** The idea of partition of Sub-Continent was now something originated by the Muslims alone. * Muslims, British and Hindus all contributed to the division of India. * John Bright in 1858 speaking on a bill in the British Parliament questioned the possibility of the so extensive a county like India. Instead of an Empire he suggested different presidencies and States.
* Jamaluddin Afghani: A Muslim Republic embracing Central Asian Republic, Afghanistan and Muslim majority areas of Subcontinent. * Sir Sayyed Ahmad Khan (1883): speak on India was a continent rather than a country. In 1867 speaking of Muslim and Hindus as two nations.* Abdul Halim Sharar expressed in his magazine Muhazzib, of August 23, 1890. Partition of India into Hindu and Muslim Provinces and exchange of population. * Theodore Morrison (1899) suggested the concentration of Muslim population from Agra to Peshawar.
* Abdul Jabbar Kheiri and his younger brother Professor Abdus Sattar Kheiri at the Stockholm Conference of the Socialist International. * Muhammad Abdul Qadir Bilgrami (April 1920): in an open letter to Gandhi suggested division and even named the districts. Not very different from the East and West Pakistan in 1947.* Maulana Hasrat Mohani (1921): referred to the fear of Hindu majority and three years later he forward a scheme to recognize the bi-communal basis of the future independent State and to convert the Muslim Majority Provinces into Muslim States and Hindu Majority Provinces into Hindu States. * Bhai Parmanand (leader of the Arya Samaj and Hindu Sangathan): Hindu-Muslim unity unthinkable. Solution of the Muslim-Hindu problem is either the assimilation of the Hindu by the ‘alien intruders’ or the assimilation of the Muslim by the Hindus.
He then rejected both as impracticable. “It struck me a long time ago that the only satisfactory avenue to unity is to effect complete severance between the two peoples. India could be partitioned in such a manner as to secure the supremacy of Islam in one zone and that of Hinduism in the other”.* Lala Lajpat Rau (1924): evolved a plan of partition of India.
* Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar (1925): advocated separation and the right of self-determination for the people of the northern areas of the subcontinent for economic, strategic, religious and cultural reasons. * William Archbold (1925): he foresaw a powerful Mohammadan combination in the North-West in alliance with Afghanistan * Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi (1927) : the creation of three zones: North-Western, Easter, and Southern * The Times Correspondence in India (1928): prophesied the division of Punjab and creation of a solid Muslim bloc from Peshawar to the mouth of the Indus. * Agha Khan (October 12 and 13, 1928) two articles in the Times of India.* Empire Review (December 1928) favorable analysis of suggestion for the break up the Indian provinces into small units in accordance ethnic and local sentiment in order to allay communal fears. The implication was that at some future date it might be practicable or necessary to merge Muslim and Hindu areas into some sort of separate blocs.
* Nawab Zulfiqar Ali Khan address as a chairman Reception Committee of the Alla India Khilafat Committee. (December 1929) … Muslims themselves should instead of rights, demand a separate country and homeland.* Sir Ross Masud (1929) in an interview, Muslim felt that they would be swamped in a self governing India. A federation between modernized Afghanistan with Persian in the background and with Allied in the frontier independent territories.
The Punjab Muslims have long been talking among themselves of a union of the Northern Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan and Afghanistan. A generation ago a union with Afghanistan would have been regarded with horror, for the Pathan was not a very popular person in Northern India; but the memory of his raids is dying out; and at present, at all events, it seems preferable to many of them to run the risk of engaging him as an ally rather than to accept the certainty of domination by the Hinduized Central Government.
