Congress and Pakistan

[muqawwee123]

Re: Congress and Pakistan

@calypsodc

Policies change. Remember Jinnah was himself opposed to separate electorates initially. That 1915 saw the return of Gandhi. His support for the Khilafat movement against Turkey was widely criticized. In protest a number of leaders quit the congress and the party split. This is the only thing I can think of. May be there is another reason.

If Mr Jinah was against separate electoral in beginning, he agreed to that and made Congress agreed upon this through a formal document (Lucknow Pact). Opposition to Gandhi’s support for Khilafat Movement again might have created concerns in people like Johar Brothers and other Muslim leaders for their issues to be represented by Congress.

As for the demographic changes that put majority Hindus at a disadvantages, there weren’t any. But consider this, just the whole of South India had a Hindu population of around 80% with muslims comprising only 12-15% of the population only.ML was not a well known party here at all, they had no say . So 1/3 representation for muslims here was not a popular move and wholly rejected by the people themselves . The same was the situation in many parts of India. This was the reason, I earlier said that ML only spoke for the muslim dominated border areas of British India and UP where muslims were a sizable minority and it cannot be not considered as a mouthpiece for all the muslims of the subcontinent.

Were these facts not known to Congress when it agreed upon such terms in Lucknow Pact? It seems that Congress had some compulsion to agree those terms at that time.