In this interview with Charles Allen recorded between 1975 and 1976, Mirza Rashid Ali Baig discusses his views on Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the All-India Muslim League. Baig was an Indian Army officer from 1924 to 1930. Although he was not a member of the Muslim League, he worked for Jinnah as his personal private secretary in the 1930s. Baig tells Allen that during the 1930s the Muslim League and Jinnah did not support the idea of a separate country for Muslims. However, as Jinnah turned towards this idea in 1940, Baig decided he could no longer work for him, as he did not want to support the campaign for a separate state of Pakistan.

About the British in India Oral Archive

These interviews were carried out between 1975 and 1976 to supplement the BBC's popular Plain Tales of the Raj radio series. The project was jointly conducted by the National Sound Archive (NSA), the India Office Library & Records (IOLR) and the School of Oriental and African Studies. The NSA and the IOLR became part of the British Library in the early 1980s and are now known as the British Library Sound Archive and the India Office Records respectively. The collection includes interviews conducted in the UK, India and Pakistan with a wide range of people, including Lord Mountbatten, B K Nehru and British civil servants. The interviews cover the role of the Viceroy, the royal family, missionary work, the police force, the Indian Civil Service in Burma, trade and shipping in Calcutta (now Kolkata), the Japanese invasion during the Second World War and the Nehru family. The interviews were conducted almost exclusively with those who had roles in the administration of the British government in India, and this is reflected in their content. The full recordings from the British in India Oral Archive are archived at the British Library Sound Archive, with collection reference C5.

CHARLES ALLEN:

I wondered, the Muslim League in our minds now stands for separatism.

MIRZA RASHID ALI BAIG:

The Muslim League at that time was very different to the Muslim League that I knew about. In fact, I left the Muslim League in 1940 on the issue of separatism. At that time separatism was a joke. I mean, all that, Jinnah, in fact, used to laugh at the very idea of Pakistan. There was no question of separatism. It was separate, of course, in the sense that the electorate was separate. There was at that time a system known as separate electorates. Muslims could only elect Muslims and non-Muslims could only elect non-Muslims. So the politics was separate, but it was separate merely with one common objective, that was India. I mean, there was no question of Partition in those days. In fact, as soon as Partition came on the cards, I left. Jinnah went on with it because he was, for various reasons, it’s a very long story and I don’t think it is relevant; but I left on that issue and that was in 1940, and Partition came a long time after that.