Quaid-i-Azam as a Strategist*

Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema** 

ike most great men of history, Quaid-i-Azam was a singularly gifted individual - an individual who had the capability to pass out of action into the recluse of solitude and inaction and then out of inaction into action with an increasing realization of the responsibility and the importance of contribution he could make to the advancement of his community’s welfare. His withdrawal from Indian politics during the years 1930-34, and his subsequent attempts to settle down in England, and then return to Indian political scene is an adequate testimony of such a gift. While in England, he “went through an agonizing reappraisal of his role in Indian politics.”1 Towards the end of 1934, he returned to Indian political arena with renewed vigour and clear objective. He came back to India with firm conviction that Congress’ India would be a Hindu India in which the Muslims would be denied their legitimate share. The immediate problem for him was how to devise a strategy which could mould the circumstantial force in such a way that it creates opportunities for the Muslims to realize their ambitions. In this connection, he devised a broad pattern of strategy based on four major tactical stages in order to attain the main objective; namely the establishment of an autonomous Muslim India. At the first stage, the immediate political objective was to reorganize and strengthen the Muslim League to the extent that it became a formidable political force within the Indian political theatre. Once this objective had been attained, he would then move on to the second stage, i.e., to reveal the idea of separate homeland in deliberately contrived vague manner. Having accomplished these two stages, he would then initiate the third stage to strive to attain the status of an undisputed spokesman of the Indian Muslims for the Muslim League. Finally he would try to impress upon the British as well as upon the Congress to accept the principle of parity and accord the equality status to the Muslim League. Once the above mentioned stages had been successfully executed and the objectives attained, the establishment of a separate homeland for Indian Muslims, would become a mere product of a sequence. These four stages do not necessarily follow one after the other but sometimes operate simultaneously.

                Realising the intensity of deteriorating social milieu and the political disarray of the Muslim Community, he was impelled to embark upon, initially, the task of reorganizing and revitalizing the Muslim League along with the strengthening of its base. He attempted to re-infuse the spirit of unity among the Muslims and repeatedly urged League workers to organize properly. In March 1936, he addressed Muslim League members and said:

 

We must think of the interest of our community. Unless you make the best efforts, organize yourself and play your part.2

 

                While delivering the presidential address at the Lucknow Session of the All India Muslim League, in October 1937, he again stressed, that “it is essential that the Muslims should organize themselves as one party.”3 Later, in the same speech he declared:

 

The one wholesome lesson that I ask the Musalmans to learn, before it is too late, is that the path before the Musalmans is, therefore, plain. They must realize that the time has come when they should concentrate and devote their energies to self-organisation and full development of their power to the exclusion of every other consideration.4

               

Simultaneously Quaid-i-Azam opened up another front with a view to enlarging the Muslim League’s base. In pursuit of this objective he devised the tactics of attacking Congress in order to expose Hindu bias of the Congress and its communal orientations. He lashed out innumerable speeches against the Congress emphasizing its attempts to wreck all other organization in India and highlighting the true aims of the Congress. In a statement issued on 13^th October 1938 from Karachi, he declared that the Congress High Command was singularly obsessed with the idea of destroying all efforts which could cause solidarity among the Muslims of Indian.5 While delivering the presidential address at the annual session of the All-India Muslim League, held at Patna, on December 26-29, 1938, he declared:

 

It is a misfortune of our country; indeed, it is a tragedy that High Command of the Congress is determined, absolutely determined to crush all other communities and cultures in this country and establish Hindu Raj. They talk of Swaraj, but they mean only Hindu Raj. They talk of Government but they only mean Hindu Government.6

 

He painted Congress as a fascist party whose authoritarian policies were not only causing the communal riots but were deliberately wrecking all hopes of communal peace in India.7 In order to support this approach, the League prepared and distributed several reports highlighting the injustices experienced by the Muslims at the hands of the Congress in general, and the Congress Provincial Ministries in particular. Admittedly some of the charges made in these reports8 against the Congress were somewhat exaggerated, but these were in line with the broad pattern of strategy that he had devised.

                These speeches and reports served multiple purposes. In the first place, these tactics helped him get rid of the stigma of being too friendly to Congress during the 1920s. Many Muslims were apprehensive of Quaid-i-Azam’s leadership and regarded him a secular leader who had a soft corner for the Congress. His earlier political strategy of skilful mediation and compromise,9 along with his expressed poor opinion of League’s leadership had further strengthened this belief. Secondly, these tactics inculcated a genuine fear of Hindu Raj among the Muslims and, in consequence, great number of Muslim masses began to join the League. When the Congress refused to form coalition ministries with the League despite the existence of prior understanding before the elections of 1937. Under Patel’s direction, the Congress, after winning unexpected number of seats in provincial legislatures, insisted that Leaguers wanting to join ministries must first join the Congress Party.10 This was a great tactical blunder that helped Quaid-i-Azam in convincing a large majority of the Muslims that Congress was essentially a Hindu body.11

At Lucknow on October 15, 1937, in a speech, he said, “…. The majority community have clearly shown their hand that Hindustan is for the Hindus”. He warned his listeners that the “present Congress Party policy”, would result in “class bitterness” and “Communal War.”12

The continuous neglect to appreciate the sensitivities of cultural minorities by the Congress-ruled provinces confirmed already aroused apprehensions of the Muslims. Perhaps, that is why, in response to Quaid-i-Azam’s call to observe December 22, 1939, as the Day of Deliverance and Thanksgiving, after the Congress ministries had resigned in November 1939, thousands joined the demonstration including Parsees, Christians and Untouchables.

                Although throughout the years from 1935 to 1940, the main preoccupation of Quaid-i-Azam had been to strengthen the League by securing more and more mass support for it, and to gain a recognition of a third political force in India, he was convinced that, perhaps, the best way out for the Muslims of India was to seek some kind of territorial separation. He scrupulously refrained from touching this subject in his speeches and statements at the time. However, on the other hand, he frequently employed phrases like ‘Hindu India,’ ‘Hindu Government etc., which implied that he had already worked out some kind of solution for the Muslims of India and was waiting for the right moment to announce it. Expediency demanded to initiate the second stage of his strategy only after having accomplished the task of making Muslim League a powerful political force to be reckoned with.

                Having successfully executed the first stage of his strategy, he then moved closer to revealing his main objective; namely a separate homeland for Indian Muslims. During the early months of 1940, he explained the reasons of inapplicability and impracticability of British form of democracy in India by emphasizing the heterogeneous nature of India, as opposed to homogeneity of the British, in an article published in Time and Tide. In the same very article, he urged the Englishmen to take cognisance of two nations in India.13 Then, in March 1940, the Lahore Resolution was passed by the Muslim League, in which it formally declared the attainment of a separate homeland. Details were left imprecise, but the principle stood clear: the Muslim’s largest political organization had dropped all idea of Indian unity and now wanted the sub-continent’s partition.14 In response to Beverley Nichols question that why Pakistan has not been defined in detail, Quaid-i-Azam said:

 

                All the details were left to the future and the future is often an admirable arbitrator. … it is beyond the power of any man to provide, in advance, a blue print in which every detail is settled.15

 

                The vagueness of the Lahore Resolution, with its somewhat blurred and hazy picture of Muslim separate homeland, was a well thought-out tactic. A detailed and precise picture of Pakistan would have deprived Quaid-i-Azam from taking a full advantage of the element of uncertainty and narrowed the field and power of manoeuvrability on one hand, and would have enabled the Congress to concentrate on a clearly visible target on the other. These tactics paid tangible dividends. It would have required a huge effort by the League workers to explain the meaning of Pakistan to Muslim masses. The Hindu press and the Congress leaders in their over-enthusiastic efforts to discredit the idea of separate homeland as enunciated in the Lahore Resolution, inadvertently helped explaining to Indian masses what Pakistan really meant and stood for and in so doing, conveyed the meaning to Indian Muslims. Even the phrase ‘Pakistan Resolution’ was coined by the Indian press.16

                After having laid the basis for the reorganization of the Muslim League and vaguely presented the idea of an autonomous Indian Muslim State, he started unfolding third and fourth stages of his strategy which were somewhat interdependent and interlinked.

                On September 3, 1939, Great Britain joined the War against Hitler, when Poland was subjected to a Nazi attack. On the same day, Indian Viceroy declared India at war with Nazi Germany. For obvious reasons, Viceroy was eager to gain the support of major political parties of India in his war efforts. The attitude of Congress towards India’s entry into the war was that of open hostility and accused British Government for having deliberately ignored the wishes of the Indian people and asked for immediate independent status. Like a great tactician, the Quaid waited until the Congress had made its move by refusing to accord its support for the British war effort. Three days later the League expressed its willingness to accord solid Muslim support provided British Indian Government guaranteed “Justice and fair play for Muslims in the Congress provinces” and gave “an assurance that no declaration or constitutional advance for India should be made, nor any Indian constitution framed or adopted without the consent and approval of the All-India Muslim League.”17 In October 1939, Viceroy, while attempting to procure the support of Indian political leaders and rallying the Indian public opinion to the side of Great Britain, made it clear “that the rights of minority groups, such as the Muslims, would be safeguarded in any new constitution.”18

                During the initial war years, Quaid’s dealings with British were not only extremely realistic but were also in congruence with a well thought-out strategy. Having procured the guarantees for minority’s rights in future constitutional arrangements and having announced a demand for separate homeland in the Lahore Resolution, Quaid-i-Azam maintained a low-key profile of restrained cooperation during these years. Realising the difficult situation the British were confronting at the time with impending danger of German invasion and the Congress non-cooperation, he refrained from pushing too hard to extract a huge bundle of concessions from them, either by complete non-cooperation or by wholehearted cooperation.19  This was a superb move, the fruits of which were manifested in Viceroy’s August offer, when he, while ruling out the possibility of any constitutional changes during the war, declared that “full weight should be given to the views of the minorities” in future constitutional arrangement for India.20

                Congress role during the early years of war was somewhat short-sighted and miscalculated. Despite British repeated offers of self-government after the war, it decided to support Gandhi’s civil disobedience movement in 1941. The whole movement was classic Congress error which Quaid-i-Azam denounced not because it was causing hindrance to the British war efforts but because he regarded it as a type of political blackmail, designed to coerce British, in order to insure Congress objectives. Sir Sikandar Hayat, the Chief Minister of Punjab, was even more critical and interpreted the movement as stabbing in the back while the British were engaged in their life-and-death struggle against the Germans.21 While highlighting the sinister Congress aims, Quaid-i-Azam also tried to project the positive attitude of the League with regard to British war efforts. In a statement on British policy on January 2, 1942, he said:

 

... the prosecution of war and war efforts the Muslim League has from the very beginning been ready and willing, without prejudice to the major political issues, to shoulder the burden of the defence of the country, singly or in cooperation with other parties, on the basis that real share and responsibility is given to Muslim India in the authority of Governments at the Centre and the Provinces, within the framework of the present existing constitution.22 

 

                Unlike the Congress efforts to obstruct the British war efforts, Quaid-i-Azam repeatedly projected League’s willingness to cooperate. In an interview to an American press representative at Bombay in July 1942, he declared:

 

I stated from the very commencement of India being declared a belligerent that in our own interest and to defend our homes and hearths we should assist England in the prosecution of war, provided Great Britain accepted our hand as a confident friend and as equal partner to face the peril, and provided real share in the authority of the Government at the Centre and Provinces was given to us within the framework of the present constitution.23

 

                Fresh Congress blunders were committed in 1942, after the rejection of Cripps Formula. To make things worse, Congressites, believing in the imminent Japanese victory in near future, demanded in Wardha Resolutions of July 1942, that, “British role in India must end immediately, in default of which the Congress would be compelled to use all its non-violent strength in a widespread struggle, to be led by Mr Gandhi.”24 Quaid-i-Azam interpreted this as a tacit declaration of war by the Congress and described them as tactics of blackmail and coercion in order to procure a system of Government which would not only establish a Hindu Raj but would also sacrifice all other interests, particularly Muslim interests in India.25 However, in response to these resolutions and quit-India movement, serious disturbances followed, “which resulted in widespread sabotage of communication between the Burma fighting zones and Delhi.”26 The British reaction, this time, was far tougher than what Congressites had anticipated. The entire leadership of the Congress with few exceptions, were put behind the bars and were kept there, until as late as the summer of 1945. This provided an excellent opportunity to Quaid-i-Azam and his followers “to rectify the balance between his organization and Congress.”27 In the following years, the League emerged so powerful an organization that it began to insist on being recognized as the sole representative body of the Muslims of India. Even Mr. Churchill declared that the Congress was not the sole representative party of India and implicitly recognized the existence of 90 million Muslims, who were opposed to the Congress.28

                Another tactical success was attained by the Quaid in 1944, when Gandhi, with the covert aim of converting him to his idea of a United India and overt purpose of resolving Congress-League controversy, expressed his desire to meet him. Quaid-i-Azam readily agreed to such a meeting. Although the outcome of this meeting could easily be equated with zero as far as the expressed purpose of the meeting was concerned, Quaid-i-Azam, however, scored two tactical points; acknowledgement of equality of status with the holy hero of the Congress, and admission of Pakistan in some form to the Congress-League agenda.29 He had already anticipated that Ghandi would not accept the type of Pakistan he was promoting and, at best, would, perhaps, concede Raja Gopal Acharia’s formula for Congress-League settlement. Secondly, he knew well that Gandhi was not coming to negotiate as a fully authorized representative of the Congress Party30 but was meeting Quaid in his individual capacity. Why did Quaid-i-Azam agree to this meeting when he knew well that their agreement may not find any support either by congress or by the British? An eminent scholar explained that he, “agreed to meet Gandhi and conduct those negotiations because he thought this would improve the position of the Muslim League and also enhance his prestige.”31 Besides, he had already anticipated that the time for pushing forward the Pakistan scheme in more precise terms was approaching fast, and it was an opportunity to convey to the Congress the determination of the League to secure Pakistan and to impress upon the British the realities of two nation theory and to gain equal status for the League. When the leading opponents of the League were willing to negotiate issues on the basis of equality, then why can’t British accord parity treatment to Muslim League. As mentioned in the beginning of this paper that Quaid-i-Azam had a highly developed sense of political timing, he realized that by 1944, the League had grown greatly in its strength and had also been acquiring the reputation of being the sole representative of the Muslim Community in India, the time had come to project that the establishment of Pakistan was the only solution for India’s constitutional ills. Since the British had committed themselves repeatedly to devise some kind of constitutional framework once the war was over, in order to accelerate the award of self-government to India, and war was approaching fast towards its end, the time had come to begin working for the partition of India. Meeting with Gandhi provided the opportune moment to dress up properly the idea of Pakistan, deliberately couched in vagueness at the time of the passage of the Lahore Resolution. After Quaid-Gandhi talks fell to pieces, Quaid-i-Azam openly declared:

 

There is only one practical, realistic way of resolving Muslim-Hindu differences. This is to divide India into two sovereign parts of Pakistan and Hindustan, by the recognition of the whole of the North West Frontier Province, Baluchistan, Sind, Punjab, Bengal and Assam as sovereign Muslim territories, as they now stand, and for each of us to trust the other to give equitable treatment to Hindu minorities in Pakistan and Muslim minorities in Hindustan.32

 

                The continuous sapping of energies and resources during the six years of Second World War left Britain extremely tired and impoverished which, in turn, gave birth to incredible weariness of Indian problem. In March 1946, the British Government sent a Cabinet Mission to India entrusted with the task of devising a constitutional structure for the eventual award of self-government. During the protected negotiations that took place before the Cabinet Mission Plan was announced, the divergent strategies of both the League and Congress clearly emerged. Congress insisted upon a strong central government whereas the League wanted a weak Centre and strong provinces. Further, Quaid-i-Azam wanted Britain to divide and then quit, whereas, Congress wanted them to depart first and division to take place later.33 The Cabinet Mission Plan was announced on May 16, 1946.

                “Even though the Cabinet Mission had rejected Pakistan, the Muslim League accepted the Plan”, because the Plan “offered a great tactical advantage in the form of compulsory grouping of the six Muslim provinces in Section B, and C.”34 It seems that Quaid-i-Azam and the League had fully comprehended the significance of the grouping and began, almost immediately, to emphasize “the right of provinces to secede from the India’s Union.”35 There can hardly be any doubt that in essence Pakistan was conceded in this compulsory groupings.

                The Cabinet Mission Plan also called for the formation of interim government until a new constitutional framework was worked out. Just before the League announced its acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan, Quaid-i-Azam pre-empted the Congress by seeking an assurance from Wavell that the League would be brought into an interim government even if Congress rejected the Plan after League’s acceptance.36 On June 4, Wavell gave assurance and on June 6, the League accepted the Plan.

                Quaid-i-Azam’s tactics of playing straight in this issue left its mark not only on Viceroy but also upon some members of the Mission. On June 10, Viceroy, in an attempt to influence the Congress leaders to participate in the interim government, initiated negotiations on a basis of parity between the Congress and the League.37 Later Cripps recommended that Quaid-i-Azam should be asked to form an interim government.38 Just before a meeting with Gandhi and Patel, Alexander suggested that they should keep Quaid-i-Azam informed, “as he had played straight whereas the behaviour of the congress was unpredictable.”39

                Having battled for three long months in the sweltering heat of India, the Cabinet Mission left India without procuring a comprehensive agreement from either the League or the Congress, leaving Viceroy to shoulder alone. Initially, both the Congress and the League accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan with its proposal for a three-tier system and the Constituent Assembly. But Nehru, as the Congress President stated before the All-India Congress Committee “We are not bound by a single thing except that we have decided for the moment to go into the Constituent Assembly.”40 Three days later, elaborating this point, he declared, “what we do there, we are entirely and absolutely free to determine. We have committed ourselves on no single matter to anybody.”41 Following Nehru’s complete volte-face, Quaid-i-Azam decided to reverse his acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan and announced to resort to Direct Action.

                Although the August 16, 1946, was intended for a peaceful demonstration of strength, it resulted into riots. Wavell, anxious to avoid riots deteriorating into a civil war, invited Quaid-i-Azam for further negotiations. Muslim League joined the interim Government only after having secured two tactical victories. First, that the League could also nominate a representative of the scheduled castes in its quota, and secondly, an important portfolio of finance was to be given to the League.42 Liaqat Ali Khan, who became the finance minister in interim government declared that, “we have come into the Government with intention of working in harmony with our other colleagues -but you cannot clap with one hand.”43 League’s control of finance ministry provided them the much needed tool with which the Government could easily be paralysed. One eminent writer justifiably wrote that the League had entered the Government fully determined to wage their struggle for Pakistan from within the Government.44

                When Quaid-i-Azam announced to abandon, hitherto scrupulously employed constitutional methods and decided to resort to direct action, he was acutely conscious of the fact that remaining outside the Government could eventually prove to be detrimental to the main objective of the League. Although the League joined the interim Government but it did not send its representative to the Constituent Assembly. The Congress, of course, insisted that the League should either accept the Plan in totality or resign from the interim government. Quaid-i-Azam was not to be trapped by such move. The League, under his leadership, retorted that the Congress had never really accepted the Plan in its totality.

                Unable to break the deadlock, the British Government at this critical point decided to transfer power to responsible Indian hands and announced that British would withdraw by June 1948. Lord Mountbatten was entrusted with the task of transfer of power, whose solution to the Indian political dilemma was to transfer power to two governments instead of one and announced the partition plan in June 1947, which was accepted by both the League as well as the Congress. Thus Pakistan came into being.

                Sir Frederick James described Quaid-i-Azam on his sixty fourth birthday as “a powerful and a first class strategist.”45 His abilities to handle problems of strategic nature were adequately displayed during the years 1935 to 1947. Throughout this period, he worked systematically and in strict congruity with the broad pattern of strategy he had devised in his mind. In 1937, when Allama Iqbal suggested to him that the time for separate Muslim state or states has come, he did not answer his letter.46 Quaid-i-Azam must have realized that the time suggested by Allama Iqbal was not right and it would be dangerous to make such demands when the League had not yet acquired sufficient strength and support considered to be a pre-requisite for such demands.

                Like a cool, calculating strategist, Quaid-i-Azam, at first, concentrated on transforming a weak and disunited Muslim League into a well organized powerful political party of India. Once the League had acquired sufficient strength, only then he announced the broad principles, in a somewhat deliberately vague manner, on which the establishment of Muslim Indian State was to be based. Having announced the demand for Pakistan, he then tried to gain recognition for the Muslim League as the sole representative of the Indian Muslims. Simultaneously he pressed for parity treatment from both the Congress as well as the British. By the end of war, it had become more or less clear that the only workable solution of Indian political problem was the partition of the sub-continent, though some attempts, even at that late stage, were made to preserve the unity of India.

                Most of the historians of Pakistan Movement admit that Pakistan was mainly a work and achievement of the personality of Quaid-i-Azam. This is nothing but a tribute to the master strategy that the Quaid employed in the establishment of Pakistan.n