ABSTRACT
After the announcement of the 3 June 1947 Partition Plan, the Sindh Legislative Assembly was the first in the Muslim majority areas of British India to vote for joining the Pakistan Constituent Assembly. It was at the first Sindh Provincial Muslim League Conference in Karachi in 1938 that Jinnah and All-India Muslim League leaders expressed the need for a separate homeland for the Muslims. After the passage of the Lahore Resolution in March 1940, it was again the Sindh Assembly which became the first provincial legislature to endorse the All-India Muslim League’s claim for separate states for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. While Sindh’s contribution in the making of the Pakistani state is seminal in light of stated developments, Sindh itself was marred by an internal struggle, which manifested itself in myriad realms. First, being a predominantly agricultural society, Sindh’s politics was dominated by powerful landlords giving rise in the 1930s to a class movement of the Hari (landless peasant farmers). Second, the local politics of the powerful landed elite was marred by an excruciating intra-elite conflict typified by personality, as opposed to ideological contestations. Sindh’s politics in the 1930s and 1940s is an increasingly frustrating and exasperating story of personal rivalries and conflicts in which one group of politicians attempts to outdo another. Third, the intensification of communal politics as a consequence of the polarisation of Muslims and Hindus in the sociopolitical and socio-economic realms resulted in the origin of a narrative where Muslim nationalism takes shape specially after the Masjid Manzilgah incident in Sukkur. Finally, politics in Sindh before Pakistan’s creation is also tainted with a conflict over competing nationalisms. An incipient rise of Sindhi nationalism along with a Pakistani nationalism amongst Sindh’s political elite is strongly evident. While it was Pakistani nationalism that triumphed, the discourse of Sindhi nationalism, whereby a competing conception of how a future Pakistani polity should be framed, is also present.
