Funny how the Islamist apologist still can't answer this
Okay I’ll give it a shot. I’ll summarize what Eqbal Ahmad has written about this prior.
The reason that the class of ulema were against the creation of Pakistan was entirely petty and pertained to issues of group struggle- not socio-economic necessarily but of worldviews.
On one end, you had the conservative mullah class, barelwis and Deobandis. They had been in power and been in opposition to the British, going so far as to boycott their schools and their language.
On the other hand, you had Sir Syed and Aligarh and what not which was more recent and which had accepted aspects of British rule and amongst other things started teaching people English and western education and what not.
Prior to Aligarh, the religious class had a monopoly on literacy, post Sir Syed, it got split and they were in decline- the new educated middle class was a threat to their hegemony.
The taxonomy of Muslim educated middle class into two categories is not universal. You also had liberal Islamic outposts that bridged the gap between the two. Like Shibli Nomanis school.
But when the Pakistan movement started, and it’s main leaders belonged to one camp, it was hard for the religious class in India to stomach the idea of accepting leadership of the movement from the other camp. There are plenty of exceptions that we have already mentioned above. Jinnah ofcourse did not really care about the educated religious class differences. He was just looking for support. As a result, the ulema who did support him in the Pakistan movement were given positions when Pakistan was formed.
Yes it’s a fact that the majority of ulema were against the Pakistan movement. They used the excuse that islam ant he reconciled into the boundaries of a nation-state. That Islam was a global religion without boundaries and that nation statehood was a British concept. This frankly is a minority opinion but they stuck to it because of the class aspect above. The other reason they stuck to it too was because congress courted their support.
That the majority of ulema were against Pakistan movement is true. That virtually none of the ulema supported Pakistan is absolutely false. There were plenty but in the minority.