Long Post warning:
My rebuttal to Hoodbhoy:
In his lecture, Hoodbhoy remarks 'Pakistan is in a state of confusion, because it was born in a state of confusion?'
He goes on to put forward two points:
'Point 1: There are only two nations that live on this sub-continent, "they are mutually hostile", they cannot ever live in peace.
Point 2: Muslims formed a nation'
To rebuke this segment of the lecture is not difficult for anyone who has studied the history of the sub continent and partition with a balanced view.
It's interesting to see that someone of Hoodbhoy's calibre chose to omit the fact that the two nation theory was thrust upon the Muslims of India by Hindu Nationalists.
To examine the reason behind this one only needs to look at what happened in 1803 after the fall of Mysore and Delhi. The British came to power, got rid of the french and Portuguese and started to consolidate territory once under the control of Muslim role. The British Raj saw the Muslims as political rivals and the only community posing a threat to their "rule".
The British generals and politicians used battles of Plassey & Saringaptam as pre-texts and in their twisted minds every Muslim was Siraj-Ud-Dawla and Tipu Sultan.
The British actively began to suppress the Muslims in the Sub Continent, the War of Independence in 1857 made the situation worse for Muslims.
The proceeding massacre of Muslims by the British was capitalised by fanatic Hindu extremists for their own benefit. Being the majority, their community leaders had acquired modern education and as such occupied key positions in public service, commerce and industry vs the Muslims of the Sub Continent.
It was during this time that the dream of the Hindu Raj began, the cunning among them pictured a time the British would leave and these sentiments produced revivalist movements such as the Arya Samaj.
The entire goal of this movement was to revive the Sivaji Cult and mobilise it against the Muslims. In fact the very concept of the "two nation" theory was an advent of Hindu Nationalists the likes of: BS Moonje, Bhai Parmanand, VD Savarkar, MS Golwalkar who aggressively demanded that Muslims should be ousted from India which was primordially a Hindu nation and saw both Hindus and Muslims as two different nations.
To address Hoodbhoy's observation on the situation of Bangladesh can be addressed by some light reading into the history behind the independence.
Lord Mountbatten who was more interested in playing Polo and sailing was reluctant to accept the position of viceroy, because he had no political experience, and he knew it would be a thankless task. But he felt it was his duty.
Mountbatten arrived in India in March 1947 to an atmosphere of distrust and conflict.
According to Ananya Vajpeyi, author of “Righteous Republic” and fellow and associate professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, “most of the conflicts going on in South Asia, whether within India, Pakistan or Bangladesh or between them, are directly or indirectly products of the unfinished business of partition, staggered from 1947 to 1971.”
I will say that Mountbatten had been given an impossible task by the British.
In his book Curfewed Night Kashmiri Journalist working for NY Times Basharat Peer argued:
“The hurried partition of India was one of the greatest imperial crimes of the British Empire. The massive displacements and the fratricide that accompanied it affected the subcontinent deeply and its legacy has shaped and twisted South Asian societies immensely.” Divided between India and Pakistan, “Kashmir carries the curse of being the unfinished business of the partition. The dispute has lingered and exacted a terrible cost for the past seven decades, and the hopes of a just peace and solution are very little.”
Nisid Hajari in his book "Midnight Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition" said partition was not inevitable and there and been an agreement between the British, India's Congress Party and the Muslim Leauge “on a united India, under a convoluted constitutional plan.” But, he says, “this deal collapsed largely because of lack of trust: Nehru and the Congress feared the Muslim areas would secede if given too much power; while Jinnah and the League feared that Congress would never hold up its end of the bargain once the British left.” Jawaharlal Nehru and Muhammad Ali Jinnah were destined to become the first leaders of postcolonial India and Pakistan, respectively.
Mountbatten’s hopes of overseeing a peaceful transition to an independent, united India were dashed as communal violence intensified between Muslim and Hindu communities.
In Hajari’s view, “avoiding partition wouldn’t necessarily have avoided bloodshed. The August 1947 riots may have been prevented, and thus hundreds of thousands of lives saved. But no one knows if the country would have held together or broken apart in ensuing years in multiple, equally bloody partitions.”
The repercussions of partition, Hajari says, “are playing out in a couple ways. Most obviously, the easy demonization of Pakistan and resort to belligerence and threats — albeit in the face of provocations by Pakistani-backed militants — is a legacy of the enmity created at partition. It’s simply far too easy to cast Pakistan as an enemy and far too difficult politically to make real concessions in the interests of peace.”
Siddartha Deb, A professor of creative writing in his novel "The point of return" laments “one can see that original genocidal rage burning on, in the violence against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 that completed the rise to power of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, as well as in the lynch mob mentality asserted by the right-wing groups to which he belongs, that killed and plundered with glee in 1947 and that continue to do so today.”
Hoodbhoy laments about the state of the nation and in his passionate speech to his impressionable audience doting on his every word he artfully presents the image of a subcontient without Pakistan, without Jinnah would have been so much better, a land of milk and honey with streets paved with gold.
To him I say this: If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
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Hoodbhoy then goes on to mention the separatist movement on Balochistan and PTM, again his argument here is moot as both of these violent movements can be compared to similar movements in nations such as Northern Ireland, Tamil states, Sri Lanka, the conflict between Taiwan, Hong Kong and mainland China and so on, but I digress here.
With regards to the PTM, we have talked at length as to why this movement which is made up of predominately Afghan's in a non organic foreign pressure group with it's only role being to create a schism between community cohesion and it's heart is a fundamentally racist movement with militant connections, his rant on the arrest of Pashteen is akin to Stephen Hawking commenting on the arrest of Gerry Adams for the murder of Jean McConville.
It's ridiculous and so I don't really need to go any further exploring this part of his rant.
Hoodboy's childlike remarks that M.A Jinnah never wrote a research paper or essay is akin to a infantile tantrum of a child throwing his toy's out of the pram for not having his way.
MA Jinnah was a barrister, he was not university educated, he was a pleader and a mighty fine one at that, a great orator and exceptionally stoic individual, he never concerned himself with academic or litrary pursuits, if Jinnah did a Myers Briggs analysis today, he would be 100% a doer.
What I would put to Hoodboy here is, for all the papers written on conflict resolution in Palestine, for all the research papers, what has been achieved on the ground?
Prof Hoodbhoy has 106 academic papers to his credit which range from physic through to extremism and politics. We all respect you Prof Hoodbhoy but there is monolithic difference between putting pen to paper and fighting for the rights of the oppressed.
Hoodbhoy attempts to paint M.A. Jinnah as some sort of militant leader whereas Mr. Jinnah was not supporter of the militant activities against the British and was a secularist through and through. He even fought (pro-bono = free of cost) for the rights of non Muslim freedom fighters:
When Bhagat Singh was jailed and judicial process to hang him started in his absence, he delivered a powerful speech against his trial in the Central Assembly (the then Parliament of India), on September 12, 1929. Jinnah said: “the man who goes on hunger strike has a soul. He is moved by that soul, and he believes in the justice of his cause. He is no ordinary criminal, who is guilty of cold blooded, sordid wicked crime… I do not approve of the action of Bhagat Singh… I regret that rightly or wrongly the youth of today is stirred up… however much you deplore them and however much you say they are misguided, it is the system, this damnable system of governance, which is resented by the people,”
Earlier, in 1916, he was the leading defence counsel of Bal Gangadhar Tilak (a favourite of the Hindutva clan) in a sedition case against him; punishment for which could be death penalty. Jinnah won the historic case against the British government to the terrible humiliation of the foreign rulers. Around 1935, there arose a serious religious conflict between Sikhs and Muslims of Lahore over possession of a religious site which was claimed to be a of martyrs Gurudwara and a mosque by Sikhs and Muslims respectively. The Muslim party approached Jinnah to fight legal battle on its behalf. Jinnah refused the brief and kept away from the case.
For oodbhoy to assail the character of a man like Jinnah is reprehensible and unbecoming, did Teddy Roosevelt the man who is widely regarded as the first modern President of the United States write a research paper? Short answer is NO, because men like Jinnah and Roosevelt were doers not academic, their interest were practical not academic.
His comment that Japan has no idiology is illinformed at best, the comparision of Pakistan with Japan is an oxymoron as it is to compare apples to oranges, Japan's idiology which centres around Shinto-Buddhism, asthehics, wholeness and the concept of Wabi-Sabi, Yugen and Enso is a product of it's rich culture and history.
Pakistan has it's own unique idiology and identity, Hoodbhoy goes on to state Holland has no Idiology which again is a mysnomer. The Netherlands was ruled by a Jagidar system (which Hoodybhoy forgot to mention) like virtually every nation on earth, the cultural history of the Netherlands centres around the Orthodoc Calvinist religion and Catholic faiths.
Yes, the quality of life index is so much better but that is not Jinnah's fault, nor is it Pakistan's, nor is it Islam's. Jinnah was a man who gave the "people" a nation, an identiy, Islam was gifted to the Muslim "people" by Allah (SWT), if you give a man a hammer he can use it to break or to build, the reason Pakistan's quality of life index if lower is because for 70 years the wise old men of Pakistan have done nothing but ponder and wonder.
To Hoodbhoy I would simple quote Iqbal: "Thay-to-aabaa-wo-tumhary-he-magar-tum-kya-ho,-hath-par-hath-dhary-muntazir-e-farda-ho".
And finally in closing I would like to Quote Stanley Wolpert where he said "Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all three."
Thank you Quaid-E-Azam, thank you for Pakistan.
Pakistan Zindabad!
