Masjid Manzilgah, 1939-40. Test Case for Hindu-Muslim Relations in Sind

Abstract

Masjid Manzilgah forms a chapter in a biography of Mohammed Ayub Khuhro on which the author is currently working. Khuhro (1901-80) was an important politician of Sind whose political career spanned over fifty years from 1921 to the end of the ‘seventies. He was a member of the Bombay Legislative Council from 1923 till the severance of the connection between Bombay and Sind in 1935 when the latter province attained autonomy under the Government of India Act of 1935. He was in the forefront of the political struggle for the ‘separation’ of Sind and after 1936 became a front-ranking Muslim League leader who helped organize the party in Sind and put it behind the Pakistan movement. Khuhro was the first Premier of Sind after independence and held that office altogether three times. He came into confrontation with Jinnah over the issue of severing Karachi from Sind and became identified as the protagonist of states' rights (or provincial autonomy) and as a champion of politicians' supremacy in the fight against the domination of the bureaucracy which bedevilled Pakistani politics for nearly half a century of its existence. This fight resulted in his repeated enforced exile from the political field depriving Pakistan of one of its most experienced public men during its formative years.