Role of Minorities in All India Muslim League - Open Discussion

[krash]

Continuing this from here.

You didn't answer any of my "points" in that post. Just stated that you did. Not how it works so I list them below.

1) Your argument that 'the reason why minority sects were given important posts is because non-sectarianism was the only way they could get those posts' makes no sense. It's a chicken or egg paradox.

2) Present evidence that the league was made non-sectarian expressly so that the men from minority sects could lead?

3) Present evidence that the League's non sectarian "general Islam" was shaped by its Shia and Ismaili leadership and to protect them from Sunnis.

4) Present evidence that "its leadership, the ones calling the shots from day 1, were from the minority sects".

5) By what criteria did you qualify those people as "the actual Sunni religious establishment" and what baring does their stance have on the role that the Sunni's played in the freedom movement and Muslim League?

6) Detail how does the Sunni Orthodoxy not producing the League's non-sectarian ethos effects the contributions of the Sunni leaders in the Muslim League? And how does it support Devji's argument (2).

7) How was the league's non-sectarian identity, which was codified in 1907, built against the clerical establishment which did not exist in politics at the time? The example you gave in response for the "clerical establishment" was formed 12 years after the fact and was not a political organization. You did not answer this either.

8) What does the "sunni clerical doctrine" have to do with the fact that Sunni Muslims grandfathered the non-sectarianism into the Muslim League from the Aligarh Movement?

1) The League's own records list exactly 2 men in the party presidency, Jinnah 1934 to 47 and the Aga Khan 1908 to 13...... The Quaid's office WAS the permanent presidency, not a session chair..... So pick one, either the office was real and the Ismaili Imam led the League for five and a half years, or it was fluff and Jinnah led nothing for 1934 to 1947......

Ah, ok......so the party was just floating through ether without a leader for 20 years from 1913 till 1933. Care to share those records?

The Agha Khan's permanent presidency was honorary. This is what 'honorary means'. This is from The Agha Khan University confirming it. The Quaid's 5th presidency was not honorary and was made permanent. It was a political party, not religious scripture that would not have changed. Basic concepts. Empty argument.

Take your time..... Meanwhile Wazir Hasan the Shia secretary running the machinery 1912 to 19, Ameer Ali's London League, Adamjee 1907, Ali Imam 1908, all quietly dropped. Four exhibits, zero answers.....

I've already showed you that these strained fallacies won't work.... There is no answer that I need to give. I have no problems or insecurities against crediting the countless contributions of countless minority Pakistanis in the country's formation, Shia and Ismaili included. It's you who has to prove that it was the Shia minority solely or even primarily responsible for running the League and that the Sunnis were just bystanders or in opposition, as you have claimed repeatedly. Just these 4 men does not do it.

2)The son WAS the National Treasurer of the AIML...... Father the early financier and 1918 session president, son the treasurer. "At its head and its treasury" stands literally..... Your birthday arithmetic fails here.....

Now the "sessions president" was the head/leader? You argued against it a couple of posts ago. Regardless, anything out of this to support your original argument that it was these Rajas financing the entire thing?

3)"Proponents within and without the League", yes, proponents, not policy........ Policy means resolutions, that came March 1940..... By your own standard the entire League including Jinnah "opposed partition until 1940"..... Careful with that one.....

Oh yeah because you get smote if you oppose something that is not a policy, and policies just sprout out of the ground one random morning.

Yes, Jinnah opposed partition for decades. Heck, he signed the Cabinet Mission Plan in 1946 to keep India united. Given your shortcomings with dates, that's after the 1940 resolution. "Careful with that one"....I enjoyed that.

4)Cute analogy, but dental councils don't found themselves as political bodies, ally with a party for 25 years, write political treatises and contest general elections....... And the clerics you say didn't exist had already declared Sir Syed a "nechari kafir" in the 1880s, your beloved Aligarh's founder, excommunicated by the establishment that "had no presence"....

JUH was not founded as a political body and did not contest any general elections, it was and still is a religious council. Organizations across the board align themselves with political parties for all sorts of reasons every day, including dentists who have political action committees.

"Clerics I said didn't exist"? Sure, bud. Pray do quote me on that. Also google the meaning of "establishment"

5)Your yes or no, No ..... the Shia Political Conference also opposed the League, thanks for asking, it completes my point.......... a sect blind lay Islam opposed by the clerics of BOTH sects and beating them both at the polls..... I answered yours in one word, mine is still pending after two posts.....

That was never your point. Your points were as summarized in the beginning of this post. You still have not answered any of them.

Per @Musings note, that's my last OT post here........ Want more, open a dedicated thread and tag me, I'll oblige.....

Yes please. Anything would be more than would you've presented so far.

These imaginary worlds, arguments, and counterarguments that you've been fabricating on the fly and then pushing with such pseudo-confidence to pretend as if you're presenting anything useful is impressive but wholly useless; everyone has the internet now. Neither is ignoring the actual counterarguments and pretending that something else was being discussed. You clearly have no knowledge of the country's history or the parts played in it by Pakistanis of all backgrounds. Instead you have an imaginary world built around 4-5 names and a handful of falsified facts that your insecure sectarian inclinations latched onto years ago to provide some bizarre stolen sense of self-worth.

Take your time for the next post and read a little. Or just keep these laughably fabricated and only self-placating claims to your echo-chamber. Anything else will only lose you what you are trying to keep.

 

[M. Sarmad]

Glad you opened a dedicated thread for this, appreciated.....


But first, I'll be candidly ignoring the couple of attempted strawmen in the body, positions I never took and won't be defending, and the last two rhetorical paragraphs, which are childish, irrelevant, and add nothing except making the post weaker than it needed to be.......... Otherwise, it's an acceptable effort at starting an academic discussion, so let's have one.....


None of your numbered points is actually unanswered, most were addressed in the original thread....... But since this is a fresh thread, for the benefit of readers let's do this properly, one point at a time, sources on the table.....


Starting with your original/foundational claim..... that the Sunni Aligarh movement grandfathered non-sectarianism into the Muslim League, and therefore the credit for the League's general Islam belongs to Sunni broad-mindedness.....


What's true in it, and I'll concede it plainly, the League was born at the 20th session of Sir Syed's Muhammadan Educational Conference at Dhaka on 30 December 1906, the founding meeting was chaired by Viqar-ul-Mulk, the resolution moved by Nawab Salimullah, both Sunnis, and the Aligarh secretaries drafted its first constitution. Network continuity is real, nobody disputes the umbilical cord.....


Now what the claim skips.....


The founding required repealing Sir Syed's own doctrine..... The Educational Conference operated under a self-imposed ban on politics, that was Sir Syed's cardinal policy, Muslim abstention from politics........

The Dhaka delegates had to remove that ban by resolution to create the League...... So what continued was the alumni network, what was overturned was the founder's doctrine...... A political party created by repealing the founder's rule against political parties is a break, not a continuation.....


Most importantly, the political template wasn't Aligarh's to give. The first modern Muslim political organization in India was the Central National Muhammadan Association, Calcutta, 1877, founded by Syed Ameer Ali, a Twelver Shia, the first Indian ever appointed to the Privy Council and the author of The Spirit of Islam. The CNMA ran deputations to Viceroys, memorials on Muslim representation, and safeguard demands three decades before the League existed, with branches across India....

And Ameer Ali's fingerprints stay on the League itself, the AIML's March 1908 session voted to finance his London branch as the party's official overseas arm, which he founded and presided over from Caxton Hall, the party's Central Committee requested him to preside over the Amritsar session the same year, and it was his 1909 deputation to Lord Morley, the Secretary of State, that actually secured separate electorates, the Morley Minto reforms, the foundational victory on which every subsequent piece of Muslim League politics stood.......

So the League's political method, organized constitutional lobbying, deputations, safeguards, separate representation, traces to a Shia jurist who built it while Aligarh was still preaching silence, and the deal that legally created the unified Muslim political category was closed by that same Shia jurist in London.


In short, the League's objectives were framed through the Simla Deputation of October 1906, led by the Aga Khan, and its foundational victory, separate electorates, was clinched by Ameer Ali......... Educational network from Aligarh, political method from elsewhere..... CNMA primarily, and it was the political method that culminated in the Pakistan Movement ultimately............


And then, even the geography says it......... Per the League's own records its headquarters sat at Aligarh for exactly 4 years, 1906 to 1910, and then at Lucknow for the following 37, its entire functional life..... And Lucknow was not a neutral address, it was the seat of Shia culture in the subcontinent, the old Awadh capital of the Nawabs, the city of the great imambaras and of Muharram, the home of Secretary Wazir Hasan who ran the party machinery from there, and the seat of the Mahmudabad Rajas who financed it........ The party of 'Sunni Aligarh' spent four years in Sir Syed's city and thirty seven in the Shia capital of India, run by a Shia secretary on a Shia family's money. If the League were simply Aligarh's continuation, it had a strange way of showing it....


Next, and this is the part that breaks your inference entirely, the word Sunni is doing two different jobs in your claim. Sunni laymen carried the ethos, true, never disputed......... But your argument needs the ethos to be Sunni Islam's product in the confessional sense, owned by its institutions, and those institutions excommunicated it at birth............. The ulema issued takfir fatwas against Sir Syed in the 1870s and 80s, nechari kafir, condemnations procured from as far as Mecca, and Deoband itself was founded in 1866 in conscious opposition to the modernist current...........

So the general Islam of Aligarh and the League was a lay identity, condemned by the custodians of Sunni orthodoxy at both ends of its life, and adopted by Sunni masses over their own clerics, to their lasting credit. That distinction, lay versus clerical, is the entire discussion, and your argument depends on erasing it.....


Which brings us to what Devji's thesis actually is........ since the version you keep attacking, that the League was made non-sectarian 'expressly' so minority men could lead, is your construction, not his, and your chicken and egg paradox dissolves with it......

Devji makes a functional claim, not a conspiratorial one.

The vocabulary of general Islam came from Aligarh, granted.... The minority sect elites, Khoja and Bohra merchant capital, the Ismaili Imamate, the Shia taluqdar aristocracy, then invested in that formula disproportionately, championed it most consistently, and rose under it, because it was the only formula under which they could lead at all, and their four decades at the summit entrenched it in turn...... Selection and affinity, a feedback loop, the way institutions work everywhere........

Devji's evidence is the standard evidence of historical sociology, the composition of the leadership, the financing, and the Shia ecumenism tradition he traces through the Aga Khan's memoirs, the League's proceedings and the Mahmudabad papers. Muslim Zion, Harvard University Press, 2013.

The one line test of the thesis is this, a Deobandi defined League could not have had the Aga Khan as its president, a Barelvi defined League could not have made a Khoja its Quaid...... Only a sect blind League could, and it did.....


Once we have settled this point, we'll take up your questions on the summit and the party records 1913 to 33, the honorary presidency, policy versus proposals on partition, and the JUH, one by one, with sources.....

 

[M. Sarmad]

Before you reply, one reference post for the thread, so the summit claim sits documented in one place..... The claim, precisely stated, the AIML was a Sunni majority party in its membership, ministries and masses, nobody disputes that, with a persistently minority sect summit..... Here is that summit, office by office.....


THE PERMANENT OFFICES

Office	Holder	Sect	Tenure	Source
Permanent President	Aga Khan III, 48th Imam of the Nizari Ismailis	Ismaili	Mar 1908 to Nov 1913	League records, Pirzada
Permanent President	Muhammad Ali Jinnah	Khoja Twelver	Dec 1919, re-elected 4 Mar 1934, until 15 Dec 1947	Pirzada, Foundations of Pakistan
Secretary (ran party HQ)	Syed Wazir Hasan	Twelver Shia	Joint Sec 1910 to 12, Secretary 1912 to 1919	League records
National Treasurer	Raja Amir Ahmad Khan of Mahmudabad	Twelver Shia	1937 to 47 era, youngest Working Committee member	Modern Asian Studies (Cambridge), Dawn
Principal early financier	Raja Mohammad Ali Mohammad Khan of Mahmudabad	Twelver Shia	1910s and 20s, session president 1918 and 1928	League records
London League, official overseas arm	Syed Ameer Ali, first Indian on the Privy Council	Twelver Shia	Founder and President from May 1908, led the 1909 Morley deputation that won separate electorates	AIML March 1908 session resolution
Party HQ	Aligarh 4 years, Lucknow 37 years	Lucknow, the Shia cultural capital	1906 to 10, then 1910 to 47	League records

Every year the permanent presidency was ever filled, it was filled by a Shia, Ismaili or Twelver..... No Sunni ever held it in the party's 41 years.....


THE MINORITY SECT SESSION CHAIRS


Sunnis chaired plenty of sessions, Salimullah, Shafi, Jauhar, Fazlul Huq, Ajmal Khan, Hasrat Mohani, Iqbal among them, which proves the party was genuinely sect blind in its honors..... But count the occasions.....

Session	Chair	Sect
Karachi 1907, first annual session	Sir Adamjee Peerbhoy	Dawoodi Bohra
Amritsar 1908 (chair first offered to Ameer Ali)	Syed Ali Imam	Twelver Shia
Delhi 1910	Aga Khan III	Ismaili
Agra 1913	Sir Ibrahim Rahimtoola	Khoja Ismaili (101 Ismaili Heroes)
Special session 1918 and Calcutta 1928	Raja of Mahmudabad senior	Twelver Shia
Delhi 1931	Sir Zafrulla Khan	Ahmadi
Bombay 1936	Syed Wazir Hasan	Twelver Shia
Lucknow 1916, Calcutta special 1920, Lahore 1924, Delhi 1929, Lucknow 1937, special Apr 1938, Patna Dec 1938, Lahore Mar 1940, Madras 1941, Allahabad 1942, Delhi Apr 1943, Karachi Dec 1943, twelve chairs	Muhammad Ali Jinnah	Khoja Twelver

That's roughly 20 of the League's roughly 38 session occasions chaired by men from sects comprising about a tenth of Indian Muslims..... And the three sessions that made history, the 1916 Lucknow Pact, the 1929 Fourteen Points, and the March 1940 Pakistan Resolution, every one chaired by the same Khoja Twelver.....


For the record, two chairs whose sect I could not verify, Syed Nabiullah, Nagpur 1910, and Syed Raza Ali, Bombay 1924, are excluded from the count.....


So.....

permanent presidency 100 percent Shia for every year it was filled
secretaryship of the founding decade Shia
National Treasurer Shia
London operation Shia
financing led by a Shia family across two generations,
and half the session chairs from a tenth of the population.....

That is not 'four or five names' as you tried to claim in OP, that is every permanent institution the party had.....

The question your 'statistical inevitability' has to answer remains, why did the inevitability only ever run one direction at the summit, and never once at the presidency, in 41 years...

 

[El Sidd]

Good academic discussion and a history lesson.

Very thought provoking indeed as to how 'real' was the fear of minority persecution if 'minorities' of 'minority' had such influential positions in society and beyond.

The implied propaganda that Sunnis are some tolerant non sectarian entity is likewise quite fascinating.

 

[Watandar]

@M. Sarmad Your knowledge of this period is impressive. What are the best books to read about Mr Jinnah , the Muslim League and the 1870 to 1947 period ?

I have only read Mr Wolpert's "Jinnah" and William Dalrymple's "The Anarchy", however Dalrymple's book is a great description of how the East India company conquered India.

 

[M. Sarmad]

@M. Sarmad Your knowledge of this period is impressive. What are the best books to read about Mr Jinnah , the Muslim League and the 1870 to 1947 period ?

I have only read Mr Wolpert's "Jinnah" and William Dalrymple's "The Anarchy", however Dalrymple's book is a great description of how the East India company conquered India.

Thank you, kind of you..... And fittingly, it was your mention of Jinnah's "double minority" status in that thread that triggered this whole debate in the first place..... just as @maxpane 's mention of Justice Ameer Ali, and his often ignored contributions, became part of this discourse..... sometimes a single name dropped in passing opens up a whole layer of the history.....


My honest advice, read everything, and especially books that contradict each other....... opposing sources sharpen your understanding far more than a narrative that agrees with you...... Wolpert is fine but he's narrative biography, the analytical battles happen elsewhere.....


6 books, in reading order:

Peter Hardy, The Muslims of British India ..... the best single survey of the whole arc, start here.....

Barbara Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India, the Deoband and clerical side everyone skips.....

Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman, Cambridge 1985, the revisionist classic, Pakistan as Jinnah's bargaining counter.....

Venkat Dhulipala, Creating a New Medina, Cambridge 2015..... the direct counter to Jalal, Pakistan as popularly imagined and debated, also the best account of the ulema's war on the League.....

Faisal Devji, Muslim Zion, Harvard 2013, the boldest interpretive take.....

Sheela Reddy, Mr and Mrs Jinnah, the man himself through his marriage, built from private letters.....

And for primary documents, Pirzada's Foundations of Pakistan, the League's own proceedings 1906 to 47.....


The Jalal and Dhulipala pair is the single best exercise on the subject, two Cambridge books arguing opposite theses from the same records.....



One key most readers miss..... The League for most of its life was a drawing room party, its membership was 843 when Jinnah was elected president in 1919, still a few thousand in the late 1920s, and in the 1937 elections it won under 5 percent of the Muslim vote and no ministry of its own anywhere.... 9 years later it swept roughly 90 percent of the Muslim seats, in Punjab 75 of 85.....

So the real question of Pakistan is not 1906 or even 1940, it is what happened between 1937 and 1946 that turned a few thousand drawing room members into millions, and that is where Jalal, Dhulipala and the provincial studies fight it out.....


And the second thing, the centrality of Sir Syed, Aligarh and the early League is partly retrospective, official history written backwards from 1947......... In their own time the powers in Muslim life were the Unionists in Punjab, Fazlul Huq's Krishak Praja Party in Bengal, the pirs and the ulema networks, while the nationalist press of the day dismissed the League as a rickety structure destined for speedy dissolution.....

The textbooks made Aligarh the main current because the state needed a lineage, but on the ground the League was a sideshow until Jinnah's post-1937 reorganization made it the flood.....

Reading the period forwards instead of backwards is the single biggest upgrade you can make on this subject.....

 

[maxpane]

And for some basics Trek to Pakistan .its a good book