Vol. 8 · pages 316–320

291PAKISTAN : NATIONAL FRUSTRATION conditions exist that Parliamentary Government can take roots. One such condition was pointed out by the late Lord Balfour when in 1925 he had an occasion to discuss the political future of the Arab peoples in conversation with his niece Blanche Dugdale. In the course of this conversation he said* :— “It is partly the fault of the British nation—and of the Americans; we can’t exonerate them from blame either—that this idea of ‘representative government’ has got into the heads of nations who haven’t the smallest notion of what its basis must be. It’s difficult to explain, and the AngloSaxon races are bad at exposition. Moreover we know it so well ourselves that it does not strike us as necessary to explain it. I doubt if you would find it written in any book on the British Constitution that the whole essence of British Parliamentary Government lies in the intention to make the thing work. We take that for granted. We have spent hundreds of years in elaborating a system that rests on that alone. It is so deep in us that we have lost sight of it. But it is not so obvious to others. These peoples — Indians, Egyptians, and so on — study our learning. They read our history, our philosophy, and politics. They learn about our parliamentary methods of obstruction, but nobody explains to them that when it comes to the point, all our parliamentary parties are determined that the machinery shan’t stop. ‘The king’s government must go on’ as the Duke of Wellington said. But their idea is that the function of opposition is to stop the machine. Nothing easier, of course, but hopeless.” Asked why the opposition in England does not go to the length of stopping the machine, he said:— “Our whole political machinery presupposes a people. .... fundamentally at one.” Laski has well summarized these observations of Balfour on the condition necessary for the successful working of Parliamentary Government when he says† : “The strength of Parliamentary Government is exactly measured by the unity of political parties upon its fundamental objects.” Having stated the condition necessary for the successful working of the machinery of representative government it will be well to examine whether these conditions are present in India. How far can we say that there is an intention in the Hindus and the Muslims to make representative government work ? To *Dugdale’s Balfour (Hutchinson), Vol. II, pp. 363-64. †Parliamentary Government in England, p. 37.

292 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES prove the futility and unworkability of representative and responsible government, it is enough even if one of the two parties shows an intention to stop the machinery of government. If such an intention is enough, then it does not matter much whether it is found in the Hindus or in the Muslims. The Muslims being more outspoken than the Hindus, one gets to know their mind more than one gets to know the mind of the Hindus. How the Muslim mind will work and by what factors it is likely to be swayed will be clear if the fundamental tenets of Islam which dominate Muslim politics and the views expressed by prominent Muslims bearing on Muslim attitude towards an Indian Government are taken into consideration. Certain of such religious tenets of Islam and the views of some of the Muslim leaders are given below to enable all those who are capable of looking at things dispassionately, to judge for themselves whether the condition postulated by Balfour can be said to exist in India. Among the tenets one that calls for notice is the tenet of Islam which says that in a country which is not under Muslim rule wherever there is a conflict between Muslim law and the law of the land, the former must prevail over the latter and a Muslim will be justified in obeying the Muslim law and defying the law of the land. What the duty of the Musalmans is in such cases was well pointed out by Maulana Mahomed Ali in the course of his statement made in 1921 before the Committing Magistrate of Karachi in answer to the charges for which he was prosecuted by the Government. The prosecution arose out of a resolution passed at the session of the All-India Khilafat Conference held in Karachi on 8th July 1921 at which Mr. Mahomed Ali presided and introduced the resolution in question. The resolution was as follows :— “This meeting clearly proclaims that it is in every way religiously unlawful for a Musalman at the present moment to continue in the British Army, or to enter the Army, or to induce others to join the Army. And it is the duty of all Musalmans in general and of the Ulemas in particular to see that these religious commandments are brought home to every Musalman in the Army.”

293PAKISTAN : NATIONAL FRUSTRATION Along with Maulana Mahomed Ali six other persons* were prosecuted under Section 120-B read with Section 131,I. P. C. and under Section 505 read with Section 114 and Section 505 read with Section 117, I. P. C. Maulana Mahomed Ali in justification of his plea of not guilty, said †:— “ After all what is the meaning of this precious prosecution. By whose convictions are we to be guided, we the Musalmans and the Hindus of India ? Speaking as a Musalman, if I am supposed to err from the right path, the only way to convince me of my error is to refer me to the Holy Koran or to the authentic traditions of the last Prophet—on whom be peace and God’s benediction—or the religious pronouncements of recognized Muslim divines, past and present, which purport to be based on these two original sources of Islamic authority demands from me in the present circumstances, the precise action for which a Government, that does not like to be called satanic, is prosecuting me to-day. “If that which I neglect, becomes by my neglect a deadly sin, and is yet a crime when I do not neglect it, how am I to consider myself safe in this country ? “I must either be a sinner or a criminal .......... Islam recognizes one survereignty alone, the sovereignty of God, which is supreme and unconditional, indivisible and inalienable * * * * * “The only allegiance a Musalman, whether civilian or soldier, whether living under a Muslim or under a non-Muslim administration, is commanded by the Koran to acknowledge is his allegiance to God, to his Prophet and to those in authority from among the Musalmans chief among the last mentioned being of course that Prophet’s successor or commander of the faithful .......... This doctrine of unity is not a mathematical formula elaborated by abstruse thinkers but a work-a-day belief of every Musalman learned or unlettered .......... Musalmans have before this also and elsewhere too, lived in peaceful subjection to non-Muslim administrations. But the unalterable rule is and has always been that as Musalmans they can obey only such laws and orders issued by their secular rulers as do not involve disobedience to the commandments of God who in the expressive language of the Holy Koran is ‘the all-ruling ruler’. These very clear and rigidly definite limits of obedience are not laid down with regard to the authority of non-Muslim administration only. On the contrary they are of universal application and can neither be enlarged nor reduced in any case.” This must make anyone wishing for a stable government very apprehensive. But this is nothing to the Muslim tenets which *Strange enough one of them was the Shankaracharya of Sharda Peeth. †The Trial of Ali Brothers, by R. V. Thandani, pp. 69-71.

294 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES prescribe when a country is a motherland to the Muslim and when it is not. According to Muslim Canon Law the world is divided into two camps, Dar-ul-Islam (abode of Islam) and Dar-ul-Harb (abode of war). A country is Dar-ul-Islam when it is ruled by Muslims. A country is Dar-ul-Harb when Muslims only reside in it but are not rulers of it. That being the Canon Law of the Muslims, India cannot be the common motherland of the Hindus and the Musalmans. It can be the land of the Musalmans—but it cannot be the land of the ‘ Hindus and the Musalmans living as equals’. Further, it can be the land of the Musalmans only when it is governed by the Muslims. The moment the land becomes subject to the authority of a non-Muslim power, it ceases to be the land of the Muslims. Instead of being Dar-ul-Islam it becomes Dar-ul-Harb. It must not be supposed that this view is only of academic interest. For it is capable of becoming an active force capable of influencing the conduct of the Muslims. It did greatly influence the conduct of the Muslims when the British occupied India. The British occupation raised no qualms in the minds of the Hindus. But so far as the Muslims were concerned, it at once raised the question whether India was any longer a suitable place of residence for Muslims. A discussion was started in the Muslim community, which Dr. Titus says lasted for half a century, as to whether India was Dar-ul’-Harb or Dar-ul-Islam. Some of the more zealous elements, under the leadership of Sayyed Ahmad, actually did declare a holy war, preached the necessity of emigration (Hijrat) to lands under Muslim rule, and carried their agitation all over India. It took all ingenuity of Sir Sayyed Ahmad, the founder of the Aligarh movement, to persuade the Indian Musalmans not to regard India under the British as Dar-ul-Harb merely because it was not under Muslim rule. He urged upon the Muslims to regard it as Dar-ul-Islam, because the Muslims were perfectly free to exercise all the essential rites and ceremonies of their religion. The movement for Hijrat for the time being died down. But the doctrine that India was Dar-ul-Harb had not been

295PAKISTAN : NATIONAL FRUSTRATION given up. It was again preached by Muslim patriots during 1920-21, when the Khilafat agitation was goning on. The agitation was not without response from the Muslim masses and there was a goodly number of Muslims who not only showed themselves ready to act in accordance with the Muslim Canon Law but actually abandoned their homes in India and crossed over to Afghanistan. It might also be mentioned that Hijrat is not the only way of escape to Muslims who find themselves in a Dar-ul-Harb. There is another injunction of Muslim Canon Law called Jihad (crusade) by which it becomes “ incumbent on a Muslim ruler to extend the rule of Islam until the whole world shall have been brought under its sway. The world, being divided into two camps, Dar-ul-Islam (abode of Islam), Dar-ul-Harb (abode of war), all countries come under one category or the other. Technically, it is the duty of the Muslim ruler, who is capable of doing so, to transform Dar-ul-Harb into Dar-ul-Islam.” And just as there are instances of the Muslims in India resorting to Hijrat, there are instances showing that they have not hesitated to proclaim Jihad. The curious may examine the history of the Mutiny of 1857 and if he does, he will find that, in part, at any rate, it was really a Jihad proclaimed by the Muslims against the British, and that the Mutiny so far as the Muslims were concerned was a recrudescence of revolt which had been fostered by Sayyed Ahmad who preached to the Musalmans for several decades that owing to the occupation of India by the British the country had become a Dar-ul-Harb. The Mutiny was an attempt by the Muslims to reconvert India into a Dar-ul-Islam. A more recent instance was the invasion of India by Afghanistan in 1919. It was engineered by the Musalmans of India who led by the Khilafatists’ antipathy to the British Government sought the assistance of Afghanistan to emancipate India.* Whether the invasion would have resulted in the emancipation of India or whether it would have resulted in its subjugation, it is not possible to say because the invasion failed to take effect. Apart from this, the fact remains that India, if not exclusively under Muslim *This interesting and awful episode has been examined in some details, giving the part played therein by Mr. Gandhi, in a series of articles in the issues of the Maratha, for the year by Mr. Karandikar.