Writer: Brigadier Ghulam Jilani, retired

The word war comes to English from the old high German language word Werran (to confuse or to cause confusion) through the Old English Werre (meaning the same). It is a state of open and usually declared armed conflict between political entities such as sovereign states or between rival political or social factions within the same state. The Prussian military analyst Carl Von Clausewitz, in his book On War, said about war, “continuation of politics carried on by other means.” War is waged by political entities, nations or earlier, city states, in order to resolve political or territorial disputes, and are carried out on the battlefield by armies comprised of soldiers of the contending nations, or by mercenaries paid by a government to wage battle.

For war to occur with rational actors, at least one of the sides involved has to expect that the gains from the conflict will outweigh the costs incurred. Without this prerequisite, there can be lasting peace.

The question arises, does it always happen that the parties directly involved in a conflict gain virtues of the war or incur losses? Many a times in modern history, it happened that the real benefit of the conflict between two warring parties, went to someone else who was not directly involved in the conflict. In World War I, the Ottoman Empire lost the war and its empire too, but Turkey later emerged victorious, and under Mustafa Kamal Pasha defended its territorial integrity against the Allies. In World War II, Great Britain won the war for the freedom of Europe but in the process lost its vast empire where the sun never set. When the Soviets crossed the Amu River in 1979, nobody in ‘STAN’ States would have imagined that they would fly their own flags just in a matter of 12 years. Consequences of major wars can never be predicted.

World War II was fought on the battle fields of three continents, with the aim to achieve political objectives of Europe, but as a consequence the polity of many nations and countries took a different turn.

The movement for the creation of Pakistan was based on democratic principles and it was won through the peaceful struggle of Quaid-e-Azam-led Muslim League. This assertion is valid, but certain factors added to its gloss. The political leadership under the guidance of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah created an environment wherein British ceded to the demands of Muslims for a separate homeland. However, the fact remains that World War II gave a fillip to the efforts of Muslim League to elicit support of Muslims, for their demand of a separate homeland. Muslim soldiers played a vital role. Here it must be noted that the effort was not direct, but subtle, yet adequate to create a milieu in which Muslim League made strong inroads in the politics of India, and then virtually dictated the terms to both the Indian National Congress, and British rulers, as the only voice of Muslims of India. The point is further elaborated in succeeding paras.

With the collapse of the Mughal Empire at the beginning of the eighteenth century, a martial Hindu renaissance spread across India, bringing with it a wave of Hindu-Muslim bloodshed. Britain’s conquering presence had forced its Pax Britannica over a warring Subcontinent, but the distrust in which the two communities dwelt, remained. Muslims were in total disarray after the first war of independence (1857).

Mr Jinnah made his efforts to work in unison with the Indian National Congress, to force the British to give political concessions to the Indians, and also earned the title of Ambassador of Hindu Muslim unity, but in 1920 he left the Indian National Congress because he disagreed with Mahatma Gandhi’s Hindu politics and campaign of civil disobedience. Allama Iqbal, who in his Allahabad address in 1930, defined the Muslims of India as a nation, and suggested that Muslim majority units be given the same privileges which were to be given to the Hindu majority units. The idea that India’s Muslims should set up a state of their own was formally articulated by Choudhry Rehmat Ali on 28th January 1933. A name was also proposed for his new state, based on the names of the provinces that it would compose – Pakistan – land of the pure.

Prevalent Hindu-Muslim antagonism in the Subcontinent and vows of different Muslim leaders to carve out a separate country for the Muslims, did not create a stir in the political waters of the Subcontinent, and nobody ever took the miseries of the Muslims of India seriously, for their resolution. This included all three actors i.e. political and administrative leadership of the Muslims, Hindus and British. Muslims were facing economic, administrative and cultural reprisals, both at the hands of Hindus, and the British, for an obvious reason that they had ruled India for centuries, and subduing them was essentially intended.

Muslims were neither united under a political platform to rid themselves of the likely tyranny of Hindus and the British, nor the British or Indian National Congress were ready to perceive any division of India. Muslims were in chaos. The performance of All India Muslim League in the first ever elections held in India after the enactment of the Government of India Act 1935, which came into effect in 1937, was greatly disappointing. Out of 491 Muslim seats, it could only capture 106. Hence, the final success of the elections was named in favour of Congress, which gained a majority in Bihar, Orissa, Madras, U.P and other regions. The Muslim League failed to make its government even in Muslim majority provinces. The stunning political outcome portended problems for the British when the shadows of war began lengthening over Europe.

Wars always bring unintended results, and sometimes designs of polity and diplomacy also change dramatically. World War II broke out with Hitler’s decision to cross British and French red lines when he rolled his tanks into Poland on 3rd September 1939. At this moment the British predicament was that it required soldiers and officers to fight. Since the British Indian Army was a voluntary army, it needed full support from the political leadership of India. Therefore in September 1939, when the Viceroy Lord Linlithgow announced that India was at war, the British Indian Army had to deal with political realities in India.

The Indian National Congress Working Committee delved into details of the pros and cons of supporting the British in this war, and after four days of deliberations, on 14th September 1939, it passed a resolution condemning the Nazi attack on Poland. Yet it insisted that India could not participate in a war for freedom and democracy, when freedom has been denied to it.

The Congress resolution forced the British to treat Jinnah at par with Gandhi. The government had thrown the Muslim League a vital political lifeline. On 18th September the Muslim League adopted its own resolution, asking the British Government to review and revise the entire problem of India’s future, de novo. It also sought a guarantee that no plan of constitutional reform would be decided without the League’s approval. Condemning Nazi aggression, the resolution stated that to secure the cooperation of Muslims, the government must ensure justice was done to them. This astute move of Mr Jinnah turned the tables on the Congress, which until then claimed to have been the voice of entire India. Punjab was the major reservoir for recruitment to the Indian Army, and Bengal which housed a significant chunk of Indian industry, were both Muslim majority provinces. The Punjab premier Sardar Sikandar Hayat Khan, and Fazal ul Haq of Bengal Province, assured their complete support to the British in their war effort. The support for the war effort for the first time got the Muslim League the recognition as sole voice of Mussalmans in India.

Prime Minister Churchill emphasised to Harriman (US representative in London) the need to avoid any political step that would antagonise the Muslims of India. Around 75 percent of Indian troops were Muslims, he claimed. (Postulation of Churchill was factually not correct, Muslims never comprised 75 percent of the British Indian Army). But this perception accrued huge benefits for the Muslim League in their political struggle, to make everyone believe that the party is the voice of Muslims of India. On the other side, f luctuating positions of Mr Gandhi on political issues, and expression of his theory of nonviolence were far from the international political realm. In 1940, when Great Britain braced herself to face a German invasion, and Churchill summoned his countrymen to “blood sweat and tears”. Mr Gandhi published an open letter to every Briton urging cessation of hostilities. He said, “No cause, however just, can warrant the indiscriminate slaughter that is going on minute to minute ... I do not want Britain to be defeated, nor do I want her to be victorious in a trial of brute strength ... I want you to fight Nazism without arms ... I want you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these, but neither your souls nor your minds. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself, man, woman and child to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them ... I am telling His Excellency the Viceroy that my services are at the disposal of His Majesty’s Government, should they consider them of any practical use in enhancing my appeal....”.

Sympathies of the All India Muslim League were clearly on the side of the Allies, as against the Axis powers. Mr. Jinnah had even said that if Britain lost, the Muslims were likely to suffer. L.S. Amery, Secretary of State for India, in a confidential press briefing, emphasised the fact that to a large extent India’s fighting war effort was dependent on Muslim effort. Churchill emphasised that the British must not on any account break with the Muslims who represented a hundred million people, and represented the main army elements on which the British must rely for the immediate fighting. Churchill also persuaded Chiang Kai-Shek of China, who was visiting India to elicit future cooperation in his war efforts with Indian leaders, to meet with Mr Jinnah who spoke for 80 million Muslims.

In a matter of a few months, after thorough mauling in the elections of 1936 37 wherein the Muslim League failed to establish a ministry in any province, Hitler’s action and the British dilemma gave her an inadvertent advantage in the political arena of the Subcontinent. It virtually became the only voice of the Muslims of India, which was being recognised by the British. Dramatic events and the essential requirement of Muslim soldiers in the British Indian Army, created a milieu in which, notwithstanding the results of elections, the Muslim League under the guidance of Mr Jinnah, passed the famous Lahore Resolution, on 23rd March 1940, barely six months after the initiation of hostilities in Europe. The Lahore Resolution which demanded a separate homeland for the Muslims of India, became the Pakistan Resolution, and a roadmap for the creation of a separate country for Indian Muslims.

After 23rd March declaration, 35.18 percent of Punjabi Muslims and 53.51 percent Pakhtuns, out of the total recruitable men in the two provinces, signed up for the British Indian Army, as against only 27.67 percent of Jat Sikhs. The Muslims of India who were actually fighting to save the world from the tyranny of fascist regimes of Germany, Italy and Japan, were also, in an indirect manner, struggling for the birth of a nation in separate homeland called Pakistan.

As the war progressed, fortunes of the Muslim League and Muslims also ticked up. Gandhi, in his political wisdom, thought to cash in on the desperation of the British and Allies, further upped the ante for self-rule. On 8 August 1942 at the All-India Congress Committee session in Bombay, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi launched the Quit India Movement. In the All India Congress Committee meeting, he uttered words uncharacteristic of Gandhi – “I want freedom immediately, this very night – before dawn if can be had”. The next day Gandhi, Nehru and many other leaders of the Indian National Congress were arrested by the British Government. Disorderly and non-violent demonstrations took place throughout the country in the following days. It was precisely the time, in the words of Supreme Allied Commander for South-East Asia, Lord Mountbatten, “no victories, only terrible morale, terrible climate, a terrible foe and terrible defeats”. Gandhi’s tactic played right into the hands of the Muslim League. While they languished in jails, their Muslim rivals supported Britain’s war efforts, earning a considerable debt of gratitude.

Jailed Congress leaders yielded a lot of time and political space to Mr Jinnah to spread his message of a separate homeland, to the Muslims in the entire length and breadth of India. While the British needed political and physical support of Indians for their war effort, which was readily provided by the All India Muslim League and Muslim soldiers, Mr Jinnah was free to spread his political message of a separate country for the Muslims, to every nook and corner of India.

Six years of the Second World War changed the political fortunes of the Muslims of India, who massively supported the Muslim League in the elections of 1945, wherein the Muslim League won all 30 Muslim seats at federal level and 95 percent provincial seats reserved for Muslims. Results of these elections left no doubt in the minds of the Hindus and British of the ultimate objective of Muslims of India. Muslims got their objective, Pakistan on 14th Aug 1947.

Muslim soldiers of the British Indian Army not only contributed towards the war effort of Britain and the political objectives of the Muslim League. These veterans brought with them immense war experience and helped the fledgling Pakistan, which was endeavouring to create institutions, to establish an organised and strong military, which was never subdued by the threats of its neighbour in the east. These brave soldiers who fought in the World War, on different fronts around the globe, brought with them:-

• The ethos of a well gelled organisation which could sustain itself in all conditions.
• Character and work culture which was in line with international standards, that helped in laying a solid foundation of a strong organisation.
• These soldiers were patriotic, but were insulated from the culture of caste, creed and religion, which is still the ethos of the Pakistan Army.
• The same soldiers guarded refugee trains to safety in Pakistan, and fought the 1948 War to liberate Kashmir. Their services continued till the 1965 War.
• They have given direction to society and the army, that with a strong bondage with your outfit and organisation, you can fight a ferocious enemy just because you are on the right side of history. This quality now permeates each soldier, in whom people are trying to find symptoms of a deep state.

‘‘Memoirs are the backstairs of history’’ (George Meredith)