Among the more important achievements of the British in Punjab was the creation of an effective and remarkably loyal intermediary administrative system. The Unionist Party was the resultant manifestation of this policy. This book deals with the origin of the Unionist Party, its policies, its politics, its moments of success, its failures, as well as the commitment of most of its leaders to the colonial system and how their actions and programmes were so deeply influenced by the attitude of the British towards them. So closely linked was the Unionist Party to British rule in Punjab, that the moment the assured support of the British became suspect so did the future of the party. Tanwar has discussed the functioning of the Unionist Party under ‘dyarchy’ and ‘provincial autonomy’, that introduced ‘controlled self-governance’ in 1919 and 1935. The growth of the Party was greatly dependent on its rural versus urban politics which reflected more particularly in the numerous legislative measures initiated by the party in the years 1937-40 and which came to be commonly known as the ‘golden laws’. The book also deals with the role of the Unionist Party in the eventful and traumatic decade that preceded the partition of Punjab. The Punjab as we know had come to be a kind of cornerstone of the Muslim League’s two nation theory. Running parallel to the League’s demand for Pakistan and the Congress Party’s fight for independence was a bitter political struggle within the Muslim elite of Punjab to control the destiny of the Muslim masses. Tanwar has shown how the passions unleashed in relation to the ‘agenda of Pakistan’ reduced the Unionist Party to irrelevance and insignificance leading it to disappear from the political scene almost as dramatically as it had appeared.
There are no reviews yet.