Muslim League National Guards

What it is: The Muslim League National Guards, also called the Muslim National Guard, were the uniformed volunteer wing of the All-India Muslim League. Wikipedia says they were formed around 1937 in the United Provinces, after the Raja of Mahmudabad convened a committee that drafted their rules. Membership was limited to Muslims aged 15 and over, and the constitution was revised in 1940 and 1944. A British Indian government estimate gave 118,152 members in 1947, which the historian Ian Talbot thinks too low. Wikipedia puts the Punjab figure at 22,000 by the end of 1946, against about twice as many for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh there.

Leaders: Wikipedia names Siddique Ali Khan, Shaukat Hayat Khan and Khurshid Anwar as commanders. A January 1947 account reproduced on All About Sikhs calls Major Khurshid Anwar "Salar of the All-India Muslim National Guards".

Key moments

• 24 January 1947: Punjab's coalition government declared the Guards and the RSS illegal. Police searched the Guards' headquarters on McLeod Road, Lahore, and seized 1,000 steel helmets and badges bearing a dagger, sword and revolver. Seven League leaders were arrested after obstructing the police.
• 25 January 1947: League members defied the order against demonstrations, and seven League members of the assembly were arrested.
• 28 January 1947: the ban was lifted. Sir E. Jenkins, writing from Punjab, later called the ban "the casus belli" of the League's agitation, and reported League leaders saying that lifting it was of no importance because they intended direct action anyway.
• March 1947: Talbot, quoted on a page of Transfer of Power documents, writes that village assaults were "orchestrated by Muslim National Guards and ex-servicemen". The governor's letter he cites attributes some attacks to retired army officers and, in the excerpt, does not name the Guards. Wikipedia's article on the Rawalpindi massacres says the violence was "instigated and perpetrated" by the Guards, with local League cadres, demobilised soldiers, officials and police, and finds evidence of local involvement but little that directly implicates top League leaders including Jinnah. It gives 7,000 to 8,000 dead, notes an official figure of 2,263 non-Muslims killed in Rawalpindi district, and records an SGPC report of over 7,000 dead. A first-person account in The Tribune names no organisation, only a mob.
• 1948: after the assassination of Gandhi, India banned the organisation (Wikipedia).

Where it stands: It is defunct; Wikipedia's infobox gives 1949. Wikipedia says the Guards worked closely with the Khaksars and Ahrars during the Punjab violence, and that Pakistan's National Guard, created in 1948, is a different body.