By Yasser Latif Hamdani
This is to carry on from the last blog-post where I wrote about the Ahrar-ul-Hind which is a militant reincarnation of Majlis-e-Ahrar and the anti-Pakistan “nationalist” forces who had opposed the making of Pakistan and called its founder “Kafir-e-Azam”. The narrative that I put up- grounded in fact and history – has evoked a rather unbecoming reaction from some Pushtun Nationalist bloggers and commentators. They feel that Majlis-e-Ahrar being an entirely Punjab based phenomenon is entirely different from Ahrar-ul-Hind. They feel that Majlis-e-Ahrar (which was a bigoted anti-Ahmadi, Anti-Shia organization) was a progressive organization only because it opposed Pakistan, was allied with Bacha Khan and the Congress and fought against “capitalism” and “colonialism”. To this group, Ataullah Shah Bokhari (the grand doyen of the Anti-Ahmadi movement in Pakistan) was a great Indian Nationalist and anti-British. This again shows the paucity of the Pushtun Nationalist point of view. I strongly recommend that people read Ahrar leader Agha Shorish Kashmiri’s loving hagiography of Bokhari and of Maulana Azad both of which are a fabulous and fascinating mix of fact and fiction cobbled together to make the following case:
A. Ahrar were right. League was wrong.
B. India was right. Pakistan was wrong.
C. Azad was right. Jinnah was wrong.
D. Ahmadis are the scum of the earth.
The fake interview of Maulana Azad that Agha Shorish invented to prove that Azad was the most prescient politician of South Asia was exposed here.
Now coming to Majlis-e-Ahrar and Ahrar-ul-Hind here are some facts that are undeniable:
1. Majlis-e-Ahrar-e-Islam Hind, founded by Congress’ nationalist Muslims to provide an alternative to the Muslim League(s) and regional parties of Muslim majority areas, became a Punjab based party only after its leaders moved to the Punjab in the aftermath of partition. Before 1947 they were quite active in NWFP and what is now India. They were behind the Madh-e-Sahaba Movement in Lucknow aimed at disrupting Shia processions in Moharram. An account of the all India activities of Majlis-e-Ahrar is given in “Political Islam in Colonial Punjab: Majlis-e-Ahrar” by Dr Samina Awan published by OUP . Similarly you can read the Munir Inquiry Commission Report on Majlis-e-Ahrar-e-Islam Hind. Page 262 of the document – marked Page 254 of the Report itself- is instructive.
2. Majlis-e-Ahrar-e-Islam Hind was allied with Bacha Khan and the Congress. Maulana Daud Ghaznavi, the founder of the Majlis-e-Ahrar, was appointed the Chief of Congress in Punjab according to Raj Mohan Gandhi’s new book Punjab – A History from Aurangzaib to Mountbatten (See Page 333- Aleph Publication) . Daud Ghaznavi remained the chief of the Congress in the Punjab till July 1947 when he left the Congress. To say that Ahrar had broken off therefore from the Congress is a complete fabrication of history. It was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Congress Party as was Jamiat-e-Ulema-Hind.
3. Bacha Khan and the Congress in NWFP were instrumental in the great game unfolding in 1947. They supported Faqir of Ipi’s rebellion in 1947 against the state of Pakistan. Faqir of Ipi had declared a Jehad on British Imperialism, Qadiyaniism and Pakistan. Faqir of Ipi’s direct descendant, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, is one of the leading lights of the TTP today and is most likely associated with the Ahrar-ul-Hind.
4. The choice of the name Ahrar-ul-Hind itself is instructive. The TTP faction that has chosen this name considers itself the ideological descendant of Majlis-e-Ahrar-e-Islam. These are the same people who want to take over all of India in the name of Islam. The symbolism is unmistakable.
The idea is not to of course suggest that Congress or Bacha Khan or anyone else is responsible for the TTP as it exists today. Congress as a big tent organization just like the Muslim League had every right to co-opt as many groups as possible. What I have written in my previous blog and repeat here again is that a great majority of those Nationalist Muslims who opposed Jinnah and the Pakistan Movement did so out of sectarian motives and their hatred of Jinnah and Muslim League was exploited by the Congress Party.
Secondly there is an unbroken ideological link between Majlis-e-Ahrar-e-Islam Hind and its anti-colonial pretensions as well as its sectarian outlook and the TTP which challenges Pakistan today. They share the same straitjacket religious ideology which seeks to limit Islam to a series of harsh punishments. Obviously they were happy to stay in a United India because they believed that ultimately they would convert all of India to Islam. They feared a Muslim majority nation state because they feared that it would be inevitably ruled by professional classes who had a very pragmatic relationship with faith. It was a question of intra-Muslim positioning. The TTP and its factions are quite clear that they see that imposing their point of view in even a sharia-compliant Pakistan is going to be hard so long as it follows representative democracy.
An incidental question was raised about Maulana Mazhar Ali Azhar. Mazhar Ali Azhar is described by the Munir Report as a Shia and that was the reason I described him a Shia. Given his penchant for Madh-e-Sahaba and other reactionary Sunni ideas, it would be unfair not to point out that Shia he may claim to be, but Shias certainly do not claim Mazhar Ali Azhar as their own.
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