In one of the letter to Jinnah (dated 28th May 1937), Iqbal wrote, “The atheistic socialism of Jawaharlal is not likely to receive much response from the Muslims. The question therefore is how is it possible to solve the problem of Muslim poverty? And
the whole future of the League depends on the League’s activity to solve this question.”
So the question arises, have we found the answer to this question? I wrote a piece sometime back on the issue of where we lost our track:
Solving the puzzle: The clue lies with Iqbal, not Jinnah!
Saleena Karim in her book ‘
Secular Jinnah’ (2010) attributes the usage of the term ‘
Islamic socialism’ to Jinnah himself ‘as well as the early leaders of Pakistan.’ Furthermore, she states: ‘Liaquat Ali Khan considered the abolition of landlordism a necessary step towards establishing this Islamic Socialism.’ However the subsequent social and political developments lead to a constitution which clearly intended to be based in the ‘Islamic ideals’ as understood by Iqbal and Jinnah but was at the same time inconsistent. No wonder, she says, the opposition leaders of the time ‘raised some legitimate criticisms’ on the then proposed constitutional framework so as to promote their notion of ‘
modern democratic state’ – the term falsely attributed to Jinnah in Justice Munir’s book ‘
From Jinnah to Zia’ (1979).
Why was it then that the intentions could not result in the necessary actions required to innovate a new socio-political and economic system of governance based on the ‘
Islamic ideals’ for which Pakistan was created? Part of the answer is the early death of the ideological fathers of Pakistan thus leaving an intellectual gap which was not filled. But this does not do justice with the immense significance of the question and is only a way of avoiding it by pretending to having answered it.
Jinnah had abhorred the ‘
modern democratic form of Government’ in his address to the Hostel Parliament of Ismail Yusuf College (dated 1st Feb 1943) while demanding ‘a true democracy in
accordance with Islam and not a Parliamentary Government of the Western or Congress type.’ Later in the same year, Jinnah said in his Presidential address at the Muslim League’s Annual Session (dated 24th April 1943), “I have no doubt that a
large body of us visualise Pakistan as a
people’s government.… The constitution of Pakistan can only be framed by the millat and the people.”
The using of the words ‘
large body of us’ makes it clear that ideology of Pakistan was well understood by the Leaguers’ and the notion of Jinnah’s death leaving behind an intellectual gap is overemphasised. The intellectual clarity of the ‘
large body of us’ which Jinnah left behind can be depicted by their debates with the opposition during the first Constituent Assembly and unanimity on drafting of the constitution by the ‘
people’s government’ in ‘
accordance with Islam.’ This brings us back to the above question to which the answer, in fact, lies not with Jinnah but with Iqbal.
In one of the letter to Jinnah (dated 28th May 1937), Iqbal wrote, “The atheistic socialism of Jawaharlal is not likely to receive much response from the Muslims. The question therefore is how is it possible to solve the problem of Muslim poverty? And
the whole future of the League depends on the League’s activity to solve this question.” With Iqbal’s death, all the energies of the League shifted towards manoeuvring the realities of the time so as to achieve their political objective. The league’s future was therefore only till what they had managed to answer and was destined to see its end when the time for the next question came.
While the Leaguers’ knew what they did not want for Pakistan – Secular Capitalistic Democracy of the West and Atheistic Socialist Communism of the East – they had not yet answered Iqbal’s crucial question. This is apparent from Jinnah’s address at the Opening Ceremony of State Bank of Pakistan. Jinnah categorically refuted the notion of adopting the ‘economic system of the west’ which ‘created insoluble problems for humanity’ and propagated for ‘evolving banking practices
compatible with Islamic ideas of social and economic life’ and hence the term ‘
Islamic socialism.’ However, nowhere in the Leaguers’ speeches does one find what these ‘practices’ or principles were except in broader terms of equality, freedom and socio-economic justice as embedded in Islam.
In fact, Jinnah had formed a Planning Committee in 1943 to chart out a five year plan for the socio-economic uplift of Pakistan. The Committee – consisting of economics, engineering and other professionals – held its first meeting in September 1944 and was advised by Jinnah in the following words: ‘
Our ideals should not be capitalistic but Islamic.’ However, the Committee could not complete the second phase of its objective of focusing primarily on Pakistan specific areas due to the turn of events in the short span of time.
It is my understanding that the success of Pakistan lies in returning to completing the work initiated by Jinnah so as to find the answer to Iqbal’s question. However, it is highly unlikely to escape the shackles of both ‘capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ in our pursuit towards reaching our destiny without having understood the
Islamic socio-economic view. And for this goal of applying ‘
Islamic ideals’ to create our distinct socio-economic system promising justice and mutual wellbeing, the starting point is to study their first hand application by the very person who introduced such ‘
Ideals.’
Note: Quotations used have been taken from Saleena Karim’s book ‘Secular Jinnah’ (2010).
