All India Muslim league(1906-

1947)
In 1885 the All-India National Congress (INC or Congress) was created
as a political party. It was apparently the party for all Indians but
Muslims soon regarded it as a Hindu organization. Accordingly,
Nawab Viqar ul-Mulk (1841–1917) in 1901 attempted to establish a
political organization that would represent Muslim political opinion in
India. In October 1906 a deputation of Muslims—the Simla
Deputation, led by the Agha khan met the viceroy of India, Lord Minto
who encouraged British India's Muslims to create their own political
party. He saw it as a moderating influence in the increasingly radical
body politic of India, especially among a group of "extremists" in the
Congress.
Thus encouraged, Viqar ul-Mulk and the Agha khan invited leading
Muslims to meet in Dacca (now Dhaka) on 30 December 1906 to
launch a new organization, the All-India Muslim league (AIML or
League). The League's first meeting was held at the conclusion of the
All-India Muslim Educational Conference (founded in 1886), which
was cut short by one day. Its members were asked to attend the new
meeting to discuss the creation of a "political association," the aims of
which were:

1. To promote among the Muslims of India feelings of loyalty to

the British government, and to remove any misconception that
may arise as to the intention of government with regard to any
of its measures.

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 2. To profit and advance the political rights and interests of the
Muslims of India, and to respectfully represent their needs and
aspirations to the government.
3. To prevent the rise, among the Muslims of India, of any feeling
of hostility toward other communities, without prejudice to the
aforementioned objects of the League.

The organization was to present "Muslim views" to the government

on the eve of the new constitutional developments that were about
to take place (the Councils of India Act, 1909).
At the League's inaugural session, two joint secretaries and thirty-one
members were appointed to represent six areas of northern India
from Bengal to the North West frontier province. Two years later a
branch of the AIML was established in London under the presidency
of Syed Ameer Ali (1849–1928) to act as a pressure lobby to influence
British policy regarding India. Syed Wazir Hasan played a prominent
role in the party in its early years, serving as joint secretary (1910–
1912) and secretary (1912–1919), while the Aga Khan was president
until 1913.
In its first five years the AIML met annually, except for 1909, in
various cities of India to express Muslim views on the political issues
of the day, to counter anti-League organizations, and to convince the
British government of its loyalty. It established a few provincial and
district Leagues and published a few brochures in various languages;
its leaders toured India from time to time, giving talks on the platform
and aims of the party.
League leaders presented the British Indian Muslim political
community's views to the government.
It maintained this pattern of limited activities for most of the first
thirty years of its existence, though the League was active enough to
enter into an agreement with the Congress in 1916 on a joint political

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post-war platform, the Lucknow Pact. This agreement established
constitutional principles to be followed in future constitutions, which
were reflected in the Government of India Act of 1918. Few of the
League's followers paid any annual dues, and many of its members
and officials were also members of other political parties. Apart from
informal contacts with the government, the major event for the AIML
was its annual meeting, where a number of resolutions were moved
and discussed. These resolutions concerned the political and social
questions of the day and, on occasion, events overseas, especially
political crises that affected Muslim countries in the Mideast.
The party membership in 1927 was only around 1,300 members, and
in 1930 in Allahabad, when the philosopher Allama Muhammad Iqbal
made his famous call for the creation of a state for the Muslims of
South Asia in the north-western part of India, fewer than seventy-five
people attended the meeting. To encourage membership, the
admission fee of five rupees was abolished, and the annual
subscription was reduced from six rupees to one rupee.
In 1927 the conflict was between Muhammad Shafi and Mohammad
Ali Jinnah (1876–1948), who had formally joined the League in 1913;
Shafi opposed joint electorates, while Jinnah and his increasing
number of followers supported them. A decade later the Punjab
leader Sikander Hayat Khan (1892–1942) challenged Jinnah for the
leadership of the League.
From 1934 until 1947 the name of Mohammad Ali Jinnah was
synonymous with that of the AIML, but it was not until 1943 that
Jinnah was the undisputed "great leader" (Quaid-e-Azam) of the
party. Nonetheless, even after that date Muslim leaders from Bengal
and the Punjab, especially Khizr Hayat Khan Tiwana (1900–1975;
premier of the Punjab 1942–1947), attempted to act in an
independent manner, favouring provincial interests over the national

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ones that the League represented. For his opposition, Khizr was
expelled from the League in 1944.
The introduction of the Government of India Act of 1935 ushered in a
new phase of politics in India. The election of candidates to provincial
assemblies became crucial as Indians, not the British, would dominate
provincial legislatures. As a result, the AIML, for the first time in its
history, began to be organized as a viable national party. On 4 March
1934 the forceful and charismatic Mohammad Ali Jinnah, a wealthy
self-made lawyer who had been a prominent Muslim politician since
1909, became the president of the party. Jinnah nominated the
Parliamentary Board, which chose party candidates for the general
elections in 1936. Even at this time only three rich supporters kept the
party functioning, and it was opposed both by the Congress and
regional Muslim parties, especially in Bengal and the Punjab;
nonetheless, the party began its slow ascent to national importance.
The rise of the League was due to the national leadership of Jinnah
and the organizational work of the independently wealthy general-
secretary, Liaquat Ali Khan (1895–1951), who, like Jinnah, devoted
most of his time over the next ten years to the party.
In the General Elections of 1936 the League contested half of the seats
reserved for Muslims. It obtained some 60 percent of those seats but
won practically none of the seats in the Muslim majority provinces,
except for Bengal where it gained 39 out of 117 seats. These electoral
defeats, however, were to lead to a complete change in League
fortunes, as Congress ministries governed in most of the provinces of
India in a manner that was viewed as favourable to the Hindu
community and detrimental to Muslim interests. As a result, there
were a large number of Muslim defections from the Congress. In 1939
the League published two widely discussed reports, The Pirpur
Report and The Sharif Report, that detailed "Congress

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misgovernment," further inflaming Muslim feeling toward the
Congress and mobilizing Muslims for the League.
In October 1937 at Lucknow, Jinnah initiated a new combativeness in
Indian politics by declaring that there were now three political
entities in India: the Congress, the British, and the League. Later, the
League chalked out a Five-Year Plan for the Muslim community and
organized the All-India Muslim Students Federation. At Lahore on 23
March 1940, at its annual meeting, the League moved the "Pakistan
Resolution," which called for the creation of a separate state for the
Muslims of India in the northwest and northeast of India. (The term
"Pakistan" was first coined in 1930.) An estimated 100,000 people
attended that famous session in Lahore. Nearly 90,000 people were
then members of the party, and membership would continue to rise.
A weekly party newspaper, Dawn, was created in 1941, and the
following year it became a daily, acquiring national readership. In
1943, the League created a Planning Committee that would plan
economic development in the Pakistan areas, and a Committee of
Action was established to enforce party discipline and its will among
the provincial League parties. In 1944 a Committee of Writers was
created; over the next two years it produced ten pamphlets in its
Pakistan Literature Series, a considerable number of newspaper
articles, and election campaign material, written primarily by students
and professors of Aligarh Muslim University—most notably professor
Jamil-ud-Din Ahmad (1914–1970), who also arranged for League
pamphlets to be published by Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf of Lahore,
who became the official publisher of the League. The League also
actively recruited student workers, especially from Aligarh Muslim
University and Punjab University, who would propagate the demand
for Pakistan both in the cities and in the rural areas and would
campaign for League candidates in election campaigns. With the rise
in communal violence in the 1940s, the League created the
paramilitary Muslim National Guard to protect League meetings and

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to act as bodyguards for Muslim leaders, especially Mohammad Ali
Jinnah.
All of the organizational work between 1937 and 1946 led to a
tremendous League victory in the 1946 general elections, when it won
one-third of the seats in the Punjab, 115 of 250 in Bengal, and almost
all of the Muslim seats it contested in other parts of India.
Membership of the party was in the millions. This victory supported
Jinnah's claim that he spoke for the Muslims of India and that those
Muslims demanded Pakistan. The British increasingly treated him as
the spokesman of Muslim India, despite the claims of Congress—
especially by Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) and Mahatma M. K.
Gandhi (1869–1948)—that the Congress spoke for all of India,
Muslims included. As a result of this electoral victory, an increasing
number of Muslim politicians joined the League, while those who did
not lost a great deal of credibility among Muslims. The League had
demonstrated that it was the party of the Muslims of South Asia. In
1946 the League agreed to enter the interim government, claiming
parity with the Congress. Liaquat Ali Khan gained one of the most
important positions in the government, that of finance member.
By early 1947 both the Congress and the British agreed that upon
independence India should be partitioned into the sovereign states of
India and Pakistan. With the creation of Pakistan on 14 August 1947,
Jinnah became governor-general and Ali Khan, prime minister of the
new state of Pakistan. The AIML then split into two parties, the
Pakistan Muslim League and the Indian Muslim League.

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 Aligarh movement
As we know that, after the war of independence the condition of the
Muslims of India were very miserable as the British fell more on the
Muslims than on Hindus. They considered that Muslims were
responsible for all the wrongs and the war held just because of their
harsh and rude behaviour. After 1857, the Muslims emerged as a
backward nation; they were illiterate and hopelessly ignorant in every
walk of life. They were deprived of their basic rights and were
neglected in every sphere of life. Nevertheless, they were
economically, politically, socially and to be more exact religiously
made the subject of ruthless punishment. They were helpless before
the British and their combine lobby with Hindus; so, in these
conditions they neither trusted Hindus nor British, who spared no
effort to tortured Muslims.

In such conditions, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan came forward and tried to
help the Muslims come out from such deplorable and miserable
conditions. He guided the Muslims towards the right path and
attempted to draw out the Muslims from such helpless condition. He
started a movement in order to give respectable position to Muslims
in society as they had in past, this movement is known as Aligarh
Movement. The main focus of the Aligarh movement was:

 Loyalty to British Government.

 Modern western education for the Muslims to compete with
Hindus.
 To keep away the Muslims from politics.

Sir Syed realized that this miserable and deplorable condition of

Muslims was due to the lack of modern education. He believed that

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the cure of every problem of Muslims was the modern education.
Therefore, he commenced an educational program in order to uplift
the deprived and disappointed Muslims, who had lost their past glory.
He took concrete steps for his education plan. Thus, in 1859, Sir Syed
Ahmad Khan set up a school for Muslims in Muradabad where
English, Persian, Islamiat, Arabic, Urdu were compulsory subjects. In
1862, Sir Syed was transferred from Muradabad to Ghazipur where he
established another school for Muslims, which was known as Madrass
Ghazipur. Here, also the English, Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Islamiat
were compulsory subjects.

In 1864, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan laid the foundation of a scientific

society at Ghazipur. The purpose of this society was to translate the
English books into Urdu language. But, later on, in 1866, after his
transfer to Aligarh, the main office of the scientific society was also
transferred to Aligarh. In 1866, the scientific society issued a journal
named as Aligarh Institute Gazette. This journal was published both in
Urdu and English languages. The aim of this journal was to wash away
the misconception between Muslims and British government and
brought them close to each other.

In order to closely watch the educational system of England, Sir Syed

Ahmad Khan accompanied his son Syed Mehmud, visited England in
1869 and stayed there for seventeen months studying English
educational institutions like Oxford and Cambridge University. Later,
after his return to India, he set up a committee known as “Committee
Striving for Educational Progress of Muslims”. Under this committee
another committee was established named as “Fund Committee for
the establishment of a Muslim College” and Sir Syed was selected the
secretary of the both committees. For this purpose, Sir Syed toured
across the country and collected funds for the establishment of
college. The committee decided first for the forming of school as a
model to the people and later to found the college. Hence, in 1875, Sir

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Syed established Mohammedan Anglo Oriental School at Aligarh. In
1877, the school was upgraded to the level of college which was
inaugurated by Lord Lytton. The main characteristic of this college
was that it offered both Western and Eastern educations. Later on,
this college was raised to the level of university, after the death of Sir
Syed in 1920.

In 1886, Sir Syed set up an organization which is known as

Mohammedan Educational Conference, which presented a twelve
point programme in western and religious education in English and
other languages. It aim was to convey the message of education to
the Muslim masses. The Conference held its sessions at different
towns of the country to know about the educational problems and
then tried to solve them. The conference in its meeting discussed the
modern techniques for the development and improvement of the
standard of the education.

In 1866, Sir Syed established British India Association at Aligarh. The

main purpose of this organization was to express the grievances and
point of view of Indians to the British parliament. He also wrote
“Loyal Muhammadans of India” in which he recorded a detailed
account of the loyal services of the Muslims which they rendered to
the British rulers. In 1870, Sir Syed, after his return from England,
setup an organization known as “Anjuman-i-Taraqi-i-Musalman-i-
Hind” in order to impart modern education to the Muslims of India.

Sir Syed wrote the philosophical commentary on Bible named as

“Tabaeen-al-Kalam.” In this commentary Sir Syed draw out the
similarities found between Islam and Christianity. He also wrote
“Essay on the life of Muhammad” on the response to “Life of
Muhammad”, written by William Muir, in which he had criticized the
Holy Prophet. Sir Syed also wrote “Anjuman-i-Taraqi-i-Urdu” for the
protection of Urdu. Sir Syed published another influential magazine
named as “Tahzib-ul-Akhlaaq” in which he discussed the Muslim

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society by criticizing the conservative way of living and emphasized on
the new modern way of life.

Sir Syed, although, was the first Muslim member of Central Legislative
Council, but he advised the Muslims to remain apart from politics
unless and until they would get education. He believed that the cure
of Muslim problems is only education and unless and until Muslims
get education, they will remain backward in every sphere of life. Thus,
Sir Syed did his best, through the Aligarh movement, for the Muslim
cause, and took the support of British by showing loyalty to them and
also aloof the Muslims from the Indian National Congress.

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