Devil Soul
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The Muslim League: A factional history
NADEEM F. PARACHAPUBLISHED about 6 hours ago
Currently, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is perhaps the largest political party in Pakistan. It is one of the umpteenth factions that have been emerged ever since the All India Muslim League (AIML) became the Muslim League (ML) in 1947 and then began to splinter.
The ML was the party of Pakistan’s founders. But it faced multiple fractures soon after the creation of Pakistan in 1947. It almost vanished in the 1970s. Its revival began in the mid-1980s and today, one of its factions (PML-N), has managed to become a formidable electoral machine.
More interesting is the way the League and many of its factions have evolved. The AIML was a centrist party based on the notions of modern Muslim nationalism and ‘Modernist Islam.’ It remained to be so until the 1970s when it increasingly shifted to the right and became overtly conservative and even ‘Islamist.’
However, in the last decade or so, most of its major factions, especially the PML-N, have been moving back to the party’s original centrist position even to the extent of gradually disowning the ideological disposition it adopted in the 1980s.
All India Muslim League (AIML)
1906: Founders of the All India Muslim League (led by an eminent Ismaili Muslim, Sultan Agha Khan) after announcing the party’s formation in Lucknow in 1906.
The party emerged as an early political expression of the gradual growth of a Muslim middle-class in India.
The party was inspired by the academic and social activism of the scholar Sir Syed Ahmad Khan who was one of the first major exponents of ‘Muslim Modernism’ in India.
1930: Iqbal’s call for separatism
Poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal (third from left) with AIML members in 1930.
In 1930, Muhammad Iqbal became the party’s president and in an address demanded a separate Muslim state (but one which will exist within an Indian federation).
He also urged lawyer and politician, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, to return to India (from the UK) and lead the League. Jinnah had quit politics after being disillusioned by the rising communal tensions between India’s Hindus and Muslims in the 1920s. He moved to the UK to practice law.
Iqbal glued the Muslim Modernism of the likes of Sir Syed and himself to the more radical currents of Pan-Islamism of that period to formulate an expanded idea of Muslim nationalism in India.
1940: Jinnah calls for Pakistan
Jinnah receiving Congress leader Mahatma Gandhi in Delhi in 1940.
Jinnah had returned to India in the mid-1930s and eventually became AIML’s president. During an address to party members in 1940, Jinnah declared that Muslims would be politically and economically undermined in a Hindu-majority India and thus needed to strive towards creating their own country, Pakistan.
1946: The League at the polls
Jinnah meeting a potential voter in the Punjab during the 1945-46 national and provincial elections in India.
The 1945-46 elections were called by the British to constitute a government at the centre and in the provinces.
The elections were vital for the League to prove that a majority of Indian Muslims considered it to be the main Muslim party in the country and agreed with the party’s demand for a separate Muslim-majority state.
The League was being directly challenged by the country’s largest Indian nationalist party, the Indian National Congress (INC); and also by radical Islamic parties who had labeled the League as a party of 'fake Muslims’.
The League’s manifesto for the election called for a separate Muslim-majority country but which would also welcome India’s other minorities (Christians, Buddhists, Zoroastrians and Sikhs) as equal citizens. The League also appealed to ‘scheduled class Hindus’, claiming that they would be better off in Pakistan.
The League won 114 out 250 seats in Bengal; 75 out of 175 in Punjab; 17 out of 150 in NWFP (present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa); 28 out of 60 in Sindh: 54 out of 228 in Utter Pradesh; 34 out of 152 in Bihar; 31 out of 108 in Assam; 30 out of 175 in Bombay; 29 out of 215 in Madras; and 4 out of 60 in Orissa.
Though overall the INC gained the most seats across India, AIML bagged 87.2% of the Muslim votes, thus becoming the largest Muslim nationalist party in the country.
The ruling party
Liaquat Ali Khan soon after assuming the office of the Prime Minister of Pakistan in August 1947.
Jinnah became governor general and Liaquat Ali Khan the first prime minister of Pakistan. All India Muslim League became the Muslim League (ML) after Pakistan’s creation.
The country’s first Governor General and PM both belonged to ML and the new country’s first Constituent Assembly had an ML majority. Jinnah in his first address described Pakistan as a modern Muslim-majority state but where the state would remain religiously neutral and where citizens would transcend their personal faiths to become Pakistanis.
Jinnah passed away in 1948.
The first fissures
In-fighting within the ruling Muslim League began almost immediately after Jinnah’s demise in 1948. The in-fighting turned bitter and the party began to fracture.
All Pakistan Awami Muslim League (APAML)
Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy.
APAML was the first ML faction. It was formed in 1949 by a leading ML leader from Bengal (East Pakistan, now Bangladesh) Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy. Suhrawardy had argued with ML leadership that the party needed to retain the populist tenor of AIML. He accused the leadership of ‘elitism’ and ‘losing contact with the masses.’ He broke away in 1949 to form APAML.
NADEEM F. PARACHAPUBLISHED about 6 hours ago
Currently, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) is perhaps the largest political party in Pakistan. It is one of the umpteenth factions that have been emerged ever since the All India Muslim League (AIML) became the Muslim League (ML) in 1947 and then began to splinter.
The ML was the party of Pakistan’s founders. But it faced multiple fractures soon after the creation of Pakistan in 1947. It almost vanished in the 1970s. Its revival began in the mid-1980s and today, one of its factions (PML-N), has managed to become a formidable electoral machine.
More interesting is the way the League and many of its factions have evolved. The AIML was a centrist party based on the notions of modern Muslim nationalism and ‘Modernist Islam.’ It remained to be so until the 1970s when it increasingly shifted to the right and became overtly conservative and even ‘Islamist.’
However, in the last decade or so, most of its major factions, especially the PML-N, have been moving back to the party’s original centrist position even to the extent of gradually disowning the ideological disposition it adopted in the 1980s.
All India Muslim League (AIML)
1906: Founders of the All India Muslim League (led by an eminent Ismaili Muslim, Sultan Agha Khan) after announcing the party’s formation in Lucknow in 1906.
The party emerged as an early political expression of the gradual growth of a Muslim middle-class in India.
The party was inspired by the academic and social activism of the scholar Sir Syed Ahmad Khan who was one of the first major exponents of ‘Muslim Modernism’ in India.
1930: Iqbal’s call for separatism
Poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal (third from left) with AIML members in 1930.
In 1930, Muhammad Iqbal became the party’s president and in an address demanded a separate Muslim state (but one which will exist within an Indian federation).
He also urged lawyer and politician, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, to return to India (from the UK) and lead the League. Jinnah had quit politics after being disillusioned by the rising communal tensions between India’s Hindus and Muslims in the 1920s. He moved to the UK to practice law.
Iqbal glued the Muslim Modernism of the likes of Sir Syed and himself to the more radical currents of Pan-Islamism of that period to formulate an expanded idea of Muslim nationalism in India.
1940: Jinnah calls for Pakistan
Jinnah receiving Congress leader Mahatma Gandhi in Delhi in 1940.
Jinnah had returned to India in the mid-1930s and eventually became AIML’s president. During an address to party members in 1940, Jinnah declared that Muslims would be politically and economically undermined in a Hindu-majority India and thus needed to strive towards creating their own country, Pakistan.
1946: The League at the polls
Jinnah meeting a potential voter in the Punjab during the 1945-46 national and provincial elections in India.
The 1945-46 elections were called by the British to constitute a government at the centre and in the provinces.
The elections were vital for the League to prove that a majority of Indian Muslims considered it to be the main Muslim party in the country and agreed with the party’s demand for a separate Muslim-majority state.
The League was being directly challenged by the country’s largest Indian nationalist party, the Indian National Congress (INC); and also by radical Islamic parties who had labeled the League as a party of 'fake Muslims’.
The League’s manifesto for the election called for a separate Muslim-majority country but which would also welcome India’s other minorities (Christians, Buddhists, Zoroastrians and Sikhs) as equal citizens. The League also appealed to ‘scheduled class Hindus’, claiming that they would be better off in Pakistan.
The League won 114 out 250 seats in Bengal; 75 out of 175 in Punjab; 17 out of 150 in NWFP (present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa); 28 out of 60 in Sindh: 54 out of 228 in Utter Pradesh; 34 out of 152 in Bihar; 31 out of 108 in Assam; 30 out of 175 in Bombay; 29 out of 215 in Madras; and 4 out of 60 in Orissa.
Though overall the INC gained the most seats across India, AIML bagged 87.2% of the Muslim votes, thus becoming the largest Muslim nationalist party in the country.
The ruling party
Liaquat Ali Khan soon after assuming the office of the Prime Minister of Pakistan in August 1947.
Jinnah became governor general and Liaquat Ali Khan the first prime minister of Pakistan. All India Muslim League became the Muslim League (ML) after Pakistan’s creation.
The country’s first Governor General and PM both belonged to ML and the new country’s first Constituent Assembly had an ML majority. Jinnah in his first address described Pakistan as a modern Muslim-majority state but where the state would remain religiously neutral and where citizens would transcend their personal faiths to become Pakistanis.
Jinnah passed away in 1948.
The first fissures
In-fighting within the ruling Muslim League began almost immediately after Jinnah’s demise in 1948. The in-fighting turned bitter and the party began to fracture.
All Pakistan Awami Muslim League (APAML)
Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy.
APAML was the first ML faction. It was formed in 1949 by a leading ML leader from Bengal (East Pakistan, now Bangladesh) Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy. Suhrawardy had argued with ML leadership that the party needed to retain the populist tenor of AIML. He accused the leadership of ‘elitism’ and ‘losing contact with the masses.’ He broke away in 1949 to form APAML.