Pakistan before Pakistan—III  From composite nationalism to Pakistan

When the debate moved from the idea of nationhood to the idea of a Muslim homeland

At the conclusion of Part II, we promised to allow the contemporary documents to speak for themselves. Before turning to the direct exchange between Maulana Abū al-Aʿlā al-Mawdūdī and Ghulam Ahmad Parwez, however, one historical development deserves brief attention. The debate did not begin with Pakistan. It began with a more fundamental question: what constituted a nation?

The January 1939 issue of Tolu-e-Islam carried a lengthy discussion entitled: “متحدہ قومیت اور مولانا حسین احمد صاحب“ Rather than engaging in personal criticism, the article examined Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani’s theory of composite nationalism. It argued that Muslims and Hindus could coexist peacefully within one country, but questioned whether common territorial residence alone was sufficient to create a single political nation.

The distinction it drew between ملت, قوم  and وطن  would become the intellectual foundation upon which its later defence of Pakistan was constructed.

This debate unfolded before the Lahore Resolution. Pakistan had not yet become the Muslim League’s declared constitutional objective. The immediate issue was whether the Muslims of India constituted merely a religious community within a larger Indian nation or whether they possessed a distinct political personality grounded in their own civilisational and moral tradition.

Here the influence of Allama Muhammad Iqbal was unmistakable. Long before the constitutional demand for Pakistan, Iqbal had questioned the attempt to measure the Muslim millat by the standards of European territorial nationalism:

اپنی ملت پر قیاس اقوامِ مغرب سے نہ کر
خاص ہے ترکیب میں قومِ رسولِ ہاشمی

ان کی جمعیت کا ہے ملک و نسب پر انحصار
قوتِ مذہب سے مستحکم ہے جمعیت تری

Iqbal was not denying the importance of political organisation or attachment to one’s homeland. He was challenging the elevation of territorial nationalism into an ultimate political creed. For him, the Muslim community derived its cohesion from a shared ethical and spiritual order rather than from territory or ethnicity alone. That distinction profoundly influenced later Muslim political thought, including the writings of Ghulam Ahmad Parwez.

The Lahore Resolution of March 1940 transformed the terms of the discussion. The question was no longer simply whether Muslims constituted a distinct nation. It became whether that nation required a separate constitutional homeland.

It was at this stage that Maulana Maududi entered the debate with increasing force. His reservations were directed not merely against the Muslim League’s political strategy but also against the philosophical foundations of a territorial Muslim state. As Ali Usman Qasmi has shown, Maulana Maududi distinguished sharply between what he regarded as an Islamic polity and what he feared would become merely a Muslim nation-state. His critique was, therefore, directed as much against the ideological premises of the Muslim League as against its leadership.

Tolu-e-Islam responded from an entirely different perspective. A remarkable illustration appears in the June 1942 issue of Tolu-e-Islam under the title “متحدہ قومیت اور مسلمان لیڈران ”  by Abdul Waheed Khan from Lucknow. Rather than dismissing Maududi or questioning his sincerity, the article seeks to answer his objections point by point.

Abdul Waheed Khan argues that the Muslim League’s demand did not arise from racial nationalism or imitation of Europe but from the political necessity of enabling Muslims to organise their collective life in accordance with the moral and social principles of Islam. Throughout the discussion, Abdul Waheed Kan repeatedly distinguishes between nationalism as an idol and political organisation as an instrument for establishing justice and collective welfare.

This is precisely where later interpretations have often simplified a far more nuanced debate. Maulana Maududi was not opposing Islam; Parwez was not advocating secular nationalism. Both were asking the same question: how could Muslim political life remain faithful to Islam in the modern age? Their answers differed because they differed in their understanding of the relationship between revelation, state, nationhood and political authority.

The article ‘Tehreek-e-Pakistan ke Mukhalif Ulema’ by Parwez reinforces this point. It does not merely list religious opposition to Pakistan; it attempts to explain why sections of the ulema opposed the Muslim League while others eventually supported it, presenting the controversy as an intellectual and constitutional disagreement rather than a simple religious manazara (dialogue).

Our purpose is not to ask readers to accept Parwez’s conclusions or Maududi’s criticisms. It is to recover the debate in the language in which it was originally conducted. That debate has remained surprisingly marginal in mainstream histories of the Pakistan Movement despite its significance for understanding the intellectual foundations of Pakistan.

The next article will examine the principal objections raised by Maulana Maududi against the Muslim League and Pakistan, followed immediately by Parwez’s documentary replies published in Tolu-e-Islam. Rather than relying upon later interpretations, we shall allow the two thinkers to speak largely in their own words before attempting any historical assessment.

[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.