Pakistan before Pakistan—II : When Jinnah sought an intellectual defence, From constitutional negotiations to the pages of Tolu-e-Islam and Tarjuman-ul-Qur’an

The first part of this series suggested that an important chapter in the intellectual history of the Pakistan Movement remains insufficiently explored. While political negotiations between the British Government, the Congress and the Muslim League have received exhaustive scholarly attention, the contemporaneous debate between Tarjuman-ul-Qur’an and Tolu-e-Islam over the religious legitimacy of Pakistan has rarely been reconstructed as an independent historical narrative.

That proposition naturally raises an important question. If such a debate existed, why has it remained largely absent from mainstream histories? Part of the answer lies in the way the history of Partition has traditionally been written.

Historians have understandably concentrated upon constitutional negotiations, provincial elections, the Lahore Resolution, the Cabinet Mission, Mountbatten’s Plan, communal violence and the transfer of power. These were the events that determined the political destiny of the subcontinent. Yet ideas have their own history.

Ideas do not emerge in a vacuum. They are debated, defended, criticised and refined through books, speeches, correspondence and journals. Political history records decisions; intellectual history explains why those decisions became conceivable. The pages of Tarjuman-ul-Qur’an and Tolu-e-Islam therefore deserve to be read not merely as religious publications but as historical documents reflecting competing conceptions of Muslim political identity on the eve of Partition.

Before Pakistan appeared on the map, it first had to be defended in the realm of ideas. Political arguments alone could not persuade Muslims who believed that territorial nationalism conflicted with Islam or that the Muslim League lacked the religious credentials to establish an Islamic polity.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah understood this challenge better than many of his contemporaries. Contrary to later caricatures, he neither sought to establish a government controlled by religious scholars (theocracy) nor dismissed religion as irrelevant to public life.

Throughout his political career, Jinnah remained a constitutional lawyer committed to representative institutions, legislative supremacy and the rule of law. He knew, however, that constitutional arguments alone would not persuade Muslims whose reservations were rooted in their understanding of Islam rather than constitutional law. The Pakistan Movement therefore required not merely political leadership but also intellectual engagement. At the same time, he recognised that the Muslim League’s political programme required an intellectual response to religious objections being advanced in influential sections of the Urdu press.

It is in this context that Ghulam Ahmad Parwez assumes historical importance. Parwez was neither a traditional alim (scholar) nor a politician seeking public office. He belonged to a generation of educated Muslims shaped by both classical Islamic learning and modern administrative experience. As a civil servant under the British Government and a serious student of the Qur’an, he occupied an unusual intellectual position.

G A Parwez sought neither clerical authority nor secular indifference to religion. Instead, he attempted to explain Islam through reason, social justice and constitutional government. This explains why the relationship between Jinnah and Parwez deserves closer historical attention than it has generally received.

Among the documents reproduced in Tehreek-i-Pakistan Key Gumshuda Auraq: Tehreek-i-Pakistan aur Parwez is Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s letter of June 14, 1947, thanking G A Parwez for his communication and requesting him to suggest suitable persons who could become, in Jinnah’s own words, “the real servants of our future Secretariat”. Whatever interpretation one ultimately places upon this correspondence, it demonstrates direct engagement between the leader of the Muslim League and an unconventional, Quran-centred intellectual at one of the most decisive moments in South Asian history. That document alone invites further historical investigation.

The significance of G A Parwez, however, does not rest upon a single letter. It rests upon the pages of Tolu-e-Islam. The Pakistan Movement did not confront a single religious opposition. Some scholars opposed Pakistan because they regarded composite Indian nationalism as compatible with Islam.

Others rejected territorial nationalism altogether as an alien Western doctrine. Still others doubted whether the Muslim League possessed either the leadership or programme necessary for an Islamic polity. These were distinct objections requiring distinct answers. The importance of Tolu-e-Islam lies in its attempt to answer each of them separately rather than treating “the ulema” as a single undifferentiated body.

The Pakistan Movement was criticised from several religious perspectives. Some scholars rejected the very idea of Muslim territorial nationalism. Others argued that the Muslim League’s leadership lacked sufficient Islamic commitment. Still others insisted that an Islamic state could emerge only through an organised religious movement rather than through constitutional politics.

These were serious intellectual objections. They required serious intellectual answers. Tolu-e-Islam attempted to provide them. Its significance lies not in claiming final authority but in preserving a contemporaneous record of arguments advanced in defence of Pakistan from within a Qur’anic framework. The journal repeatedly addressed objections raised in Tarjuman-ul-Qur’an, creating what appears to have been one of the most sustained intellectual exchanges of the Pakistan Movement.

This series does not ask readers to accept Parwez’s conclusions or that of Maulana Abu’Ala Maududi. On the contrary, both deserve to be read in their own words. Only then can we appreciate that the controversy was not between believers and non-believers, nor between religion and politics. It was not even a disagreement between two intellectuals, but among many influential Muslim thinkers over the meaning of Islam, nationhood, sovereignty and the future political destiny of the Muslims of India.

The next article will therefore allow the documents to speak for themselves. Rather than beginning with our conclusions, we shall reconstruct the debate chronologically by reproducing the principal arguments advanced in Tarjuman-ul-Qur’an and the corresponding replies published in Tolu-e-Islam between 1938 and 1947. Readers may then judge for themselves whether this forgotten conversation deserves a more prominent place in the intellectual history of Pakistan.

[To be continued]

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Dr. Ikramul Haq, Advocate Supreme Court, Adjunct Faculty at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), member Advisory Board and Visiting Senior Fellow of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), holds an LLD in tax laws. He was full-time journalist from 1979 to 1984 with Viewpoint and Dawn. He also served Civil Services of Pakistan from 1984 to 1996.