Preface to the second edition

(p. 277)
A.K. FAZL-UL-HAQ
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he was appointed a member of the Governor’s Executive Council -the first time, when, according to Sir Robert Reid, a nonofficial was appointed to this high post.1^5 He maintained this position till 1919 when he was appointed Judge of Calcutta High Court. In 1921 he became the President of Bengal Legislative Assembly under Montagu-Chelmsford Scheme, but died soon thereafter, in October 1922.
Apart from the patronage of newspapers, which contributed to the awakening amongst the Bengal Muslims, Shamsul Huda’s main contribution was in promotion of Muslim education. He was instrumental in starting the Carmichael Hostel. Before this, Muslim students from the mofussil had to face great hardship in finding suitable residential accommodation136 in Calcutta. Shamsul Huda was also responsible for the creation of the posts of Assistant Director for Muslim Education137 at the provincial level and one Assistant Inspector in each division for fostering the cause of Muslim education. He worked hard for the establishment of a Government College for the Muslims in Calcutta. As a result of his efforts a sum of rupees nine lakhs was sanctioned by the Bengal Government and even land for the college was purchased, but on account of the outbreak of the First World War,138 the college could not be started during Shamsul Huda’s tenure of office as Executive Councillor. The seeds shown by him, however, germinated and, after being nourished by A. K. Fazal-ul-Haq during his brief tenure as Education Minister, bore fruit in 1926.
A.K. Fazl-ul-Haq. The work of two leaders from East Bengal who had entered public life in the first decade of the twentieth century has been outlined above, but the person whom Nawab Salimullah specially encouraged139 and chose to carry on his work was another. Writing about Fazl-ul-Haq, whose long political career enabled him to bridge the gulf between the first Partition of Bengal and the creation of Pakistan, A.F. Noor-un-Nabi says, ’’Nawab Sir Salimullah Bahadur of Dacca was the recognized leader of the Muslims of Bengal at the time. His discerning eye fell upon Mr. Fazl-ul-Haq. Soon after he joined the High Court Bar, at the instance of the Nawab he was selected to preside over the annual session of the Bengal Presidency Muslim League

278 ] Modern Muslim India and the Birth of Pakistan

held at Dacca in 1912. The presidential address which Mr. Fazlul-Haq delivered at the time at once marked him out as a gifted leader of the Muslims and as the intellectual successor of Nawab Khwaja Sir Salimullah Bahadur in the political field.”140
Maulvi Abul Kasem Fazl-ul-Haq was born in October 1873 in a village of Barisal district of East Pakistan. His father, the third Muslim graduate in the Presidency of Bengal, was Government Pleader and Public Prosecutor. His grandfather was a good scholar of Persian and a successful Mukhtar. Fazl-ul-Haq had a brilliant educational career. He was educated at Barisal District School and later at Presidency College and took his M.A. in 1895 in Mathematics. Subsequently, he got Law Degree and was enrolled as a Vakil in the Calcutta High Court in 1900 becoming a junior to the late Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee.
The sudden death of his father in 1901 compelled him to return to Barisal, where he started legal practice and looked after the family property. He had already married Khurshid Talaat Begum, the daughter of Nawab Syed Muhammad Azad, Fazl-ulHaq’s father-in-law who belonged to a leading Muslim family of Bengal had married a daughter of Nawab Abdul Latif and was a well-known Urdu writer. His other daughter was married to Lt.-Col. Sir Hasan Suhrawardy, first Muslim Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University and maternal uncle of Husain Shaheed Suhrawardy, later Prime Minister of Pakistan. One of Azad’s sons, Syed Husain, achieved fame as editor of The Independent, Allahabad, and was Indian Ambassador to Egypt after 1947. Another of his sons, Syed Ali Ahmed, became Inspector General of Registration, Bengal, and the remaining sons also held high government appointments. Fazl-ul-Haq’s marriage, which was issueless,141 ultimately ended in separation but presumably his new relatives attracted him, in spite of his legal training and father’s example, to government service. There were other pulls in the same direction. His younger sister was married to Syed A. Salik, the author of Early Heros of Islam, etc., who was a member of Bengal Civil Service [and the father of Syed Mahbub Murshid, later Chief Justice of East Pakistan]. Fazl-ul-Haq received an offer of Deputy Collectorship from Sir Bampfyde Fuller, the Lieutenent-Governor of the newly-created province of Eastern
I
Emergence of the Muslim Majority Provinces [ 279
Bengal and Assam, and joined the Bengal Civil Service in 1905. He worked as Deputy Collector and was promoted Deputy Registrar, Co-operative Credit Societies, Eastern Bengal and Assam. He, however, resigned11”2 in 1912 and resumed practice at Calcutta High Court. Next year he was elected to the Bengal Legislative Council, and continued to be a member of the provincial legislature till 1954 when he became the Governor of East Pakistan. He was already associated with the Bengal Presidency Muslim League and in 1913 became its General Secretary, while Nawab Salimullah Khan was its President. In the same year he made a powerful speech in the Bengal Legislative Council which has been reproduced by his biographer143 and displays his thorough study of the educational problems of Bengali Muslims. In 1918 he was the President of the All-India Muslim League as well as the General Secretary of All-India National Congress. During this period his main contribution to the welfare of the Bengal Muslims was the safeguarding of their interests at Lucknow. He was one of the supporters of the Lucknow Pact, under which the Muslims of Bengal got 40% of elected seats. This was substantially less than their share on the basis of population, but considering that they could secure only 10’4% of actual representation undei Minto-Morley Reforms, it meant a great improvement and represented the biggest gain accruing to any Muslim province. Other delegates who attended and took part in the session ai Lucknow included Nawab Syed Muhammad, Maulana Akram Khan and Abul Qasim.
Meanwhile Fazl-ul-Haq had already started activities on behalf of the Bengal peasants (among whom the Muslims formed the majority) which later led to the formation of Krishak-Proja Party. Fazl-ul-Haq came from rural areas, and his spell of service in the Co-operative Department had given him a keen insight into the sufferings of the peasantry. He started Krishak-Proja Samitis at an early date,144 and ga\e expression to an interest which remained dear to his heart all his life and, in due course, led to the passing of far-reaching measures for the amelioration of the condition of the rural masses.
In 1918 Fazl-ul-Haq presided over the Delhi session of the AllIndia Muslim League. He was also the General Secretary of the

280 ] Modern Muslim India and the Binli of Pakistan

All-India National Congress during this year.’45 He was appointed a member of the Inquiry Committee which was set up by the Congress to report on Jallianwala Bagh massacre, and which included top leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, C.R. Das and Motilai Nehru. His biographer seems justified in holding that had Faz!- ul-Haq not left the Congress on the question of Non-Cooperation, he would have been President of that body before Pandit Motilal Nehru. 14<>
He was also active in the Khilafat Movement and presided over the second All-India Khilafat Conference held at Delhi in

1920. His interest, however, cooled down as the Khilafat leaders, along with the Congress, adopted a comprehensive programme of Non-Co-operation while Fazl-ul-Haq was opposed to the bycott of schools, colleges and councils.

Like the Quaid-i-Azam and Fazi-i-Husain, Fazl-ul-Haq parted company with the Congress when it gave up constitutional means for achieving its political aims and decided on Non-CD-operation. In 1924 he became Education Minister in the government of Bengal, but the Ministry was overthrown within six months, owing to the opposition of the Swarajists under C.R. Das, who had the support of the Muslim Khilafatists. Even during this short term of office Fazl-ul-Haq tried to help the establishment of the Islamia College, Calcutta, which was ultimately opened in July

1926. The other steps which he took for the betterment of Muslims in educational and cultural spheres were the creation of a special directorate for Muslim education and provision of a new doublestoreyed building for the Muslim Institute at Calcutta.

During the years 1925 to 1936, Fazl-ul-Haq did not find any place in the provincial government, but he was not politically inactive. Ram Gopal, for example, quotes from a memorandum, which Fazl-ul-Haq submitted to the Reforms Enquiry Committee in 1924, in which he urged the need for proper safeguards while extending the system of representative government.147 Next year he presided at the Bengal Muslim Conference held at Faridpur on 2 May, when he urged the Muslims to organise themselves, to start an association on the lines of the Hindu Mahasabha and to cover the whole of Bengal with a network of branches.143 He, however, seems to have remained close to the ’•Nationalist”
Emergence of the Muslim Majority Provinces
[281
group for some time and in 1928 along with Abu Husain Sarkar attended a Nationalist Conference held at Allahabad with Dr Ansari as its President, to consider the Nehru Report. According to Fazl-ul-Haq’s biographer, in the Khilafat Committee (Conference?) which met in December 1928 to consider Nehru cornmittee’s proposals, ”the Punjab group led by Maulana Zafar Ali Khan and the Bengal group led by Fazl-ul-Haq, Maulana Akram Khan and Ashraf-ud-din Chowdhury were in favour of cornpromise with the Congress, while the new Khilafat Committee of Calcutta led by Mr. Shaheed Suhrawardy was against any cornpromise with the Congress on the question of reservation of Muslim seats in the Muslim majority provinces.”149 Fazl-ul-Haq’s several co-workers, who had worked closely with the Hindus during the Khilaft-Congress concord, remained aloof from the political struggle for Muslim rights till 1937 or even later. Maulana Akram Khan, the President of the Bengal Khilafat Committee, remained with the Congress for many years and worked on the Committee to inquire into Chittagong Armoury Raid in 193L Similarly, we see Ashraf-ud-Din Ahmed Choudhri (later a member of Nizam-i-Islam Party and a minister in Abu Husain Sarkar’s cabinet in East Pakistan in 1955-6) presiding over the Bengal Muslim Political Conference held on 21 April 1930 at Chittagong and urging co-operation with the Congress in Salt Satyagraha, launched by Mr Gandhi. He was a close associate of Subhash Chander Bose and was General Secretary of Bengal Provincial Congress Committee on the eve of the Partition. Faridpur district, which had a tradition of anti-British political activity since the days of the Faraizis, was, in June 1931, the venue of All-Bengal Nationalist Muslim Conference, with Dr Ansari as the President and Moazzam Husain Choudhri (better known as Lat Mian in Pakistan) as Chairman of the Reception Committee. Another veteran leader who took part in anti-British agitation was Maulvi Tamizuddin Khan who later became President of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly. He also came from Faridpur and spent fourteen months in jail during the Non-Co-operation Movement. Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani, who later migrated to Assam and before the incorporation of Sylhet in Pakistan was President of the Provincial Muslim League of Assam, was also originally

282 ] Modern Muslim India and the Birth of Pakistan

associated with the Khilafat Movement in Bengal.
In the meanwhile, the constitutional struggle gained momenturn, and Fazl-ul-Haq’s attitude gradually hardened. In the Provincial Committee which was set up in 1927 to aid the Simon Commission, Muslim Bengal was represented by- Sir Abdul Karim Ghaznavi, K.G.M. Faruqui, A.K. Fazl-ul-Haq and Maulvi Abul Kasim. Fazl-ul-Haq dissented from the views of other members who favoured establishment of an upper chamber in Bengal. We again find him representing Bengal, along with Sir Abdul Rahim and Sir Abdul Halim Ghaznavi. He took an active part in the deliberations of the Round Table Conference where he delivered strong speeches in support of the demands of Bengal Muslims. In one150 of these speeches he repudiated the Lucknow Pact as injurious to the interests of the Muslims of the Punjab and Bengal. (Mian Fazl-i-Husain, who had favoured the Pact at one stage, had come to the same conclusion.) When the Hindus and the Muslims failed to come to an agreement at the Round Table Conference, the British Premier gave his Communal Award, under which the representation of Bengal Muslims, though not in accordance with the population and depending for its being effective on the support of European members of the Assembly, showed substantial improvement over their position under the Lucknow Pact. There were efforts to have this Award modified and, in 1933, Fazl-ul-Haq organised a number of meetings to resist the reopening of the Award.
Sir Abdul Rahim (1867-1948). A leader whose work has not received adequate attention and who, probably, more than anyone else dominated the Muslim Bengal politics in the twenties was Sir Abdul Rahim. (The only other Muslim leader of prominence was Fazl-ul-Haq, but he had one foot firmly planted in the Krishak-Proja organisation, with occasional excursions to the Nationalist camp, and his position with regard to Muslim demands, though mindful of community’s interests, was not so clearcut or consistent.)
Abdul Rahim was born in 1867 in a prominent family of Midnapur district and had a brilliant educational career. He took his M.A. in English Literature from the Calcutta University, standing ”first among the first classes of the year”. This enabled
Emergence of the Muslim Majority Provinces [ 7.83
bim to get Begum of Bhopal’s foreign scholarship for Law and he proceeded for studies abroad. In England he specialised in Muhammadan Law, studying the original legal literature in Persian and Arabic. On his return in 1890, he started legal practice and in

1907 was appointed by the Calcutta University as Tagore Law Lecturer on Islamic Jurisprudence. The lectures which he delivered were published as The Principles of Muhammadan Jurisprudence in

1911 and provide a standard text-book on the subject.
In July 1908 Abdul Rahim had been appointed judge of Madras High Court and continued in this position for some twelve years. Twice he officiated as Chief Justice and distinguished himself for ability and independence. Side by side with his legal and judicial work Abdul Rahim maintained his interest in education, particularly of the Muslim community. In 1915, he was chosen to preside over the annual session of the Mohammedan Educational Conference. Next year he presided over the Nadwa-
tul-Ulema.
Abdul Rahim had entered the political field even earlier and was a member of the famous Simla Deputation which waited on Lord Minto on 1 October 1906 to urge the grant of Separate Electorates to the Muslims. His active political life was, however, interrupted by his elevation to the bench and he picked up the threads again only after his retirement. He returned to Bengal and became a member of the Governor’s Executive Council (1920-5). Even in this position Sir Abdul Rahim was politically active and, according to the journal of the Servants of the India Society, Poona, he was ”with Deshbandhu (C.R.Das), the joint author of the (Bengal Hindu-Muslim) Pact.”^ The Pacti” provided that representation in legislature should be through joint electorates but on population basis. Muslim representation in services was also to be on population basis, with weightage for Muslims in new appointments till their quota was made up. It attracted a number of prominent Muslims including Dr Abdullah al-Mamun Suhrawardy and Husain Shaheed Suhrawardy to the Swarajist Party of C.R. Das, but very few Hindus had the vision of that statesman. The Pact, which was concluded on 27 December 1923, was severely criticised by the Hindus when its terms were puplished. and, although it was endorsed by the Bengal Provincial Confer-

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ence at Sirajganj on 3 June 1924, it was sidetracked at the Cocanada Session of the All-India National Congress. With the death of C.R. Das in June 1925 the Pact also became a dead letter and the Muslim members of the Swarajist Party drifted away. Dr Abdullah al-Mamun Suhrawardy, who was a prominent member of the Party and was its candidate for the Presidentship of the Bengal Legislative Council, resigned from the Swarajist Party in August 1925. It was, however, left to Sir Abdul Rahim who was elected to Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1925 to start the Bengal Muslim Party in the Assembly. This was established in the middle of April 1926, and advocated Muslim representation in the Bengal Legislature in proportion to population through Separate Electorates. Sir Abdul Rahim worked hard for the success of the Bengal Muslim Party whose efforts were opposed by the Congress, the new Swarajists and other Hindus by creating dissension amongst the Muslims.
Sir Abdul Rahim, however, continued to urge his point of view frankly and vigorously from all platforms. In 1925 he presided over the Aligarh Session of the All-India Muslim League and stated some home-truths with which later generations have become acquainted through the advocacy of the Two-Nation Theory during the struggle for Pakistan, but which created quite a sensation in the twenties. In the course of his Presidential Address, Sir Abdul Rahim said:
The Hindus and Muslims are not two religious sects like the Protestants and Catholics of England, but form two distinct communities of peoples, and so they regard themselves. Their respective attitude towards life, distinctive culture, civilization and social habits, their traditions and history, no less than their religion, divide them so completely that the fact that they have li%ed in the same country for nearly 1,000 years has contributed hardly anything to their fusion into a nation. . . . Any of us Indian Muslims, travelling in Afghanistan, Persia, Central Asia, among Chinese Muslims, Arabs, and Turks would at once be made at home and would not find anything to which we are not accustomed. On the contrary in India we find ourselves in all social matters aliens when we cross the street and enter that part of the town where our fellow townsmen live.15^
These home-truths, instead of awakening the Hindu leaders to the realities of the situation, made them bitterly hostile to Sir
Emergence of the Muslim Majority Provinces [ 285
Abdul Rahim. In 1927 the Governor of Bengal offered him ministership, but no Hindu was prepared to work as his colleague. The Hindus sought to create dissensions in the Muslim ranks by coming to terms with A.K. Ghaznavi, who became the Muslim minister. Sir Abdul Rahim, however, continued to urge the Muslim point of view from other platforms. In 192S he presided over the Bengal Muslim Conference, which denounced the Nehru Report and reiterated Muslim demands. He was active on other platforms also-in 1926 he again presided over the annual session of the All-India Mohammedan Educational Conference when, among other things, he advocated propagation of Urdu among all Muslims-but Bengal Muslim Conference became the main instrument of his political activity. In 1930 he again presided over the session of Bengal Muslim Conference and slashed the recommendations of the Simon Commission which had been so cool towards the Muslim demands.
In 1931 Sir Abdul Rahim was elected to the Central Legislative Assembly and in the absence of Mr M.A. Jinnah who was in England in connection with the Round Table Conference became the leader of the Independent Party. His active participation in politics came to an end when, on 24 January 1935, he was elected President of the Central Legislative Assembly. As guardian of the interests of all sections of the house, his position was semijudicial. He, however, continued his interest in Muslim affairs, and, as Begum Shaista Ikramullah says, ”lunches at Sir Abdul Rahim’s house were almost informal meetings of the Muslim League Working Committee” ’54 We catch a glimpse of the vigorous manner in which Sir Abdul Rahim gave expression to the Muslim point of view even during his tenure as Speaker of the Assembly in Essaye~, the reminiscences of Marquess of Zetland, who was Secretary of State for India from 1935 to 1940. In June

1939, the Viceroy had a talk with Sir Abdul Rahim ”to sound him on the attitude of the Muslims towards the Federation”. The Viceroy \\rote about the views expressed by Sir Abdul Rahim in his letter dated 23 June addressed to the Secretary of State:

I had not anticipated that he would be anything but very right wing; but, I was, I confess, a little surprised by the extreme communal vigour of his views and by the conviction with which

286 ] Modern Muslim India and the Birth of Pakistan

he maintained that his co-religionists now stood, as he put it, with their backs to the wall and must fight.155
Zetland who as Lord Ronaldshay had been Governor of Bengal from 1917 to 1922 himself made the following observations on Abdul Rahim’s point of view:
So far as Sir Abdul Rahim was concerned, I was not in the least surprised at ”the extreme communal vigour of his viev ” I had known him well for more than a quarter of a century. He had been a membei of the Rojal Commission on the Public Services in India on which I had served before the 1914 war, and he had been a member of my Executive Council in Bengal. I had always regarded him as a man of considerable culture and I had found him to be of moderate views in general; but I had long since discovered how strong were his feelings on the communal issue. And I had learned from a report on current events m the Punjab that he had astonished Sir H. Craik, the then Governor of the Province, by declaring that if he thought that Federation was imminent, he would advise his co-religionists to boycott it by refusing to return Muslim representatives to the Federal Legislature.156
Sir Abdul Rahim continued to hold the post of the Speaker until the Partition-i.e. his eightieth year-but his withdrawal from active politics during the previous thirteen years or so meant that he could take no part in the Pakistan Movement and the new generation was hardly acquainted with his life and struggle for the Muslim rights. His death in Karachi at a ripe old age went almost unnoticed, but he has his place in the national history. His son-in-law, Husain Shaheed Suhrawardy, maintained-more adroitly and more successfully-the political objectives for which Sir Abdul Rahim worked so courageously in the twenties.
Khwaja Nazim-ud-Din. Meanwhile a new political figure was emerging in the Provincial Council. The Bengal Ministry had a chequered career and the dyarchy had to be suspended in the province four times owing to the inability of the non-official ministers to secure a vote of confidence in the provincial legislature and the reluctance of Congress and pro-Congress groups to let any ministry function. This position was quite different from the Punjab where dyarchy had functioned without a break and had strengthened the Muslim position. In Bengal, the first stable ministry
(p. 286) KHWAJA NAZIM-UD-DIN

Emergence of the Muslim Majority Provinces [ 287
was formed in December 1929, when Khwaja Nazim-ud-Din was, for the first time, included in the cabinet (along with Khan Bahadur K.G.M. Faruqui and a Hindu minister). Thereafter the dyarchy followed a steady course in Bengal. Khwaja Nazim-ud-Din continued in the cabinet, first as a Minister (1929-34) and later as an Executive Councillor, till the formation of government under the new Act in 1937. He belonged to the family of Dacca Nawabs, and was the son of Nawab Salimullah Khan’s sister. He was born on 19 July 1894, and was educated at M.A.O. College, Aligarh, and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. On his return from England he started taking active interest in civic and political affairs. He was Chairman of Dacca Municipality from 1922 to 1929 and also served on the Executive Council of Dacca University.