Abstract
Sir Mian Fazl-i-Husain, generally speaking, is overlooked by the historians therefore by
revisiting the main characteristics of Fazl-i-Husain‟s political leadership, one can have a better
understanding of the role of Muslim leadership like that of Mian Fazl-i-Husain in the colonial
Punjab. He struggled to free India from the foreign rule as early as possible but he believed that
without better understanding and communal harmony among the Muslims, Hindus and the Sikh,
this freedom cannot be achieved. Montagu-Chelmsford Reform of 1919 provided the opportunity
to those leaders who wished to work under the constitutional umbrella, to achieve independence
with peaceful means. The newly enforced Act opened the doors for electoral politics and helped
the elected members to join the executive council and to serve their nation as parliamentarians
and some as ministers. Thus political vacuum created by the rejection and boycott of the
conventional political parties such as the Congress and the League was filled up by the provincial
parties, political elites, and groups. This phenomenon suited the most to Mian Fazl-i-Husain who
undertook the responsibility of cementing the gulf among the religious communities by his ideas
and actions. No doubt the emergence of the Rural Group was the political expediency and
spontaneous to the political situation but the foundation of National Unionist Party was the
brainchild of the philosophy of Sir Fazl-i- Husain. This party was a party with secular
representation and program. It included main leaders of the Muslims, Sikhs and the Hindus and
remained dominant on the political landscape of the provincial politics from 1923 to 1947.
Therefore, it is important to understand the political philosophy of Fazl-i-Husain and his main
objective behind the foundation of the National Unionist Party. This paper will try to emphasize
the point that Fazl-i- Husain got the Charismatic traits that helped him to persuade the Punjabi
political leadership to establish a provincial political party on the secular basis. He was a strong
believer in establishing a plural society and for that matter, he worked for the common welfare of
all the religious communities. This paper will also develop the argument that Fazl-i-Husain, in
an atmosphere of religious separatism in India, was successful, to a great extent, in establishing a
party with a secular program, which enabled him to pursue a party program for creating a plural
society. Though much has been written on the foundation and working of the Unionist party, very
few have academically focused on the ideas and thoughts of Fazl-i-Husain for laying the
foundation of the party and by producing this piece of paper it is felt that it will fill the gap in the
Muhammad Iqbal Chawla & Nyla Umar Mobarik
200 A Research Journal of South Asian Studies
historical literature of the Colonial Punjab.
Muhammad Iqbal Chawla, Nyla Umar Mobarik. (2018) Fazl-i-Husain’s Plural Approach and the Punjab Politics: Re-contextualizing the Foundation of the Unionist Party, South Asian Studies, Volume 33, Issue 1.
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