Punjab: Muslim League and Unionists

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Punjab: Muslim League and Unionists

October 14, 2007

REVIEWS: The Punjab Muslim League and the Unionists

By S.G. Jilanee

The Punjab Muslim League and the Unionists

By Khalid Shamsul Hasan

Ushba Publishing International, Karachi

Available with Paramount Books, Karachi and Royal Book Company, Karachi

ISBN 969-8588-54-X

202pp. Price not listed

AS Mr Jinnah’s assistant secretary since 1914, Shamsul Hassan was privileged to watch the drama of the struggle for Pakistan at close quarters. He left behind a mass of material which has been published as the Shamsul Hassan Collection. Based on documents from the collection, his son, Khalid Shamsul Hassan, wrote this handy 190-page book to unveil a little known dimension to the said drama. Most of the literature on the subject of the Muslim League and Pakistan gives the impression that the opposition Jinnah encountered to his cause came only from the Congres, Hindu Mahasabha, Sikhs, the British government, Muslim nationalists, the Jamiatul Ulema-i-Hind and the Jamaat-i-Islami.

The Machiavellian intrigues of the Punjab Unionist Party and its relentless opposition to Mr Jinnah, which posed a greater threat to the cause of Pakistan than perhaps the combined forces of all the others, are rarely mentioned. Khalid has exposed the details of their mischief and unmasked the hideous faces of the role players with unimpeachable evidence mostly in the shape of correspondence.

For starters, it was the National Unionist Party in Punjab in the early 1940s that first coined the parochial slogan, ‘jaag re jaag ai jaat/teri pug nu laga daag’ which Nawaz Sharif’s supporters modified to ‘jaag Punjabi jaag/ teri pug nu lag gaya daag’ in the 1990s. The Unionists were a group of powerful landlords whose ancestors had been Mughul courtiers. For example, Ahmad Yar Khan Daultana inherited a state covering ‘more than 45,000 acres’. ‘They had no political opinion except those which the British liked... The main binding force among them was common loyalty to the British government,’ says Feroz Khan Noon in his autobiography with reference to the Muslim members of the Punjab Legislative Council.

The Unionists tried to ‘decimate’ the All India Muslim League to prevent it from taking root in Punjab which they treated as their fief. And Sir Fazle Hussain was the principal architect of this movement; he had formed a Muslim League before the All India Muslim League was launched. The events since the launching of the All India Muslim League in 1906 only expose the chaotic state of Muslim politics in India where self-seekers far outnumbered sincere men. For some time there were rival Muslim Leagues. There was also a Muslim Conference and leaders switched from one to the other.

Private correspondence between the British governors of Punjab, Hailey and Glancy with Fazle and Shafi in particular has the trappings of a cloak-and-dagger story. Letters reveal, for the first time, the sinister conspiracy to force Jinnah to keep his fingers out of the Punjab ‘pie.’ There are also some interesting asides. For example, the Pakistan edition of Maulana Maududi’s Mussalmanan-i-Hind ki Siyasi Kashmakash has been ‘cleansed’ of derogatory remarks such as Kafir-i-Azam and Na-Pakistan which appear in the original Pathankot edition.

At the end of the book there are thumbnail sketches of some prominent Muslim leaders but, for some unknown reason, Lala Lajpat Rai has also been included. And lengthy quotes from the personal correspondence between Lady Viquarunnisa Noon and Quaid-i-Azam on topics that have no relevance to Muslim League affairs occupy much valuable space.

Finally, the statement that Nawab Ahmad Saeed Khan of Chhatari was ‘the first Indian, who was appointed as acting governor,’ needs to be corrected. The first Indian to be so appointed was Satyendra Prasanno Sinha, 1st Baron Sinha (1863-1928). He was appointed the (full) governor of the Province of Bihar and Orissa in 1920, full eight years before Chhatari.