Follow Us On:
(Author: Naureen Talha)
Publisher Oxford University Press
Pp: 220
Reviewed by Qammar Abbas
This book is the PHD thesis of the author Naureen Talha. She has done her masters in Economics while she got her PHD degree from NIPS. With her background in economics the author has tried to trace out the economic factors which ultimately created the sense of Muslim separatism in India. The major argument of her is that it were the economic factors which prompted Muslims to launch a movement for their rights first and gradually it grows into full fledge political movement, which ultimately ended into a separate Muslim state. She has divided the period of Muslim political consciousness in four phases. The first phase which started after the war of independence was a time in which Muslims were facing the hardest time in their history in India. They were backward in educational field, and British had put the whole responsibility of the war of independence on Muslims. So all the doors of progress were closed to Muslims, Hindus on the other had adapted to new environment very quickly. In this first phase Muslims tried to realize the Government of their backward situation, and asked for more rights and representation in Government services. The author has tried to prove her point of Muslim backwardness by putting a lot of statistical information. From 1921 onwards the second phase started, in this phase the Muslims realized their various backwardness’s. So they tried to overcome these deficiencies by improving their education standard and also by economic uplifting of the Muslim community. They started exerting their demands from the Government in the same style as Hindus were doing. The whole scenario created strife between two communities as well as the sense of competition. The third phase which started from 1935, in this phase the Muslims experienced the clash of economic interests with the majority community. Especially under the Congress rule when the Muslims were crushed economically. The Muslims realized that their interests would not be safe in Hindu dominated India. There was an obvious clash of economic interests between the Hindus and the Muslims, which ultimately turned into the demand of separate nation by the latter community.
The final phase was a phase in which Muslims started building themselves as a separate nation. The educated and well of Muslim classes started promoting the cause of Pakistan. The Muslim industrialists started shifting their industries to the Muslim majority areas and the business classes also promoted the Idea of Pakistan as it was in there better interest. So in creation of Pakistan the efforts of an educated middle class, consisted of salaried class, students, business classes and industrialists were quite obvious.