Pakistan Failed Jinnah
Tuesday
13 September 2011, by Ajeet Jawed
On September 11 this
year falls Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s sixtythird death anniversary. The following
article is being published on that occasion.
There are a few figures in the history of the world who can be put in both a
positive and a negative frame. Mohammad Ali Jinnah is one of them. He is both
revered and hated, and admired and cursed, by the vast masses of the subcontinent.
For forty years of his
political career, he fought for the freedom of India. In those days he was
proud to be the son of the soil and used to call himself an Indian first and a
Muslim afterwards. Sectarian interests or sectional feelings had no place in
his thinking or activities. On his return to India in 1896, after completing
his education from London, he had joined a secular organisation, ‘The Bombay
Presidency Association’ and later the Indian National Congress and soon emerged
as its prominent leader. Gokhale, Dadabhai Nauroji and Pherozshah Mehta were
his political gurus and liberal principles like equality, freedom and
secularism his ideology. He had condemned and criticised the formation of the
communal organisations and considered their existence as disastrous for the
unity of the country. He stood for merit for every domain and opposed
reservations and separate electorates for Muslims. He was willing for joint
electorates even in the mid-thirties but demanded safeguards for the Muslim community
to make them feel secure and give up separate electorates which were certainly
advantageous for them. In 1913 he joined the Muslim League on the advice of his
political guru, Gokhale, in order to rescue it from the hold of the loyalists
and obscurantists in which he succeeded by 1916. The Muslim League under his
leadership came closer to the Congress under the Lucknow Pact and decided to
fight for swaraj shoulder to shoulder with the latter. His and his like-minded
Muslim colleagues’ opposition to all communal concessions posed a challenge to
the British policy of divide-and-rule. They tried to buy him up by conferring
on him the title of Sir and later offered him even the Governorship of any
province, but he refused.
He was well aware of the
root cause of communalism in the country and once gave an amazing solution for
its eradication. He told Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, his close friend: ‘You destroy
your Pandit and we will destroy our Mullah and there will be communal peace.’ Religion never mattered in his public or private life. He left the
Congress because he disagreed with Gandhi’s mixture of politics with religion.
Gandhi used the Khilafat, a religious issue, to unite the Hindus and Muslims in
India. Jinnah opposed it both in the Muslim League and Congress even at the
risk of his political career. Kamal Pasha, who had abolished the Khilafat [rule
of the khalifa], and introduced democracy and modernism in Turkey, became his
role model.
Jinnah had no knowledge of
his religion, Islam, and was, to an extent, irreligious. He did not offer
Namaz, never observed fasts, was never seen in the mosque and never donned
achkan and churidar pyjama before he assumed the role of a Muslim leader. So
much so that he never joined his Muslim colleagues for Namaz during the
sessions of the Muslim League when its meetings were adjourned for prayers. He
always wore Western suits with a sola hat, smoked cigars, drank scotch, and ate
ham-sandwiches even during the days of Ramadan. He had married a non-Muslim
girl and allowed his modern wife to be present in the Muslim League meetings
without purdah in ultra-modern dresses and to ride on horseback to Churchgate.
Jinnah never concealed
his Hindu ancestry. His grandfather was a Bhatia Hindu who had converted to
Islam. The Khoja sect, to which he belonged, believed in ten Avatars and had
much in common with Hindus in their inheritance laws and social customs. Jinnah
used to say publicly that he had sprung from the Hindu stock. Even his name,
Jinnah, was a Hindu name. Because of his ignorance of Islam, many called him
Pandit Jinnah. Yet he used to win his election from the Muslim constituency
with a huge number of votes. The reason for this was that in those days
communalism had not acquired roots and the people voted for Jinnah because he
was known for his love for the country, honesty and integrity. So popular was
he that Sarojini Naidu wrote a poem on him eulogising his patriotism and the
people of Bombay raised an amount of Rs 65,000 to build a Jinnah Memorial Hall
within the Congress compound.
After leaving the
Congress he had not turned into a communalist. He organised a secular party
known as the Independent Party in the Central Legislative Assembly. It
consisted of members belonging to the Hindu, Sikh, Parsee and Muslim communities.
His party always co-operated with the Congress vis-Ã -vis the British
authorities and their allies. Jinnah contested the elections as a member of the
Independent Party till 1936, declined to lead the Muslims in the Assembly, and
refused to work exclusively for the Muslim community. His nationalist ideas and
secular outlook won him a special place in the hearts of the liberal-minded
countrymen, especially the youth. In 1936 he was chosen to preside over the All
India Youth Conference in which the All India Students Federation was formed.
IT was only after the
elections to the Provincial Assemblies in 1937 and the subsequent Congress
refusal to share power with the Muslim League that Jinnah started changing his
track from secular politics to sectional and separatist politics which
ultimately paved the way for the formation of Pakistan.
However, the Pakistan of
his vision was to be a secular, modern and minority-friendly state. The
Pakistan of his concept was not only for the Muslims but also for the minorities
like Hindus, Parsees and Sikhs. He had approached the Sikh leaders and tried to
assure them their rightful place in the new state but failed to convince them.
In all his public speeches, statements and even in his press conferences, he
reiterated that Pakistan would not be a theocratic state. In 1944 the Mullahs
opposed the Dawn [the Muslim League’s daily paper] policy of not propagating
religion. They approached Pothan Joseph, the Christian editor of Dawn, and
complained that Dawn was a Muslim paper but its editorials, specials articles,
news stories and Sunday features were devoid of Islamic content and Quranic
injunctions. Jinnah refused to be dictated by the Mullahs. They were told that
Dawn was not only for Muslims but for non-Muslims too. No wonder they cursed
Jinnah as Kafir-i-Azam. In the elections in 1945 Jinnah refused to take the
help of Ahrars and Jamat-i-Islami as the two organisations had desired the new
state to be governed by Islamic principles. They denounced Jinnah and
characterised his concept of Pakistan as napak [impure], filthy and damned.
When Jinnah got
Pakistan, he tried to give practical shape to his vision. Like Kamal Pasha, the
architect of modern Turkey, Jinnah too wanted the state of Pakistan to be truly
democratic, and free from any interference from the obscurantist forces. In
this attempt, he sought the help of the secular minded Muslims, Hindus and
Parsees. He told his Hindu industrialist friend, Dalmia, and M.S.M. Sharma, the
editor of Daily Gazette of Karachi, and others who had decided to stay in
Pakistan that Pakistan ‘will function with the will and sanction of the entire
body of the people of Pakistan’. According to Sri Prakasa, the first Indian
High Commissioner to Pakistan, Jinnah was anxious to revert to his old role of
ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, a Muslim Gokhale. He wanted Pakistan to be a
model state wherein the majority would not suppress the minority. ‘I am going
to show how the minorities should be treated,’ he declared.
On August 15, 1947, he
gave a reception to celebrate the Indian Independence Day. Among the guests
were Kiran Shankar Roy, the leader of the Congress which had rechristened
itself as the Pakistan National Congress, Bhim Sen Sachar, C. Vazirani, Justice
Mahajan, M.S.M. Sharma and others. On that day, on his order, the Indian and
Pakistan flags flew together. The Pakistan Minorities Association was formed
under the suggestion of Jinnah with Hemandas Wadhwani as the President and
M.S.M. Sharma as one of the Vice-Presidents. Jinnah had the Muslim League flag
adopted as the flag of Pakistan, but with a white strip covering one-third of
the flag as a symbol of peace and minorities. The task of writing a national
song for Pakistan was assigned to a Hindu poet from Lahore, named Jagannath
Azad.
He wanted the best
brains to make the Constitution for Pakistan. Kiran Shankar Roy’s name was in
the panel of Chairmen who could preside over the Constituent Assembly in the
absence of the President. The panel was prepared by Jinnah. Jogendranath Mandal
was elected as the temporary Chairman of the Constituent Assembly and was also
made the Law Minister in the first Cabinet of Pakistan. In India, Jinnah had
never missed an opportunity to castigate Maulana Abul Kalam Azad by calling him
a ‘showboy’. Ironically, he even approved the name of Abul Kalam Azad, who had
been nominated to the Constituent Assembly along with Abdul Ghaffar Khan from
the North West Frontier Province. [Azad declined when his name appeared in the
newspaper.]
In order to keep away
from religious inter-vention in the Muslim civil society, he had successfully
opposed the Shariat Bill and the Qazi Bill in the Indian Central Legislative
Assembly despite opposition from the Mullahs. In Pakistan he openly declared
that religion was a private matter and Islamic principles could not be applied
in the political domain. A few days after the formation of Pakistan, a group of
leading Ulemas waited on him and asked him to apply the Sharia to the
functioning of the new state. Jinnah told them strongly: ‘Whose Sharia?
Hambalis? Sha’afis? Ma,alikeis? Ja’afris?... I certainly do not propose to hand
over the field to Ulemas.’ A majority of the Muslim leaders too were for
Pakistan to be an Islamic state. But Jinnah made it clear to them that neither
he nor his Working Committee, nor the Council of the All India Muslim League
had ever passed such a resolution wherein it was committed to make Pakistan a
theocratic state.
WHILE inaugurating the
first session of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, as its President on
August 11, 1947, he firmly declared:
You are free to go to
your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or any other place of worship
in the state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed—that
has nothing to do with the fundamental principle that we are all citizens of
one state… Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and that
you will find that in course of time Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims
will cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the
personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of
the state.
All the eleven members
of the Pakistan National Congress led by Kiran Shankar Roy were present in the
Constituent Assembly when Jinnah laid down the basic principles, that is, of
secularism and democracy on which the Constitution of Pakistan would be made.
Many were amazed. If Pakistan was to be a secular state like that of India then
what was the logic of the creation of Pakistan? This was the first and last
address of Jinnah to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan as it did not meet
again in Jinnah’s lifetime.
Jinnah’s vision of
Pakistan was not tolerated by the fundamentalists. They had tolerated Jinnah so
long he was leading the Muslims in the fight for Pakistan but when Pakistan was
achieved Jinnah was seen as a hindrance to their objective of making Pakistan a
theocratic state. The fundamentalists became active after Pakistan came into
being, lest Jinnah succeed in his objective. They disliked his speeches,
statements and assurances to the minorities but were up in arms after his
speech in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan. The fundamentalists in the high-ups
in the administration refused to publish those portions of his speech in which
he spoke about Pakistan to be a secular and democratic state. It was only when
Altaf Hussain, who had taken over the editorship of Dawn from Pothan Joseph,
threatened that he would go to Jinnah to report the matter if the press advice
was not withdrawn that they agreed to publish his speech. Even after that some
of the news-papers published his address in brief without those paragraphs.
Later attempts were made to have this speech burnt or removed from the official
record.
His speech also earned
him the wrath of the illiterate Muslim masses that had been given an Islamic
picture of the new state by the Muslim leaders before partition. Three days
after the inauguration of Pakistan, Jinnah was in Lahore. There he went to the
Shahi Mosque to address the gathering at Id prayers, but people refused to
listen to him. He was shouted down and obliged to leave the mosque by the back
door.
However, Jinnah was
determined to defeat the designs of the fundamentalists. He invited the secular
and progressive Muslims, whom in India he considered his enemies, to strengthen
his position vis-a-vis the orthodox sections. Without a strong, secular and
democratic party, this was an impossible task. Hence he decided to convert the
Muslim League into a non-communal party. To ensure impartiality in the
governance of the state and to rise above party politics, he resigned from the
presidentship of the Muslim League. H.S Suhrawardy, the well-known barrister
and ex-Premier of undivided Bengal, who had become a preacher of Hindu-Muslim
unity under the influence of Gandhi, had come to Karachi to attend the All
India Muslim League Council’s session to be held on December 15, 1947, along
with other Indian delegates. Jinnah sought his help and Suhrawardy in the
meeting of the Council, which was presided over by Jinnah, strongly pleaded for
making the League a democratic and secular organisation by opening its door to
all the citizens of Pakistan irrespective of their religion, caste or creed.
Despite Jinnah’s support, the proposal was strongly opposed by a majority of
the Leaguers of Pakistan. Finally only ten members, including Suhrawardy and
Mian Iftikharuddin, a former Congress leader of undivided Punjab, voted for the
resolution. [The meeting was held in camera.] Suhrawardy was condemned and
called the enemy of Pakistan and later his name was dropped from the Pakistan
Constituent Assembly. When he went back to East Bengal to promote communal
harmony, he was arrested by the Chief Minister Nazimmudin and jailed.
Jinnah assigned the task
of re-organising the Pakistan Muslim League to Khaliquzamman, a former Congress
leader from the United Provinces, who had migrated to Pakistan. The orthodoxy
did not let him have a free hand in the party’s affairs. They called him a
‘refugee’.
Jinnah had also met
Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the North-West Frontier Province leader, a former member of
the Indian National Congress and close associate of Gandhi, and had asked him
to strengthen his position by joining the Muslim League. But Ghaffar Khan was
not willing to do so as the League was not a secular body. Jinnah explained to
him that he wanted to convert the Muslim League into National League, open to
every loyal citizen of Pakistan but was being attacked by the mad Mullahs and
it was precisely because of that that he wanted his colleagues of
Khuda-i-Khidmatgar to join the League and help him in ousting those dangerous
elements. Abdul Ghaffar Khan remained unconvinced. On March 8, 1948, Ghaffar
Khan along with G.M. Sayed, another progressive leader, and Munshi Ahmed Din, a
popular leader of the Congress Socialist Party of undivided India, issued a
manifesto announcing the formation of the Pakistan People’s Party which had as
its objective, the establishment of a ‘Union of free Socialist Republics’ in
Pakistan. It was not banned during Jinnah’s life-time. The Communist Party of
Pakistan too was formed with Sajjad Zaheer, a well-known leader of the CPI, as
its General Secretary. Under Sajjad’s leadership, the newly formed party
actively worked in the direction of making the state of Pakistan democratic and
socialist, despite opposition from the orthodox leaders.
IN April 1948, a
Convention, called the Pakistan People’s Convention, was held in Karachi. It
was attended by all the veteran leaders of the freedom struggle, Socialists,
Communists, various representatives of the trade unions, peasant and students
organisations to make a democratic front for the construction of a non-communal
democratic state and to build a just society based on harmony. Abdul Ghaffar
Khan also came from Peshawar along with his followers to attend the Convention.
The fundamentalists were against holding this Convention. They called its
participants traitors and demanded action against them. Jinnah not only allowed
the Convention, ignoring opposition, but also ordered two-lakhs of charkhas
[spinning wheels], earlier a symbol of mockery for him, for Abdul Ghaffar
Khan’s social work. However, the Chief Minister of the NWFP did not want any
political rival. When Ghaffar Khan went back to Peshawar, Qaiyum, flouting
Jinnah’s advice, got Ghaffar Khan arrested, and called him an agent of India.
Despite stiff opposition
and ill-health, Jinnah continued his efforts at building Pakistan on liberal
principles. In February 1948 in his broadcast for the people of America, he
said: ‘In any case Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic state—to be ruled
by priests with a divine mission. We have non-Muslims—Hindus, Christians and Parsees—but
they are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the same rights and principles as any
other citizens and will play their rightful part in the affairs of Pakistan.’
He regarded freedom of
the press as a pillar of democracy and was against any restraint on it even if
it wrote against the government’s policies or actions. During the Karachi riots
in January 1948, the editor of the Sind Observer, K. Punniah, wrote some
editorials accusing the authorities of taking sides with the majority [Muslim]
community. There was a sharp reaction among the people and government over the
comments. Ultimately, the matter was brought to the notice of Jinnah. His reply
was: ‘No action against the paper be taken. Let other papers give a befitting
reply to the editor.’
He was well aware of the
trouble the Mullahs could cause and hence he went to Quetta on June 14, 1948 to
address the defence forces and reminded them that he, as the Governor-General
of Pakistan, was the final authority to give orders to the armed forces and
they should not listen to the Mullahs who had no idea about how to run the
state.
Ironically all his moves
were checkmated not only by the obscurantists but also by the Muslim League
leaders. He was no more the undisputed leader of the Muslims and the Muslim League.
Both Daultana and Mamdot, the powerful provincial leaders of Punjab, refused to
listen him and Jinnah had to wash off his hands from Punjab affairs. In Sind,
Khuhro, the Chief Minister, refused to give Karachi for making it the capital
of Pakistan. Khuhro and the Muslim League members of Sind openly challenged the
sick leader. In Dacca the people staged demonstrations against him when Urdu
was declared to be the official language of the province. He was reminded that
he was an outsider, a Bombayite and a refugee. Even Liaquat Ali Khan [the first
Prime Minister of Pakistan who was later murdered], had started ignoring him.
When he stayed at Zirat for a long period for health reasons, Liaquat paid him
a courtesy call only on one occasion and that too for a few minutes.
Subsequently when he was brought back to Karachi, neither Liaquat Ali nor any
of his colleagues went to see him at his residence.
Though Jinnah was all
powerful, the head of the state as well as Commander-in-Chief of the armed
forces, yet his shoot-at-sight order had not restrained the rioters in Lahore
who were killing and looting the non-Muslims. He was unable to provide safety
and security even to his Hindu friends who on his advice had decided to stay in
Pakistan. They all, including the Hindu leaders of the Congress, left for
India. Demons-trations against him were staged and effigies burnt by both the
Hindu and Muslim refugees. He was cursed and called Qatil-i-Azam, a Kafir, and
a Bombayite. Rahmat Ali called him Boozna [monkey]. Many attempts were made on
his life. He was alone, sad, and unhappy in the land of his own creation. In
January 1948 he visited the Hindu refugees’ camps in Lahore and wept, perhaps
realising the folly of partition. According to J.N. Sahni, a journalist, who knew
him closely:
Whatever his detractors
might say, neither he nor Liaquat ever dreamt that Muslims in Pakistan left to
themselves would behave like brutes, dacoits, goondas and cannibals against
Hindus and Sikhs and later even against their own co-religionists!
The Muslim refugees who
had migrated to Pakistan leaving India were terribly depressed, disappointed
and desperate to return to their homes in India. One of them suggested a way
out:
The whole partition
business was a blunder and the accursed British did the trick. The only way to
set it right is to repeat 1947. If we win in the war with India, we go back
home as conquerors; if we lose, there shall be reunion and we return home all
the same and if we die on the battlefield, we taste the cup of martyrdom and
enter the portals of paradise. But another round we must have.
Jinnah, the
Governor-General and creator of Pakistan, too wanted to come back to India.
During his address to the All India Muslim League Council meeting in December
1947 in Karachi, he stated: ‘I still consider myself to be an Indian. For the
moment I have accepted the Governor-Generalship of Pakistan. But I am looking
forward to a time when I would return to India and take my place as a citizen
of my country.’ Before leaving India for Pakistan, he had not sold his house at
Malabar Hills which he built during World War II, and had not claimed
compensation from the Indian Government as he wished to return later. The sick
Jinnah longed to be in Bombay at his Malabar Hills house and had also spoken
about it to Sri Prakasa, and told him to convey his desire to Pandit Jawaharlal
Nehru. He loved the cosmopolitan life of Bombay where he had his Hindu friends,
the grave of his wife, and his only daughter, Dina. The un-secular environment
suffocated his secular spirit. During the last few days of his life he went to
Zirat to recuperate his health. When he was to travel back to Karachi, he could
not even walk. His sister, Fatima, wanted him to wear kurta pyjama but Jinnah
insisted to wear his new, brand English suit, with matching tie, hat and butler
shoes [white and brown colour]. He was taken to his car on a stretcher. It was
his last journey. He died on September 11, 1948 as a dejected man with
unaccomplished dream. Even after sixty-three years of his death, Pakistan has
not become what its Quaid-i-Azam wanted it to be. He had failed in India and
Pakistan failed him.
Dr Ajeet Jawed is an
Associate Professor, Satyawati College, University of Delhi.
Mainstream, VOL
XLIX, No 38, September 10, 2011
https://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article2993.html?fbclid=IwAR2hmTbhI8wuKBI9eNhEgFBOJKoGG4rjbxEMi_cKmnooti557J5JJ5eoIww
