The Indian Problem Report On The Constitutional Problem In India by R. Coupland

Author:R. Coupland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1944-02-29T16:00:00+00:00

BANG-i*ISLAM SEA

[Reproduced with Mr. C. Rahmat Ali 9 8 kind penmanon

considered it \ said another member of the delegation, ' we have considered it chimerical and impracticable.' x

In July 1935, Mr. C. Rahmat Ali circulated another four-page leaflet from another Cambridge address. In it he claimed to be the c founder of the Pakistan National Movement' as President of which he signed the document. Its context was a more soberly-phrased restatement of the arguments of the previous leaflet. A new point was made of the new Government of Burma Act. * While Burma is being separated from Hindoo-stan, it remains a mystery to us why Pakistan . . . is to be forced into the Indian Federation.'

Little more was heard of the movement at the time, but the course of its further development can be gleaned from the statement made by Mr. C. Rahmat Ali to a meeting of its ' Supreme Council' at Karachi in 1940 and reproduced in the Indian press and in pamphlet form in England. 2 It

1 Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform, Minutes of Evidence, Q. 9598-9. * The MiOat of Islam and the Menace of ' Indianism ', by C. Rahmat Ah, Founder-President, Pakistan National Movement, 16 Montague Road, Cambridge.

restated the case made in the leaflets as follows. (1) The Moslems in so-called India are * Muslim, not Hindu; Pakistani, not Hindustani; and Asian not Indian. ... In retrospect the India of to-day is the South Asia of yesterday, but in prospect the sphere of the individual solidarity of several nations of to-morrow.' (2) The choice now facing the Moslem community (millat) is c between re-construction in Asia and re-destruction in India '. In the past ' Indianism' spiritually and morally ' corrupted the standards of our Islamic values', and c politically it deprived us of imperial supremacy, dispossessed us of national sovereignty, and reduced us to a " minority community ". In the future " Indianism ", on the premise of the territorial unity of " India ", proposes to create the Central Government, control its civil administration, and command its military arm. . . . When sure of its power, it will, in the name of democracy and with the help of British bayonets, make use of it to coerce and crush us, its prey, into complete captivity.' (3) The millat can only be saved by severing all ties with India which * never was and never would be the Muslim motherland '. North-West India must constitute the nation and sovereign State of Pakistan. Thus the basis of the movement as it was started in 1933 remained unchanged, but its promoters had now extended it beyond the North-West to cover other parts of India. First, Bengal, with its hinterland of Assam, is * Bang-i-Islam ' (Islam in Bengal) and must be preserved as such for posterity by * the saving right of self-determination'. Secondly, the State of Hyderabad or Usmanistan (Usman is the Nizam's family name) is ' a part of our patrimony' and its de jure sovereignty must be given international recognition.

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