Column for 1st June 2003

The attempt to resurrect memories of Muslims opposed to partition and Pakistan has caused some little stir. A correspondent writes:

‘Allah Baksh was premier (those days chief ministers were known by this designation) of Sind during the eventful days of the “Quit India ‘ movement of 1942 as head of the ‘Ittehad Party’ (Unity Party) which did not allow the Muslim League to have any foothold on the Muslim majority province of Sind.’

‘Allah Baksh and his Party were not part of the Indian National Congress but when the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made a derogatory reference to the Indian freedom struggle and the ‘Quit India’ movement in a speech in the British Parliament, Allah Baksh renounced all titles conferred by the British Government,’ {Churchill said, ‘I did not become the first minister of the Crown to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire’}

Allah Baksh stated ‘It (the renouncement of the titles) is the cumulative result of the feeling that the British Government does not want to part with power. Mr Churchill’s speech shattered all hopes’.

‘The British administration could not digest this dissent of Allah Baksh and he was removed from office by the Governor Sir Hugh Dow’ in October 1942’
‘This great sacrifice of a Muslim leader for the freedom of the country remains unknown even today’.

‘The fact that Nathuram Godse, closely associated with Hindu Mahasabha Savarkar and the RSS killed Gandhiji on January 30th 1948 is known by all but how many of us know that Allah Baksh, a great fighter for the independence of a united India and prolific opponent of the idea of Pakistan was murdered on May 14th 1943 by professional killers hired by the Muslim League.

Allah Baksh needed to be liquidated because he was able to muster massive support of common Muslim masses throughout India against the formation of Pakistan. Moreover Allah Baksh with massive support in Sind and opposed to the formation of Pakistan could be the greatest stumbling block in the physical formation of Pakistan as without Sind the ‘Islamic State in the west of the country would just not have materialised’.

‘It is a well known fact that the dismissal of the Allah Baksh ministry in 1942 and his murder in 1943 paved the way for the entry of Muslim League in Sind. One could see the open ganging up of the British rulers and Muslim League in political and physical liquidation of Allah Baksh and his kind of anti-communal politics’.

‘Sind Muslim League leader M. A. Khuro was put on trial as the main conspirator in the killing of Allah Baksh. He was found ‘not guilty’ as the state could not produce an ‘independent’ witness to prove his involvement. Significantly it was the same ground on which Savarkar later secured acquittal in Gandhiji’s murder case’.

Our correspondent has provided more details of the conference held in Delhi from 27th to 30th April 1940 to oppose the Pakistan resolution of the Muslim League. There were fourteen hundred delegates from all over India and Allah Baksh presided. The resolution passed reads:

‘INDIA would have geographical and political boundaries of an indivisible whole land and, as such, was the common land of all the citizens irrespective of race or religion’.

The conference resolved that ‘Pakistan’ was impractical and harmful to the country’s interests generally and Muslims particularly’.

In his presidential address Allah Baksh said that

the theocratic state ‘was based on a false understanding that India is inhabited by two nations, Hindu and Muslim. It is much more to the point to say that that all Indian Mussulmans are proud to be Indian Nationals and they are equally proud that their spiritual and creedal realm is Islam.’

‘As Indian nationals- Muslims and Hindus and others, inhabit the land and share every inch of the motherland and all its material and cultural treasures alike according to the measure of their just and fair rights and requirements as the proud sons of the soil… It is a vicious fallacy for Hindus, Muslims and other inhabitants of India to arrogate to themselves exclusively proprietary rights over either the whole or any particular part of India. The country as an indivisible whole and as one federated and composite unit belongs to all inhabitants of the country alike, and is as much the inalienable and imprescriptible heritage of the Indian Muslim as of other Indians. No segregated or isolated regions, but the whole of India is the Homeland of all Indian Muslims and no Hindu or Muslim, or any other has the right to deprive them of one inch of this Homeland.’

Allah Baksh was at his most perceptive when describing the causes of communalism and ascribing it to the high castes amongst both Muslims and Hindus.

‘These feelings and ambitions amongst those who hope to constitute the ruling caste among Hindus and Muslims, as successors to the present Imperial rulers, revive and invent excuses for popular consumption from historical and other sources, and by securing the support of groups, manouver themselves in a position to play the political chess which promises a prospect of success in their aim of becoming the rulers of the masses either integrally of the entire country or of a delimited region’.

He went on to expose the hollowness of the myth built by the Muslim Leaguers inspired by Saiyyad Ahmad of Aligarh and Hindu Mahasabhites inspired by Savarkar.

‘Had the imperialist structure of society been a guarantee of the prosperity of Muslim masses and had the empires not carried the germs of their own decay…then the mighty Omaiyyad, Abbasid, Saracenic, Fatimide, Sassanic, Mughal and Turkish empires would never have crumbled, leaving 1/5th of the human race, who live by the Islamic faith in the conditions they find themselves today disinterested and destitute in bulk. Similarly those Hindus who entertain similar dreams and who out of tendentiously written pages of history or out of the works of modern imperialists select ingredients for the nourishment of their imperial dreams, or dreams of exploitation, imposition and domination would be well advised to discard such ideals’.

Allah Baksh provided a goal for the anti-communalism movement as being one aiming ‘to build up a vigorous, healthy progressive and honoured India enjoying its well deserved Freedom’.

Perhaps a portrait in the Parliament House and a postage stamp will help make Allah Baksh’’s contribution better known. The Indian National Congress and other parties calling themselves secular should take up this most worthy cause.