If you grew up in Pakistan, you were probably taught that the Pakistan Movement was a unified struggle, that all Muslims of the subcontinent rallied behind Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League to demand a separate homeland. The story goes something like this: Hindus and Muslims were two separate nations, and the only path to safety and dignity for Muslims was Pakistan.
But here’s the uncomfortable question this book forces you to ask: What if that narrative is incomplete? What if the demand for Pakistan faced fierce opposition from some of the most prominent Muslim scholars, political leaders, and religious organizations of the time?
Muslims against the Muslim League: Critiques of the Idea of Pakistan (Cambridge University Press, 2017), edited by Ali Usman Qasmi and Megan Eaton Robb, does something extraordinary. It pulls back the curtain on a largely forgotten chapter of South Asian history, the story of Muslims who said “no” to Pakistan.
Not just a few dissenting voices, but a remarkable spectrum of opposition that included Deobandi scholars, Sufi masters, Shi‘a leaders, Baluch nationalists, communists, and even some of the most revered figures in Islamic intellectual history.
Overview
Muslims against the Muslim League is a collection of fourteen scholarly essays that collectively dismantle the myth of a monolithic Muslim community united behind the Pakistan demand. The editors argue that the Muslim League’s success, measured by the creation of Pakistan in 1947, has led historians to overlook the rich and contentious debates that surrounded the idea of a separate Muslim state.
The book focuses on “the voices of dissent coming from political leaders, religious organizations, ‘ulamas and activists who offered, with varying degrees of success, alternative visions and critiques of the idea of Pakistan”.
What makes this volume particularly valuable is its geographical and ideological breadth. The essays cover Muslim majority and minority areas alike, spanning the North-West Frontier Province, Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan, East Bengal, and North India.
The critics examined include Deobandis, Sufis, Shi‘a ‘ulama, communist activists, and Indian nationalists. In other words, this isn’t a book about “Hindus versus Muslims”, it’s a book about Muslims versus Muslims over the very meaning of Muslim identity and political destiny.
Who Will Actually Love Muslims against the Muslim League
This book isn’t for everyone, and I want to be honest about that upfront.
You will love Muslims against the Muslim League if:
- You’re a student or scholar of South Asian history, Islamic studies, or political science.
- You grew up in Pakistan or India and want to understand the complexities behind the narratives you were taught in school.
- You’re fascinated by intellectual history, how ideas about nation, community, and religion evolve over time.
- You appreciate rigorous, evidence-based scholarship that challenges conventional wisdom.
- You want to understand the roots of Pakistan’s ongoing struggles with identity, sectarianism, and regional nationalism.
You might bounce off Muslims against the Muslim League if:
- You’re looking for a light, popular history. This is dense academic writing.
- You prefer clear heroes and villains. The book presents nuanced, sometimes contradictory figures who defy easy categorization.
- You’re not familiar with South Asian history or Islamic terminology. The book assumes some background knowledge.
For the right reader, though, this is an eye-opening, transformative read. As one reviewer noted, it’s “something readers in Pakistan would love to have on their bookshelves, and curriculum designers wouldn’t even have in the bookstores”.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
Title: Muslims against the Muslim League: Critiques of the Idea of Pakistan
Editors: Ali Usman Qasmi and Megan Eaton Robb
Publication Details: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Ali Usman Qasmi is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan. He completed his PhD from the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University and was a Newton Fellow for Post-Doctoral research at Royal Holloway College, University of London.
His previous works include Questioning the Authority of the Past: The Ahl al-Qur’an Movements in the Punjab and The Ahmadis and the Politics of Religious Exclusion in Pakistan, which won the Karachi Literature Festival Peace Prize in 2015.
Megan Eaton Robb is Assistant Professor at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. She completed her DPhil from the Oriental Institute at the University of Oxford and was previously a Junior Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.
Her research interests include gender and religion in South Asia, the history of Islam in South Asia, and Hindi and Urdu public spheres.
Context of Muslims against the Muslim League
The book addresses a significant gap in academic literature. As the editors note in the introduction, “The popularity of the Muslim League and its idea of Pakistan has largely been measured in terms of its success in achieving the end goal – creation of a sovereign state in the contiguous Muslim majority regions of North West and North East India”.
This success, however, “has led to an oversight of various Muslim leaders and organizations which were opposed to this demand”.
The volume addresses this gap by “taking stock of multiple narratives about Muslim identity formation in the context of debates about Partition, historicizes those narratives, and reads them in the light of the larger political milieu of the period”.
Purpose of Muslims against the Muslim League
The central argument of the book is that “the movement for Pakistan inspired a contentious, influential conversation on the definition of the Muslim qaum”.
The editors argue that understanding this conversation, and the various critiques of the Muslim League that emerged from it, is essential for understanding both the Pakistan movement itself and the subsequent history of the region.
As the introduction puts it, the volume goes “beyond the machinations at the level of high politics to how the movement for Pakistan inspired a contentious, influential conversation on the definition of the Muslim qaum”.
Rather than viewing opposition to the League as determined by the dictates of the League’s own policies, “this volume highlights critiques of Pakistan according to the logic of its critics”.
2. Background
To understand why so many Muslims opposed the Muslim League, you need to understand how the concept of the “Muslim qaum” (nation or community) evolved in colonial India.
The term “qaum” underwent significant transformation during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As the editors explain, it could refer to a shared identity held by a community, a nation, a tribe, or a religious sect. In the nineteenth century, figures like Sayyid Ahmad Khan used “qaum” in an inclusive sense, including both Hindus and Muslims as part of the Indian nation.
By the early twentieth century, however, the term had begun to shift. The Minto-Morley reforms of 1909 granted separate electorates for Muslims, institutionalizing religious divisions in the political arena. The Muslim delegation that demanded these reforms told the Viceroy that “the Muslims of India should not be regarded as a mere minority, but as a nation within a nation whose rights and obligations should be guaranteed by statute”.
The Lahore Resolution of March 1940 marked a decisive turning point. Muslims were no longer simply a minority seeking political rights within India, they were now a nation with sovereign claims.
But this transformation was far from uncontested. As the book demonstrates, a remarkable array of Muslim voices challenged this new definition of Muslim political subjectivity.
3. Muslims against the Muslim League Summary
Muslims against the Muslim League contains fourteen essays, each examining a different critic or critique of the Muslim League and the idea of Pakistan. Let me walk you through the most significant ones.
Chapter 1: Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani and the Jami’at ‘Ulama-i-Hind
Barbara D. Metcalf opens the volume with an examination of perhaps the most prominent religious opposition to Pakistan. Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani (1879–1957) was a leading scholar of the Deoband seminary and president of the Jami’at ‘Ulama-i-Hind (JUH), an organization of Islamic scholars affiliated with the Congress.
Madani’s opposition to Pakistan wasn’t based on secular nationalism, it was grounded in Islamic theology itself. He argued that the Covenant of Medina, dating back to the time of Prophet Muhammad, established a precedent for Muslims, Jews, and pagans living together under a single political community.
For Madani, this demonstrated that Islam was compatible with “composite nationalism”, the idea that people of different religions could form a single nation based on shared territory.
Madani’s argument went beyond theology. He also offered pragmatic reasons for opposing partition: division would leave smaller states vulnerable to exploitation, and an “Islamic” state would be impossible to establish given the deep divisions among Muslims themselves.
As Metcalf notes, Madani “presciently pointed out, anyone who thought they could escape the problem of Hindu-Muslim communal violence… ought to reckon with internally generated intra-Muslim outbreaks, not least if an ‘Islamic’ system was imposed”.
In one of his pamphlets, Hamara Hindustan aur us ke faza’il (Our India and its Excellences), Madani made the emotional case for staying in India. He argued that Muslims’ attachment to India was demonstrated by their burial practices, “Muslims choose to be buried in India even after their death, clear proof of the fact that India was as dear to Muslims as it was to any other community”.
Chapter 2: The Partition Conundrum
M. Raisur Rahman shifts the focus from high politics to the experiences of ordinary Muslims in the qasbahs (small towns) of North India. He argues that there was no “linear response” to the Muslim League’s Two-Nation theory, often, members of the same family chose different paths.
Rahman draws on memoirs, letters, and poetry to show how qasbah residents navigated the partition conundrum. Some supported Pakistan and migrated; others opposed it and stayed; many were simply uncertain.
As he puts it, “ambiguities and the lack of a clear conviction was what people in the 1940s and 1950s endured, given their own insecurities as they grappled with the realities of the moment”.
One particularly poignant example is Chaudhary Muhammad Ali of Rudauli, a taluqdar and literary figure who opposed the Two-Nation theory even as members of his immediate family opted to settle in Pakistan. After partition, his children left for Pakistan while he stayed behind.
He wrote melancholic letters to his daughter Hima, expressing his sense of loss and his disillusionment with post-independence India. As he put it, the choice left for someone like him was “either Pakistan or qabaristan (graveyard)”.
Chapter 3: Choudhary Rahmat Ali and his Political Imagination
Tahir Kamran explores the fascinating case of Choudhary Rahmat Ali (1897–1951), the man who actually coined the name “Pakistan” in his 1933 pamphlet Now or Never.
Despite this contribution, Rahmat Ali has remained a peripheral figure in Pakistani national history.
Why? For one thing, Rahmat Ali had nothing but disdain for Muhammad Ali Jinnah. He derisively branded Jinnah “Quisling-i-Azam” instead of Quaid-i-Azam. More fundamentally, Rahmat Ali’s vision of Pakistan was radically different from what actually emerged.
He envisioned a “Continent of Dinia”, a deliberate distortion of the name India, in which not only would all religious communities have their own regions, but which would safeguard the interests of all Muslims in the Indian subcontinent.
Rahmat Ali’s political imagination was shaped by pan-Islamism and a deep antipathy toward Hindus, which may have originated in the communal tensions of his native Punjab. His vision evolved from the “Pak Plan” of 1933 to the “Continent of Dinia” in the 1940s, and eventually to the “Cultural Orbit of Pakasia.”
Despite his role in naming Pakistan, his radical vision was inconsistent with what the Muslim League actually demanded, and that’s precisely why he’s been marginalized.
Chapter 4: Differentiating between Pakistan and Napak-istan
Ali Usman Qasmi’s own chapter examines Maulana Abul Ala Maududi (1903–1979), the founder of Jama’at-i-Islami and one of the most influential Islamist thinkers of the twentieth century. Maududi fiercely opposed the Muslim League and the idea of Pakistan, but not for the reasons you might expect.
Maududi wasn’t a secular nationalist or a Congress supporter. His opposition came from the opposite direction: he believed the Muslim League’s Pakistan would be a Muslim national state rather than a true Islamic state.
In his view, the League’s demand for Pakistan was too close to Western notions of nationhood rather than corresponding to the strict Islamic conceptual alternative of Muslim universalism.
In one of his most striking formulations, Maududi argued that if Pakistan was not based on the sovereignty of God, it would be “Napak-istan” (land of the impure) rather than Pakistan. He wrote: “As a Muslim, I am not interested in the issue that Muslim rule gets established in the Muslim majority areas of India… If it makes me happy that instead of Ramdas, an Abdullah will sit on God’s throne, then it is simply nationalism, not Islam”.
Maududi’s critique wasn’t just theoretical. He was deeply concerned that the Muslim League’s leaders, including Jinnah himself, had little knowledge of Islam. “From Muslim League’s greatest leader to its junior leaders,” he wrote, “there is not a single individual whose mind and thought is Islamic, and who looks at affairs from an Islamic perspective”.
Chapter 5: Advising the Army of Allah
Megan Eaton Robb examines Ashraf Ali Thanawi (1863–1943), a pre-eminent Deobandi Sufi-scholar who took a more ambiguous position. Thanawi didn’t oppose Pakistan outright, but he tried to guide the Muslim League toward what he considered a more Islamic path.
Thanawi wanted the Muslim League to transform into “lashkar-i Allah” (an army of Allah). He laid out specific conditions: all members should acknowledge belief in Allah, stay free from Westernizing influences, distinguish themselves from non-Muslims in appearance and behavior, observe the call to prayer, pay zakat, and observe Ramadan.
Most importantly, Thanawi insisted on the inclusion of a “consultative body” of ‘ulama to advise the League. He hoped to establish the ‘ulama as partners in nation-building.
However, as Robb demonstrates, the League leadership largely ignored Thanawi’s advice while using his name for political branding.
After his death in 1943, his disciples, particularly Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, became more directly involved in League politics, helping to pass the 1949 Objectives Resolution that attempted to define Pakistan’s Islamic character.
Chapter 6: The Illusory Promise of Freedom
Ali Raza tells the story of Mian Iftikhar-ud-Din (1907–1962), a progressive politician who started in the Congress, joined the Muslim League, and then became one of its harshest critics after Pakistan’s creation.
Iftikhar-ud-Din saw the demand for Pakistan as a progressive movement that would ensure the unity and harmony of India. As Raza notes, he “saw the demand for Pakistan as a progressive movement that, paradoxically, was going to ensure the unity and harmony of India”.
After independence, however, he became disillusioned. As Minister for Refugees and Rehabilitation in Punjab, he proposed radical measures: breaking up large estates, distributing land to refugees, and implementing “Islamic Socialism.”
His proposals were met with hostility.
As he put it in one of his most memorable statements: “What do they know of freedom, who only freedom know?” He was expelled from the Muslim League in 1950 and went on to found the Azad Pakistan Party, arguing that “the Muslim League having thrown all its promises and its ideals to the winds and having failed utterly in the task of building up economic, social and political life of the country, stood naked and discredited in the eyes of the peoples”.
Chapter 7: Visionary of Another Politics
Markus Daechsel examines Inayatullah Khan ‘al-Mashriqi’ (1888–1963) and his Khaksar movement. Mashriqi offered a radically different vision of politics, one based on revolutionary temporality rather than specific policy proposals.
The Khaksars were a paramilitary movement that sought to disrupt the normal flow of time through war, civil disobedience, and sacrifice. In 1940, scores of Khaksars were shot dead by police in Lahore, less than a mile away from where the Muslim League was holding its historic session. This “Karbala” moment made the Khaksars heroes to many, but their influence waned as the League appropriated their political methods.
Mashriqi’s vision was based on what Daechsel calls “a distinctive notion of revolutionary politics”.
He believed that true liberation required a total revolution that would engulf all of “Hindustan”, not just Muslim-majority areas. His 1945 “Constitution of India” proposed a united India with separate electorates for different communities and classes.
For Mashriqi, politics wasn’t about achieving specific goals, it was about living at the edge of temporality itself.
Chapter 8: Nonviolence, Pukhtunwali and Decolonization
Safoora Arbab examines Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890–1988) and the Khuda’i Khidmatgar (Servants of God) movement in the North-West Frontier Province. This was arguably the most remarkable Muslim opposition to the League, an organization of Pashtuns committed to nonviolence.
The Khuda’i Khidmatgars, also known as the “Red Shirts,” were the largest organized resistance “army” in British India. They took an oath to fight non-violently and grounded their ideology in Pashtunwali, the indigenous tribal codes of conduct. As Arbab explains, they reinterpreted the Pashtun concept of badal (reciprocity) from violent revenge to a “species of love.”
Ghaffar Khan’s vision was radically different from Jinnah’s. While Jinnah’s politics was based on the friend/enemy binary and the acceptance of violence as normal, the Khuda’i Khidmatgars offered what Arbab calls a “politics of friendship.”
In Ghaffar Khan’s words: “Khuda’i Khidmatgari created such love and affection in the hearts of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh people and aroused such an ardent [sense of] brotherhood that those Hindus and Sikhs had to be forcefully sent to India from the Frontier Province, yet even till today they call themselves Khuda’i Khidmatgars”.
Chapter 9: Islam, Communism and the Search for a Fiction
Ammar Ali Jan explores the surprising overlaps between political Islam and communism in colonial India. He focuses on Shaukat Usmani (1901–1978), a forgotten figure who was perhaps the best-known communist outside Europe during the 1920s.
Usmani’s journey is extraordinary. He started as a participant in the Khilafat movement, migrating to Afghanistan in 1920 to join the forces defending the Ottoman caliphate. He ended up in the Soviet Union, studied at the University of the Toilers of the East, and became a leader of the Communist Party of India.
For Usmani, both political Islam and communism represented a rupture from colonial ideology and a search for a new political community. As Jan argues, “both stem out of a negation of the globally prevalent liberal imperial ideology, creating a space for an intellectual and political rupture”.
They also shared a commitment to heroic sacrifice, the voluntary embracing of death as a rejection of colonial violence and an assertion of transformative political will.
Chapter 10: Muslim Nationalist or Nationalist Muslim?
Sarah Ansari examines Allah Bakhsh Soomro (1900–1943), a Sindhi politician who steadfastly opposed the Muslim League. Soomro served as Chief Minister of Sindh on two occasions between 1938 and 1942, and his ministry was supported by Hindus as well as Muslims.
Soomro’s opposition to the League was based on his commitment to cross-communal cooperation. In April 1940, he presided over the All-India Azad Muslim Conference, which declared that “India with its geographical and political boundaries [was] an indivisible whole and as such it [was] a common homeland of all citizens”.
Soomro’s political career was cut short when he was murdered in May 1943. His death removed a major obstacle to the League’s expansion in Sindh. As Ansari notes, it’s one of the biggest “what-ifs” of Sindhi history: what would have happened if Soomro had lived?
Chapter 11: Dancing with the Enemy
Newal Osman examines the uneasy alliance between Sikander Hayat Khan (1892–1942), the premier of Punjab, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Sikander signed a pact with Jinnah in 1937, but he never fully embraced the idea of Pakistan.
Sikander’s real goal was to protect Punjab’s autonomy. He proposed federal schemes that would have given maximum power to the provinces and prevented a Congress-dominated centre from interfering in Punjab’s affairs. His ideal was a loose confederation in which Punjab would retain its unity and autonomy.
But the alliance with Jinnah created problems on all fronts.
It alienated Sikander’s Hindu and Sikh colleagues, put him in an awkward position during the Shahidganj controversy, and led to his proposals being twisted into the Lahore Resolution.
As Osman shows, Sikander was constantly trying to “dance with the enemy”, toe the League line while secretly pursuing his own goals.
Chapter 12: Religion between Region and Nation
Neilesh Bose examines Rezaul Karim (1902–1993), a Bengali Muslim politician who developed a particularly Bengali definition of composite nationalism. Karim was a Congress politician from Calcutta who actively critiqued the idea of Pakistan.
In his 1941 book Pakistan Examined, Karim argued that the Pakistan demand was based on a misunderstanding of culture and religion. He claimed that “the Pakistanists are of [the] opinion that the people of Pakistan differ from that of India in culture, religion, civilization, language and literature and there is nothing in common with the people of India.”
Karim countered that this was simply false.
Karim’s critique went beyond politics to culture. He argued that Bengali Muslims had a debt to Bankimchandra Chatterjee, the Bengali novelist often reviled by Muslim communalists.
For Karim, Bankim’s literary genius in creating narratives of anti-colonial revolt was more important than his portrayal of Muslims.
Chapter 13: ‘The Pakistan that is going to be Sunnistan’
Justin Jones examines the responses of Indian Shi‘a to the Pakistan movement. Shi‘a leaders were deeply anxious that Pakistan would become “Sunnistan”, a state dominated by Sunni interests.
As Hosseinbhoy Laljee, president of the Shi‘a Political Conference, warned: “The All India Muslim League is a body dominated by the Sunni Mussalmans… the League is a fascist body out to crush all opposition and capture power to establish the government of a Sunni Junta, by a Sunni Junta and for a Sunni Junta”.
These anxieties weren’t unfounded. As the League gained support from Deobandi ‘ulama, its rhetoric increasingly invoked Sunni symbols. Some League-affiliated ‘ulama called for Pakistan’s constitution to be based on the rule of the first two Khalifas, a specifically Sunni formulation.
As one Shi‘a commentator put it, “Won’t this be a system of government and society which is exclusively built on the Sunni point of view?”
Chapter 14: The Baluch Qaum of Kalat State
Abdul Majeed examines the proceedings of the Kalat state assembly, which debated whether to accede to Pakistan. The Baluch sardars were emphatic in their refusal to consider themselves part of the Muslim qaum.
As one member put it: “We are Muslims but it is not necessary that, because of being Muslim, in giving up our independence we should assimilate with others. If it is for this reason that we should join Pakistan, that it is a Muslim government, then the Islamic governments of Afghanistan and Iran should also assimilate into Pakistan”.
The Baluch leaders were clear: they wanted an honourable treaty with Pakistan, not accession. “Accession means joining two things so that nothing distinguishes them and treaty means that two governments retain their existence,” one member explained.
They were willing to cooperate on defence, external affairs, and communications, but they refused to give up their distinct national existence.
4. Muslims against the Muslim League Analysis
This is a profoundly important book, and not just for specialists. It fundamentally challenges the way we understand the creation of Pakistan.
The editors make a compelling case that the Pakistan movement was far more contested than conventional narratives suggest. By recovering the voices of Muslim critics, they demonstrate that the idea of Pakistan was never inevitable. It emerged from a contentious conversation about the meaning of Muslim identity, a conversation that could have gone in very different directions.
The book’s greatest strength is its diversity of perspectives. By covering such a wide range of critics, from Deobandi scholars to communist activists, from Sufi masters to Baluch nationalists, the editors show that opposition to the League came from every conceivable quarter. This isn’t a story of “secular Muslims” versus “religious Muslims.”
It’s a story of Muslims with radically different visions of what Muslim political identity should mean.
The essays are rigorously researched and carefully argued. Each chapter draws on primary sources, pamphlets, newspapers, memoirs, speeches, to reconstruct the views of its subjects. The editors have brought together some of the best scholars in the field, and the quality of the contributions is consistently high.
5. Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
1. Recovery of forgotten voices. The book brings to light critics who have been largely forgotten in both Indian and Pakistani historiography.
As one reviewer noted, “there has been a rise in scholarly work on inward critiques of the movement from the time. The latest among these is a collection of 14 essays”.
2. Geographical and ideological breadth. The volume covers both Muslim majority and minority areas, and includes critics from across the political spectrum. This allows for a truly comprehensive picture of opposition to the League.
3. Intellectual depth. The essays don’t just describe opposition, they analyze the intellectual foundations of that opposition. Each chapter explores the ideas, arguments, and worldviews that shaped its subject’s critique.
4. Use of primary sources. The contributors draw extensively on pamphlets, newspapers, memoirs, and other primary sources to reconstruct their subjects’ views. This gives the book a solid evidential basis.
Weaknesses
1. Density. This is not a book for casual readers. The essays are scholarly and assume significant background knowledge. Some readers may find the academic language and theoretical frameworks challenging.
2. Limited focus on popular opinion. The book focuses primarily on elite voices, political leaders, religious scholars, intellectuals. It tells us less about what ordinary Muslims thought about Pakistan.
3. Uneven coverage. Some essays are stronger than others, and some figures (like Maududi) receive more attention than others. The volume could have benefited from more essays on critics from South India and other underrepresented regions.
6. Comparison with Similar Works
This book joins a growing body of scholarship that challenges conventional narratives of the Pakistan movement.
Ayesha Jalal’s The Sole Spokesman (1985) revolutionized the study of the Pakistan movement by arguing that Jinnah used the demand for Pakistan as a bargaining chip rather than a serious goal. Qasmi and Robb’s volume builds on Jalal’s work by shifting focus from Jinnah’s tactics to the critics who opposed him.
Venkat Dhulipala’s Creating a New Medina (2015) offers a wealth of information about the political realities influencing Pakistan’s creation, focusing on the United Provinces. While Dhulipala overstates the unity of Muslim conversations about Pakistan, Qasmi and Robb’s volume offers a more diverse picture by covering multiple regions.
Faisal Devji’s Muslim Zion (2013) argues that the Pakistan movement was detached from any ultimate goal of creating a nation state. Qasmi and Robb’s volume challenges this by showing that the movement did have ideological content, it was just content that was hotly contested.
What sets this volume apart is its focus on critics rather than proponents.
It provincializes the scholarly discussion of how the concept of the Muslim qaum developed, showing that “transformations in the public sphere, leading to a new understanding of community, combined with the inadequacies of the League’s opponents, to contribute in large part to the League’s dominance”.
7. Conclusion
Muslims against the Muslim League is an outstanding contribution to the historiography of South Asia. It challenges us to rethink everything we thought we knew about the Pakistan movement, and about Muslim identity in the subcontinent more broadly.
The book’s central insight is that there was never a single “Muslim” view on Pakistan. Muslims were divided by region, sect, class, ideology, and personal experience. Some supported the League; others opposed it; many were uncertain. The story of Pakistan is not a story of Muslim unity, it’s a story of Muslim contestation.
Who Should Read This Book?
For students and scholars: This is essential reading. If you study South Asian history, Islamic studies, or political science, you need to engage with this book.
For general readers: This book is challenging but rewarding. If you’re willing to put in the effort, you’ll gain a much deeper understanding of the forces that shaped the subcontinent.
For Pakistanis and Indians: Muslims against the Muslim League offers a more honest, nuanced understanding of your shared history. It’s uncomfortable at times, it challenges cherished narratives on both sides. But it’s also liberating. It shows that the past was more complex, more contested, and more interesting than the stories we were told in school.
A Final Thought
The book ends with a note about the Ahrar leader Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari, who once told a crowd: “As long as the sun and moon exist, Pakistan will remain, but there will be no trace of you people”. It was a threat, but also a prophecy. Today, the Ahrar are largely forgotten, while Pakistan endures.
But perhaps the real lesson of this book is different. Perhaps it’s that the debates that raged in the 1940s, about the meaning of Muslim identity, the relationship between religion and politics, the tension between unity and diversity, are still with us. They haven’t been resolved. They’ve just taken new forms.
In Pakistan, these debates play out in the struggle between secularists and Islamists, between center and periphery, between those who see Pakistan as a homeland for Muslims and those who see it as an Islamic state.
In India, they play out in debates about minority rights, secularism, and the place of Muslims in the nation.
The critics of the Muslim League may have lost the battle in 1947. But their questions, about what it means to be Muslim, about how to build just societies, about the relationship between faith and politics, remain as urgent as ever.
References
- Qasmi, Ali Usman and Megan Eaton Robb, eds. Muslims against the Muslim League: Critiques of the Idea of Pakistan. Cambridge University Press, 2017.
- The Friday Times. “Muslims Against The Muslim League – And Why Opposing Jinnah Failed The Test Of Time.” August 12, 2026.
- The Kashmir Monitor. “Muslims against the Muslim League.” November 11, 2018.
- Dawn. “Book explores Muslim nationhood genesis.” October 13, 2017.
- Wikipedia. “Two-nation theory.” Cited in Qasmi and Robb (2017), p. 2.
- NBS Hahab. “Abul A’la Maududi: A Muslim Against The Muslim League.” April 16, 2020.
- H-Net Reviews. “Megan Eaton Robb. Print and the Urdu Public.” December 2021.
