Muslim and Hindu leaders who were loyalists of British Empire

[KingMamba]

ok brothers. i have to go now to prepare for Iftaar and water my lawn

in sha Allah see you in a couple of hours after tarawih

Iftar over here in a bit too, you must not be in Pakistan at the moment?

Anyway same here.

 

[FaujHistorian]

ok brothers. i have to go now to prepare for Iftaar and water my lawn

in sha Allah see you in a couple of hours after tarawih

show off

ok brother. may allah bless your rozas

Pakistani time is to get ready for Sehri

Where are you?

 

[M. Sarmad]

Here is an excellent essay by mr. hamdani.

show which Muslim Mullahs were on payroll of British.

• Maulana Fazlur Rahman Muradabadi with having facilitated the English capture of Lucknow.
• Maulana Rashid Gangohi, Tazkira-e-Rasheed, on page 80 has the great Deobandi freedom fighter claiming that he was entirely loyal to the British Empire
• Dean of Darul Uloom Deoband, Hafiz Maulana Muhammad Ahmad, was given the title of “Shams-ul-Ulema” by the British governor of UP
• Ahmad Raza Khan Barelvi was principally a supporter of British rule and declared jihad against the British to be unlawful.
• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, made his name as a recruiter for the British Empire before and during the First World War. For his stellar services to the British Empire, in 1915 Gandhiji was awarded the Kaiser-e-Hind medal — the highest honour for a loyal British Indian subject.

Please do not forget to read the last paragraph before commenting. Thank you


Loyalists of the British Empire

Almost all Deobandi religious leaders and all Barelvi ulema were on the payroll of the empire. This is how they sustained a living and ample proof can be found in their own books

Yasser Latif Hamdani
July 07, 2014




Canadian activist and polemicist Tarek Fatah, responding to my article ‘Shorish Kashmiri, Azad and partition’ last week (Daily Times, June 30, 2014) thought it wise to declare, on Twitter, that what I had written about Shorish Kashmiri was inspired by Ahmedi propaganda. He declared that no Ahmedi had fought against the British and that the British had sustained the Ahmedi community and rewarded it time and again. This, of course, is the standard line of the mullahs in Pakistan, a line that has been forwarded time and again by Tehreek-e-Khatm-e-Nabuwat and Majlis-e-Ahrar. This was also the elaborate fiction that Shorish Kashmiri invented along with Ataullah Shah Bokhari and Mazhar Ali Azhar of Ahrar in the 1940s to attack the Muslim League and discredit it as the authoritative representative of Muslims. What is strange however is that a self-styled progressive refusenik like Fatah, who does not tire of attacking Muslims otherwise, has chosen to repeat this distortion of history.

The biggest issue the scholars of Deobandi and Barelvi schools had with the Ahmedis was that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the sect, had reinterpreted the doctrine of jihad as more than qital (fighting). Consequently, the Ahmedi community as a whole remained constitutional and law-abiding citizens of British India. The Ahmedi religious movement itself had been at the forefront of the missionary activities of the church. Mirza Ghulam Ahmed, before founding the Ahmedi sect, had been considered the intellectual champion of Muslims against the onslaught of the Christian west and the re-absorption activities of Hindu sects like the Arya Samajists. A peaceful, hardworking and enterprising community, the Ahmedis produced the likes of Sir Zafrullah Khan who was one of the finest advocates in law, the president of the Muslim League for a while, one of Pakistan’s founders and later head of the International Court of Justice. For this reason, Ahmedis are denounced as British agents even though there is not a single Ahmedi who received any patronage or pension from the British Empire.

Let us, however, look at the roles of those other groups who were considered to be at the forefront of the Independence Movement. That the Hindu reform and revival movement itself owed a great deal to British patronage after 1857 can hardly be disputed. Needless to say, the most celebrated freedom fighter in all of South Asia, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, made his name as a recruiter for the British Empire before and during the First World War. When Jinnah asked Gandhi to join the movement for Indian self-rule, Gandhi’s condescending reply, in olde English, was, “First ye seek the recruiting office” and then the British will open their doors to his petitions. For his stellar services to the British Empire, in 1915 Gandhiji was awarded the Kaiser-e-Hind medal — the highest honour for a loyal British Indian subject.

Hindus were not the only ones to receive this patronage by the empire. Almost all Deobandi religious leaders — supposedly the most militant of anti-British elements — and all Barelvi ulema were on the payroll of the empire. This is how they sustained a living and ample proof can be found in their own books. For example, in Sawanay-e-Qasimi — the biography of Maulana Qasim Nanawatvi — page 103 credits Maulana Fazlur Rahman Muradabadi with having facilitated the English capture of Lucknow. On page 247 of the same book we find that Deobandi religious figures were proud of being pensioners of the British Empire and used it to prove their loyalty to the monarch. The biography of Maulana Rashid Gangohi, Tazkira-e-Rasheed, on page 80 has the great Deobandi freedom fighter claiming that he was entirely loyal to the British Empire. On page 160 of the Tehreek-e-Shaikh-ul-Hind, we find that another ‘freedom fighter’ and the Dean of Darul Uloom Deoband, Hafiz Maulana Muhammad Ahmad, was given the title of “Shams-ul-Ulema” by the British governor of UP. His most famous student was Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madni, the great ally of the Congress Party and the leader of Jamiat-e-Ulema-Hind — another ‘freedom fighter’. He is considered a great hero of the freedom movement by Pakistani Islamists and Indian nationalists. The entire Deoband edifice was built on official patronage and British pensions.

Now let us come to the other side of the Hanafi Sunni coin: the Barelvis. Ahmad Raza Khan Barelvi was principally a supporter of British rule and declared jihad against the British to be unlawful. His fatwa can be found on page 447 of his treatise Al-Mohajat, Al Mohtamanat Fi Ayat-al-Mumtahanat. Francis Robinson, in his book Separatism Amongst Indian Muslims: The politics of UP Muslims 1860-1923 on page 268 confirms the pro-government fatwas of Ahmad Raza Khan Barelvi.

Similarly, the Shias by and large remained loyal and law abiding citizens of the empire though it must be said to their credit that, unlike the Barelvis and Deobandis, they were not patronised by the British. A sub-sect of Shia Islam, the Ismailis, both Agha Khanis and Bohris, looked towards the British Raj as a means to protect them from hostile sectarian majorities. Indeed, so close was the relationship of Sir Agha Khan to the British that Kemal Ataturk publicly accused the Agha Khan of working for the British against Turkey, though unjustifiably. Needless to say, Kemal Ataturk himself has also been accused of being a British agent by latter day votaries of the pan-Islamic khilafat.

The point I wish to make is this: people interacted with the empire in different ways. Some people, very few and far between, did take up arms against the empire, more often for reasons wholly unsavoury than noble ones. Others worked within the system or were its beneficiaries. The accusation targeting one community or the other of having been ‘British agents’ is therefore farfetched and wholly unfounded. As free men and women in the 21st century, we should approach modern realities without the rancour that our blinkered views on history cause. As for Tarek Fatah, given his penchant to attack minorities like Ahmedis, the logical question is whether he feels any pang of hypocrisy vis-à-vis the fact that he is a Canadian subject of the Queen of England?

@Azlan Haider, @Joe Shearer (you probably know all this)

Loyalists of the British Empire

YLH is absolutely correct ... Ahmedis were the only sect of Muslims who supported Pakistan Movement en masse .. Jinnah foiled all attempts made by conservatives for the expulsion of all Ahmedis from the Muslim League (by declaring them Non Muslims) . Jinnah said that no one , including the legislative body , has any right to declare someone Kafir when he says that he is a Muslim.. ... Iqbal himself was an admirer of Mirza Ghulam Ahmed and Ahmedis (till 30s at least) , his father and brother were staunch Ahmedis .... But we ignored what the founding fathers of this nation believed in , and followed the Mullahs instead ... The same Mullahs who had opposed Pakistan movement with all their energies . . We ourselves are responsible for all our miseries today ...

Anyway anyone who reads up about the history of the time will know that it was the Deobandis and only the Deobandis who by far were willing to fight the British.

Sir You need to read the Diaries of Sir Cunningham (Governor of KPK during British Rule) to know the reality of these Mullahs , He in fact did a great service to the Muslims of Pakistan by recording the names of these traitor Mullahs and stipends given to them by the British govt. :

The Diaries of Sir George Cunningham:

Since the entire policy of the British was based on Islam, therefore, it is important to record the diaries in detail. This will further inform the people how the British used these so-called devotees of Islam, followers of the Prophet, and inheritors of Namaz to serve their ends. And their entire faith was sold cheap.


George Cunningham's diaries are a shocking record of men nurtured at the excellent Islamic school at Deoband, who were busy serving the British. With the Holy Book in their hand and the Tasbih strung around their neck, these pilgrims set out to spread me word of colonialism,British Imperialism, and, for a few pieces of silver, agreed to serve as the custodians of slavery for the Indian people.

Sir George Cunningham's diaries are available at the India Office Library, London. If someone needs proof or wants to investigate further, that is where he should look.

The British policy of communalism could not work in the Frontier Province. Here, Muslims were in such an overwhelming majority that they were not afraid of any other community. Secondly, the Pakhtoons were so confident of their own strength that no one could impose any unwanted policy on them.

It became obvious that any people who were ready to tackle a strong, cruel and oppressive race like the British could not be cowed down. Therefore, the British generally sought out the Maulanas; and in the tribal areas and Afghanistan, they especially combined forces with the Maulanas. These religious leaders were expected, to align with the British against Russia. During the Russian Revolution of 1917, the British realized that along with the military strength a new ideology had emerged. Their experienced eye focused on Islam as the only way to confront and confound the ideological strength of the Russians. When faced with a real danger in the person of Amir Amanullah Khan, they used Islam against Muslims. With utmost cunning, Islam was used against a Pakhtoon ruler and the Muslims of Afghanistan. When Hitler's armies darkened European borders, the British, once again, found their boundaries endangered. At that lime we witnessed Islam being used in India to further British interest. It served as a useful ideological weapon against the USSR. During turbulent times in the Frontier Province, the British once again used Islam . Islam as a political force was strengthened not only in the Frontier Province, but also in the tribal areas and in Afghanistan.


Cunningham wrote that Kuli Khan was being used as the Mullah liaison. He was commissioned to work secretly with the tribal Mullahs and with others who were not prepared to come out in open support. It was a simple case of establishing an Islamic stronghold to combat the Kafirs including the Bolsheviks. The first Mullah recruited by Cunningham was Mullah Marwat. He was formerly connected with the Khaksar movement. Kuli Khan assured him that the only way he could serve Islam was by raising the slogan of Jihad against the enemies of Islam. Through Mullah Marwat, Kuli Khan established relations with the office bearers of the Jamiat-u-Ulema-e-Sarhad, and their supporters in India

These Mullahs, many of whom had consistently been anti-British, began to speak and write against the Russians and Germans. Subsidies were paid to all Mullahs through Mullah Marwat.

It was the responsibility of these Mullahs to tell the nation that since the British were believers in the book, Ahl-e Kitaab, even marriage with them was legal. On the other hand, the Russians were Bolsheviks; not only did they not believe in a revealed book, they did not believe in the existence of God. Therefore, the British and the Muslims were united in their common aspiration to fight this infidel race. They were required to continually remind the Muslims that enlisting in the British Army and fighting along with the British is a service to Islam.

Cunningham records that he persuaded the leaders of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Sarhad to go to Waziristan and convince Faqir Ipi that since the British were at war against the Germans and Italians, Faqir should not bother them because they were now fighting against an infidel race. Their war, in its own way, was a Jihad, therefore, Faqir's Jehad against them should be called off. The British were conducting this intrigue with utmost secrecy. Their enemies had no suspicion that such documents and letters were being exchanged. Cunningham was happy that Faqir’s deputy, Mohammad Waris' letter written to Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Sarhad was friendly in tone. It became evident that Faqir and his companions had no inkling that the Mullahs were accomplices of the British, with explicit instructions from them.

.
Cunningham made three groups among the Maulanas. The smaller Mullahs were handed to the local Khans. Those slightly superior in rank reported through the Deputy Commissioners. The senior ones had a direct line to the Governor Cunningham:

" I have not been in touch with any of the smaller Mullahs myself. I have done it through me following agents with whom practically all my connections have been verbal, as little is put on paper as possible. Ghulam Haider of Sherpao village…he told me that he thought he could work through about nine or ten Mullahs including those of the following villages: Razzar, Kot, Tarnab, Tongi, Utmanzai and Umarzai later Prang and Charsadda. "

Cunningham wrote that he had asked Ghulam Haider of Sherpao village to meet each Mullah on an individual basis, prepare him to serve the true cause of Islam, give him forty fifty rupees, tell him that he will receive another visit after four months, at which time he should be prepared to brief the authorities about his activities to date. Cunningham asked the Khan Bahadur to hint to the Mullahs that if their work proves satisfactory they could expect a government pension. In return, Khan Bahadur told Cunningham that certain Mullahs were most untrustworthy. Better, if they were called in each month, but they should be well paid. Cunningham said that he had given Ghulam Haider of Sherpao village Rs 600. The list of Mullahs from districts Naushera and Peshawar was handed to the Deputy Commissioner, Iskander Mirza.

The Mullahs of Swat, Baneer, Mardan and Rani Zai were the responsibility of the Prime Minister of Swat, Hazrat Ali. Cunningham wrote, "The Wazir-i-Azam [Hazrat Ali of Swat] sent me a list of the Mullahs through whom he is working. He is paying them an average of Rs 15.00 per month."

This was unfair, for the Mullahs of Hashtnagar and Doaba were paid only Rs 10 per month. The Mullahs of Kohat were the responsibility of the Deputy Commissioner of that area. The Mullahs of Bannu were entrusted to Nawab Zafar Khan and Taj Ali. The latter was Khan Bahadur Ghulam Haider's son.

Cunningham had given Rs 600 to the Deputy Commissioner of Dera Ismail Khan, Mohammad Aslam, to pass along to three spiritual leaders of that area, Ama Khel Faqir, Pir Musa, and Pir Zakoori; two hundred rupees a piece. They were given the assurance that if their work was satisfactory they could get a raise!

Regarding Syed Abdul Jabbar of Satana, Cunningham wrote that he was connected with Hyderabad Deccan, and waspaid by the Prime Minister, Sir Akbar Hydari. That Hyderabad would pay for the work that was done for the British wasperfectly acceptable to Cunningham. He reports that Khan informed him that work was successfully completed at Sawabi,and that he had sent his cousin to look after the affairs of Bajaur. The Afridi Mullahs of Khyber were the responsibility of the political agent, Bacon. Cunningham had a long standing relationship with Maulvi Barkatullah, the leader of the Mujahideen:

My arrangement uptil now with him [Maulvi Barkatullah of Asmos] has been that he comes to see me once or twice a year. Barkatullah said he could also do a good deal through ten or twelve Maulvis in different places throughout Bajaur Mohmand country.... I paid him Rs 1000. I asked him to recruit ten or twelve Maulvis from Bajaur within this amount, and contact me in a couple of months.

Cunningham, then gave a detailed account of the activities of Kuli Khan and the Maulanas. It seems that a lot of work was accomplished through the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Hind. They organized several assemblies, passed a few motions, printed pamphlets and made contacts by touring various areas. In Cunningham's records there is evidence of anti-Congress propaganda along with anti-war statements. "Maulana Mohammad Shuaib toured the Mardan district, condemning Satyagraha. A pamphlet by Maulana Midra ullah condemned war situation and was anti-Congress."



Cunningham wrote that the Pir of Musa Zai came to visit him at Peshawar. He was friendly with Sher Ali. The latter was able to enlist the support of the Pir Taunsa. He had agreed to go along with him but unfortunately for him became involved in a civil suit.

In Khyber the political agent entrusted his work to Maulana Abdul Baqi. He placed implicit trust in him and claimed to have given him Rs 1000.

When the war broke out and Hitler became the supreme dictator, the British had to face defeat from all directions. They became concerned that the USSR, taking advantage of the situation, may move towards India. To forestall this possibility the Jamiat-ul-Ulema declared at their annual general meeting that if Russia attacked Afghanistan it was the duty of all Muslims to Join the Jehad against them. When the British were satisfied that there was no fear from Russia, Cunningham issued an edict, "I advised Kuli Khan to modify his anti Bolshevik propaganda and to concentrate more on propaganda against Germany and Italy


It is difficult to conceive how a true Muslim could bear to side with his sworn enemies. Right from the time of Sultan Salahuddin until the Ottoman Empire, the British had routed the Muslims. The British-Indian army had showered the Great Mosque with bullets.

They had seized the throne from the Mughal Emperors. The memory of their treatment of the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, and his children will long linger in human memory. Then, before the very eyes of their brethren in the Frontier Province, how badly they treated the Pakhtoons in Afghanistan. Amir Dost Mohammad Khan, Amir Sher AH Khan, and, finally, Amir Amanullah Khan, all these Muslims were destroyed by the British. Were the Mullahs unaware of all the atrocities inflicted by the British on the Khudai Khidmatgars from 1930 onwards? Their bombing and attacks on the tribal areas were no secret for the Mullahs, and neither was their military action on Wazir, Masood, Afridi and Momand. The war against true believers and Mujahids like Haji Sahib Turang Zai and Faqir Ipi was inspired and instigated by the British.

The Mullahs were concerned neither with Islam, nor Quran, nor with the faith itself. These followers of the Holy Prophet were busy selling religion for ten or fifteen rupees a month. The British were their Muftis and Qazis. Their religious sanction came from the British. Having raised the sword in the name of Islam, they were prepared to pounce upon the "enemy" at the slightest nod from the British. If the British called the Russians "infidels", the Mullahs echoed "Yes". If the British declared the same for the Germans, the Mullah's nodded in agreement although the Germans like the English were Ahl e Kitaab. The Mullahs did not concern themselves with the principles: they waited upon the pleasure of the British. When it was a question of damning Italy, the Mullahs echoed the British sentiment without recognizing that Rome was the seat of Christianity, and Vatican city, residence of the Pope.

Cunningham wrote:

"Wazir-i-Aam of Swat is now employing eighteen Mullahs at Mardan and thirty two at Pir Baba Ziarat, paying each one of them thirty rupees per month."

Cunningham further wrote that Maulana Mohammad Shuaib and Maulana Midrarullah came to see him at Nathiagalli. They brought a detailed, Urdu pamphlet which was intended for distribution in the districts (Zillahs) and tribal areas. It was an excellent pamphlet; anti-Congress, anti-Japan and anti-Germany. What better proof could there be that these Mullahs wanted to "serve" Islam, and in what better way could they "serve" it than to perform Jehad with the militancy of their pen? They pronounced Islamic Judgements (Fatwas), but these were first approved by the British before they were announced:

Maulana Mohammad Shuaib and Maulana Midrarullah came to see me at Nathiagalli on the 26th August and produced a long draft in Urdu of the pamphlet which they proposed to issue both in the Districts and in Tribal Territories; all goodanti-Congress, anti-Japanese and anti-Marxist stuff. They were extremely friendly.

The British did Islam a good turn by recording the names and addresses of these Mullahs. There were twenty-four Mullahs from the Peshawar district, of whom six were from the city of Peshawar, thirteen from the Tehsil Charsadda, three from Tehsil Naushera, and eighteen from Mardan and Sawabi. And so it goes. It is humiliating to read how these interpreters of religion sold their conscience to the political agents and bartered Islam for a few pieces of silver! It is further painful to see proof of their false Judgements (Fatwas) upon true sons and patriots of India. What amazing manipulations! To preserve their imperial regime the British were able to raise and organize a band of servile Muslims who never demanded a free India. On the contrary they resisted the freedom movement, and fully supported the British, confident of material support from them and moral support from their so-called interpretation of Islam.

The British strategy was to befriend those families whose heads were involved in the freedom struggle. The two most important persons fighting the Jehad against the British were Faqir of Ipi and Mullah Pawandah. Another crucial link was Haji Sahib Turangzai of Momand. The British were most interested in ingratiating themselves with these three individuals. And their greatest triumph was to win over the sons of these valiant patriots. Mullah Pawandah's son Fazal Din
and Haji Turangzai's son Padsha Gul. If one were to assess the state of things it becomes apparent that there were very few influential persons in the districts and tribes whom the British had not obtained for a price. After the death of Haji SahibTurangzai and Mullah Pawandah, Faqir was the only stalwart whom they could not buy!

An interesting incident occurred when, after the outbreak of the war in Europe, the British tried to persuade the Afghans to throw out the Germans. To pressurize the Afghans, they invited Shami Pir to the tribal territory, instructing him to incite the people against the royal family of Afghanistan. When the British were satisfied that the task had been successfully completed, they called Shami Pir to the Vana cantonment in Waziristan. They settled with him for £25,000. Shami Pir performed a disappearing trick! Having seen this task successfully completed the Secretary of State for India was thrilled. He asked the Viceroy to make a similar deal with Faqir. The Viceroy's reply is dated 14 July 1938. "There is, I fear, no possible chance in dealing with him on the same basis as Shami Pir. He is not only implacable, but also completely incorruptible. Who would rid me of this turbulent priest?"

 

[Joe Shearer]

show off

ok brother. may allah bless your rozas

Pakistani time is to get ready for Sehri

Where are you?

Iftaar at this time? Probably the east coast of the US, 10.5 hours behind. Nearly 5:30 in the evening. And what is as all-American as watering one's lawn?

YLH is absolutely correct ... Ahmedis were the only sect of Muslims who supported Pakistan Movement en masse .. Jinnah foiled all attempts made by conservatives , for expelling Ahmedis from Muslim League by declaring them Non Muslims. He said that no one , including the legislative body , has any right to declare someone Kafir when he says that he is a Muslim.. ... Iqbal himself was an admirer of Mirza Ghulam Ahmed and Ahmedis (till 30s at least) , his father and brother were staunch Ahmedis .... But we ignored what the founding fathers of this nation believed in and followed the Mullahs ... The same Mullahs who opposed Pakistan movement with all their energies . . We ourselves are responsible for all our miseries today ...




Sir You need to read the Diaries of Sir Cunningham (Governor of KPK during British Rule) to know the reality of these Mullahs , He in fact did a great service to the Muslims of Pakistan by recording the names of these traitor Mullahs and stipends given to them by the British govt. :

The Diaries of Sir George Cunningham:

Since the entire policy of the British was based on Islam, therefore, it is important to record the diaries in detail. This will further inform the people how the British used these so-called devotees of Islam, followers of the Prophet, and inheritors of Namaz to serve their ends. And their entire faith was sold cheap.


George Cunningham's diaries are a shocking record of men nurtured at the excellent Islamic school at Deoband, who were busy serving the British. With the Holy Book in their hand and the Tasbih strung around their neck, these pilgrims set out to spread me word of colonialism,British Imperialism, and, for a few pieces of silver, agreed to serve as the custodians of slavery for the Indian people.

Sir George Cunningham's diaries are available at the India Office Library, London. If someone needs proof or wants to investigate further, that is where he should look.

The British policy of communalism could not work in the Frontier Province. Here, Muslims were in such an overwhelming majority that they were not afraid of any other community. Secondly, the Pakhtoons were so confident of their own strength that no one could impose any unwanted policy on them.

It became obvious that any people who were ready to tackle a strong, cruel and oppressive race like the British could not be cowed down. Therefore, the British generally sought out the Maulanas; and in the tribal areas and Afghanistan, they especially combined forces with the Maulanas. These religious leaders were expected, to align with the British against Russia. During the Russian Revolution of 1917, the British realized that along with the military strength a new ideology had emerged. Their experienced eye focused on Islam as the only way to confront and confound the ideological strength of the Russians. When faced with a real danger in the person of Amir Amanullah Khan, they used Islam against Muslims. With utmost cunning, Islam was used against a Pakhtoon ruler and the Muslims of Afghanistan. When Hitler's armies darkened European borders, the British, once again, found their boundaries endangered. At that lime we witnessed Islam being used in India to further British interest. It served as a useful ideological weapon against the USSR. During turbulent times in the Frontier Province, the British once again used Islam . Islam as a political force was strengthened not only in the Frontier Province, but also in the tribal areas and in Afghanistan.


Cunningham wrote that Kuli Khan was being used as the Mullah liaison. He was commissioned to work secretly with the tribal Mullahs and with others who were not prepared to come out in open support. It was a simple case of establishing an Islamic stronghold to combat the Kafirs including the Bolsheviks. The first Mullah recruited by Cunningham was Mullah Marwat. He was formerly connected with the Khaksar movement. Kuli Khan assured him that the only way he could serve Islam was by raising the slogan of Jihad against the enemies of Islam. Through Mullah Marwat, Kuli Khan established relations with the office bearers of the Jamiat-u-Ulema-e-Sarhad, and their supporters in India

These Mullahs, many of whom had consistently been anti-British, began to speak and write against the Russians and Germans. Subsidies were paid to all Mullahs through Mullah Marwat.

It was the responsibility of these Mullahs to tell the nation that since the British were believers in the book, Ahl-e Kitaab, even marriage with them was legal. On the other hand, the Russians were Bolsheviks; not only did they not believe in a revealed book, they did not believe in the existence of God. Therefore, the British and the Muslims were united in their common aspiration to fight this infidel race. They were required to continually remind the Muslims that enlisting in the British Army and fighting along with the British is a service to Islam.

Cunningham records that he persuaded the leaders of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Sarhad to go to Waziristan and convince Faqir Ipi that since the British were at war against the Germans and Italians, Faqir should not bother them because they were now fighting against an infidel race. Their war, in its own way, was a Jihad, therefore, Faqir's Jehad against them should be called off. The British were conducting this intrigue with utmost secrecy. Their enemies had no suspicion that such documents and letters were being exchanged. Cunningham was happy that Faqir’s deputy, Mohammad Waris' letter written to Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Sarhad was friendly in tone. It became evident that Faqir and his companions had no inkling that the Mullahs were accomplices of the British, with explicit instructions from them.

.
Cunningham made three groups among the Maulanas. The smaller Mullahs were handed to the local Khans. Those slightly superior in rank reported through the Deputy Commissioners. The senior ones had a direct line to the Governor Cunningham:

" I have not been in touch with any of the smaller Mullahs myself. I have done it through me following agents with whom practically all my connections have been verbal, as little is put on paper as possible. Ghulam Haider of Sherpao village…he told me that he thought he could work through about nine or ten Mullahs including those of the following villages: Razzar, Kot, Tarnab, Tongi, Utmanzai and Umarzai later Prang and Charsadda. "

Cunningham wrote that he had asked Ghulam Haider of Sherpao village to meet each Mullah on an individual basis, prepare him to serve the true cause of Islam, give him forty fifty rupees, tell him that he will receive another visit after four months, at which time he should be prepared to brief the authorities about his activities to date. Cunningham asked the Khan Bahadur to hint to the Mullahs that if their work proves satisfactory they could expect a government pension. In return, Khan Bahadur told Cunningham that certain Mullahs were most untrustworthy. Better, if they were called in each month, but they should be well paid. Cunningham said that he had given Ghulam Haider of Sherpao village Rs 600. The list of Mullahs from districts Naushera and Peshawar was handed to the Deputy Commissioner, Iskander Mirza.

The Mullahs of Swat, Baneer, Mardan and Rani Zai were the responsibility of the Prime Minister of Swat, Hazrat Ali. Cunningham wrote, "The Wazir-i-Azam [Hazrat Ali of Swat] sent me a list of the Mullahs through whom he is working. He is paying them an average of Rs 15.00 per month."

This was unfair, for the Mullahs of Hashtnagar and Doaba were paid only Rs 10 per month. The Mullahs of Kohat were the responsibility of the Deputy Commissioner of that area. The Mullahs of Bannu were entrusted to Nawab Zafar Khan and Taj Ali. The latter was Khan Bahadur Ghulam Haider's son.

Cunningham had given Rs 600 to the Deputy Commissioner of Dera Ismail Khan, Mohammad Aslam, to pass along to three spiritual leaders of that area, Ama Khel Faqir, Pir Musa, and Pir Zakoori; two hundred rupees a piece. They were given the assurance that if their work was satisfactory they could get a raise!

Regarding Syed Abdul Jabbar of Satana, Cunningham wrote that he was connected with Hyderabad Deccan, and waspaid by the Prime Minister, Sir Akbar Hydari. That Hyderabad would pay for the work that was done for the British wasperfectly acceptable to Cunningham. He reports that Khan informed him that work was successfully completed at Sawabi,and that he had sent his cousin to look after the affairs of Bajaur. The Afridi Mullahs of Khyber were the responsibility of the political agent, Bacon. Cunningham had a long standing relationship with Maulvi Barkatullah, the leader of the Mujahideen:

My arrangement uptil now with him [Maulvi Barkatullah of Asmos] has been that he comes to see me once or twice a year. Barkatullah said he could also do a good deal through ten or twelve Maulvis in different places throughout Bajaur Mohmand country.... I paid him Rs 1000. I asked him to recruit ten or twelve Maulvis from Bajaur within this amount, and contact me in a couple of months.

Cunningham, then gave a detailed account of the activities of Kuli Khan and the Maulanas. It seems that a lot of work was accomplished through the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Hind. They organized several assemblies, passed a few motions, printed pamphlets and made contacts by touring various areas. In Cunningham's records there is evidence of anti-Congress propaganda along with anti-war statements. "Maulana Mohammad Shuaib toured the Mardan district, condemning Satyagraha. A pamphlet by Maulana Midra ullah condemned war situation and was anti-Congress."



Cunningham wrote that the Pir of Musa Zai came to visit him at Peshawar. He was friendly with Sher Ali. The latter was able to enlist the support of the Pir Taunsa. He had agreed to go along with him but unfortunately for him became involved in a civil suit.

In Khyber the political agent entrusted his work to Maulana Abdul Baqi. He placed implicit trust in him and claimed to have given him Rs 1000.

When the war broke out and Hitler became the supreme dictator, the British had to face defeat from all directions. They became concerned that the USSR, taking advantage of the situation, may move towards India. To forestall this possibility the Jamiat-ul-Ulema declared at their annual general meeting that if Russia attacked Afghanistan it was the duty of all Muslims to Join the Jehad against them. When the British were satisfied that there was no fear from Russia, Cunningham issued an edict, "I advised Kuli Khan to modify his anti Bolshevik propaganda and to concentrate more on propaganda against Germany and Italy


It is difficult to conceive how a true Muslim could bear to side with his sworn enemies. Right from the time of Sultan Salahuddin until the Ottoman Empire, the British had routed the Muslims. The British-Indian army had showered the Great Mosque with bullets.

They had seized the throne from the Mughal Emperors. The memory of their treatment of the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, and his children will long linger in human memory. Then, before the very eyes of their brethren in the Frontier Province, how badly they treated the Pakhtoons in Afghanistan. Amir Dost Mohammad Khan, Amir Sher AH Khan, and, finally, Amir Amanullah Khan, all these Muslims were destroyed by the British. Were the Mullahs unaware of all the atrocities inflicted by the British on the Khudai Khidmatgars from 1930 onwards? Their bombing and attacks on the tribal areas were no secret for the Mullahs, and neither was their military action on Wazir, Masood, Afridi and Momand. The war against true believers and Mujahids like Haji Sahib Turang Zai and Faqir Ipi was inspired and instigated by the British.

The Mullahs were concerned neither with Islam, nor Quran, nor with the faith itself. These followers of the Holy Prophet were busy selling religion for ten or fifteen rupees a month. The British were their Muftis and Qazis. Their religious sanction came from the British. Having raised the sword in the name of Islam, they were prepared to pounce upon the "enemy" at the slightest nod from the British. If the British called the Russians "infidels", the Mullahs echoed "Yes". If the British declared the same for the Germans, the Mullah's nodded in agreement although the Germans like the English were Ahl e Kitaab. The Mullahs did not concern themselves with the principles: they waited upon the pleasure of the British. When it was a question of damning Italy, the Mullahs echoed the British sentiment without recognizing that Rome was the seat of Christianity, and Vatican city, residence of the Pope.

Cunningham wrote:

"Wazir-i-Aam of Swat is now employing eighteen Mullahs at Mardan and thirty two at Pir Baba Ziarat, paying each one of them thirty rupees per month."

Cunningham further wrote that Maulana Mohammad Shuaib and Maulana Midrarullah came to see him at Nathiagalli. They brought a detailed, Urdu pamphlet which was intended for distribution in the districts (Zillahs) and tribal areas. It was an excellent pamphlet; anti-Congress, anti-Japan and anti-Germany. What better proof could there be that these Mullahs wanted to "serve" Islam, and in what better way could they "serve" it than to perform Jehad with the militancy of their pen? They pronounced Islamic Judgements (Fatwas), but these were first approved by the British before they were announced:

Maulana Mohammad Shuaib and Maulana Midrarullah came to see me at Nathiagalli on the 26th August and produced a long draft in Urdu of the pamphlet which they proposed to issue both in the Districts and in Tribal Territories; all goodanti-Congress, anti-Japanese and anti-Marxist stuff. They were extremely friendly.

The British did Islam a good turn by recording the names and addresses of these Mullahs. There were twenty-four Mullahs from the Peshawar district, of whom six were from the city of Peshawar, thirteen from the Tehsil Charsadda, three from Tehsil Naushera, and eighteen from Mardan and Sawabi. And so it goes. It is humiliating to read how these interpreters of religion sold their conscience to the political agents and bartered Islam for a few pieces of silver! It is further painful to see proof of their false Judgements (Fatwas) upon true sons and patriots of India. What amazing manipulations! To preserve their imperial regime the British were able to raise and organize a band of servile Muslims who never demanded a free India. On the contrary they resisted the freedom movement, and fully supported the British, confident of material support from them and moral support from their so-called interpretation of Islam.

The British strategy was to befriend those families whose heads were involved in the freedom struggle. The two most important persons fighting the Jehad against the British were Faqir of Ipi and Mullah Pawandah. Another crucial link was Haji Sahib Turangzai of Momand. The British were most interested in ingratiating themselves with these three individuals. And their greatest triumph was to win over the sons of these valiant patriots. Mullah Pawandah's son Fazal Din
and Haji Turangzai's son Padsha Gul. If one were to assess the state of things it becomes apparent that there were very few influential persons in the districts and tribes whom the British had not obtained for a price. After the death of Haji SahibTurangzai and Mullah Pawandah, Faqir was the only stalwart whom they could not buy!

An interesting incident occurred when, after the outbreak of the war in Europe, the British tried to persuade the Afghans to throw out the Germans. To pressurize the Afghans, they invited Shami Pir to the tribal territory, instructing him to incite the people against the royal family of Afghanistan. When the British were satisfied that the task had been successfully completed, they called Shami Pir to the Vana cantonment in Waziristan. They settled with him for £25,000. Shami Pir performed a disappearing trick! Having seen this task successfully completed the Secretary of State for India was thrilled. He asked the Viceroy to make a similar deal with Faqir. The Viceroy's reply is dated 14 July 1938. "There is, I fear, no possible chance in dealing with him on the same basis as Shami Pir. He is not only implacable, but also completely incorruptible. Who would rid me of this turbulent priest?"

A great post! Thank you for pointing us to the diaries.

On a minor, slightly frivolous note, did you recognise this quotation?

Who would rid me of this turbulent priest?"

 

[M. Sarmad]

On a minor, slightly frivolous note, did you recognise this quotation?

Mirza Ali Khan (Urdu/Pashto: مرزا علی خان; born 1897, died 1960), known as the Faqir of Ipi, was a Pashtun from today's North-WaziristanPakistan, Federally Administrated Tribal Areas. His followers addressed him as 'Haji Sahib' (or Respected Pilgrim). The village of Ipi is located near Mirali Camp in North Waziristan Agency, Waziristan, from where the Faqir of Ipi started his guerrilla warfare against the British Empirethroughout the 1930s and 1940s until the British departure in 1947.

 

[genmirajborgza786]

Iftar over here in a bit too, you must not be in Pakistan at the moment?

Anyway same here.

up north its 4: am to 9:00 pm ! meri halwa nikal gayee hai bhai !

 

[FaujHistorian]

up north its 4: am to 9:00 pm ! meri halwa nikal gayee hai bhai !

halwa nikal gayee hai bhai !

ya

hawa nikal gayee hai bhai !

 

[shuntmaster]

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, made his name as a recruiter for the British Empire before and during the First World War. For his stellar services to the British Empire, in 1915 Gandhiji was awarded the Kaiser-e-Hind medal — the highest honour for a loyal British Indian subject.

Kaiser-e-Hind medals 's most famous recipient is Mohandas Gandhi, who was awarded the it in 1915 by The Lord Hardinge of Penshurst for his contribution to ambulance services in South Africa. Gandhi returned the medal in 1920 as part of the national campaign protesting the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

 

[genmirajborgza786]

halwa nikal gayee hai bhai !

ya

hawa nikal gayee hai bhai !

dono suraat -e-haal mein nikaal ne ka drawaza eik hi hoti hai !

 

[FaujHistorian]

Kaiser-e-Hind medals 's most famous recipient is Mohandas Gandhi, who was awarded the it in 1915 by The Lord Hardinge of Penshurst for his contribution to ambulance services in South Africa. Gandhi returned the medal in 1920 as part of the national campaign protesting the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

Services provided

medal received.

Case closed.

 

[FaujHistorian]

Was Jinnah a British Raj agent?
Mostaque Ali


Mohammed Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan....also a British agent?
1947 and the sad occurrences of that event was unique. To be sure Muslim armies fought Hindu armies led by their respective Rajas, but the full extent of the demographic shift, isolation from Partition for ordinary civilians, and the ensuing dogma in Pakistan especially after 1965, and later under Zia ul Haq never existed between ordinary people in South Asia before.

Pakistan was the megalomaniac creation of Mohammed Jinnah, who knew he would not last very long to fully see his dream being created, but through his egotism he persisted in creating the moth eaten failed state, with the active backing of the British..........It started in 1940 when the Muslim league drafted a constitution, and from there developed a grass roots organization for the first time (before that specific date it was a talking shop for privileged Muslim nobility and notables wholly disconnected with the Muslim masses) As the Muslim League developed, the majority of the top echelon of the Congress were locked up from 1942, with the "Quit India" Movement. The Muslim League thus with covert British Raj guidance became a legitimate force in Indian politics, which could articulate its position with mass appeal............for me all this could not have been done by Jinnah himself or his close cadres like Liaqat Ali Khan, in such a short time (1940--1946). That there must have been some sort of institutional backing from Britain to translate the Muslim League into a reasonably cohesive force by 1946, to the point where Jinnah was negotiating quite confidently with Gandhi and Nehru.

Jinnah was an excellent Barrister, and thus a good speaker, but a political genius like Gandhi, with his vision? I never thought so. He was a stiff starched plodder, not given to inspiration, as most natural freedom leaders of that era. Thus to me he was a functionary for the British Raj, who played out his role to the end.

The British official files related to independence and Partition, and the creation of Pakistan will be released in the year 2022, the longest release date for British state papers. Normally they are released within 30 years. They must contain controversial information for them to be released at such a late date. Obviously when they are released they will be sanitized for public consumption, but one speculates whether Jinnah was a British agent. All those long years in Bilaat, London, during the critical years of the independence movement; His penchant for ham sandwiches, and alcohol; his speeches to his Muslim audiences in immaculate Oxbridge English mostly; his deference to British Raj law, and the need to avoid any sanction, in contrast to the many occasions when Congress leaders were imprisoned by the Raj, in the course of serving the greater cause.

His general demeanor of a man who was quite cold and reserved, who showed no overt fondness for Muslims. ....Do we have any pictures of him mixing with the illiterate Garib Muslim masses from the 1920's through to the 1940's, smiling and relishing the moment and opportunity to fulfill his mission for his people? We have plenty of those for Gandhi and Nehru, and they are genuine. Do we have any pictures of him praying at a Mosque with his fellow Muslim congregation?

This is the man who founded the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ......descendants of Brahman Hindus from Gujarat.

Then lets widen the scenario, without the benefit of the British state papers about Partition to be released in 2022. 75 years after that fateful event.

Why were the British so keen to leave India in August 1947, and hand over power formally, when most people agreed that 1948 would have been a better date? Why the hurry, when they had been in the region from over 200 years, and the British Raj a full 90 years?

The official explanation being that the government in London wanted to wind things up as far as the empire was concerned, since Britain was an exhausted nation after the war, and generally wanted to bring the boys back home-------the empire simply could not be maintained any longer. Not even for one more year, into 1948, at least in India. (The rest of the empire got its independence in the 1950's, 60's, 70's and in Hong Kongs case 1997). But with the largest British possession, the most profitable, and the "Jewel in the Crown", the British could not stay a year longer to properly supervise the hand over of power, and avoid inevitable civilian casualties.

Lets see if we can refute the most popular assertions why the British left early, in that manner:

(1) First we have got to cut our losses, and leave India to her own destiny argument. India was never a burden to the British, it was always a hefty surplus profit. The British were efficient tax collectors especially in India and ruthless exploiters of the land (Bengal Famine 1769, millions left dead as the East India angled for cash crop profits, Indigo, jute and opium), and Indian revenue maintained the Indian colonial army and administrative system, as well as transferring huge surplus profits into the exchequer of the British government.

The British first and foremost came to India to make money, not to rule. That idea only came much later into the 19th century.In the 18th century alone the surplus of the East India company over Greater Bengal was so enormous it eclipsed any revenue in comparison to most other European powers.................Greater Bengal to a significant extent financed and contributed to the huge 450 million pounds that Britain managed to raise to fight the Napoleonic wars.

So, the Idea that the British were financially exhausted post 1945 (true), and India was a financial liability which could no longer be maintained (not true--self financing.......) which almost makes it sound in terms of colonial propaganda, that Britain funded and maintained India to the detriment of the British Isles, which is wholly incorrect. The British had by 1947 demobbed the Indian army from 2 million to around 460,000. The financing of that army came from India.

(2) Another explanation for the quick transfer of power in India was that the government wanted to bring the boys back home to blighty. The British maintained about 80,000 British troops serving along side native units, and 20,000 Civil servants in India...........the average number from 1860----1940, under the British Raj. A mere 100,000 men was not a great stretch on the manpower resources of post war torn Britain. Its not as if millions of job opportunities were waiting for such highly skilled men steeped in colonial environments, where they had spent most of their lives.

Indeed, the British maintained key officers in South Asia into 1951, 4 years after independence.

(3) The final general explanation, as to why the British left India in such a hurry is that, the Indian nationalists were clambering aggressively for independence, and after the war the British were not sure if they could really keep maintaining control over the Sub-continent any longer........"Lets get out whilst the going is good" theory. Again does not make sense since all the British had to do and did subsequently do is promise on a specific date of departure and keep to that date......e.g for example 1948, which would have given everybody the time to organize and be ready for that eventuality. So the point being since the British had been in South Asia for such a long time, 90 years for the British Raj, one extra year would not have hurt.

So what was the real reason for the British to depart India, in such a hurry after such an illustrious history of conquest and exploitation? It all depends on how you view their decision making; in terms of good faith or bad faith.

Lets view it from the perspective of the British and their agent Jinnah, if you will indulge and consider. The British run him as their agent; slowly propagate him from an obscure business family from Gujarat, recent converts to Islam who migrate to Sind and improve their Islamic credentials; the whole Jinnah siblings adopt more Islamic sounding names Mohammed Ali Jinnah etc for example viz their original Rajput/Gujarati Hindi names........and he eventually proceeds from business into the elite of the legal profession. The British know by 1945 he will not last long at the twilight of his years, into his seventies, and it is from that perspective if we can see, why the British were in a hurry to "leave" and create Pakistan in 1947, and why Mountbatten made assertions and put so much pressure for a quick settlement, as a 'neutral arbiter".

Independence in 1948, would have been too late for Jinnah, his health critical by that time, and death by September 1948. Jinnah needed to be around at least a year for Pakistan to be solidified.

The British grasped and knew this fact.

Then you observe Jinnah's tactics in creating Pakistan, which I credit to his British intelligence handlers........"Direct action day" 16th August 1946 which blackmailed Gandhi into accepting his terms for a separate state, OR ELSE. His unilateral attack against Kashmir, using irregulars........his claim of territory well inside India. Are these the policies of a secular moderate man who just wants to live in peace and harmony with India as a good neighbor, or an agent out to destabilize the region on the orders of his British masters?

And we wonder why Pakistan is failed state.

On similar and yet separate current note.........

There is a popular belief in the elite spectrum of Pakistani society that to gain power in Pakistan one must curry favor with the USA.............this is of course self defeating because once you come to power with America's blessing, they can just as easily remove you.........Musharaf comes to mind, and the USA puts something worse and even more malleable in your place, Zardari.

If we follow Omer Sheikh, the Pakistani recruited by British intelligence, his time in elite British schools and universities (LSE) we can get a glimpse of the recruitment process, and timeline.............one imagines there are thousands of others like him in Pakistani society within the armed forces, intelligence, landed elite (Tamindar/Zamindar) and business and political elite working for Blighty and the USA..............

And yet these privileged idiot/Ullu bacha's do not realise what great traitors they are to their country, and which countries are their real enemy which does long term harm to their country (certainly not India.........).

Sources used in the blog?

BTW the essay is full of speculations even the writer accepts it when he says:

one speculates whether Jinnah was a British agent.

you can do better Shunt ji

much better.

Show if Jinnah got a shiny shiny shiny medal just like Gandhi

Thank you

 

[FaujHistorian]

Why Pakistan's Mohammed Ali Jinnah Was No Nelson Mandela
Rafia Zakaria is one of Pakistan’s most readable columnists. She’s writing a book on Karachi, the port city to the south that, having once served as Pakistan’s first capital, is now paralysed by sectarian bloodletting. Anyone with an interest in Pakistan should read it when it’s released. I suspect it will, like much of Rafia’s work, be a bracing account, free of cant. Sadly, I can’t say the same about her most recent piece, a foray into history published in Dawn, in which she labours to equate the man who savagely divided India in the name of religion with the man who kept South Africa united despite its sharp racial polarities.

Jinna (Courtesy Embassy of Pakistan)
Rafia’s argument is this: had Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, lived longer, his creation might have matured into South Asia’s South Africa, a pluralistic state, rather than descending into what it is today: a procrustean hell.

The belief that it was Jinnah’s premature death, rather than his wilful conduct during the last years of his life, that caused Pakistan to fail is shared widely by that country’s liberals. Like so much else in Pakistan, it’s an idea sustained by self-deception.

After all, the proposition that Pakistan’s evolution into an inclusive state was curtailed by the early demise of its founder works by investing Jinnah with a catholic spirit that is fundamentally incompatible with his principal political pursuit: the creation of an exclusive state called Pakistan. “Hindus and Muslims can [n]ever evolve a common nationality,” Jinnah had declared in 1940. Could a journey fuelled by such hatred and divisiveness possibly have culminated in a peaceful and pluralistic destination?

One answer is to deny that Jinnah ever wanted Pakistan, that his factional rhetoric—the ceaseless traducing of his secular adversaries in Congress as aspiring Hindu overlords, the relentless invocation of the racialist neologism “Pakistan”—was all a ploy meant to secure for Muslims greater rights within a united India. This argument, pioneered by the formidable Ayesha Jalal, relies, once again, on a degree of deception, neglecting entirely the question of whether such brinkmanship, being directed by a man who was dying of lung disease, was going to profit the people he claimed to represent or condemn them to an uncertain future. Even if we accept Jalal’s thesis, it’s not easy to exalt a man who uncorked the genie of religious hatred as a tactic even though he knew that he wouldn’t be around to force it back into the bottle.

“Through passive resistance and unarmed struggle, [South Africa’s] black majority had wrested from the hands of a white majority [sic] the reigns [sic] of a system where all advantages had been given to the whites and all costs borne by the blacks,” Rafia writes. “Mohammed Ali Jinnah,” she continues, “died barely a year after the creation of Pakistan. His was just as hard won, just as miraculous a victory. Through his masterful maneuvering and inspirational rallying, a country had been wrest from the clenched fists of the British Empire sulky about its losses.”

Could a journey fuelled by such hatred and divisiveness possibly have culminated in a peaceful and pluralistic destination?
Some may find it rather coarse to liken the predicament of Jinnah and his sybaritic sponsors who never saw the inside of a prison cell to the calvary of South Africa’s black majority under the National Party.

But two things are especially dismaying in Rafia’s interpretation of events. The implication that Jinnah’s struggle was in any way peaceful airbrushes from history the hundreds of thousands who paid with their lives in the course of Partition. Their deaths were not an aberration, but the direct consequence of Jinnah’s dogmatic campaign. Dr. Rafiq Zakaria, the Gandhian politician who was active in the Indian freedom struggle, went along to one of Jinnah’s “inspirational” rallies. All he found, as he later recalled in his singeing biography of Jinnah, was communalist “venom,” which “aggravated the hostilities between the two communities as never before.”

How exactly was Jinnah “inspiring” people? A letter Jinnah received from the Himalayan town of Mussoorie, written by a young man called Zulfi Bhutto, gives us an idea. “Hindus,” it read, “are the deadliest enemies of our Koran and our Prophet.” Did Jinnah believe that preaching hate would beget love? By 1946, Jinnah was issuing calls of “India divided or India destroyed.” In 1946, Jinnah called for a Direct Action Day. Riots erupted in Calcutta, capital of the sole province then in control of Jinnah’s party, the Muslim League. Corpses lined the streets of that great multicultural city.

Jinnah’s response to this butchery precipitated by his own baleful stemwinders? “I’m not going to discuss ethics.”

Similarly, Rafia’s conscription of Jinnah into the anti-colonial struggle cannot stand up to scrutiny. In the last years of his life, far from being an opponent of British imperialism, Jinnah become its most vigorous agent, siding with the colonial masters against his own people, and, in the end, plotting with some of Britain’s most hidebound conservatives, who despised Indians only marginally less than the enforcers of Apartheid rule hated blacks, to partition India.

Far from sulking, Britain was actually very eager to get out of India. This is why Whitehall brought forward the date of Independence. Charged with abolishing the Empire, Britain’s last Viceroy to India, Lord Mountbatten, had no cause to object to Partition. Yet, as the only British Viceroy who did not view Indians with prejudiced eyes, Mountbatten resisted the idea and did his very best to keep India united. For all his epic incompetence, he discerned that dividing India would be disastrous. He tried to dissuade Jinnah, but failed.

Since history has so thoroughly vindicated Mountbatten’s scepticism, it’s worth recalling his verdict on Jinnah. “Until I had met [Jinnah],” Mountbatten later said, “I would not have thought it possible that a man with such a complete lack of… sense of responsibility could… hold down so powerful a position.” To the very eve of Partition, Jinnah was acquiring prime property in Karachi and Bombay. He had no idea what Pakistan was going to be. At any rate, could it ever be anything other than a monument to divisive politics?

In the name of a great religion that is as Indian as Hinduism or Jainism, one people, bound throughout history by what Nehru called “invisible threads,” were segregated, parcelled out into country-sized ghettoes: the very antithesis of everything Mandela attempted to accomplish in South Africa.

“When Mandela left the presidency and eventually public life,” Rafia writes, “his shadow remained, watchful and nurturing over the newly democratic South African state.” This prompts her to conclude, neatly: “Pakistan’s loss was the untimely early death of its leader, the man with the plan… The death of one man should not mean so much, but perhaps the death of some men, leading men, doom the futures of too many to come.”

“Until I had met [Jinnah],” Mountbatten later said, “I would not have thought it possible that a man with such a complete lack of… sense of responsibility could… hold down so powerful a position.”
Jinnah’s death was not untimely at all: he knew that he was going to die early the moment his Bombay doctor, Jal Patel, gave his diagnosis. Yet Jinnah proceeded with his non-plan, keeping his illness secret from the people who might have been able to suppress the rage he was provoking.

Why? Jinnah’s deceit injured most of all those millions of his fiercest followers who, terrified by the fears of Hindu dominance that he and the landed nabobs of his Muslim League had conjured up, placed their fates at his feet.

Mandela, on the other hand, did have a plan. His moral authority rested in large measure on his nonviolent struggle—and his refusal to lend his imprimatur to identity politics. Once he was elected, reconciliation became his primary fixation, and no one could contest the force of his own personal example.

What of Jinnah?
Having stirred up hatred between Hindus and Muslims, he attempted to heal their wounds with a speech to the putative people’s assembly of Pakistan.

On 11 August 1947, he told the soon-to-be born nation that religion was not the determinant of Pakistani nationalism. In fact, it was immaterial. It was religious divisions, he claimed, which had hindered India’s chances of early independence. “Indeed, if you ask me, [religious disunity] has been the biggest hindrance in the way of India to attain the freedom and independence, and but for this we would have been free people long, long ago.”

It’s odd that he should’ve perpetuated what he denounced as a bane, but the bolt from the blue was yet to come. “You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the State,” he declared. “We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens – and equal citizens – of one State.”

This speech has been adduced to advance the theory that Jinnah wanted an inclusive country. But it doesn’t explain why he needed to create Pakistan to achieve that when such an entity already existed: it was called I-N-D-I-A, that capacious home of Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs and Buddhists and Jews and Christians and people of every faith, and no faith at all. Why did he have to hack it apart?

Jinnah’s speech, far from sculpting a pluralistic future for Pakistan, plunged it into an identity crisis. If faith was indeed irrelevant in Pakistan, what exactly united West Pakistan with East Pakistan? What constituted the two “wings”, separated by a thousand miles of India, into one “nation”?

The other obvious problem was Kashmir. Pakistan’s locus standi in Kashmir rested entirely upon the fact that a majority of Kashmiris shared the faith of the Pakistani state. But if, as Jinnah said, religion was no business of the state, what was the basis of Pakistan’s claim on Kashmir? Sincere answers to these questions will negate the preposterous premise that Pakistan could ever have survived without a religious identity. Jinnah’s foundational speech, carried to its logical conclusion, emerges as the strongest possible case for the dissolution of Pakistan.

But as his subsequent actions show, Jinnah quickly realised his folly and consciously reintroduced Islam as the sustaining force of the state: in less than 2 months after the speech, he authorised a jihad in Kashmir, inaugurating the first Pakistan-India war just 60 days after Partition. The tragedy, of course, is that Pakistan couldn’t survive even with a religious identity, as the calamitous events of 1971 demonstrated.

Indian soldiers fighting in the 1947 Kashmir War. (Wikimedia Commons)
For Indian secularists, the tragic irony of Jinnah’s struggle for Pakistan is that, far from emancipating India’s Muslims, it empowered India’s Hindu chauvinists. (It is impossible, in fact, to imagine a man who has caused greater harm to India’s Muslims than Jinnah.) It exonerated the demonization of Muslims as untrustworthy Fifth Columnists, and it legitimised the effort to turn India, once Pakistan had been carved out from it as a homeland for its Muslims, into an exclusive homeland for the Hindus who remained.

Hindu nationalists agitating for the creation of a Hindu state are in fact paying a tribute to Jinnah, the most successful proponent of majoritarian politics in modern India’s history. Narendra Modi is nothing if not the most consummate Hindu avatar of Mohammed Ali Jinnah. His dream is to complete the journey that Jinnah started us on. Jinnah said Hindus and Muslims don’t belong together: Modi agrees.

Indians who today oppose Modi are followers of Indians who opposed Jinnah in another time: pluralists, humanists, adherents of the inclusive nationalism of Nehru. It is those muzzy Indians who have tolerated or defended, in the name of politeness, the beatification of Jinnah who will have to account for the recrudescence of his ideology in Hindu garb – and it is they who, having deferentially abided Jinnah’s ethno-religious project next door, have weakened the fight against Hindu nationalists who now seek to replicate it at home.

Sorry, Rafia: but Mohammed Ali Jinnah was no Mandela.
Having perhaps sensed that the quest for a Muslim nation that the quixotic idea of Pakistan embodied had failed – or was bound to fail – Jinnah sought to bequeath the appearance of a strong state. Power, and the accoutrements of power, would fill the vacuum created by the absence of ideas. Jinnah spent the first months of his country’s painful birth in 1947 writing to Ambassador Mirza Ispahani in Washington to find a limousine and aircraft befitting the governor-general. “What about my car?” an impatient Jinnah, who had an enormous private fortune, asked Ispahani in December of that vicious year. “I want the car very badly.”

The distance between the Qaid-e-Azam’s priorities and the plight of the people he governed could not have been greater. With his cultivated aversion to human multiplicity and his contempt for the concept of unity in diversity, Jinnah sowed the seeds of the anti-Bengali genocide of 1971 when he forced the people of East Pakistan to accept Urdu as the state language. When he died, just over a year after Pakistan’s creation, Jinnah had left behind all the trappings of a state, but not even the trace of a nation.

The great Mandela, heir to the Indian National Congress’s self-consciously inclusive freedom struggle, has lapsed into serious illness. He has earned our prayers, for a swift recovery or a quiet rest. But what he must be spared, after consecrating his life to bringing people together, is the disgrace of being used as a peg on which to hang a laudatory garland woven for a divisive demagogue whose legacy continues to poison the inhabitants of India and Pakistan and Bangladesh, and may yet result in a nuclear holocaust. Sorry, Rafia: but Mohammed Ali Jinnah was no Mandela. But if we must mourn, let us mourn the fact that Jinnah went as far as he did: that’s what divided us, one people, into three nations.
​

do you read before cut n paste?

Oh bahi your own essay is proving that Jinnah was not British agent.


Here is the quotation from your post


“Until I had met [Jinnah],” Mountbatten later said, “I would not have thought it possible that a man with such a complete lack of… sense of responsibility could… hold down so powerful a position.”


Jinnah was active in politics from 1915 or even earlier, long before Mount Batten was sucking on milk bottle.

 

[ShahidT]

India itself according to Shariat [ of all groups including shia and deobandi and ahle hadith ] is Dar al Islam. You cannot have "jihad" in Dar al Islam. Brother i dont think you know about basic islamic principles.

i think you are confused. dar al Islam is where laws are according to sharia. perhaps you mean dar al aman, but then go tell that to muslims of kashmir and gujarat, heck even muzaffarnagr and bihar or assam. no one in their right mind believes in fatwas by darul uloom deoband that india is this or that because we all know the reason they do those and for whom.

so please give me a proper source by ulema other than deoband that say this is the case, as i'm hearing it first time.

 

[pakdefender]

tang pajama wearing indian nehru was in the pocket of the british viceroy's wife , very big pitthu of the british raj

@Azlan Haider , kun bhai app ko kya takleef hui , is nehru related to you ? or are you an indian in disguise who can't handle the truth

 

[Joe Shearer]

Was Jinnah a British Raj agent?
Mostaque Ali


Mohammed Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan....also a British agent?
1947 and the sad occurrences of that event was unique. To be sure Muslim armies fought Hindu armies led by their respective Rajas, but the full extent of the demographic shift, isolation from Partition for ordinary civilians, and the ensuing dogma in Pakistan especially after 1965, and later under Zia ul Haq never existed between ordinary people in South Asia before.

Pakistan was the megalomaniac creation of Mohammed Jinnah, who knew he would not last very long to fully see his dream being created, but through his egotism he persisted in creating the moth eaten failed state, with the active backing of the British..........It started in 1940 when the Muslim league drafted a constitution, and from there developed a grass roots organization for the first time (before that specific date it was a talking shop for privileged Muslim nobility and notables wholly disconnected with the Muslim masses) As the Muslim League developed, the majority of the top echelon of the Congress were locked up from 1942, with the "Quit India" Movement. The Muslim League thus with covert British Raj guidance became a legitimate force in Indian politics, which could articulate its position with mass appeal............for me all this could not have been done by Jinnah himself or his close cadres like Liaqat Ali Khan, in such a short time (1940--1946). That there must have been some sort of institutional backing from Britain to translate the Muslim League into a reasonably cohesive force by 1946, to the point where Jinnah was negotiating quite confidently with Gandhi and Nehru.

Jinnah was an excellent Barrister, and thus a good speaker, but a political genius like Gandhi, with his vision? I never thought so. He was a stiff starched plodder, not given to inspiration, as most natural freedom leaders of that era. Thus to me he was a functionary for the British Raj, who played out his role to the end.

The British official files related to independence and Partition, and the creation of Pakistan will be released in the year 2022, the longest release date for British state papers. Normally they are released within 30 years. They must contain controversial information for them to be released at such a late date. Obviously when they are released they will be sanitized for public consumption, but one speculates whether Jinnah was a British agent. All those long years in Bilaat, London, during the critical years of the independence movement; His penchant for ham sandwiches, and alcohol; his speeches to his Muslim audiences in immaculate Oxbridge English mostly; his deference to British Raj law, and the need to avoid any sanction, in contrast to the many occasions when Congress leaders were imprisoned by the Raj, in the course of serving the greater cause.

His general demeanor of a man who was quite cold and reserved, who showed no overt fondness for Muslims. ....Do we have any pictures of him mixing with the illiterate Garib Muslim masses from the 1920's through to the 1940's, smiling and relishing the moment and opportunity to fulfill his mission for his people? We have plenty of those for Gandhi and Nehru, and they are genuine. Do we have any pictures of him praying at a Mosque with his fellow Muslim congregation?

This is the man who founded the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ......descendants of Brahman Hindus from Gujarat.

Then lets widen the scenario, without the benefit of the British state papers about Partition to be released in 2022. 75 years after that fateful event.

Why were the British so keen to leave India in August 1947, and hand over power formally, when most people agreed that 1948 would have been a better date? Why the hurry, when they had been in the region from over 200 years, and the British Raj a full 90 years?

The official explanation being that the government in London wanted to wind things up as far as the empire was concerned, since Britain was an exhausted nation after the war, and generally wanted to bring the boys back home-------the empire simply could not be maintained any longer. Not even for one more year, into 1948, at least in India. (The rest of the empire got its independence in the 1950's, 60's, 70's and in Hong Kongs case 1997). But with the largest British possession, the most profitable, and the "Jewel in the Crown", the British could not stay a year longer to properly supervise the hand over of power, and avoid inevitable civilian casualties.

Lets see if we can refute the most popular assertions why the British left early, in that manner:

(1) First we have got to cut our losses, and leave India to her own destiny argument. India was never a burden to the British, it was always a hefty surplus profit. The British were efficient tax collectors especially in India and ruthless exploiters of the land (Bengal Famine 1769, millions left dead as the East India angled for cash crop profits, Indigo, jute and opium), and Indian revenue maintained the Indian colonial army and administrative system, as well as transferring huge surplus profits into the exchequer of the British government.

The British first and foremost came to India to make money, not to rule. That idea only came much later into the 19th century.In the 18th century alone the surplus of the East India company over Greater Bengal was so enormous it eclipsed any revenue in comparison to most other European powers.................Greater Bengal to a significant extent financed and contributed to the huge 450 million pounds that Britain managed to raise to fight the Napoleonic wars.

So, the Idea that the British were financially exhausted post 1945 (true), and India was a financial liability which could no longer be maintained (not true--self financing.......) which almost makes it sound in terms of colonial propaganda, that Britain funded and maintained India to the detriment of the British Isles, which is wholly incorrect. The British had by 1947 demobbed the Indian army from 2 million to around 460,000. The financing of that army came from India.

(2) Another explanation for the quick transfer of power in India was that the government wanted to bring the boys back home to blighty. The British maintained about 80,000 British troops serving along side native units, and 20,000 Civil servants in India...........the average number from 1860----1940, under the British Raj. A mere 100,000 men was not a great stretch on the manpower resources of post war torn Britain. Its not as if millions of job opportunities were waiting for such highly skilled men steeped in colonial environments, where they had spent most of their lives.

Indeed, the British maintained key officers in South Asia into 1951, 4 years after independence.

(3) The final general explanation, as to why the British left India in such a hurry is that, the Indian nationalists were clambering aggressively for independence, and after the war the British were not sure if they could really keep maintaining control over the Sub-continent any longer........"Lets get out whilst the going is good" theory. Again does not make sense since all the British had to do and did subsequently do is promise on a specific date of departure and keep to that date......e.g for example 1948, which would have given everybody the time to organize and be ready for that eventuality. So the point being since the British had been in South Asia for such a long time, 90 years for the British Raj, one extra year would not have hurt.

So what was the real reason for the British to depart India, in such a hurry after such an illustrious history of conquest and exploitation? It all depends on how you view their decision making; in terms of good faith or bad faith.

Lets view it from the perspective of the British and their agent Jinnah, if you will indulge and consider. The British run him as their agent; slowly propagate him from an obscure business family from Gujarat, recent converts to Islam who migrate to Sind and improve their Islamic credentials; the whole Jinnah siblings adopt more Islamic sounding names Mohammed Ali Jinnah etc for example viz their original Rajput/Gujarati Hindi names........and he eventually proceeds from business into the elite of the legal profession. The British know by 1945 he will not last long at the twilight of his years, into his seventies, and it is from that perspective if we can see, why the British were in a hurry to "leave" and create Pakistan in 1947, and why Mountbatten made assertions and put so much pressure for a quick settlement, as a 'neutral arbiter".

Independence in 1948, would have been too late for Jinnah, his health critical by that time, and death by September 1948. Jinnah needed to be around at least a year for Pakistan to be solidified.

The British grasped and knew this fact.

Then you observe Jinnah's tactics in creating Pakistan, which I credit to his British intelligence handlers........"Direct action day" 16th August 1946 which blackmailed Gandhi into accepting his terms for a separate state, OR ELSE. His unilateral attack against Kashmir, using irregulars........his claim of territory well inside India. Are these the policies of a secular moderate man who just wants to live in peace and harmony with India as a good neighbor, or an agent out to destabilize the region on the orders of his British masters?

And we wonder why Pakistan is failed state.

On similar and yet separate current note.........

There is a popular belief in the elite spectrum of Pakistani society that to gain power in Pakistan one must curry favor with the USA.............this is of course self defeating because once you come to power with America's blessing, they can just as easily remove you.........Musharaf comes to mind, and the USA puts something worse and even more malleable in your place, Zardari.

If we follow Omer Sheikh, the Pakistani recruited by British intelligence, his time in elite British schools and universities (LSE) we can get a glimpse of the recruitment process, and timeline.............one imagines there are thousands of others like him in Pakistani society within the armed forces, intelligence, landed elite (Tamindar/Zamindar) and business and political elite working for Blighty and the USA..............

And yet these privileged idiot/Ullu bacha's do not realise what great traitors they are to their country, and which countries are their real enemy which does long term harm to their country (certainly not India.........).

I was a little taken aback to read this excerpt. Some parts of it were so blatantly wrong.

Which Muslim armies fought which Hindu armies led by their respective rajas? Only the Mehtar of Chitral sent his state Troops against the Baltistan outposts of the Maharaja of Kashmir's state forces. There was some turbulence in two subsidiary states of the Nawab of Junagadh, and the Indian Army marched into those subsidiaries, but not into Junagadh initially. The Razakars killed a lot of Hindus in Hyderabad, but they were not a Muslim army, only organised Muslim hooligans who also insulted and drove out the Nawab of Chhatri, an immensely dignified nobleman from the UP who was then the Prime Minister of the Nizam.

It continues in that vein.