Number of words: 691

It is the overwhelming showing of the Muslim League in 1946 that constitutes the basis of the  joint Muslim League Sangh Parivar thesis that the Muslims of India brought about the Partition. But let us look at the facts a little  more closely. The british Indian province in which the Muslims had the most overwhelming majority was NWFP. The 1941 Census of India tells us that of the total population of 3.3 million league secured only seventeen of the thirty-six Muslim seats. Accordingaly, the congress, not the Muslim League formed the ministry . which accounts for why NWFP continued to be Pakhtoons across the border in Afaganistan so loathe Pakistan and adore india and that, apart from the brief interregnum of the Taliban India relations with afganistan have always been much closer, warmer and friendlier than pakistan’s.

The second largest Muslims out of of a total population of five million. The government of India act, 1935, did not give they really wanted. And going  by the continous state of revolt in which Baluchistan remained for decades after the creation of Pakistan, it would be reasonable to assume that whatever else they might have wanted, they certainly were not part of the faction in favour of Pakistan.

Which brings us to Sind – three million Muslims out of a population of 4.5 million. With a little bit of help from sundry ICS mandirins, 47 per cent of the electorate did vote for the Muslim seats to the congress and denying the Muslim League victory in three other muslim seats.

In Punjab, the Muslim league tally shot up from one in 1937 to seventy-five in 1946 but not without so many seats going to other parties including the congress, that the government was formed not by the Muslim League but, with Congress support, by Sir Khizr hayat Khan of the Unionist Party in coalition with miscellaneous others.

Moreover, the elections of 1946 were confirmed to british India and so Muslims in princerly states with large muslim populations, such as Kashmir and hydarabad never got around to saying what they wanted. To go by what Shaikh  Abdullah did it would be reasonable to assume that muslim opinion in Kashmir wished to have little to do with Pakistan. And the wrapping up of the Nizam’s rule in a few days of police action in september 1948 indicates that the sentiment to remain in India was probably at least as strong among the Muslims of Hydrabad as was the razkar sentiment to merge Hydrabad with faraway Pakistan.

Where then was the demand for Pakistan voiced unambiguously? Well, Bengal of course where the muslim League swept the Muslim seats, claiming 113 out of 14 seats, and winning virtually every muslim seat in every province where the muslim were in a minority.

Thus while substantial chunk of the muslim vote in the areas where the Muslims were in majority did not favour Pakistan even in the fevered atmosphere of 1946 it was where the Muslims were in a minority that the Muslim vote vent overwhelmingly to the Muslim league.

So, does that not prove that it was the Muslims who created Pakistan? Not quite, because no one really asked the muslims  what they wanted.

I do not merely mean that Muslims were denied the opportunity of voting for non-Muslim candidates or even against muslim  candidates as they have frequently done in independant India. More importantly – and this is the crux of my argument – no one asked the Muslims at large in 1946 whether or not they wanted the Muslim League and all its works. The muslim League may have won 75 per cent of the muslims seats, all over India, was six million. The total Muslim population of India, on the other hand, was seventy nine million. If we assume that half the Muslim population were adults. It would mean that the 1946 elections ascertained the views of merely 16 percent of the adult. Muslim population on wheather or not they wanted Pakistan. At least 84 percent of the subcontinent Muslims were disenfranchised. Their opinion was never sought.

Excerpted from “Confessions of a secular fundamentalist” by Mani Shankar Aiyar