Allah Bux Soomro

Allah Bux Muhammad Umar Soomro (1900 – 14 May 1943), also written Allah Baksh Soomro, was a zamindar, government contractor and politician from Sindh in colonial India, founder of the Sind Ittehad Party and twice Premier of Sindh. He is considered among the best premiers of the province, known for promoting Hindu-Muslim unity and for campaigning for an independent, united India, and he was referred to after his assassination as Shaheed, "martyr". ¹

He was born in 1900 at Shikarpur in northern Sindh, in the family's fief, into an affluent family; the English article, citing Khadim Husain Soomro's biography, describes him as a member of the Soomro (Jat) clan of Sindh. ¹ His father, Haji Muhammad Umar, was a well-known contractor and businessman, and after passing his matriculation examinations in 1918 Allah Bux joined his father's contract business. ¹

He joined politics at an early age and was elected to the Jacobabad municipality in 1923, then to the Sukkur district local board in 1928, becoming its president in 1930; in 1931 he was granted the title of Khan Bahadur. ¹

He served as Chief Minister (Premier) of Sindh for two terms, from 23 March 1938 to 18 April 1940 and, on the article's text, cabinet table and the Urdu article, from 7 March 1941 to 14 October 1942, holding the finance, excise and industries portfolios; the English infobox gives the second term's start as 27 March 1942, against the article's own body, and the body is followed here. ^{1 2} In his second cabinet, Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah — his predecessor as premier, and later his successor in the office — held the home, parliamentary affairs and law portfolios. ¹

Soon after taking office he overruled the banishment of Ubaidullah Sindhi, allowing him to return to his homeland; the Urdu article likewise lists recalling "Maulana Abdullah Sindhi" among his measures, together with fixing Sukkur's irrigation administration, cutting provincial expenditure and raising teachers' salaries. ^{1 2} He reduced ministers' salaries to Rs. 500 a month and prohibited the nomination of members to local bodies. ¹

The English article records that he also introduced reforms in religion: in 1938 he prohibited the Ziwal-Haj, a local pilgrimage gathering organised by a pir of Lawari at which the poor who could not afford the Hajj had prayed facing the pir's dargah and greeted one another as Hajji — a practice other Muslims denounced as un-Islamic and agitated against until he banned it — and he banned the Om Mandali, a predecessor of the Brahma Kumari organisation. ¹ These are recorded as acts of his government; no source names a school for Soomro himself, and his record says so.

His first premiership was shaken by the Manzilgah controversy at Sukkur, over two old buildings near the Sadh Belo temple claimed variously as a mosque and as an inn. ¹ His commission reported, from the buildings' Persian inscriptions, that Manzilgah was an inn, but in June 1939 the Muslim League launched an agitation, and senior League leaders including G. M. Syed, M. A. Khuhro and Sir Abdullah Haroon occupied the buildings from 3 October to 19 November 1939; after riots in Sukkur the government yielded and allowed Muslims to pray there, and a compromise followed in February 1941. ¹ League leaders later admitted, the article says, that the agitation had been staged to topple him. ¹

Soomro founded the All India Azad Muslim Conference to represent the Islamic organisations and parties that championed a united India and opposed partition. ¹ He stated that the concept of Muslims as a separate nation in India on the basis of religion was, in his words, un-Islamic, and that no power on earth should be permitted to rob Indian Muslims of their just rights as Indian nationals. ¹ On 27 April 1940 more than 1,400 delegates took part in the conference's Delhi session under his presidency; the orientalist Wilfred Cantwell Smith remarked that those present represented the majority of India's Muslims. ¹

A no-confidence motion passed against him in 1940, the Congress and the Muslim League voting together. ¹ He served on the National Defence Council until 1942, when, at the start of the Quit India Movement, he resigned from it, and in September 1942 he renounced his knighthood and the Khan Bahadur title. ¹ Briefly returned to power in March 1941, he was dismissed by the Governor for his support of the Quit India Movement. ¹

He was assassinated on 14 May 1943 while travelling in a tonga in his hometown of Shikarpur, aged 43. ¹ Rumours pinned the murder on agents of the pro-separatist All India Muslim League; the article records this as rumour, and the case remains unsolved in the sources. ¹

Political analysts such as Urvashi Butalia have argued that the Sindh Assembly would not have supported the Lahore Resolution had Soomro lived, and would instead have opted for a united India. ¹ The Shaheed Allah Bux Soomro University of Art, Design and Heritage at Jamshoro is named after him. ¹ His son Rahim Bux Soomro also became a politician in Pakistan. ¹

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