Lets be clear about a couple of things. There are no Indian Muslim leaders. The last leader of Indian Muslims was Muhammad Ali Jinnah and he left a huge scar on the Indian psyche to the extent that the Indian political leadership ensured that no other Muslim leader would ever emerge.
There are several Indian Muslim politicians who have been a fixture in the Indian political landscape but their clout barely extends beyond their constituencies from where they are elected, primarily because of the demographics of that constituencies. For the most part, these political leaders have done well for their electorate and therefore, deserve accolades. But to call these people as a pan-Indian Muslim leader is exaggerating the facts.
So please don't blame Indian Muslims or their limited leadership. Understand the situation that they are in.
Of course brother, I would not say that I understand Indian politics as well as you. You are very much in the environment and touched by the heat.
I was referring to post-Independence leaders of India, namely Abul Kalam Azad, who himself grew disenfranchised with the rising influence of Patel and other sectarian leaders. At the end, he himself was sidelined by Nehru and Gandhi.
Not to say I disrespect him, no, he was a leader of the people and a proper, respectable Muslim, but he caught his mistake too late. The Hindus simply can not be trusted to safeguard the interests of Muslims.
Quaid e Azam understood that early on and tried his best to convince him.
The nasty critics of Quaid e Azam were the JUH of Deoband, and they propagated many theories of Quaid e Azam's supposed English dietary habits, declaring him a Shia, made takfir on him, even going to the extent of describing him as Kaffir e Azam (auzobillah,) and altogether rubbished Pakistan, much to the admiration of secular and extremist Hindus alike.
One example is that Moulana Madodi he didn’t love Pakistan but when he saw he had no power or influence in India he decided to shift over. Sadly we should’ve kicked that bechod out for abusing Wali Jinnah R.A., but we were all welcoming. Sadly a lot of useless people like Madodi crosses over and should’ve been taken care of at that point.
Dear brother, I respect and admire everything you have written up until this point, I must politely disagree. I shall explain why.
You and I have the benefit of hindsight, which others did not.
No doubt Maulana Maududi made monumental mistakes when partition was happening, his vision was clouded in his fiqh and literary knowledge of Islam. He was not able to think outside the box as Allama Iqbal had done, who was an equally prestigious scholar of Islam.
However, he accepted and owned his mistakes when the violence of partition became clear.
At that point some Muslims of Pakistan and now India also could not accept that there needed to be a separate country. Partition violence was the absolute proof of the motives of Gandhi and Nehru, and their kind of duplicity and collusion with extremist Hindus and Sikhs.
Time proved Quaid e Azam correct, and remarkably, he is still being proven right to this day!
Maulana Maududi championed for Pakistan to become a genuine Islamic state, something that the people of Pakistan have been fighting for to this day. He did not agree with the secularism of the British raised elites of the political class and the military.
His vantage point was desperately needed to bring equilibruim to Pakistan. From his students, we received great Islamic scholars like Maulana Shabbir Usmani (who read the janazah of Quaid e Azam) and Dr. Israr Ahmad (who is admired by no less a person than Imran Khan.)
Furthermore, when the secular concept of Muslim nationalism collapsed in the aftermath of 1971 and the split of Bangladesh, the Islamic narrative of Pakistan took center stage. Pakistani Muslims had to rationalize why the events happened the way they did, and so we reached into Maulana Maududi's own theory of Islamic identity.
He put it quite clearly in his pamphlet "Tafheem ul Islam" in which he states clearly that Islam and Kufr are polar opposites, they can never compromise, just as light and darkness are distinct. Further he stated that Muslims have re-entered a Makkan period and that Islam must be preached and built from the ground up, and this was the only remedy for the people's problems.
Some Muslims were still stuck in Jahaliyya, hence they were easily influenced by Kuffar and against other Muslims.
It was this view of Islamic identity and rationalization of 1971, which gave birth to a new and more unified Pakistan. Now Islam took center stage, and a Muslim had to instill Islam in his life in all facets, for the betterment of Pakistan and the Muslim Ummat as a whole.
When Soviets invaded Afghanistan, it was this philosophy which was further proven correct. Now Pakistan could chart its future as an unabashedly Islamic state.
The old slogan, which my ancestors on the road to Pakistan recited over and over again, while they walked over the dead and mutilated bodies of fellow Muslims, while their malnourished and dehydrated bodies trudged on, and their eyes scoured the horizon for murderous bands of kuffar (Indian Sikhs/Hindus,) that slogan was born again.
Pakistan ka Matlab kya? La ilaha ila Allah.
