Muslims and Political Representation in Colonial India: The Making of Pakistan

1986 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 539-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farzana Shaikh
Keyword(s):  
Majority Rule ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Political Alignments

One of the principal difficulties in arriving at a constitutional settlement in India during the 1940s stemmed from the inherent conflict between Congress's emphasis upon the principle of majority rule and fluid political alignments and the Muslim League's commitment to the Islamic conviction that numerical configurations were irrelevant to politics and that what mattered was the rigid ideological divide between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Whom can a Muslim Woman Represent? Begum Jahanara Shah Nawaz and the politics of party building in late colonial India

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-46
Author(s):  
ASHISH KOUL
Keyword(s):  
Political Representation ◽  
Gender Issues ◽  
Muslim Woman ◽  
National Defense ◽  
Muslim Identity ◽  
Indian Women ◽  
Alternative Models ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Party Building ◽  
Gender Based

Abstract This article argues that gendered ideas about political representation were pivotal to the All-India Muslim League's new self-imagination as the exclusive representative of Indian Muslims after the Pakistan Resolution of March 1940. I offer a gendered reading of League politics during the crucial decade of the 1940s by examining the historical implications of Begum Jahanara Shah Nawaz's expulsion from the party in 1941 for accepting a post on the National Defense Council. When she claimed that she was appointed to the Council as a representative of all Indian women and Punjab, the League leadership condemned her for disobeying the party's resolution to remain aloof from British India's wartime administration. With an unusual intensity, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the League's president, censured her for endangering Indian Muslims’ fragile unity and asserted that League members could either represent Muslims—or no one. Her arguments functioned as an effective foil against which the League solidified its homogenizing narrative of an Indian Muslim identity and its universalizing project of Pakistan. As the demand for Pakistan increasingly dominated the League's rhetoric, alternative models of representation that drew upon cross-religious, gender-based, or regional solidarities became progressively untenable for female Muslim League politicians. Shah Nawaz's expulsion, and the discourse on representation it generated, demonstrated that gender issues were central to League politics at both the provincial and the all-India level.

Silence of the Land: On the Historical Irrelevance of Territory to Congressional Districting and Political Representation in the United States

2001 ◽  
Vol 15 (01) ◽  
pp. 53-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Rehfeld
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Political Representation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Representative Government ◽  
Congressional District ◽  
Congressional Districts ◽  
Communities Of Interest

Every ten years, the United States “constructs” itself politically. On a decennial basis, U.S. Congressional districts are quite literally drawn, physically constructing political representation in the House of Representatives on the basis of where one lives. Why does the United States do it this way? What justifies domicile as the sole criteria of constituency construction? These are the questions raised in this article. Contrary to many contemporary understandings of representation at the founding, I argue that there were no principled reasons for using domicile as the method of organizing for political representation. Even in 1787, the Congressional district was expected to be far too large to map onto existing communities of interest. Instead, territory should be understood as forming a habit of mind for the founders, even while it was necessary to achieve other democratic aims of representative government.

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