In December of 1906, a group of nationalist Muslim leaders gathered
in Dhaka, India and proposed a Muslim political association with three
aims: to protect Muslim interests, to counter Congress influences,
and to support the British administration. The first meeting of this
new entity, named the All India Muslim League [AIML], was held in
Karachi on December 20th, 1907. The next hundred years of the AIML,
stretching from Dhaka to Karachi, can only be described as tumultuous.
While the party and its ideologies gained significance in the Indian
nationalist scene, it also underwent various evolutions as it struggled
to represent the often dueling agendas and hopes for the millions
of Muslims in India.
The importance of the AIML to the anti-colonial movement in India
is thus readily apparent. It trained and groomed generations of Muslim
leaders on local, national and international scales as it played pivotal
roles in the two partitions of India and the creation of Pakistan
and Bangladesh. In that regard, no history of nationalism in India
can be written without due attention to the Muslim League. However,
the history of AIML is of even more relevance in today's world. The
oft-heard refrain about the lack of democracy and
democratic practices in the Muslim world fails utterly to account
for institutions like the Muslim League—an erasure which deserves
a sustained critique through renewed attention to this organization's
history of charted and documented practice of Muslim democracy in
India.
The focus of the colloquium will be squarely on the League itself.
We seek an approach to topics such as Muslim nationalism in the early
20th c., the participation of landed elites in the League, Jinnah,
the League's relationship with the Empire, Congress, religious institutions,
etc., through the prism of the organizational and ideological setup
of the Muslim League itself. The colloquium will consist of paper
presentations and a keynote, as well as roundtable discussion throughout
the day. The colloquium will also be the first step in the organization
of a Digital Archive, consisting of primary resources and analysis,
on the history and legacy of the Muslim League.
