguard interests of the Muslims.
- "The Musalmans are only a fifth in number as compared with the total population of the country, and it is manifest that if at any remote period the British government ceases to exist in India, then the rule of India would pass into the hands of that community which is nearly four times as large as ourselves ... our life, our property, our honour, and our faith will all be in great danger, when even now that a powerful British administration is protecting its subjects, we the Musalmans have to face most serious difficulties in safe-guarding our interests from the grasping hands of our neighbors."
- All India Muslim League founded as forum for Indian Muslim separatism
- This happens after the (first) Partition of Bengal, separating eastern Muslims from the mostly Hindu western areas of India
- Anyhow, Jinnah joins this organization too - but reluctantly, b/c the Muslim League had little influence beyond educated Muslim elites and was very conservative & loyal to British
- He joined to try to bring them in line with the Indian Congress's views, (an org they hated)
- 1916: He actually gets the Indian Congress and Muslim League to agree on something! The Lucknow Pact of 1916 granted the Muslims many of the safeguards which they had demanded, including separate electorates and weight in the Legislative Councils in provinces with a Muslim minority.
- Becomes chief ambassador of Hindu-Muslim peace and political unity
- 1920: The law-abiding Jinnah disagrees with Gandhi's non-cooperative movement and decides to leave both the All-Muslim League and Indian Congress (which Gandhi basically had taken over in)
- Tries to retire from politics, but a man named Nawab Liaqat Ali Khan visits him and says - look, Indian Muslims need your leadership
- From the outside, starts converting Muslim League into an enlightened political organization willing to cooperate w/ other organizations w/ other organizations
- Turns Muslim League into a tool to unify all Muslims
- Take a step back and look at how hard of a task that must have been. Muslims of British India were majorly divided:
- Sect: Sunni vs Shia
- Language: No "Muslim" language, they just shared language with regional languages of the Hindus. Bengali, Punjabi, Gujazati and Tamil. So people couldn't even understand each other or Muslim leaders
- Ethnicity: Families of Arab & Turkish invaders of India vs. Converted families of native Hindu population
- Muslims who had shared economic interest with Hindu landowners
- Political divide rose when in 1900s Brits introduced elected councils - division between the Muslim majority in Bengal and the Poonjaaab and Muslim minority in United Provinces
- Take a step back and look at how hard of a task that must have been. Muslims of British India were majorly divided:
- Despite all this, Jinnah convinces the Muslim League and his followers that the only way to maintain the religious rights, dignity of the persecuted Muslims is to create an entirely separate country: 2 Nation Theory
- 1930: Poet Mohammad Iqbal proposes creation of separate Muslim state in northwest India
- 1933: Rahmat Ali, a Cambridge undergraduate comes up w/ name Pakistan: made up of the initial letters of Punjab + Afghan areas + Kashmir + Sind, and the ending stan – land. (Maybe Balochistan?) Pak also means 'spiritually pure, or clean.
- Pakistan in Urdu.
- People are like, oh that's cute but still aren't really listening. They don't think it's that important
- 1937 election: The Indian Congress does really well and has ministries in 7/11 provinces. This is the first time Hindus are in charge of so many Muslims, and they're not at all sensitive to Muslim cultural & religious interests.
- Muslims realize they actually need the Muslim League to protect their rights & interests and they accept Muslim League as their speaker, vs the Indian Congress as the Hindu speaker
- 1940: Muslim League adopts Lahore Resolution, which endorses idea of separate nation for India's Muslims, to be called Pakistan.
- The British Viceroy to India says: "The British cannot contemplate the transfer of their present responsibility for the peace and welfare of India to any system of Government whose authority is directly denied by large and powerful elements in India's national life."
- Indian Congress & British Parliament are being pushed to agree to the campaign for Muslim independence
- Independence of Pakistan & India
- 1947: British gov't agreed to quit India after ruling for approx. 340 yrs. The 2nd world war has started & the British have more important stuff to do now. They just ask for Indian support in the war...which the Indian Congress didn't want to give, but the Muslim League was okay with.
- Congress is kind of going down at this point...with all of Gandhi's "Quit India" protests, the leaders are all going to jail. So people are supporting the Muslim League
- But Parliament passes Indian Independence Act anyhow. India became independent country, and Pakistan is a separate country.
- 1947: British gov't agreed to quit India after ruling for approx. 340 yrs. The 2nd world war has started & the British have more important stuff to do now. They just ask for Indian support in the war...which the Indian Congress didn't want to give, but the Muslim League was okay with.
- Thru this Indian Independence Act, the Government of India Act becomes constitution of Pakistan.
- August 15: Jinnah becomes first governor-general and Liaquat Ali Khan, member of All-Muslim League, becomes the first Prime Minister of the new nation.
- August 14, 1947: Birth of The Dominion of Pakistan
- Map: East Bengal, a part of Assam (Sylhet), West Punjab, Sind, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. Much, much smaller than what Jinnah had dreamed of.
- Decision to divide Punjab and Bengal, two of the biggest provinces, between India and Pakistan created inter-religious violence. The violent clashes continued until November.
- More than two million people migrated across the new borders
- At least 200,000 killed, 5.5 million had been made homeless.
- Approx. 15 million people flee religious persecution, Muslim fleeing to East and West Pakistan, while Hindus flee to India.
- Post-Pakistan:
- Jinnah's last message: “The foundations of your State have been laid and it is now for you to build and build as quickly and as well as you can.”
- Sept 11, 1948: Quid-e-Azam dies in Karachi, a year after Pakistan's founding
- The independence also resulted in tensions over Kashmir leading to the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947, which culminated in a U.N.-led armistice and a hitherto unresolved Kashmir dispute.
- March 23, 1956: Constitution and proclaims Pakistan an Islamic republic.
- In 1971, after Pakistan's third war w/ India, the East "wing" of Pakistan seceded and became the independent country of Bangladesh.
- Map of modern Bangladesh situation, Kashmir situation.
mar 24 2013 ∞
mar 25 2013 +
mar 25 2013 +