Rule of the Congress

Supposedly it was the experience of Muslims under the first Congress provincial governments that led them to seek Pakistan.

Majlis-i-Ahrar, Part 3

From Part 2, note the following about the Ahrar: "In their dealings with the Congress, religion was a private affair to them and nationalism their ideology. When they were pitted against the League, their sole consideration was Islam of which they held a monopoly from God, and the League was not only indifferent to but an enemy of Islam."

It suggests that the Ahrar saw the Congress as purely a political party; but the Muslim League as competition in the religious realm.

Of course, the Munir report also says about the Ahrar: "They left the Congress on grounds of religion, and they opposed the Muslim League and Pakistan on that ground." 

The grounds for the Ahrar splitting away from the Congress need to be examined.

On Congress misrule

January 8, 1942,  Viceroy Linlithgow to Secy. of State Amery:

"Equally I doubt the case for taking up Muslim complaints against Congress governments. As you know I never took those complaints too seriously, and I should be surprised if they did not prove to be either psychological in character or the type of quite minor oppression, insolence, injustice, which in a country so immense as this, so densely populated, and so entirely staffed by Indians of every class and kind, is bound to happen once the impression gets abroad in a major province that there is a Hindu raj or a Muslim raj as the case may be in the government of that province."

There is the historical record that we can examine fully later; but the above remark admirably summarizes the results of such a scrutiny.  It is an appropriate rejoinder to those who make allegations as referred to here:

"It was the hue and cry raised against the atrocities allegedly perpetrated by the Congress ministries in the United Provinces and Bihar that eventually gave the League the nationwide stature and strength to challenge the regional parties in the so-called Muslim majority province where it had not fared well at all."

The foundation of Muslim League stature and strength was falsehood, (and the cry that Islam is in danger).