S.Irfan Habib lifting Ghungroo of Sumroo

S. Irfan Habib, who is not as old as Irfan Habib, writes in Caravan Magazine-

Allah Baksh Sumroo, a premier of Sindh province—equivalent to the current post of a chief minister—was a committed patriot, whom the Muslim League hated to the extreme. Sumroo’s story directly challenges the ongoing communal and divisive rhetoric where Muslims are projected as a comprador class that was wholeheartedly behind the Muslim League’s two-nation theory.

Sumroo was killed at the young age of 43. His story confirms that Islamist Politics uses violence to establish Muslim supremacy followed by forcible conversion or ethnic cleansing. In the case of the Muslim League, the justification was 'Islam is in danger'. In the case of the anti-C.A.A agitation, the justification is that 'Indian Muslims are in danger'. Yet, there was no truth in the notion that Islam was in danger in the Nineteen Forties, nor is there any truth in the suggestion that Indian Muslims are being deprived of citizenship by C.A.A/NRC. Ludicrously, the elderly Irfan Habib (not the author of this) tried to get rough with Arif Mohammad Khan demanding he quote Nathuram Godse, not Maulana Azad.

The 'Shaheen Bagh' agitation was supposed to be non-violent. But it turned violent. One of its organizers demanded that Muslims cut off Assam by physical force. He is now in jail.
One thing is clear. Muslims don't gain from such stupid lies. If they are the minority they lose disproportionately from the resulting violence. The case of Sumroo, or Sindhi Muslims in general, is worse. Though the majority, they too sustained a loss from the violent and mendacious Islamist politics of the Muslim League. Arguably, the Bengali politicians who supported the Pakistan demand, too, would have been better off if they had rejected the Islamist line.

But, resisting the Islamist line carries a cost. One may be assassinated if one is in a Muslim majority area. If not, then, like Arif Mohammed Khan, elderly nutters denounce you as a mouthpiece for the killer of Mahatma Gandhi. Why? These fools tell lies about supposed 'narratives'.

The narrative that all Muslims got together to seek India’s partition on the basis of the two-nation theory is now a few decades old.

There is no such narrative. The fact is, the Muslim League swept the polls in 1946 getting 87 per cent of the Muslim vote. Congress got 90 per cent of the non-Muslim vote. 'Secular' Muslims were proven to be show-boys. The exception was 'Frontier Gandhi'. But when push came to shove, he could not hold power and ended up in exile.

The truth is that Islam has a political dimension which can harm 'secular' Muslims as well as those of weaker or 'minority' ethnicities. This means that non-Muslims need to be wary of political demands made by Muslims qua Muslims. There is a slippery slope to Jihadi violence. The result is that there has been 'Hindu consolidation'. But even in Sri Lanka we see push-back against creeping Islamization (following the Easter bombings).

It has acquired salience again, with some hyperventilating neo-nationalists reiterating that all Muslims are traitors as they joined Muhammad Ali Jinnah and his Muslim League to divide India.

Sadly, all Muslims not following the Jihadi line are considered traitors and apostates worthy of death by well-funded, internationally networked, Islamist outfits. On the one hand, this means that Leftist academics are considered 'useful idiots' by these extremists. Their role is to spread stupid lies so that the Islamists can recruit cannon fodder. But how is one to spread stupid lies in the internet age? The answer is that you point your finger at some alleged narrative which you attribute to 'the powers that be'. In other words you feed a sense of paranoia to spread stupid lies.

These people forget that a large number of Muslims, who consciously decided to stay back, had a choice—either to leave and be Pakistanis

and lose their property

or stay back in India

and try to keep a 'special' status

and choose their homeland. Many opted for the latter.

Till the Custodian of Evacuee Property started harassing them or economic opportunities across the border enticed them away. In any case, all sensible people tried to get the fuck away from 'homelands' which were turning into anarchic 'shitholes'.

A similar choice was made by many Hindus who decided to stay back in Pakistan. However, staying back in a democratic, secular and plural India was different from opting for a regressive and sectarian Islamist Pakistan. The future of both, who stayed behind, has proved that so tellingly. 

I wonder if this complacency is warranted. The day may come when Muslims in West Bengal will regret not leaving earlier for the East. As it is, a Bangladeshi writer has said in the NYT that Bengali Muslim immigration to East Pak was for economic not political reasons.

Unfortunate political developments and the prevalent communal rhetoric in India has forced me to go back to the history afresh.

The 'unfortunate political development' is that the Supreme Court completed the NRC exercise in Assam and threw a bomb in Amit Shah's lap. Congress and the Left tried to take advantage of this by telling stupid lies. This led to violence and a backlash. So fresh lies of a stupid type have to be told.

There is a concerted campaign to malign all Indian Muslims as leftover Pakistanis, who are enemies within the country; the narrative is that these fifth columnists should be shunted out to Pakistan in the so-called national interest.

Irfan Habib certainly believes that Arif Mohammed Khan should say 'I am a devotee of Nathuram Godse. I serve an administration which will deport all Muslims, including me. There genuinely is a 'narrative' of the type S.Irfan Habib will write about in the Caravan magazine.' The fact that Khan refused to say anything like this is PROOF that Islam is in danger!

But merely indicting all Muslims for the sake of petty majoritarian politics goes against the facts of history. 

Whereas it is a great crime not to indict Arif Mohammad Khan for refusing to say 'I do Puja to Nathuram Godse every day. As Governor of Kerala, I am drawing up lists of all Muslims so that they can be deported or killed in Gas Chambers. Jai Savarkar! Heil Hilter! Jai Genocide!'

We are a nation obsessed with history,

Nonsense! Our historians are utterly shitty. But they are not obsessed with history. They are obsessed with repeating stupid lies.

more often concerned with correcting the presumed historical wrongs than learning anything from the past. With this compulsive preoccupation, some of us live perpetually in the past. Even so, most people believe that Maulana Azad, an Independence-era leader, fought a lone battle for a united India,

No. We think he was a nutter who fell for Gandhi's toothless charms and thus became utterly useless.

while a majority of Indian Muslims vouched for Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, and his Muslim League.

The 1946 election result speaks for itself. 87 per cent is a big majority. There has never been any popular support for reversing partition in Pakistan. On the other hand, there has been a lot of forcible conversion and ethnic cleansing. Even in India, Muslims have ethnically cleansed non Muslims from areas where they are stronger.

This has no factual basis and any extent of living in the past will help unravel actual facts.  

Why does this shithead not say 'only 13 per cent of Indian Muslims voted for the Muslim League'? Alternatively, he could argue that 13 comes before 87. Thus 13 is better than 87. The better number is the one which represents the majority. Thus, because 13 per cent of Muslims did not vote for the League, they actually represented the majority.

To put the record straight, some unsung heroes from our recent history should be talked about.

Because if unsung heroes are talked about 13 becomes a bigger number than 87.

There are many historical characters that were crucial to countering the politics of hate and division of the country around the time of partition.

They failed. Some were killed by Islamists to ensure this outcome.

Among them was Allah Baksh Sumroo, who served as a premier of the Sindh province—equivalent to the current post of a chief minister—for two terms between 1938 and 1942. Sumroo was a committed patriot, whom the Muslim League hated to the extreme. He belonged to a feudal Sindhi family but was known for a frugal living and commitment to democratic values. Sumroo wore khadi even as a young man of twenty. We hear about using flags as a power symbol so often these days, but he never used a flag on his official car even in those feudal and colonial times.

So what? He was killed. No one says Islamists don't use violent methods to get their way. What worries people is that Muslims have to toe the line or else risk having their own throats slit by the fanatics.

What is important to remember today is his commitment to undivided India.

For which he was killed by Muslims. What followed was ethnic cleansing of non-Muslims from the Province he had led.

Sumroo emerged as a major challenge to the divisive politics of communalists of all hues, particularly the Muslim League.

But their  killing him disposed of that challenge.

Azad was undoubtedly a national face, espousing composite nationalism, but he actually derived strength from such regional but powerful voices like Sumroo. 

He lost all strength when the 1946 election results came in. All Muslims seats at the Center were taken by the League. They formed a Government in Sindh. So much for Sumroo who was 3 years dead.

To go into the details of his massive anti-Muslim League politics would require a much longer discussion. Let me just refer to one of the most important episodes in the history of our sad partition of the country. The Muslim League passed a resolution recommending the creation of an independent state of Muslims on 23 March 1940 at Lahore. Soon, Sumroo organised a huge conference of patriotic Muslims between 27 and 30 April 1940 in Delhi, called the Azad Muslim Conference. According to some estimates, there were not less than seventy-five thousand people who gathered from all over India to condemn the Muslim League for its divisive politics.

Six years later, the League captured 87 per cent of the Muslim vote. By then Sumroo was dead and buried.

Most of these people came from a large number of political and social organisations, largely representing the backward and artisanal sections of the Muslim society. This representation at the conference was an indicator that the Muslim League spoke for the ashraf, or the privileged sections of the Muslim society while the majority of Muslims—the ajlaf, or the backward sections—remained almost untouched by the League’s rhetoric.

So what? They fell into line obediently enough. The Communists supported Partition and got their throats slit in Pakistan. In India, they could work with the establishment to ruin the economy and the educational system.

The British identified a collaborative section of the Muslim community, helped in forming the Muslim League but this section largely represented the affluent—the zamindars, and business and professional classes.

The Indian National Congress was started by the British. Viceroy Landsdowne said that the Cow Protection Agitation gave Congress some grass-roots support. Then Gandhi came and single-handedly preserved British Rule by unconditionally surrendering in 1922. Ireland and Egypt won independence. Turkey liberated itself. But India collaborated with the die-hard Tories by remaining supine. The Second Round table Conference sealed Congress's fate. It would be a Hindu party. The creation of Sindh meant that there would be a viable Pakistan before that word was first uttered. Gandhian theatrics, like that of Sumroo or Badshah Khan had no effect whatsoever on the outcome. In 1932, tribals invaded Kashmir. The Maharaja appealed for British help and got it. 16 years later, the same thing happened but the outcome was not as clean cut. India was an incompetent, Hindu, replacement for the British Raj. Pakistan was something worse. It is now poorer than Bangladesh. Thirty years ago it was ahead of China!

The leadership that emerged in the League had little clue to the highly differentiated Muslim society they claimed to represent.

So what? They won.

Azad could see this early.

Like Azad knew rural India!

Referring to Indian Muslims at the time, he wrote in his weekly Urdu language newspaper, Al Hilal, in 1912:
The most unfortunate part of their life is that they have a section of elite who are in the forefront and leading them.

Them bastids went to Aligarh, or, worse yet, London, and spick Inglis gud. May Allah destroy them!

Those are the self-proclaimed leaders of the community. They have put the crown on their own head, with their own hands, instead of the masses doing the same. They indulged in all sorts of exhibitionism of power and the worst is show of their wealth. And by so doing they had converted the millat [class] of downtrodden men in their community as their slaves and camp followers. And now if anyone tries to question their validity as leaders or defy them, they are successfully suppressed and annihilated by those selfish leaders; as they have the power of money.

What happened to Azad? He became a camp-follower of Gandhi who had plenty of bania money.

Sumroo’s presidential address at the Azad Muslim Conference in April 1940 also exposed the misplaced arguments of the League, particularly in the name of religion and culture. All through his speech he spoke extensively on the shared history and heritage, stressed on the compositeness of Indian nation and nationalism and emphasised that the compact between diverse communities cannot be severed.

Yet it was. Hindus were about 25 per cent of the population. They are less than 10 per cent now. No compact existed as was proved in 1948.

What is the point of writing bollocks pointing out that some other people talked bollocks 80 years ago and that bollocks whose wholly useless?

Strongly condemning the two-nation theory exponents, The Sunday Statesman of 28 April 1940 quoted him saying in his speech:
A majority of the 90,000,000 Indian Muslims who are descendants of the earlier inhabitants of India are in no sense other than the sons of the soil with the Dravidian and the Aryan and have as much right to be reckoned among the earliest settlers of this common land.

But, where they were the majority they tyrannized and ethnically cleansed non Muslims. The leopard does not  change its spots. In Kashmir, the Muslim majority ethnically cleansed the Hindu minority long after Independence. In Delhi, just recently, a supposedly non-violent protest by Muslims turned violent quickly enough. One of the organizers of the protest can be seen on camera demanding much more bloodshed. If this is what is happening where Muslims are the minority, imagine what they will do if they become the majority!

The nationals of different countries cannot divest themselves of their nationality merely by embracing one or another faith.

But this Islamist view has prevailed. The truth is both Hindus and Muslims want to escape shithole countries and acquire American or European Nationality.

In its universal sweep Islam, the faith, can run in and out of as many nationalities and regional cultures as may be found in world.

But it can also recruit terrorist nutjobs wherever it can be found. 

He underlined the long history of shared heritage of Hindus and Muslims, as mentioned in a Hindustan Times report on the same day:

It is a vicious fallacy for Hindu, Muslim and other inhabitants of India to arrogate to themselves an exclusively proprietary right over either the whole or any particular part of India.

It was not a fallacy. It was a prophesy which came true. The thing had been inevitable since the Second Round Table Conference. 

The country as an indivisible whole and as one federated and composite unit belongs to all the inhabitants of the country alike and is as much the inalienable and imprescriptible heritage of the Indian Muslim as of other Indians.

Unless they can get to Europe or America. If the Gulf or the Kingdom gave citizenship that would be an even better choice because taxes are lower.

Sumroo made these detailed references to the shared history and intermixing of Hindu and Muslim cultures over the centuries to counter both the League as well as those who were arguing for Hindutva majoritarianism. He was aware, like Azad, of the forces which threatened the future of united composite India. Sumroo needs to be talked about today more seriously to counter all those who threaten fellow Muslim citizens to go to Pakistan. 

What is the point talking about a guy who was killed long ago and whose verbiage was proved utterly worthless? The facts can't be gainsaid.

In his address, Sumroo provided a counter for another argument put forth by neo-nationalists today—that Muslims asked for Pakistan and once it was granted by dividing the country, all of them should have moved there.

Or accepted that they would live in a Hindu or other non-Muslim dominated country save where they were in the majority- i.e. the Kashmir Valley. 

This would have settled the issue forever.

That is precisely what happened- save in Kashmir where there is separatism. However in districts contiguous to Bangladesh, such separatism may arise as demographics change. Some Bengali Hindus may welcome this. It appears that Bangladesh is better run. 

All those who make such insinuations today need to know what popular Muslim leaders like Sumroo said of the creation of Pakistan:

No they don't. Why? Pakistan exists. Sumroo does not. 

It was based on false understanding that India is inhabited by two nations, Hindu and Muslim. It is much more to the point to say that all Indian Mussalmans are proud to be Indian nationals and they are equally proud that their spiritual level and creedal realm is Islam. As Indian nationals—Muslims and Hindus and others, inhabit the land and share every inch of the motherland and all its material and cultural treasures alike according to the measures of their just and fair rights and requirements as the proud sons of the soil.

This may have been true under the British. But they left long ago.

Azad, too, sent a message of support to the Azad Muslim conference as he was not able to attend it. He expressed his solidarity with the conference and wished that the deliberations would be fruitful for the great cause of the freedom of the country and the Muslims.
This fight for composite and inclusive Indian nationalism, which looks so alarming and threatening today, is more than few decades old.

That fight was lost long ago.

Azad and Sumroo challenged these regressive and divisive forces in the 1930s and 1940s. They almost took the battle to the enemy’s camp by organising a huge conference in Delhi, which unnerved the Muslim League leadership. Sumroo was assassinated in 1943. It was suspected to be the League’s handiwork.  

Three years later the League triumphed in the polls. They formed a Government in Sindh. Sumroo had backed the wrong horse. So had Azad. He should have settled in his maternal ancestor's Saudi Arabia and formed a 'Hizbullah'.

We can comprehend his stature and the sense of loss on his death by reading some of the reactions in contemporary press and also the pain expressed by several nationalist leaders. The Hindustan Times described him as follows:
… finest of Sindhis, one of the truest of Musalmans, one of the noblest sons of India who loved his peasants for he loved the land; and he used to wear khaddar even in the twenties, for he loved the poor. Both the Hindus and Muslims looked up to him as a leader … He had an all-India mind and in the midst of division and strife, pinned his faith on an independent united India, and dreamt the dream of the united State of Asia in the years to come …
His murder was seen as a national calamity by several papers. The Amrita Bazar Patrika called him “one of the most vigorous personalities, endowed with a high sense of duty and rare courage of conviction, who easily commanded the respect and admiration of all, even of those who differed from him on some or the other public questions.” Commenting on his death, the newspaper added, “A life so full of promise has been cut short. And India is much poorer today by the death of the young man of 42 whose sturdy patriotism and devotion to duty would be cherished long after the present unhappy situation has ended and India has come into her own.”

A short while later, millions were murdered or forced to flee. Sumroo's fate was but a harbinger of what stupid Gandhian politics inevitably entailed. Suppose Indians had not talked worthless shite and co-operated to get rich then minorities would have been viewed as assets and protected as such. Instead, we had Gandhi-giri and Leftist bullshit. Both are based on stupid, paranoid, lies.

The right wing in India often says that Subhas Chandra Bose, a leader of the anticolonial struggle, did not find his rightful place in Indian history. I find it politically motivated and not really a sincere observation. It is people like Sumroo, who seem to be lost in our history records, even in the writings of the so-called liberal and Marxist historians, except for a chapter in a book by Shamshul Islam titled Muslims Against Partition of India. 

But everybody knows that Liberal and Marxist historians are shit. Look at Sharjeel Imam. He could have made money in I.T. But he ended up doing a PhD in history at JNU. The cretin is now in jail.

Another prominent Muslim voice from the past, who can rightfully represent our composite nationalist ethos is Saifuddin Kitchlew, a Kashmiri freedom fighter whose family moved to Punjab. It was his arrest along with Dr Satyapal, a political leader, that triggered the protests leading to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919. Most of us are oblivious to his contributions as well. Kitchlew had also mourned the loss of Sumroo saying:
At this critical period of the freedom movement in the country the death of a man like Mr Allah Baksh is a thundering blow to the forces of nationalism. Mr Allah Baksh was a thorough going nationalist. Mr Allah Baksh is dead but his work will remain.

That work consisted of maligning Hindu Nationalism. This soon turned into maligning Hinduism. Now it is nothing but paranoid nonsense. Muslims have made themselves hated in Delhi. Students and Academics from JNU & Jamia have contributed to this. This was not the outcome most of us expected. We thought Shaheen Bagh would turn a sort hipster love-in. Instead Pinjra Tod unleashed the genie of communal violence and bitter hatred. What has soared aloft is the vulture not the falcon.

It is necessary to know about such men and women from our past as their profiles directly challenge the ongoing communal and divisive rhetoric where Muslims are projected as a comprador class that was wholeheartedly behind the League’s two-nation theory.

Muslims are not 'projected as a comprador class'. They are projected as evil bastards who will slit your throat and grab your land- if they have the upper hand. That is the 'narrative' we need to combat. Say loud and clear 'Muslims in India are hardworking and poor. If we get them- especially the girls- into big factory dormitories, we can rise up. Stop listening to stupid Professors. Give Free Enterprise a chance.'

Azad was surely the prime political figure, an Islamic scholar, who stressed on the composite nationalism. However, he was not fighting a lone battle against the Muslim League, as Jinnah wanted the British and the Muslims to believe. He was hated and derided as a show boy of the Congress party, precisely to show that most of the other Muslims and their leaders were with the idea of Pakistan. This falsehood needs to be exposed, particularly in the midst of the ongoing divisive politics.  

This cretin thinks Indians respect Azad. They don't. Why? His ideas were shit. Some Islamist nutters are interested in his early writing. But Hindus are too ignorant of Arabic and Persian and Islamic theology to understand any subtlety he was capable off. They just see him as a fool who fell for Gandhian foolishness. Nehru did too. That's why the country adopted begging bowl diplomacy. But that begging bowl had a hole in it. The soul of that hole was talking worthless bollocks of the type this author indulges in.

As for divisive politics- who is practicing it? Only these nutters who pretend that the RSS is Fascist and Hindu Nationalism is not Indian Nationalism despite the fact that only Hinduism holds the country together. All non-Hindu majority territories have a separatist movement. These are the plain facts of the case- not a 'narrative' which has to be combated by talking about Sumroo or Ghungroo.