Vol. 8 · pages 321–325

296 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES rule, is a Dar-ul-Harb and the Musalmans according to the tenets of Islam are justified in proclaiming a Jihad. Not only can they proclaim Jihad but they can call the aid of a foreign Muslim power to make Jihad a success, or if the foreign Muslim power intends to proclaim a Jihad, help that power in making its endeavour a success. This was clearly explained by Mr. Mahomed Ali in his address to the Jury in the Sessions Court. Mr. Mahomed Ali said:— “But since the Government is apparently uninformed about the manner in which our Faith colours and is meant to colour all our actions, including those which, for the sake of convenience, are generally characterised as mundane, one thing must be made clear, and it is this : Islam does not permit the believer to pronounce an adverse judgment against another believer without more convincing proof; and we could not, of course, fight against our Muslim brothers without making sure that they were guilty of wanton aggression, and did not take up arms in defence of their faith”. (This was in relation to the war that was going on between the British and the Afghans in 1919.) “Now our position is this. Without better proof of the Amir’s malice or madness we certainly do not want Indian soldiers, including the Musalmans, and particularly with our own encouragement and assistance, to attack Afghanistan and effectively occupy it first, and then be a prey to more perplexity and perturbation afterwards. “But if on the contrary His Majesty the Amir has no quarrel with India and her people and if his motive must be attributed, as the Secretary of State has publicly said, to the unrest which exists throughout the Mahomedan world, an unrest with which he openly professed to be in cordial sympathy, that is to say, if impelled by the same religious motive that has forced Muslims to contemplate Hijrat, the alternative of the weak, which is all that is within our restricted means, His Majesty has been forced to contemplate Jihad, the alternative of those comparatively stronger which he may have found within his means; if he has taken up the challenge of those who believed in force and yet more force, and he intends to try conclusions with those who require Musalmans to wage war against the Khilafat and those engaged in Jihad; who are in wrongful occupation of the Jazirut-ul-Arab and the holy places ; who aim at the weakening of Islam ; discriminate against it and deny to us full freedom to advocate its cause; then the clear law of Islam requires that in the first place, in no case whatever should a Musalman render anyone any assistance against him ; and in the next place if the Jihad approaches my region every Musalman in that region must join the Mujahidin and assist them to the best of his or her power. “Such is the clear and undisputed law of Islam ; and we had explained this to the Committee investigating our case when it had put to us a

297PAKISTAN : NATIONAL FRUSTRATION question about the religious duty of a Muslim subject of a nonMuslim-power when Jihad had been declared against it, long before there was any notion of trouble on the Frontiers, and when the late Amir was still alive”. A third tenet which calls for notice as being relevant to the issue is that Islam does not recognize territorial affinities. Its affinities are social and religious and therefore extraterritorial. Here again Maulana Mahomed Ali will be the best witness. When he was committed to the Sessions Court in Karachi Mr. Mahomed Ali addressing the Jury said :— “One thing has to be made clear as we have since discovered that the doctrine to which we shall now advert is not so generally known in non-Muslim and particularly in official circles as it ought to be. A Musalman’ s faith does not consist merely in believing in a set of doctrines and living up to that belief himself; he must also exert himself to the fullest extent of his power, of course without resort to any compulsion, to the end that others also conform to the prescribed belief and practices. This is spoken of in the Holy Koran as Amribilmaroof and Nahi anilmunkar ; and certain distinct chapters of the Holy Prophet’s traditions relate to this essential doctrine of Islam. A Musalman cannot say : ‘ I am not my brother’s keeper’, for in a sense he is and his own salvation cannot be assured to him unless he exhorts others also to do good and dehorts them against doing evil. If therefore any Musalman is being compelled to wage war against the Mujahid of Islam, he must not only be a conscientious objector himself, but must, if he values his own salvation, persuade his brothers also at whatever risk to himself to take similar objection. Then and not until then, can he hope for salvation. This is our belief as well as the belief of every other Musalman and in our humble way we seek to live up to it; and if we are denied freedom to inculcate this doctrine, we must conclude that the land, where this freedom does not exist, is not safe for Islam.” This is the basis of Pan-Islamism. It is this which leads every Musalman in India to say that he is a Muslim first and Indian afterwards. It is this sentiment which explains why the Indian Muslim has taken so small a part in the advancement of India but has spent himself to exhaustion* by taking up the cause of Muslim countries and why Muslim countries occupy the first place and India occupies a second place in his thoughts. His Highness the Aga Khan justifies it by saying† :— *Between 1912 when the first Balkan war began and 1922 when Turkey made peace with the European Powers, the Indian Muslims did not bother about Indian politics in the least. They were completely absorbed in the fate of Turkey and Arabia. †India in Transition, p. 157.

298 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES “This is a right and legitimate Pan-Islamism to which every sincere and believing Mahomedan belongs—that is, the theory of the spiritual brotherhood and unity of the children of the Prophet. It is a deep, perennial element in that Perso-Arabian culture, that great family of civilization to which we gave the name Islamic in the first chapter. It connotes charity and good-will towards fellowbelievers everywhere from China to Morocco, from the Volga to Singapore. It means an abiding interest in the literature of Islam, in her beautiful arts, in her lovely architecture, in her entrancing poetry. It also means a true reformation— a return to the early and pure simplicity of the faith, to its preaching by persuasion and argument, to the manifestation of a spiritual power in individual lives, to beneficent activity of mankind. The natural and worthy spiritual movement makes not only the Master and His teaching but also His children of all climes an object of affection to the Turk or the Afghan, to the Indian or the Egyptian. A famine or a desolating fire in the Muslim quarters of Kashgar or Sarajevo would immediately draw the sympathy and material assistance of the Mahomedan of Delhi or Cairo. The real spiritual and cultural unity of Islam must ever grow, for to the follower of the Prophet it is the foundation of the life of the soul.” If this spiritual Pan-Islamism seeks to issue forth in political Pan-Islamism, it cannot be said to be unnatural. It is perhaps that feeling which was in the mind of the Aga Khan when he said* :— “It is for the Indian patriot to recognise that Persia, Afghanistan and possibly Arabia must sooner or later come within the orbit of some — Continental Power—such as Germany, or what may grow out of the break-up of Russia—or must throw in their lot with that of the Indian Empire, with which they have so much more genuine affinity. The world forces that move small States into closer contact with powerful neighbours, though so far most visible in Europe, will inevitably make themselves felt in Asia. Unless she is willing to accept the prospect of having powerful and possibly inimical neighbours to watch, and the heavy military burdens thereby entailed, India cannot afford to neglect to draw her Mahomedan neighbour States to herself by the ties of mutual interest and goodwill. “In a word, the path of beneficent and growing union must be based on a federal India, with every member exercising her individual rights, her historic peculiarities and natural interests, yet protected by a common defensive system and customs union from external danger and economic exploitation by stronger forces. Such a federal India would promptly bring Ceylon to the bosom of her natural mother, and the further developments we have indicated would follow. We can build a great South Asiatic Federation by now laying the foundations wide and deep on justice, on liberty, and on recognition for every race, every religion, and every historical entity. *India in Transition , p. 169.

299PAKISTAN : NATIONAL FRUSTRATION “A sincere policy of assisting both Persia and Afghanistan in the onward march which modern conditions demand, will raise two natural ramparts for India in the north-west that neither German nor Slav, Turk nor Mongol, can ever hope to destroy. They will be drawn of their own accord towards the Power which provides the object lesson of a healthy form of federalism in India, with real autonomy for each province, with the internal freedom of principalities assured, with a revived and liberalised kingdom of Hyderabad, including the Berars, under the Nizam. They would see in India freedom and order, autonomy and yet Imperial union, and would appreciate for themselves the advantages of a confederation assuring the continuance of internal self-government buttressed by goodwill, the immense and unlimited strength of that great Empire on which the sun never sets. The British position of Mesopotamia and Arabia also, whatever its nominal form may be, would be infinitely strengthened by the policy I have advocated.” The South Asiatic Federation was more for the good of the Muslim countries such as Arabia, Mesopotamia and Afghanistan than for the good of India,* This shows how very naturally the thoughts of Indian Musalmans are occupied by considerations of Muslim countries other than those of India. Government is based on obedience to authority. But those, who are eager to establish self-government of Hindus and Muslims, do not seem to have stopped to inquire on what such obedience depends and how far such obedience would be forthcoming in the usual course and in moments of crisis. This is a very important question. For, if obedience fails, self-government means working together and not working under. That may be so in an ideal sense. But in practical and work-a-day world, if the elements brought under one representative government are disproportionate in numbers, the minor section will have to work under the major section and whether it works under the major section or not *What a terrible thing it would have been if this South Asiatic Federation had come into being? Hindus would have been reduced to the position of a distressed minority. The Indian Annual Register says : “Supporters of British Imperialism in the Muslim community of India have also been active trying by the organization of an Anglo-Muslim alliance to stabilize the rule of Britain in Southern Asia, from Arabia to the Malaya Archipelago, wherein the Muslims will be junior partners in the firm at present, hoping to rise in time to the senior partnership. It was to some such feeling and anticipation that we must trace the scheme adumbrated by His Highness the Aga Khan in his book India in Transition published during the war years. The scheme had planned for the setting up of a South Western Asiatic Federation of which India might be a constituent unit. After the war when Mr. Winston Churchill was Secretary of State for the Colonies in the British Cabinet, he found in the archives of the Middle Eastern Department a scheme ready-made of a Middle Eastern Empire”— 1938, Vol. II, Section on “India in Home Polity”, p. 48.

300 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES will depend upon how far it is disposed to obey the authority of the government carrried on by the major section. So important is this factor in the success of self-government that Balfour may be said to have spoken only part of the truth when he made its success dependent upon parties being fundamentally at one. He failed to note that willingness to obey the authority of Government is a factor equally necessary for the success of any scheme of self-government. The importance of this second condition, the existence of which is necessary for a successful working of parliamentary government, has been discussed by* James Bryce. While dealing with the basis of political cohesion, Bryce points out that while force may have done much to build up States, force is only one among many factors and not the most important. In creating, moulding, expanding and knitting together political communities what is more important than force is obedience. This willingness to obey and comply with the sanctions of a government depends upon certain psychological attributes of the individual citizens and groups. According to Bryce the attitude which produces obedience are indolence, deference, sympathy, fear and reason. All are not of the same value. Indeed they are relative in their importance as causes producing a disposition to obey. As formulated by Bryce, in the sum total of obedience the percentage due to fear and to reason respectively is much less than that due to indolence and less also than that due to deference or sympathy. According to this view deference and sympathy are, therefore, the two most powerful factors which predispose a people to obey the authority of its government. Willingness to render obedience to the authority of the government is as essential for the stability of government as the unity of political parties on the fundamentals of the state. It is impossible for any sane person to question the importance of obedience in the maintenance of the state. To believe in civil disobedience is to believe in anarchy. * Studies in History and Jurisprudence , Vol. II. Essay I.