Pak Tea House » Uncategorized » How Azad won in Pakistan and India! Ramchandra Guha’s imaginary history and other incidental lies.
How Azad won in Pakistan and India! Ramchandra Guha’s imaginary history and other incidental lies.
*This is a rebuttal to Ramchandra Guha’s article “Letting Azad win” which in my view was a terrible distortion of history and facts. -YLH
By Yasser Latif Hamdani
Ramchandra Guha- the so called Indian Historian- is incapable of telling the truth. It never ceases to amaze me how he continues to distort the facts regarding partition. Now however he has taken desperate tactics using frivolous allegations.
Consider: he thinks Lahore is Kandahar where every woman is in a burqah. Anyone who has been to Lahore knows that this is an incredible lie even by the standards of Ramchandra Guha. Perhaps had he actually bothered to visit Lahore, he would have changed his mind but facts are not what Guha is interested in. He is more interested in weaving an India-shining myth and in the process he will go to any lengths to lie about the facts. For almost similar populations in terms of size – Pakistani Muslims are about 170 million and Indian Muslims number a few million less- there are three times as many Muslim women in Pakistan than in India who are doctors, engineers, pilots, businesswomen, fighter-pilots, artists and indeed fashion and media. I would also venture to take a guess and say that more Muslim women in Pakistan are out of Burqah than in India. So much for Ramchandra Guha’s bigoted lies.
Even otherwise Lahore is hardly a communal ghetto that Guha imagines it to be. To this end it is instructive to quote Aakar Patel’s impressions on his visit to Pakistan during the famous 2004 series between Pakistan and India which is closer to the truth:
Punjabi, Gujarati, Pushtun and Urdu spoken on one side; Punjabi, Gujarati, Urdu, Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil and Haryanvi on the other. There was a Christian and a Hindu doing battle for the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, one crossing himself as he crossed 50; the other touching dirt to his forehead as he began a new spell.
The newspaper Nawa-e-Waqt is the keeper of the Pakistan ideology, the guardian of the Two-Nation theory. Its Sunday edition during the Multan test had a full page feature on the one player in the contest that the editor picked as a good Muslim. The man said his prayers all five times and spoke of the peace and calm that came over him when he entered the ground after kneeling to God.
That player of course was Irfan Pathan, the man from Gujarat, wearing the India colours.
“Who are they? They look like Indians,” said my host in Lahore before the commentator identified Irfan’s maulvi father and hijab-clad mother, on camera sitting in the VIP stand with hennaed beard, Jinnah topi and full burqa. And they did look foreign, amid the suits and the jeans of the rich Pakistanis; stoic, expressionless as their son was out for 49 in Lahore.
When India won a test and almost took the series against Australia, we celebrated our standing up to the greatest team in the world, perhaps the greatest team ever. Indiawas shining in the world then. But this was much more. This was the victory of Indiaover Pakistan, not one team over another.
So in Pakistan we celebrate the triumph of our nationalism. But how do we separate ourselves from Pakistan? The colours of moderate Islam got thumped by seculardemocracy in the cricket match, yes that is true.
In the murky skies over Islamabad on Day 4, however, this clarity was missing. Who was the ‘we’ that beat ‘them’?
For me, Pakistan was a foreign country.
Visitors to Pakistan will be shocked at how they have kept their cities and their airports. They are truly world class. India can never be this efficient or clean.
Lahore is paradise. It has huge gardens splashed through the middle of its roads. An enormous canal glides through the middle of a thoroughfare.
Indians will also be amazed with how much at ease the Lahauri is with his culture and how little this culture has to do with religion.
To me that culture is alien because it is Punjabi, not because it is Muslim.
To me, the groups of Sardars walking again in the streets of Lahore’s old city with the kirpans by their side and the shopkeepers at their elbow, seemed to belong there. They were Lahauris.
But for all of Pakistan’s foreign-ness, it had everything that we pride India for. It was pluralist, it was joyous, it was tolerant. In the colourful Indian crowds, clapping, shouting, shopping, Pakistans also discovered something perhaps foreign to themselves and perhaps something of themselves.
Ramchandra mian’s overactive imagination about the ground realities of Pakistan and India aside, his simplistic and counterfactual presentation of history is much more problematic. The divide between Azad and Jinnah and indeed Congress and Jinnah dates back to the Khilafat Movement. Gandhiji- for all his many qualities- made a terrible error when he decided to promote Mullahs in the Khilafat Movement to deliberately sideline Jinnah and the secular Muslims. At that time Maulana Azad was encouraging Muslims to leave India because it had become “Darul-Harb”. Maulana Azad represented- whether Guha likes to admit it or not – a section of conservative religious Muslims who were not interested in the material progress of their community. Contrary to Guha’s deliberate misrepresentation of history, this is what one famous Congressite Achyuth Patwardhan had to say.
It is, however, useful to recognise our share of this error of misdirection. To begin with, I am convinced that looking back upon the course of development of the freedom movement, THE ‘HIMALAYAN ERROR’ of Gandhiji’s leadership was the support he extended on behalf of the Congress and the Indian people to the Khilafat Movement at the end of the World War I. This has proved to be a disastrous error which has brought in its wake a series of harmful consequences. On merits, it was a thoroughly reactionary step. The Khilafat was totally unworthy of support of the Progressive Muslims. Kemel Pasha established this solid fact by abolition of the Khilafat. The abolition of the Khilafat was widely welcomed by enlightened Muslim opinion the world over and Kemel was an undoubted hero of all young Muslims straining against Imperialist domination. But apart from the fact that Khilafat was an unworthy reactionary cause, Mahatma Gandhi had to align himself with a sectarian revivalist Muslim Leadership of clerics and maulvis. He was thus unwittingly responsible for jettisoning sane, secular, modernist leadership among the Muslims of India and foisting upon the Indian Muslims a theocratic orthodoxy of the Maulvis. Maulana Mohammed Ali’s speeches read today appear strangely incoherent and out of tune with the spirit of secular political freedom. The Congress Movement which released the forces of religious liberalism and reform among the Hindus, and evoked a rational scientific outlook, placed the Muslims of India under the spell of orthodoxy and religious superstition by their support to the Khilafat leadership. Rationalist leaders like Jinnah were rebuffed by this attitude of Congress and Gandhi. This is the background of the psychological rift between Congress and the Muslim League’
They were willing to go along with the Congress because Congress ensured the Mullahs the “shepherd” status for the Muslim flock of sheep. Unlike Jinnah and the secular Muslim salariat that followed him, these nationalist Muslims were not interested in jobs, shares, political and economic issues. It is for this reason that the most reactionary and bigoted of the Muslim religious elite supported Azad and the Congress Party without exception- leading among them the Mullahs of Deoband including one Mufti Mahmood – the father of Maulana Fazlur Rahman. Other supporters of Maulana Azad included the Majlis-e-Ahrar which included such proudly and openly bigoted fellows as Agha Shorish Kashmiri, Maulana Ataullah Shah Bokhari and Maulana Mazhar Ali Azhar – three of the most bigoted anti-Ahmadi, anti-shia, anti-women and anti-minority ideologues.
While Pakistan ensured that there would be an indigenous Muslim bourgeoisie – in terms of constitution and law, the followers of Azad – the Ahraris, Jamaat-e-Islami wallahs, and Deobandis- have managed to defeat the secular liberal forces who were the followers of Jinnah. By creating deliberate confusion about why Pakistan was created the followers of Azad managed to excommunicate the Ahmadis in Pakistan and marginalize the Shias, Ismailis and others who were amongst the founders of Pakistan.
Even in India Azad won when Congress Party –true to Azad ideology – decided to overturn the Shah Bano verdict of the Indian Supreme Court. Perhaps Guha missed it – because he usually misses salient points in history – but the lawyer for Shah Bano in the famous case was none other than Daniyal Latifi – a progressive secular lawyer who also was Jinnah’s associate and who was a Muslim Leaguer and indeed the main draftsman of the League manifesto.
These are undeniable facts of history. Of course Guha and his counterparts in Pakistan would rather bury it. But facts will be facts and my attempt here is to set the record straight.
Filed under: Uncategorized · Tags: Ahrar, Azad, Congress, constitution of India, Deoband, India, Indian Muslims, Indian women, Jamaat-e-Islami, Jamiat, Jinnah, Lahore, Maulanas, Mullahs, Nationalist Muslims, Pakistan, Pakistani Women, Ram Chandra Guha, Ramchandra Guha, secularism
23 Responses to "How Azad won in Pakistan and India! Ramchandra Guha’s imaginary history and other incidental lies."
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hindu are master fiction writer,cannot write truth.they are mostly away from ground reality.they think that imgination is truth.
what is wrong?
YLH was always great admirer of Guha’s history narratives
engrich
True. There are a handful of Muslims who do dare deliberately fictionalize history, but they are few and largely irrelevant in the context of Islamic societies. In Pakistan, specifically, there appears to be little fear of anyone destroying history the way it is routinely destroyed elsewhere.
Other people study history the way they would like it to have been. Muslims study it the way it actually was so they can learn from it.
Question is – why and how did pakistan allow azad followers to trump Jinnah followers. Can someone deny the fact that Pakistan was created in the name of Islam .
Also – number of women professionals in Pakistan are more than Indian Muslims women doing similar jobs because quite a bunch of the north Indian Muslim middle class had migrated to Pakistan. What was left behind was the lower classes. I am sure lower classes in Pakistan would be very similar to Muslim lower class in India. The Muslim middle class and upper class, whatever remains, continue to do well. I have three close friends, who are from middle class and upper class background. Middle class thought process will remain the same and is independent of religion – to educate kids and imbibe good values.
In contrast – Muslims from south India are very progressive as the middle class remained in india as they were south Indians first and Muslims second.
Your theory, like ramchandra guha’s is a bit skewed.
Indian, what is Guha’s theory?
I guess, YLH’s theory is that Aakar Patel is a better historian than Guha. Nice. Btw, why is Basant not celebrated in Lahore anymore?
Aakar Patel is one of those authors who writes what he dreams about how a place should be and not how it is in reality. If Pakistan was such a paradise, then why do we hear the same authors go about chest beating ad nauseam.
i agree.
Can anyone deny Pakistan was founded in the name of Islam? Yes.
Bade miyan try and read carefully… I did not quote Aakar Patel as a historian. I think Ayesha Jalal, H M Seervai and others are much more towering as authors than Mr. Guha who is hardly a historian… more like a crook.
YLH
I am astonished at the depraved stance you have taken.
This is what Guha – an eminent historiographer – has noted:
“In Bihar, once a byword for backwardness, Muslim girls go unaccompanied on
cycles to school. Barely a handful of Indian Muslims have joined terrorist
organisations; whereas tens of thousands of Pakistanis have done so. Indian
Islam retains its diverse and plural character; Pakistani Islam has increasingly
gone the Wahabi way. Here, unlike there, Shias, Ahmediyas, Khojas and Ismailis
are not under threat from Sunni fundamentalists. ”
YLH, how can so stupendous a scholar and luninary like you disagree?
IT can indeed be said without a tincture or peradventure of doubt that my self – esteemed though not as much as it deserves by far in many luminous and numinous quarters of noble and knighted ezcellence both in prose and verse and sundy literary endeavours – to repeat, it can indeed be said with all conviction that I am a confirmed admirer and deriver of wisdom from the ever-luminous YLH.
Yet his latest missive doth me confound. It convinceth not neither doth it inform.
For the pleasure and persuasion of the readers here is what that excelling mind, Ramachandra Guha actually said:
“In the third week of March 1940, Maulana Abul Kalam
Azad delivered the presidential address at the annual meeting of the Indian
National Congress, held that year in Ramgarh in Bihar. Azad here spoke of
secularism as India’s “historic destiny”, proof of which was in “our languages,
our poetry, our
literature, our culture , our dress, our
manners and our customs”, all of which bore the “stamp of our joint endeavour”
(as Hindus and as Muslims). Azad insisted that “whether we like it or not, we
have now become an Indian nation, united and indivisible. No fantasy or
artificial scheming to separate or divide can break this unity”.
A few days later, the Muslim League met for its annual meeting in Lahore,
where its president, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, put forward a radically different
point of view. Hindus and Muslims, he believed, “belong to two different
civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions”.
Jinnah thought it “a dream that Hindus and Muslims can evolve a common
nationality”.
In the short-term, Jinnah won the debate. In 1947, Pakistan was created as a
separate homeland for the Muslims of the subcontinent. Azad was deeply
demoralised by this defeat, but his friend and comrade, Jawaharlal Nehru, set
out to win the argument in the long-term. Millions of Muslims had stayed behind
in India; to these, Nehru offered the ideal, and hope, of a common citizenship
in a secular State.
Partition had been accompanied by ethnic cleansing and bloody riots.
Remarkably, the first decade-and-a-half of Independence was largely free of
Hindu-Muslim violence. This was in good part due to Nehru’s leadership. He
helped make Muslims feel secure in a largely Hindu nation; at the same time, he
kept the forces of Hindutva extremism at bay.
In 1963, after the theft of a relic of the Prophet Muhammad from a shrine in
Kashmir, there was violence against Hindus in what was then East Pakistan,
followed by violence against Muslims in West Bengal and Orissa. In 1969, there
was a major riot in Ahmedabad. The 1970s also saw some serious bouts of
Hindu-Muslim rioting (in Moradabad and Jamshedpur, among other places). However,
it was really in the 1980s and 1990s that the Gandhi-Azad-Nehru ideal of a
secular India came under serious threat.
The communal polarisation of those decades was enabled by two grossly cynical
moves — the annulling by Rajiv Gandhi of the Supreme Court judgement in the Shah
Bano case, and the rath yatra of LK Advani. These two acts helped fuel a wave of
religious violence across northern and western India, a violence so regular and
widespread that those decades still seem, to one who lived through them, to be
best captured in the title of a book by MJ Akbar, Riot after Riot. Notably, in
all states except Jammu and Kashmir, Muslims suffered massively. Despite being a
minority, far more Muslim lives were burnt, and Muslim homes burnt, than Hindu
ones. There were now real fears that India was becoming a Hindu Pakistan.
This cycle ended with the Gujarat riots of 2002. In the decade since, there
has been no serious Hindu-Muslim riot in India. This is the first 10-year-period
since Jawaharlal Nehru’s death of which this can be said. Indeed, the diminution
of sectarian conflict is the one genuinely cheering thing about India today,
small consolation — but consolation nevertheless — in the face of corruption
scandals, growing economic inequalities, galloping environmental degradation,
et. al.
My own impression, based on travels around the country and conversations with
a variety of Indians, is that this cooling of communal tempers is occurring
independently and simultaneously on both sides of the spectrum. Hindus who once
went along with the Ayodhya movement now see the futility of constructing a
nation’s agenda around a single temple. Having witnessed (and suffered) the BJP
in power in New Delhi, they now know that far from being a ‘party with a
difference’, it is driven by greed and personal ambition. Meanwhile, the
ordinary Muslim is breaking free of the reactionary mullahs who once presumed to
speak for the community. He, and increasingly she, is no longer moved by talk of
the past glories of Islam — rather, they seek education and jobs in the modern
economy.
The contrast with Pakistan in this respect can be striking. In Lahore, once a
showpiece of cosmopolitanism, the women on the streets are mostly in burqas. In
Bihar, once a byword for backwardness, Muslim girls go unaccompanied on cycles
to school. Barely a handful of Indian Muslims have joined terrorist
organisations; whereas tens of thousands of Pakistanis have done so. Indian
Islam retains its diverse and plural character; Pakistani Islam has increasingly
gone the Wahabi way. Here, unlike there, Shias, Ahmediyas, Khojas and Ismailis
are not under threat from Sunni fundamentalists.
Have Nehru and Azad then finally won the argument? Is, will, must, secularism
be India’s destiny? It is too early to say. The social peace of the past decade,
the shedding of reactionary tendencies by Hindus and Muslims, could yet be
reversed by the scheming of politicians. The bans on cow-slaughter and the
mandatory teaching of the Bhagvad Gita in BJP-ruled states are inimical to the
secularism that the nation’s founders sought. So are the job quotas for Muslims
so energetically pursued by the Congress. Pace Azad, these schemes are not so
much artificial as malevolent. The former seek to provoke Muslims; the latter,
to placate them. Neither is consistent with the claims of equal citizenship. For
the sake of Hindus, Muslims, and India itself, these schemes must be withdrawn,
or, through the pressure of democratic public opinion, be made to fail.”
Ramachandra Guha is the current holder of the Philippe Roman Chair in
History and International Affairs, London School of Economics.
The Constituent Assembly of India was able to
produce a “secular” constitution, inspite of the fact that there was no
opening address that could be compared to Jinnah’s 11th August 1947
speech. So, communalism in India is not protected by the Indian
Constitution. It is inspite of the Indian Constitution. The Constituent
Assembly of Pakistan, on the other hand, could not produce a “secular”
constitution, inspite of the fact that the founder of this country
clearly shared with this Assembly his vision of a “Secular Pakistan” to
be governed by a “Secular Constitution”. Religious extremism in Pakistan
is very much protected by Pakistan’s present constitution.
YLH
Ramachandra Guha is FAR FAR more successful than you or what you can EVER hope
to achieve in your entire life
YLH
Dont you know how Maulana Azad had PREDICTED all that is
now happening in Pakistan
You must have read his predictions about Pakistan which have been proved right
SO it is Pakistan which has LET Azad WIN
YLHwhat can i say, what happens when you are stuck between two people, both in misconception, praising each other….. on your front yard. To think of the Quaid as a secular is a myth of yonder imagination. .In a speech he said, ‘ What is it that you want? All this talk of socialism, communism, national-socialism and every other ism is out of place. Do you think you can do anything just now?’. So the Quaid rejected any ism to be imposed on him or on the Musalmans, he even withdrew from democracy if it was to be practiced in united India, that would be equivalent to ‘Hindu Raj’ , he said. Then did he not know that democracy would mean Muslim Raj in Pakistan. In another speech he admitted that he was not a Maulana but that he was true to his faith. .Jinnah’s English modeled education had rendered him weak in the Islamic jurisprudence , but he was strong in the British law, and he was to fight them down in their own grounds, therefore he would find fulfillment of Islamic ideals in corrected use of English terms like democracy, socialism… didn’t you read when he said ‘… we learned democracy 13 centuries ago..’ .when he said ‘ we will treat your minorities not only in the manner that a civilized government should treat them but better because it is an injunction in the Quran to treat the minorities so .’ does he not take the Quran as a law giving book.
I cannot take somebody who takes Aakar Patel seriously, seriously. Patel is a known idiot of Indian journalism who deliberately cultivates views on every single subject which are directly opposed to those of the average educated Indian middle class reader of the publications he writes for. If anything, both Ram Guha and Aakar Patel are very similar in their respective ideologies. Both are well known as bootlickers of the Gandhi-Maino dynasty and the Congress party. Both have very similar world views on most things, but its just that Ram Guha has a veneer of sophistication that Patel does not, and hence Guha is much more successful.
The problem with Hamdani is he views everything from the Gandhi vs Jinnah point of view. Now Gandhi vs Jinnah may have been important issues 50 years ago, may be important for even some of Hamdani’s fan-boys and hate-boys even today… may be important in much of Pakistan even… but in India – it is of zero consequence. The only Gandhis who are important in India are Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and the rest of the dynasty. They, along with their party, are doing a stellar job of systematically destroying India, an effort which even Pakistan’s ISI or its greatest India haters like Parvez Musharaf or Hamid Gul could not match had Pakistan defeated India militarily and taken over the occupation of the country.
I suppose Vajra is conflicted on whether he is first and foremost a Sonia-Congress fan boy or a Hamdani-Pakistan fan boy ….
hamdani, YOU GOT TO BE KIDDING YOUR WILDEST DREAMS BEFORE YOU COMMENT GUHA. Seriously are you kidding!!! Guha is THE historian of modern India. The facts of Guha aside… what makes you think that Pakistan is as what you think. Lets keep Guha aside…you could pass that he is an indian and could be biased…… When you ignore the impression of the world about Pakistan…thats not normal …
1. Why does IMF shell out money to keep Pakistan floating….
2. Who are the prominent muslims on par with Indian muslims that you can compare..
3. Why do the tourists come to india not Pakistan which also has very good monuments
4. Why did the hindu minority population come down to less than 2 %
5. Why are most terrorist links traced back to Pakistan
The answers to these are simple…. but just as many Pakistanis pass it off …. it may not matter. But the fact is time is not Pakistan’s side.
You are lawyer and supposed to be better of the society that has trouble being secular.
If you do not get it why bother that your nation has stability and future.
Just wanted to make the point that whenever an Indian criticizes Pakistan, Hamdani habitually regurgitates 2 articles – this one by Aakar Patel written in 2004, and another one by William Darlymple, also written many years ago – both of who see Pakistan in a positive light. There are perhaps 1 or 2 more articles on Pakistan that Hamdani quotes. Buts thats about it. He ignores 99% of the articles or opinion pieces or books on Pakistan by other writers – American, Indian, even Pakistani – even though most of them are far more credible than Hamdani’s one or two pets, because they dont depict Pakistan the way he wants them to. Indeed, any digression on their path from how he would like Pakistan to be depicted promptly elucidates the most ugly, ridiculous, shambolic reaction from him – which again, he bolsters with the articles from Patel, Darlymple and a couple of others, to make his point. I dont visit this site often. But having read this particular article, I a a couple of others by Hamdani over the years, leads one to conclude that he is yet to grow out of his teenaged Pakistani internet troll phase… Will he ever grow up ? India vs Pakistan phase is over. Hyphenating India with Pakistan ended at least a decade ago. Pakistan is seen as a failed state by most people around the world. Nobody has heard of Jinnah or gives a flying f about Jinnah. Wake up and smell the coffee.
Only thing I find curious is that this guy actually has admirers, some of them even grown people.
sir i am a muslim pakistani but i really did not liked your point of saying that muslim woman do not wear burqa is wrong. we should encourage muslim women to wear burqa because it is part of the relegion islam. i am sorry to say that because of silly competitions. i don`t say that our women should not work, they should, but our men should also work instead of eating the money gained by their wives or sisters.
THANK XX
THE PROBLEMS WE ARE FACING ARE BECAUSE OF DOING WRONG DEEDS FOR SILLY COMPETITIONS.
THANK YOU.
ALLAH HAFIZ
Jinnah did hobnob with reactionary mullahs and muslim internationalists.
Jinnah did not write down what he wanted should become out of Pakistan. Making mere speeches is not enough. He had enough time to write a book (be it only a small one of just 60-120 pages – it does not have to be 600-1200 pages). Dictating a such book to scribes and stenographs does not take more than a few hours. Speeches cause confusions.
Writing a book lets one know one’s own contradictions, failings, deficiencies, irrationalities etc. It also makes it clear to the inheritors what you wished to be done. Jinnah failed here very very badly.
What was Jinnah’s role after he came to know that the pak army and pathan tribals had invaded Kashmir (20. October 1947) and looted and raped there? Did he then behave as an opportunist-pretender or as a decent-righteous human being? He wanted that the relationship between India and Pakistan should be like between USA and Canada. But did he lay the foundation for it? He did have the opportunity to lay this foundation.
@raison
yes you are right. jinnah’s role is often cited as one of the reasons for Pakistan’s instability lack of democracy.
first of allhe made himself Governor General of Pakistan instead of holding elections and even trying to work out a constitution like Nehru did. Nehru did not proclaim himself to be anything and did not seize power. instead he took all the right steps for a nascent democracy.he set a very important precedent. jinnah did the opposite and this was one big mistake
he then disbanded Wali Khan’s government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province even though it were very popular simply because they had been pro-congress and they did not want partition. he set an extremely dangerous precedent by doing that effectively justifying andom dismissals of government that became a characteristic of Pakistan and thus prevented a stable democracy to flourish.
so a lot of the blame does lie with Jinnah in that he was not prescient an lacked a vision. he had the right ideas but had no idea about how to bring them to fruition.