Volume 7, No. 6, June 2025
Editor: Rashed Rahman
The national question in Pakistan has no lesser importance than in the Indian Union. Already during the creation of Pakistan a sharp contradiction emerged between the Muslim League (ML) and the political organisations of the Afghans on the question of inclusion of the Afghan territories of India. The Red Shirts and its allied organisations were against the inclusion of their territories in Pakistan and demanded the creation of an independent Pathan state – Pushtunistan or Pathanistan – out of the Afghan territories of India. Consequently the Afghan organisations boycotted the referendum held in 1947 on the question of inclusion of the territories of the North West border province in Pakistan, as the British government refused to include in the list of questions also the question of creation of Pathanistan. The demand for an independent Afghan state was popular in the border strip inhabited by the tribes of Wazirs, the Afridi and others. In spite of all the manoeuvring of the British government and the ML and subsequently the government of Pakistan, the movement for the creation of Pathanistan did not stop even after the formation of new dominions. This movement got overt support from the government of Afghanistan, which protested particularly strongly against the inclusion of the border tribes in Pakistan. There are no doubts that the movement of the Pathans was partly used by the British and American imperialists for forcing the Pakistan government to give its permission for the Anglo-American army to control the strip inhabited by border tribes. But this movement in the main was a people’s movement directed against both the British plan of partitioning India as well as against Pakistan as a stooge of the British.
The Anti-British movement in the North-Western Frontier Province (NWFP) and in the Afghan princely states under Indian jurisdiction and particularly in the strip of the so-called independent tribes never stopped since the time of their inclusion in the British Indian Empire. Independence from British domination was always the end, though maybe one not always clearly recognised, aim of the struggle of the Afghans of India. In 1919, during the Afghan war for independence against the British, sympathy for Afghanistan swelled among the Afghans of India, but after the formation in 1929 of a reactionary regime in Afghanistan that was looking for accord with the British imperialists, the Afghans of India began to look for other allies in their struggle against colonial oppression. Specifically, the anti-British course of the national movement of the Afghans of India, and not sympathy for Indian bourgeois nationalism or, more so, for Gandhism, explains the relations between the Afghan national movement and the Indian National Congress (INC).
Only the top layer among the leadership of the Red Shirts, mainly the landlords – Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Khan Sahib and others were genuine Congressists and followers of Gandhi. The major part of the Red Shirts who followed them had very little in common with the INC and even less with Gandhism. These were Afghan peasants aspiring for freedom from the British and allying with the INC only because the latter declared full independence of India as its final goal.
The ML, always closely linked to the British government, for this very reason was never popular among such fanatical Muslims as the Indian Afghans/Pathans. And when the question of inclusion of the Afghan territories of India into Pakistan surfaced, the majority of the Afghans came out against it. A party with Abdul Ghaffar Khan as its leader was set up in Pakistan, which declared its goal as transformation of Pakistan into a federation of ‘socialist republics’. This programme was clearly pure demagogy. Abdul Ghaffar Khan never had anything in common with socialism. However, he continued the struggle against the government of Pakistan and soon he and his followers – the Afghan nationalists – were thrown in jail. Even after this the movement for Pathanistan carried on, but as a result of the repression the centre of the movement shifted to the strip of land of the border tribes, specially Waziristan. The well-known Fakir Ipi actively worked for the creation of Pathanistan. In 1951 the Pathan problem remained one of the serious problems in Pakistan.
In 1948 in Pakistan the Sindh problem surfaced. The city of Karachi was made the temporary capital of Pakistan, and later the decision was taken to make it the permanent capital. Lahore, the largest city of Pakistan and the historical centre of Punjab, suffered greatly during the riots in August-September 1947 and was a very volatile place. Declaration of Karachi as the capital city of Pakistan and its separation from the province of Sindh into an autonomous administrative unit drew the anger of the population of Sindh as the Sindhis considered Karachi as their national capital. The Sindhis were always very sensitive to all sorts of projects for the domination of Sindh by Punjab because they considered that such moves will be detrimental to their national aspirations and will put them in a position of dependency on the Punjabis. The working masses of Sindh are not well organised, the class of workers is minuscule, and the peasantry is backward and oppressed by the feudal landlords who do not want any conflict with the government. The merchant bourgeoisie of Sindh, mainly Hindus, is afraid of raising its voice though earlier it had strongly opposed the domination of Sindh by Punjab.
The Bengal problem has great importance for Pakistan. The Bengalis constitute more than half the population of Pakistan. They are the most advanced of the nationalities of Pakistan. The Bengalis of East Pakistan have no links, neither economic nor cultural, with West Pakistan. That is why the government of Pakistan wanted to bind Bengal to Pakistan by introducing in Pakistan, including Bengal, Urdu as the single state language and by escalating pan-Islamic propaganda. A common religion and a common language, according to the government of Pakistan, should have been able to unite East Bengal with West Pakistan. But the reactionary endeavour at assimilation through forcing an alien language on the population failed. Already in Jinnah’s lifetime, in the beginning of 1948, the decision of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan to declare Urdu as the mandatory state language of all of Pakistan resulted in serious disturbances in Dhaka amongst the government employees and specially the students. They demanded that Bengali be the state language in East Pakistan, that the teaching in universities and official work in state and provincial departments be conducted in Bengali, etc.20 Demonstrations and protest meetings were held and there were even clashes with the police against the policy of forcing Urdu as the mandatory state language on the Bengalis. These disturbances forced Jinnah to go to East Bengal and talk to the students to convince them to accept Urdu as the language of all of Pakistan. In doing so, Jinnah declared that this would not be to the detriment of the Bengali language that would be considered as the official language of the province.
The Bengal problem was not limited only to the issue of language. In March 1949, the representatives of East Bengal in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan during the discussions on the budget strongly opposed the policy of the Central Government of Pakistan, which declared that it views East Bengal only as a place from where it can extract resources but is not interested in its development. The Bengali national development that was artificially weakened by incitement of Hindu-Muslim pogroms over a period of 40 years, is again beginning to gain momentum both in the West as well as in the East Pakistani Bengal. The intensification of the national and peasants’ movement in Bengal can explain the provocation of Hindu-Muslim pogroms in both parts in February 1950. The ruling groups of the Indian Union and Pakistan, following the example set by their British mentor, are trying to drown the people’s movement of the Bengalis in blood.
The ruling grouping of Pakistan is trying to counter the demands for autonomy of the national provinces as well as the liberation movement of the Pathans and the Bengalis with the propaganda of pan-Islamism and the Shariat, the unity of all Muslims and forcing of Urdu as the state language of all of Pakistan. However, if the pan-Islamic propaganda still makes some impact among the nationalities of Pakistan, then the attempt to make Urdu as the state language of all of Pakistan only strengthens the national movement.
The absence of cultural and economic links between East Bengal and West Pakistan makes Pakistan an extremely unstable state. This situation is extensively exploited by British imperialism. However, the progression of the national-liberation movement in South-East Asia, particularly in Pakistan’s neighbour Burma, may become a signal for the intensification of the national-liberation people’s movement in Bengal.
Therefore, both in the Indian Union and Pakistan after the partition of India the national question has become one of the most crucial questions of political life.
An examination of the national movement that is gaining momentum and increasing in scale both in the Indian Union as well as in Pakistan allows us to reach the following conclusions:
The national movement is growing unevenly. In the territories of the Marathis, Malayali and particularly in Andhra, wide sections of the working people are participating in the movement and it has taken on very strong proportions. This movement is a bit weaker in Bengal, Karnataka, and in Tamilnad; it is even weaker in Gujarat. Therefore, the movement is most active in regions where the remnants of feudal relations in the countryside are greater but where capitalism is on the rise at the same time.
The experience of India also demonstrates that fully and almost fully formed nations with a developed national movement having well-defined national demands do not always have their own strong national bourgeoisie. Precisely the national movement assumes the most active forms among peoples like the Telugu and the Marathi, whose national bourgeoisie is weak and has not been able to link up economically or politically with the British imperialists. Consequently, the competition between the bourgeoisies of various nations in the national movement in the period of the general crisis of capitalism plays a secondary role and the national movement is an expression of the struggle of the masses of workers, the peasantry and the petty bourgeois layers of the towns against the oppression of foreign imperialists, feudal landlords and the dominant monopolistic bourgeoisie in India.
In 1925, J V Stalin in response to Semich’s article on the national question in Yugoslavia wrote: “The essence of the national question today lies in the struggle that the masses of the people of the colonies and dependent nationalities are waging against financial exploitation, against the political enslavement and cultural effacement of those colonies and nationalities by the imperialist bourgeoisie of the ruling nationality. What significance can the competitive struggle between the bourgeoisies of different nationalities have when the national question is presented in that way? Certainly not decisive significance, and, in certain cases, not even important significance. It is quite evident that the main point here is not that the bourgeoisie of one nationality is beating, or may beat, the bourgeoisie of another nationality in the competitive struggle, but that the imperialist group of the ruling nationality is exploiting and oppressing the bulk of the masses, above all the peasant masses, of the colonies and dependent nationalities and that, by oppressing and exploiting them, it is drawing them into the struggle against imperialism, converting them into allies of the proletarian revolution.”21
The struggle of the peasant masses against the feudal vestiges dominant in the Indian countryside – against feudal land ownership, the rule of the princes and usurer enslavement – forms the main content of the national movements of the Indian Union and Pakistan. The national bourgeoisie also participated in the national movement fairly actively but only in regions where this movement assumed extremely acute form; it was not the motive force.
It is in this light that the role of such national organisations as Andhra Mahasabha, Maharashtra Conference and others must be assessed. These organisations are an important ally of the proletariat in a democratic revolution. They mainly consist of peasants, the democratic layer of intellectuals and the urban poor, but, in them, there are also representatives of the top layer of tenants and the national bourgeoisie. In this light, these organisations must not be equated with peasants’ unions, workers’ unions, etc., that are more homogenous regarding their class content than the above-mentioned organisations. These organisations while fighting against the national policy of the central government of the Indian Union and Pakistan play a certain progressive role and even, as in Telengana, participated actively in the peasant uprising. But under increasing repression of the reactionary forces they can always be splintered and the bourgeois-kulak section of the leadership can betray the movement. The reactionary national policy of the governments of India and Pakistan is a result of the fact that they are governments of landlords, princes and large capitalists that are put on the leash by British imperialism.
Comrade Stalin wrote in 1917 about the reasons of national oppression in Russia: “This is to be explained chiefly by the fact that, owing to its very position, the landed aristocracy is (cannot but be!) the most determined and implacable foe of all liberty, national liberty included; that liberty in general, and national liberty in particular, undermines (cannot but undermine!) the very foundations of the political rule of the landed aristocracy. Thus the way to put an end to national oppression and to create the actual conditions necessary for national liberty is to drive the feudal aristocracy from the political stage, to wrest the power from its hands.”22
The landlords, princes and the monopolistic bourgeoisie of India and the British and American imperialists are the carriers of national oppression. This ensures the important role of the national movements in the struggle for genuinely independent and democratic India and Pakistan. The national and the peasants’ movements in India and Pakistan confirms the fact that the revolutionary potential of the national movement in these countries has not been totally eliminated and that it can become a strong ally of the proletariat in the struggle for people’s democracy.
Speaking about the tasks of the revolution in China, J V Stalin, basing himself on the tactical principles of Leninism, wrote: “I have in mind such tactical principles of Leninism as:
These tasks, put up by comrade Stalin, are fully applicable for India and Pakistan.
Endnotes:
From: A M Dyakov: Indiya vo bremya i posle vtoroi mirovoi voiny 1939-1949 (Izdatelstvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, Moscow, 1952, pp. 208-222).
Translated from the Russian by Tahir Asghar
Appendix
From: The Memorandum of the CPI to the British Cabinet Mission
The Provisional Government, shall, therefore, convene the Constituent Assembly on the basis of adult franchise and of the recognition of the right of self-determination for provinces, reconstituted as new national units (as explained below).
Self-Determination
The acute differences between the Congress and the League on the issue of Constituent Assembly can only be settled by the just application of the principle of self-determination.
We suggest that the Provisional Government should be charged with the task of setting up a Boundaries Commission to redraw the boundaries on the basis of natural ancient homelands of every people, so that demarcated provinces become, as far as possible, linguistically and culturally homogeneous national units, e.g., Sind, Pathanland, Western Punjab.* The people of each such unit should have the unfettered right of self-determination, i.e., the right to decide freely whether they will join the Indian Union or form a separate sovereign state or another Indian Union.
The Communist Party stands for a free, voluntary, democratic Indian Union, in a common brotherhood to defend the freedom and solve the problems of poverty which require the co-operation of all. It is only on the basis of the application of the principle of self-determination, as indicated above, that the Indian unity can be preserved.
* The following are the national units that will come into existence after demarcation of the boundaries, as suggested above, and after the dissolution of the Indian states, as contemplated under Section 6: Tamilnad, Andhradesha, Kerala, Karnatak, Maharashtra, Gujerat, Rajasthan, Sind, Baluchistan, Pathanland, Kashmir, Western Punjab, Central Punjab, Hindustan, Bihar, Assam, Bengal, Orissa.
Indian States
The Indian people are determined to put an end to the Princes’ autocracy, which holds sway over one-third of India. Indian freedom and Indian democracy will have no meaning – in fact, they will be constantly endangered – if one-third of India is allowed to remain under the yoke of these medieval autocrats. The Princes of the British Government they have been in the past, and are even today, maintained by British bayonets as a useful prop to British rule. India regards the so-called treaties and obligations of the British Government as merely a conspiracy against Indian democracy. There should be, therefore, no question of inviting the Princes to share power in the Interim Government or of allowing them any share in determining the decisions of the Constituent Assembly.
The peoples of the Indian States should, therefore, have the same rights and franchise as the rest of the Indian people. The people of each should have the full right to decide through a freely elected Constituent Assembly whether they should join the Indian Union as a separate province or join any particular reconstituted province, inhabited by people of the same nationality…
Conclusion
The Communist Party is of the opinion that only if the British Government proceeds along the lines laid down in this Memorandum, will it be able to achieve a stable, democratic settlement between the Indian people and the British people on the basis of equality – thus solving one of the knottiest problems of world security and peace among peoples.
Any attempt, however, to exploit the differences among the Indian people, to impose an arbitrary partition, and to retain the Princes in order to perpetuate British domination, will be resisted by the Indian people with all the strength at their command.
April 15, 1946, Bombay.
From: (Edited) G Adhikari: Marxist Miscellany, Volume Eight (People’s Publishing House, Bombay, 1946, pp.120-24).
(Concluded)