Baibars_1260
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You know Baibar I sometimes wonder what if Partition hadn't happened.
We were in majority in present day Pakistan and Bangladesh. But the resources of wealth were controlled by Hindus and Sikhs.
Would we have been like the poor Muslim peasants of UP? Would our population have been underrepresented? Would we have a a string of sarkari Muslim leaders who would be coopted by Congress?
They're so worked up when Muslims are 15%. Imagine how their state of mind would be if Muslims were 35%
Look at Bosnia or the Central African Republic. Roughly the same percentage. Bosnia as part of the United Yugoslavia.
With the fall of the Mughal empire, any equal treatment of Muslims was a thing of the past. What is Pakistan today was part of the Maratha empire for about 90 years and then part of the Sikh Empire for another 40 years- an approximate time line; there were overlapping periods when Nadir Shah, Ahmed Shah and Ghulam Qadir seized control for few years but the impact of these incursions was temporary.
During this period Muslim of all classes faced economic ruin as they lost property, manufacturing resources, and a complete lack of educational resources. Small Muslim farmers were dispossessed of their lands and were reduced to a peasant class, Muslim artisans such as ceramic workers from Chunar, Brass ware workers from Moradabad, leather workers from Kolhapur, weavers from Dhaka, gun smiths from Monghyr, all were targeted by brutal reprisals by the successive Empires .
Only the KPK in the North and Tipu Sultan in the South were temporarily able to hold out in the rapidly deteriorating communal environment. These were no longer wars for territory but reprisal wars where whole populations of Muslims were massacred by a succession of Jats, Marathas, Sikh war lords. The Jats being especially vicious.. The Indian Muslims did try to fight back. Syed Ahmed Barelvi lead a fight against the Sikh Empire until he was trapped in Balakot and beheaded by the Sikh commander Hari Singh Nalwa. ( Hari Singh himself got trapped and beheaded shortly afterwards by Afghan partisans).
The British then took over from the Sikhs but never trusted the Muslims. The economic and educational collapse of Muslims in what is now Pakistan continued reducing the Muslim population of Pakistan into serfs of wealthy Hindu and Sikh landlords. The last show of Hindu Muslim unity ( fleeting and temporary ) was in the Great Indian Mutiny of 1857. The Mutiny was suppressed. Post-Mutiny the Hindus and Sikhs took a bold decision to acquire Western Education and learn English from the British and work closely with them. The British had identified the Muslims as enemy # 1 because the feeble doddering puppet Mughal "king" of India had supported the the Mutiny. The Muslims continued studying at home or in Madarsahs by-passing the educational opportunities offered by studying in the new Universities and colleges being set up by the British. Not that they had a choice. The British didn't want the Muslims and held them in contempt. Even Delhi was declared out of bounds to Muslims.,The Jama Masjid in Delhi housed horses of the Royal Cavalry ( one can imagine the stink and dung heaps) for 12 years. With no commercial class, no
education, and no property the Muslims of united India were fourth class subjects in the British Empire.
Some time in the 1920s the British now afraid of rising Hindu nationalism decided to bring the Muslims back. Landholdings were returned to Muslims. The Aligarh university was established as were other schools ( Osmania) imparting modern education., The British began to recruit Muslim soldiers into the Indian army,
Now freed from discrimination, a new class of Muslim professionals ( Doctors,Engineers, Lawyers etc.) rapidly developed and came to the forefront. The speed at which western education spread amongst Muslims was astonishing.
World War 2 brought the first commissioned officers, pilots, naval officers, engineer officers. Even though Muslims were rapidly catching up there was very little of a mercantile class or business community. Muslims of old United India were largely landed gentry or professionals .
By the 1940s India was completely polarized.,
The rest we know. The Mughals began to lose power in 1674 C.E. with the rise of the Marathas. By the mid 1800s Muslims were completely impoverished.
The founding of Pakistan was a generational event.
Muslims (a portion ) would survive and live their dreams.
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