Well, you have got it exactly backwards, and both your claims in this post can't stand scrutiny....
First, you are talking about rank and file, Devji about summit/leadership..... Sunnis were around 85% of Indian Muslims, so a Sunni-majority membership is a statistical inevitability that explains nothing........ What needs explaining is why that Sunni-majority body kept placing Ismaili Imams, Bohra industrialists, Shia Rajas and a Khoja barrister at its head and its treasury for 40 years straight, that's the entire lifespan of ML (pre-partition)...... and Devji's answer is that the sect-blind "general Islam" was the one formula under which those men could lead at all....
"The rank and file". "Kept placing". "40 years straight". Right...
The reason why minority sects were given important posts is because non-sectarianism was the only way they could get those posts? That made no sense. Regardless, did Devji present any evidence for his particular claim? That the league was made non-sectarian expressly so that the men from minority sects could lead? And what of your claim that the League's non sectarian "general Islam" was shaped by its Shia and Ismaili leadership to protect them from Sunnis? Did the Sunnis first make it non-sectarian 18 years before, during the Aligarh Movement, so that down the line they could form a political party with majority Sunni leadership who would then task another Sunni to codify its rules in which he would keep it non-sectarian so that minority leaders could rise to power and then.....again make it non-sectarian to protect themselves from Sunnis? Some people, who happened to be Sunnis, saw past these idiotic sectarian divides and formed a movement that was above it but that credit goes to the minority sects?.....
The explaining is simple when one is not searching for confirmation bias. The Aligarh Movement was a Muslim Nationalist movement with sectarianism against its very ethos. As such it appointed based on qualification, which it did for Sunnis, Shia, Ismaili, and Ahmadiya appointees. Minority sects holding positions of import is just as statistically inevitable as the majority making up the majority membership, in a non-sectarian organization. More if the those members hold un-statistically more favorable backgrounds, such as Imams, Industrialists, Rajas, and barristers.
ML may have emerged from the Aligarh movement, but its leadership, the ones calling the shots from day 1, were from the minority sects....
No they weren't. Present evidence. "Calling the shots"...
Second, the actual Sunni religious establishment fought Jinnah's general Islam tooth and nail...... Madani's Deoband, the biggest Sunni clerical body in India, wrote whole treatises declaring the two nation theory un-Islamic and put up candidates against the League in the 45-46 elections..... Maududi, another Sunni stalwart, called a League made Pakistan a kafir government of Muslims and declared voting itself haram..... The Ahrar coined Kafir-e-Azam for Jinnah and after losing in 46 openly said "Madhe Sahaba" should be used as a weapon against the League, a direct sectarian attack on his Shia background.....
"The actual Sunni religious establishment"? Again please spare us the rhetoric and conjecture that you need to downplay or uplift any sectarian views. The Muslim League was predominantly Sunni, was formed predominantly by Sunnis, was predominantly led by Sunnis, was based on a movement predominantly by Sunnis, was voted for and supported by the majority of Sunnis, and was voted for and supported by in majority Sunnis. That's "the actual Sunni establishment".
Want to know who the "actual minority establishment" was that opposed Pakistan?
So the custodians of Sunni orthodoxy didn't produce the League's sect blind Islam, they declared war on it, and attacked its leader sectarianly, which proves Devji's point better than anything....
A sectarian religious group did not come up with a non-sectarian political party!? Gasp! No way! Any minority sectarian religious groups that did? Want to know the minority orthodoxy that declared war on it as well?
The "general Islam" of the ML was a lay identity built against the clerical establishment, led by an Ismaili Imam, financed by a Shia Raja, and consummated by a Khoja barrister, while the Sunni masses voted for it over their own muftis' fatwas.....
No it wasn't. The "clerical establishment" was in self-exile from politics and had no presence at all at the time.
Sir Agha Khan officially presided as the president for 1 year in 1909. His lifetime presidency was an honorary position during which other presidents were being appointed in parallel to preside over their annual conferences. His immense contributions instead lay in his domestic and international political influence and party financing.
By the "Shia Raja" did you mean Mohammad Amir Ahmad Khan? *Would serve you well to remember the names of the people you want to piggyback off. Unquestionably a great man with immense services to the country, but you know that he was born 8 years after the Muslim League was formed, right? And that he opposed partition until 1940? Anyway, the party was almost exclusively financed by voluntary contributions and monthly subscriptions from most of the Muslim Nawabs, Rajas, aristocrats, and other wealthy Muslims. There was no one person financing it. For example, Khwaja Salimullah Bahadur, the Nawab of Dacca. Also the man who formally tabled the new party, served as the Vice President, and then as the President. He was Sunni, if that somehow matters.
The barrister was the only person who actual mattered or made a consequential difference, from the entirety of then India. His own words are enough to avoid any attempts at the sectarian flavoring of his being.
Thanks for mentioning three people. There were hundreds of thousands more Shia, Ismaili, Ahmadiya, Sunni, and Non-Muslims who worked hand in hand to make this country happen. Anyone who tries to take anything away from any one of them, individually or collectively, is either uneducated or insecure.
All that said, the positions in the party were on a rotatory basis. For example, the president's post changed 25 times from 1907 till 1937 until Jinnah took it his 5th time and revamped the party. Until then, it was a well-intentioned but exclusive rich boy's club that met once a year with little standing and less to show for it.
That's not a Sunni clerical doctrine grandfathered in, that's the double minority thesis in action....
Meaningless nonsensical statement clutching at some weird strawman of a "Sunni Clerical doctrine". Which minority's "clerical doctrine" was it then that made and ran the Muslim League?
There's a clear disconnect between your statements and just basic documented history. Don't believe you've ever made it past the hand full of names or "facts" someone once told you. Everything is available online these days.
