Jinnah — a visionary for all ages

[fatman17]

HUM HINDUSTANI: Two questions, two surnames —J Sri Raman

In a television interview, Jaswant Singh asked the anchor and the viewers to “look into the eyes” of Indian Muslims, “an alienated lot”, and see their “pain”. All these years, he has not been caught even once playing the ophthalmologist with the surviving victims of the Gujarat pogrom

My column is devoted this time to two searching questions and two controversial surnames.

Let us start with the questions.

Question 1: What was Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s role in the Partition of India?

Answer: The jury is still out on that one. The Quaid-e-Azam, however, is playing a crucial posthumous role in splitting the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), the political front of the Parivar (India’s Far Right “family&#8221.

Former External Affairs (or Finance or Defence) Minister Jaswant Singh is now also a former BJP leader and member. The party has thrown him out for writing a biography of Jinnah and releasing it on the eve of a “brainstorming session” of the leadership on the BJP’s reverses in the recent general election. As widely reported, the book titled “Jinnah — India, Partition, Independence” absolves Jinnah of all blame for the bloody event of 1947 and attributing responsibility for it instead to India’s Congress party and government leaders Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel.

This, of course, is not the first time Pakistan’s founder has caused a furore in the BJP and the Parivar. As widely recalled again, a tribute on Pakistani soil by former Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani to Jinnah as a “secular leader” led to the most traumatic phase of the former’s career within the Far Right fraternity. He was divested of party presidency as a punishment, but soon became the party’s “shadow prime minister”, though the voters denied him the substance.

Advani’s rehabilitation, however, did not come before the party firmly asserted its stand on the Quaid-e-Azam in a formal resolution: “Whatever may have been Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan,” said the resolution, “the state he founded was theocratic and non-secular”. A party spokesman said on the occasion that the BJP viewed Jinnah as one of the “main” persons responsible for Partition.

Advani could not but have anticipated the inner-party reaction to his praise of Jinnah. He could not have been unaware of the influence on his party of its ideological parent (of which more in a moment). If he still went ahead with his statement, it was not because he was ready to reveal a radical change in his outlook. Hardly hidden was the political motive behind his homage to Pakistan’s first Governor-General. Advani’s was an attempt to acquire the moderate image of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and thus acceptability to allies, without whom the party could not capture power.

With Advani’s example before him, Singh must have been even more aware of the inevitable consequences of his adventure as an author. He, too, could not have proceeded with the book and its release without political motive. Critics in the party relate this to his rebellious role after the poll debacle. He had said there should be “some relation” between “inam” (reward) and “parinam” (result), provoked by the denial of plum parliamentary posts distributed among his rivals. He can complain no more.

Singh did not exactly stick his neck out in Advani’s defence when the latter faced inner-party punishment for his indiscretion in Pakistan. Advani returned the silent compliment, as BJP cabal banished Singh. Advani showed the same moral courage as when he witnessed the demolition of Babri Masjid, making December 6, 1992 “the saddest day of my life”. He did nothing, either, to see that August 19, 2009 did not become the saddest day of Singh’s political life.

Singh has also been trying to secularise his image after thirty years in the BJP. In a television interview, he asked the anchor and the viewers to “look into the eyes” of Indian Muslims, “an alienated lot”, and see their “pain”. All these years, he has not been caught even once playing the ophthalmologist with the surviving victims of the Gujarat pogrom. He might do so now, after the imposition of a ban on his book in the state. Narendra Modi, the favourite child of the BJP’s ideological parent mentioned before, has acted fast.

Which brings us to our next poser.

Question 2: Who wears the pants in the Parivar?

Answer: In the largely dhoti-clad world of Indian politicians, it is difficult to say. But we know who wears the khaki half-pants in the clan of majority communalism. It is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

In recent years, we have been witness to a debate among political pundits on the degree of control the RSS has over the BJP. The patriarch of the Parivar has now pronounced the authoritative answer. The RSS only let its displeasure be known over Advani’s ideological deviation. It has preferred to crack the whip more conspicuously in Singh’s case. Advani has an RSS background and has always worn the badge with professed pride. Singh has never been a member of the minority-dreaded outfit.

Talking to a TV channel the other day, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat minced no words of what he has in mind for the BJP. He said there were many RSS members among BJP leaders and stressed that the organisation could issue directives to them. An indirect directive he issued right in the interview was for the installation of a new party leadership, preferably from the age group of 55 to 60. Octogenarian Advani, who wants to remain the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha (Lower House of India’s parliament) for five years, cannot say he has not been warned.

It is time to move on to the two news-making surnames. The first, of course, is Jinnah. If this is a reliable red rag to the “saffron brigade” as the feistier of India’s Far Right are called, so is the tag of “Khan” to the anti-terror security staff at American airports. The surname, in the present instance, belonged to popular Bollywood star Shah Rukh.

Details about the matinee idol’s detention at Newark airport are old hat by now. Several stories about his and other Muslim surnames leading to similar harassment and humiliation of others, and not only celebrities, have already been reported and recalled as an instance of religious profiling. What this columnist found curious, however, was a statement by a BJP spokesman joining in a condemnation of the practice.

Not long ago, India watched the videotape of an election rally oration by BJP candidate Varun Gandhi, which caused a nation-wide uproar (noted in these columns before). A particularly hair-raising line of the hate speech was: “Badey daraawne naam hotey hain inke... Karimullah... Mazharullah... agar raat ko kabhi dikh jaayen... to darr rahen hain...” (These people have such scary-sounding names... Karimullah... Mazharullah... If you ever encountered them at night, you’d be scared...)

Now, if that is not name-based religious profiling, nothing is. The country, however, has heard no clear condemnation of this from either Advani or Singh or any BJP spokesperson.

The writer is a journalist based in Chennai, India. A peace activist, he is also the author of a sheaf of poems titled At Gunpoint

 

[fatman17]

Jaswant questions BJP’s double standards
View attachment 4570
* Former leader unaware of reason for expulsion from party

By Iftikhar Gilani

NEW DELHI: Expelled Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Jaswant Singh on Thursday criticised the ban imposed on his book by the western Indian state of Gujarat, as more BJP-led state governments were about to proscribe his book on Pakistan founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

“I am greatly saddened by it,” Singh said. “I join the eminent company of authors like Salman Rushdie. I think banning books in India is shutting the door to thinking. If our political leaders stop writing, reading, thinking, discussing and analysing, the politics will get all the more lost in the dark alley than it already is,” he said. “I don’t know which particular part aggrieved the party. They have not clarified this,” he said. Jaswant said the fact that he was writing a book on Jinnah was not hidden from the party leadership.

 

[fatman17]

Gujarat bans book

LAHORE: Authorities in the western Indian state of Gujarat have banned former BJP leader Jaswant Singh’s book on Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, an Indian paper said. The BJP government in Gujarat said it had banned the book for its “defamatory references” to Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s first home minister, and a political icon in Gujarat.

daily times monitor

 

[fatman17]

Selling like hot cakes

LAHORE: Jaswant Singh’s book on Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah is selling like hot cakes, DNA India reported on Thursday. It said the book was set to launch Jaswant into the top league of Indian writers, with bookshops across the country selling hundreds in the last three days and stores running out of copies.

daily times monitor

 

[fatman17]

Media hails Jaswant

LAHORE: The Indian media on Thursday hailed Jaswant Singh for his book on Muhammad Ali Jinnah, with the Indian Express questioning the free thinking in ideology driven parties. Times of India said, “Surely it is not impossible for a political outfit to function without asking members to always agree with party views.” The Hindu said it was for “historians to evaluate the scholarly merit of Singh’s work”.

daily times monitor

 

[fatman17]

Jaswant Singh breaks silence over 1999 plane hijacking

* Ex-BJP leader insists Advani was aware of deal to swap terrorists for hijacked passengers

By Iftikhar Gilani

NEW DELHI: After setting in perspective the history of Partition, Jaswant Singh is now volunteering information on Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its stalwart LK Advani – breaking his silence over the 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane to Kandahar.

Jaswant – as external affairs minister at the time – accompanied three terrorists, who were set free in exchange for passengers of the hijacked plane, to Kandahar. There has been a controversy over the issue, with Advani claiming a few years ago that he was not aware of Jaswant’s plane trip to Kandahar with the three dreaded terrorists.

In a televised interview, Jaswant dealt a blow to Advani’s stance of years that he did not know about the exchange and Jaswant’s flight to Kandahar. Breaking his decade-long silence following his exit from the BJP, Jaswant said he “covered up” for Advani when he claimed Advani was not aware of the developments. Jaswant said Advani was aware of the decision to release the terrorists in exchange for the freedom of over 160 hostages. “Yes, he did [know],” he said. Asked why he maintained during an election campaign that Advani did not know about the Kandahar trip and whether he covered up for Advani, Jaswant said, “I’m sorry, I did [that] ... I tried to cover it. I treated it as part of my continuing sense of commitment and loyalty.”

Asked whether he lamented covering up for Advani, Jaswant said, “I don’t regret [it] because it was a step I took. But it was part of an election campaign. How should I put it? I was being very conservative with truth.”

He said Advani could not have been unaware of the decision to fly to Kandahar. “I announced it in the cabinet,” said Jaswant. “How can they (terrorists) be released from prison without the home minister consenting?” he said. Jaswant also made veiled criticism at Advani when he questioned why the aircraft was allowed to leave Amritsar, because once it left, “the game was lost”.

“Who would be responsible for the aircraft leaving Amritsar? For 45 minutes, the aircraft was on the ground in Amritsar. All of you are obsessed with Kandahar ... I went there because 166 lives were involved, and the officers there had asked me to consult if a decision was to be made,” he said. “I went and asked him [later] ‘what do you want me to say now Advaniji’. He said ‘you say whatever you want to’.”

 

[fatman17]

Jinnah was a secular man, says Jaswant

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Former Indian External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh has said that Muhammad Ali Jinnah was a secular man, and that he had initially opposed the division of Bengal and Punjab.

In an interview with Ejaz Haider on a private TV channel, Singh said that the BJP’s decision to expel him from the party has deeply hurt and disappointed him. He further stated that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a hard-line Hindu nationalist group, was pulling strings in the BJP. The BJP expelled Singh from the party on August 18 after determining that his recently released book, Jinnah: India-Partition Independence, went against the core principles of the BJP’s ideology.

Singh said that India Today, a prominent magazine, got five eminent historians to determine who was responsible for the partition of India. The editor of the magazine, according to Singh, said that there was consensus among the historians that Jawaharlal Nehru, not Jinnah, was responsible for partition, and that his book was based on this consensus. Singh added that we need to re-examine history objectively and truthfully to figure out a path for the future.

Responding to a question, Singh said that Jinnah was forced to choose the option of partition, and that partition was an instrument to end all peace in the South Asian region. But, Singh added, “we can find a solution as we are all victims. We should know that no one will come back to restore peace for us unless we ourselves wake up…try and find out where we went wrong.” The veteran politician, now an independent member of the Indian parliament, concluded by stressing that “we must expand the constituency of peace in the region”.

 

[Khajur]

Selling like hot cakes

LAHORE: Jaswant Singh’s book on Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah is selling like hot cakes, DNA India reported on Thursday. It said the book was set to launch Jaswant into the top league of Indian writers, with bookshops across the country selling hundreds in the last three days and stores running out of copies.

daily times monitor

There is no doubt Jaswant Singh is a smart guy.
He knows exactly how to dish out a best seller.

In his last book "A Call To Honour ",he claimed someone(A mole) in the PMO during late prime minister P V Narasimha Rao's tenure had leaked nuclear secrets to the US and this created a major hupla in the indian parliament.But Mr Jaswant Singh later on clarified that he heard that from some close confidant and couldn't disclose his name.

Name the mole, PM dares Jaswant

Now this time around too went for anther controversial subject though being fully aware of the clear stand that BJP taken on Mr Jinnah after LK Advani's Jinnah controversy.

And more importantly he went on to make strong remarks aganist Nehru,Patel and called Jinnah a secular leader who was forced by congress demand a separate pakistan and also undesirably claimed indian muslim sometime feel like aliens in their own country in his pre book release TV interviews.

Now he says nobody read his book before his expulsion and his 600 pages book takes a very balanced view every characters related to the partition.

Earlier I had some respect for Mr Jaswant Singh ...but mole controversy of his last book gave me the clear impression that he is just another politician who knows which side of the bread is to buttered.

 

[Murshad]

The man and his vision - Remembering Muhammad Ali Jinnah [1876-1948]
Pakistan, one of the largest Muslim states in the world, is a living and exemplary monument of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
With his untiring efforts, indomitable will, and dauntless courage, he united the Indian Muslims under the banner of the Muslim League and carved out a homeland for them, despite stiff opposition from the Hindu Congress and the British Government.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah was born in Karachi on December 25, 1876. His father Jinnah Poonja was an Ismaili Khoja of Kathiawar, a prosperous business community. Muhammad Ali received his early education at the Sindh Madrassah and later at the Mission School, Karachi. He went to England for further studies in 1892 at the age of 16. In 1896, Jinnah qualified for the Bar and was called to the Bar in 1897.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah started his political career in 1906 when he attended the Calcutta session of the All India National Congress in the capacity of Private Secretary to the President of the Congress. In 1910, he was elected to the Imperial Legislative Council. He sponsored the Waqf Validating Bill, which brought him in touch with other Muslim leaders. In March 1913, Jinnah joined the All India Muslim League.
As a member of the Muslim League, Jinnah began to work for Hindu-Muslim unity. In 1917, the annual sessions of both the Congress and the League were held at Lucknow. The League session was presided over by Muhammad Ali Jinnah. It marked the culmination of his efforts towards Hindu-Muslim unity. Here, both the League and the Congress adopted a scheme of reforms known as the Lucknow Pact.
On April 19, 1918, Jinnah married Rutanbai. Their daughter, Dina was born a year later. In 1919, Jinnah resigned from his membership of the Imperial Legislative Council as protest against the "Rowlatt Act".
Until the publication of Nehru Report, Jinnah continued his efforts for Hindu-Muslim unity. The Nehru Report, published in 1928, was severely criticised by all sections of the Muslim community. In December 1928, the National Convention was called to consider the Report. Jinnah proposed some amendments, but they were all rejected. He finally parted ways with the Congress.In 1929, Jinnah presented his famous Fourteen Points in response to the Nehru Report. When he returned from England, he reorganised the Muslim League. In 1934, he was elected as its permanent president. The Provincial Assembly elections of 1937 swept the Congress to power in eight provinces. After almost two years of oppressive rule, Muslims under the leadership of Jinnah, celebrated the Day of Deliverance at the end of Congress rule.
The Muslim League held its annual session at Lahore in March 1940. This was presided over by Quaid-e-Azam. The demand for Pakistan was formally put forward here. This goal was realised on August 14, 1947. Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah was appointed as its first Governor General, The establishment of Pakistan brought even greater responsibilities for Jinnah. The refugee problem, the withholding of Pakistani assets by India, and the Kashmir problem were a real test for the Quaid. However, his indomitable will prevailed. He worked out a sound economic policy, established an independent currency and the State Bank for Pakistan. He chose Karachi as the federal capital.
However, he did not live long to witness the progress of the state that he had founded. On September 11, 1948, he died after a protracted illness at Karachi. He was buried in Karachi that witnessed the entire nation mourning over an irreparable loss.

(Jinnah’s thought at a glance)
Two students of the first Muslim school in Bombay, British India, contributed to Muslims in a major way. The first was a brilliant barrister, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan nation, also known as Quaid-e-Azam. The second was Abdullah Yusuf Ali whose translation of the Quran is the most used English translation of the Quran in the world. In 1940 Mohammad Ali Jinnah was instrumental in getting the Muslim League formally to adopt Dr Mohammad Iqbal's vision of a separate state for Muslims. A year later, Jinnah summed up the implications of this vision of a separate state for Muslims with his customary eloquence: The ideology of the Muslim League is based on the fundamental principle that the Muslims of India are an independent nationality and any attempt to get them to merge their national and political identity and unity will not only be resisted but, in my opinion, it will be futile for anyone to attempt it. We are determined, and let there be no mistake about it, to establish the status of an independent State in this subcontinent.
During the early and difficult months of Pakistan's emergence, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, although in ill-health and over seventy years of age, undertook a countrywide tour aimed at building confidence and raising people's spirits. "Do not be overwhelmed by the enormity of the task," he said in a speech at Lahore. "There is many an example in history of young nations building themselves up by sheer determination and force of character. You are made of sterling material and second to none. Keep up your morale. Do not be afraid of death. We should face it bravely to save the honor of Pakistan and of Islam. Do your duty and have faith in Pakistan. It has come to stay." Jinnah's role in this Pakistan that had indeed come to stay is immeasurable. His people bestowed upon him the title Quaid-e-Azam, 'Great Leader', because without him, Pakistan would not have existed at all. His leadership of Muslims of India through the 1930's and the crucial years immediately preceding Partition gave shape to their dreams and put their aspirations into a realistic and meaningful framework. One of his greatest gifts as a politician was that whenever he defined Pakistan he did so in terms that the man in the street could understand, and he avoided abstract philosophical principles. "We are a nation," he affirmed, three years before the birth of Pakistan, "with our own distinctive culture and civilisation, language and literature, art and architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of values and proportion, legal laws and moral codes, customs and calendar, history and tradition, aptitude and ambitions--- in short, we have our own distinctive outlook on life."
Professor Ziauddin Ahmad, the biographer of Quad-e-Azam, commented, "When he defined Muslim nationhood in such tangible terms, every Muslim found himself testifying to the justice of this claim, and subscribing to the logical corollary of the fact and recognition of separate Muslim nationhood, viz., the demand for a Muslim homeland."

(Pakistan’s founding father)
A brilliant lawyer by trade, he rose to the forefront of the struggle for a Muslim nation as India negotiated its independence from Britain.But his insistence on a separate Muslim state to be carved out of the former British India earned him many enemies.
Indeed, the last viceroy of India under British rule, Lord Mountbatten - thwarted by Jinnah's relentless call for partition plans of the future states of India and Pakistan - referred to him variously as a 'lunatic', an 'evil genius,' and a 'bastard'.
Today, many in the West view Jinnah through the eyes of Richard Attenborough's movie 'Gandhi,' in which the Muslim leader was portrayed as a cold villain who wanted a separate Pakistan only for his own political aggrandizement. In truth, Jinnah was a complex man who by his eloquence and perseverance inspired both adulation and condemnation.Born in 1876, the son of a wealthy Karachi merchant, Jinnah was not a man of the people like Indian nationalist Mahatma Gandhi. Jinnah studied law in England, and after his return to India in 1896 as an advocate for the Bombay High Court, the slender, well-dressed and well-spoken attorney quickly made a name for himself.According to one contemporary, quoted in a Time Magazine profile, Jinnah was "the best showman of them all. Quick, exceedingly clever, sarcastic and colourful. His greatest delight was to confound the opposing lawyer by confidential asides and to outwit the presiding judge in repartee." In 1906, Jinnah joined the All India Congress. In 1913, while still serving in the Congress, he joined the Muslim League, prompting a leading Congress spokesman of the day to call him the "ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity." With time, that would change.
Early in his political career, Jinnah was chiefly concerned with achieving independence for a unified India. Increasingly, however, he worried that British oppression would be replaced by Hindu oppression and continued subjugation of India's Muslim minority.
In 1919, Jinnah resigned from the Congress and turned his focus to Muslim interests. Over the next two decades he would become the architect of a dream first voiced by Muslim poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal that Indian Muslims would someday have their own nation.
By the late 1930s, Jinnah, who had become leader of the Muslim League, was convinced that a partition of India along religious lines was the only way to preserve Muslim political power.
In 1940, the Muslim League adopted the 'Lahore Resolution' calling for separate autonomous states in majority-Muslim areas of northeastern and eastern India.
In 1946, violence between Hindus and Muslims broke out after Jinnah called for demonstrations opposing an interim Indian government in which Muslim power would be compromised.
The riots spread. In the first weeks of the uprising, more than 3,000 people were killed and thousands wounded. Against the rising tide of ethnic unrest, Jinnah demanded partition of India. Britain, eager to make a clean break with India, finally relented and Pakistan was born. Jinnah, who by most accounts was not a particularly religious man, called for equal rights for all Pakistani citizens without regard to their religion.
In his inaugural speech as first governor general of Pakistan, Jinnah said: .'You will find that in the course of time, Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would 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”
But Jinnah would not live to see the development of his fledging country. He died of tuberculosis just 13 months after the formation of Pakistan.
His vision of a secular government was never fully realised, either, with disputes between religious groups marring much of Pakistan's brief history. And later, many of his followers disputed the degree to which he was committed to a secular government.
A half-century after his death, controversy stirs over the making of a film about his life. Critics of the film, which stars British actor Christopher Lee, worry that Jinnah will be cast in an unfavourable light. Those involved in the project insist that the film will portray Pakistanis beloved leader accurately.
However history may judge him, his own contribution to history cannot be doubted. As his biographer, Stanley Wolpert, wrote:
”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.”
Compilation & Research by Yahya Hussain

 

[Murshad]

"The constitution of Pakistan has yet to be framed by the Pakistan Constituent Assembly. I do not know what the ultimate shape of this constitution is going to be, but I am sure that it will be of a democratic type, embodying the essential principle of Islam. Today, they are as applicable in actual life as they were 1,300 years ago. Islam and its idealism have taught us democracy. It has taught equality of man, justice and fairplay to everybody. We are the inheritors of these glorious traditions and are fully alive to our responsibilities and obligations as framers of the future constitution of Pakistan. In any case Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic State to be ruled by priests with a divine mission. We have many non-Muslims --Hindus, Christians, and Parsis --but they are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the same rights and privileges as any other citizens and will play their rightful part in the affairs of Pakistan. "


Broadcast talk to the people of the United States of America on Pakistan recorded February, 1948

 

[Halaku Khan]

Jinnah will remain famous for his "Direct Action Day", when huge numbers of Kaffirs were slaughtered on the 18th day of the holy month of Ramzan, in 1946.

Here is a contemporary account from Time magazine:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
INDIA: Direct Action -- Printout -- TIME
Monday, Aug. 26, 1946

India suffered the biggest Moslem-Hindu riot in its history. Moslem League Boss Mohamed Ali Jinnah had picked the 18th day of Ramadan for "Direct Action Day" against Britain's plan for Indian independence (which does not satisfy the Muslims' old demand for a separate Pakistan). Though direct, the action was supposed to be peaceful. But before the disastrous day was over, blood soaked the melting asphalt of sweltering Calcutta's streets.

Rioting Muslims went after Hindus with guns, knives and clubs, looted shops, stoned newspaper offices, set fire to Calcutta's British business district. Hindus retaliated by firing Moslem mosques and miles of Moslem slums. Thousands of homeless families roamed the city in search of safety and food (most markets had been pilfered or closed). Police blotters were filled with stories of women raped, mutilated and burned alive. Indian police, backed by British Spitfire scouting planes and armored cars, battled mobs of both factions. Cried Hindu Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (who is trying to form an interim government despite the Muslims' refusal to enter it): "Either direct action knocks the Government over, or the Government knocks direct action over."

By the 21st day of Ramadan, direct action had killed some 3,000 people and wounded thousands more. Said one weary police officer: "All we can do is move the bodies to one side of the street." Vultures tore into the rapidly putrefying corpses (among them, the bodies of many women & children).

Like other Indian leaders, Jinnah denounced the "fratricidal war." But most observers wondered how Jinnah could fail to know what would happen when he called for "direct action." Shortly before the riots broke out, his own news agency (Orient Press) reported that Jinnah, anticipating violence, was sleeping on the floor these nights—to toughen up for a possible sojourn in jail.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

As says the Time article itself "Though direct, the action was supposed to be peaceful."

Beyond that speculation on whether Jinnah could have known, how he could not have known, is just that, speculation. Not a shred of conclusive evidence that Jinnah either plotted the violence or thought it would reach the levels it did.

For some Indians such negative speculation is an elixir, since it allows the perpetuation of the demonization of Jinnah, and through that a perpetuation of the prejudice and hatred directed at Pakistan - an issue that resulted in Jaswant Singh, due to his honest introspection of the rather skewed Indian views on Jinnah, getting fired from his long standing position in the BJP.

 

[Halaku Khan]

Time Magazine's obituary for Jinnah:

----------------------------------------------------------------
PAKISTAN: That Man - TIME

Monday, Sep. 20, 1948


Out of the travail of 400 million in the Indian subcontinent have come two symbols—a man of love and a man of hate. Last winter the man of nonviolence, Gandhi, died violently at the hands of an assassin. Last week the man of hate, Mohamed Ali Jinnah, at 71, died a natural death in Karachi, capital of the state he had founded. His devoted and equally fanatic sister, Fatima, was at his side; so was his daughter, Mrs. Dinah Wadia, whom he had disowned because she married a Parsee (as he had done before her).

Gandhi's death shamed Hindus and Muslims into halting the communal massacres which he had been unable to stop during his life. Jinnah's passing might release a new wave of fanaticism which even he would have opposed. As he died a crisis which might bathe all India in blood was boiling up. When the news of his death reached New Delhi, a Hindu said, "A man can be more dangerous in death than in life." He meant that the inflammatory preachings of Jinnah the agitator would live on, but the occasionally restraining hand of Jinnah the politician had been removed.

"The Best Showman." Jinnah was born in Karachi in 1876 of a wealthy trading family; at 16 he went to England to study law. As an advocate of the Bombay High Court he was, according to a colleague, "the best showman of them all ... His greatest delight was to confound the opposing lawyer by confidential asides and to outwit the presiding judge in repartee."

He joined the Congress Party and for a while worked for Hindu-Moslem unity. In 1921, he abandoned the Congress to build the Moslem League and to work for a separate government for Indian Muslims. The walls of his meeting halls blazed with such slogans as: "Make the blood of slaves boil with the force of faith!" and "Make the small sparrow fight the big hawk!" He would stalk into meetings wearing his "political uniform"—native dress with a black astrakhan cap—and whip the Muslims into a frenzy. Sometimes, in his fury, his monocle would pop out of its socket. After meetings, he would go home, change to Western clothes and be again the suave Western lawyer.

Enemies among the Muslims whispered against him: "Jinnah does not wear a beard; Jinnah does not go to the mosque; Jinnah drinks whiskey." Yet his power increased to the point where he was able to force the Hindus and the British to split India into two dominions. He became governor general of Pakistan. With the split came the riots. His part in them will not soon be forgotten by Hindus. Last week, when news of his death reached New Delhi's bazaars, there was bitter exultation. A Hindu refugee said:

"I had six people working under me in the West Punjab. Because of that man, I now work as a watchman for one rupee, eight annas [45¢] a day. Now that man is dead, but what about me?"

"A Man of Destiny." The Hindustani Times devoted a page to an uncompromising attack on Jinnah's motives and methods. However, it concluded: "A man of destiny, he was perhaps the greatest man of Islam since Mohamed."

Jinnah did not underestimate his own importance. Recently, a delegation from the Moslem League called on him to urge a policy with which he disagreed. Gently, the League spokesman reminded Jinnah of a debt. "Sir," he said, "because of this league you got Pakistan." Jinnah snapped, "No. Because of my iron will I got Pakistan. I can see ahead 50 years-which you and even my Pakistan ministers cannot."

Last June he retired to a cool, quiet mountain resort in Baluchistan Province. Against the advice of his doctors, he flew back to Karachi last week to confer with Premier Liaquat Ali Khan on the war between India and the Nizam of Hyderabad. The strain of the flight was too much for his old heart. Two hours after his arrival he was dead.

Behind him Jinnah left no outstanding favorite, no one man who could command the unquestioning respect of other contenders. The cabinet hastily appointed as governor general Khwaja Nazimuddin, British-educated premier of East Bengal. The real struggle for influence would be between Liaquat Ali Khan and Foreign Minister Sir Mohamed Zafrullah Khan.

Liaquat, 53, is a plump, bald, practical politician, whom Hindus regard as a moderate. Zafrullah Khan, 55, Pakistan's spokesman in the U.N., is handicapped politically because he is a member of the Ahmadiyya community, an offshoot from Mohammedanism. Mizza Ghulam Ahmad, founder of the sect, who died in 1908, taught that Christ had escaped alive from the cross, fled to Kashmir, where he died, and was buried at Srinigar. Hindus regard Zafrullah Khan as a brilliant fanatic.

Jinnah's death raised the possibility that his political heirs might seek the final solution for insolvent, disorganized governments: war.

 

[fatman17]

ANALYSIS: What did Jinnah stand for? —Rasul Bakhsh Rais

As we try to rebuild Pakistan as a democratic state, we need to revisit Jinnah, recover him from the usurpers and shape the future of Pakistan according to his ideas of democracy, constitutionalism, peaceful struggle for rights, and the separation of religion from the state

The recent book on Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah by Jaswant Singh, the expelled member of the BJP and former Indian minister of external affairs, has raised a fresh controversy in Indian politics because of his reassessment of the founder of Pakistan. What enraged the conservative leaders of the BJP was Singh’s portrayal of Jinnah as secular, and not solely responsible for the partition of India.

Why does such a depiction boil the blood of conservative Hindu political leaders and some intellectuals in India? The answer is very simple: it doesn’t fit the historical picture of Jinnah that they have drawn in their minds, and they have kept their minds tightly closed since independence. The story of the creation of Pakistan that they have taught successive generations and would want everyone in the world to believe has contributed to an intellectual and political mindset about Jinnah and Pakistan that is difficult to change.

Jaswant Singh is not a run of the mill politician. He is a thinking man and very reflective about India’s past. This scribe, interviewing him in May 1984 on a different subject, found him deeply interested in exploring what happened to India since the Muslim invasions, and why and how they happened. My Indian academic friends recommended that I see Mr Singh not as a politician but as an intellectual; I found him very engaging on many subjects.

His book, which we have yet to find and read in Pakistan, appears to be one of those intellectual journeys that Jaswant Singh has been taking to understand India’s complex past, its present and its future. As we can see from the strong reaction from conservative Hindu social and political groups, writing about Jinnah is not an easy task in India, where a man who struggled for the independence of India for decades before embracing the idea of an independent Pakistan has been made out a villain of the piece.

Objective historians or those who have written on Jinnah and on the events leading to the partition of the subcontinent have never disputed the fact that Jinnah was a modernist Muslim devoted to the freedom of India, and when he found Congress leaders to be unreasonably hostile to legitimate Muslim political interests, he demanded a separate state — Pakistan.

Jinnah tried, till the end of the Cabinet Mission, to work within the constitutive framework of the Indian union but without compromising on three basic principles that would constitutionally safeguard Muslim interests — autonomy of provinces, representation of Muslims in the legislature proportionate to their demographic strength, and share in power.

The idea of concurrent majority was not a new concept. The southern states in the US that were a numerically minority used it to seek accommodation of their interests in founding of the American republic. Likewise, interests of such a large number of Muslims that constituted more than a quarter of the Indian population required constitutional arrangements beyond the logic of one-man-one-vote. And the dominant section of the Congress Party was not willing to concede on this issue.

This essay is not about why or under what conditions the idea of Pakistan became popular among Muslims and how the struggle for a separate homeland for Muslims in regions of their great concentration succeeded. It is about the principles and ideology that Jinnah stood for.

But we cannot actually discover the real Jinnah out of the many controversies about him in Pakistan without settling the debate on whether he wanted to create a state for Muslims or an Islamic state.

The evidence for the fact that Jinnah demanded a homeland for Muslims comes from the major religious political parties — the Jama’at-e Islami and the Jamiat-e Ulema-e Islam — which opposed the creation of Pakistan. This was because they did not endorse the idea of a territorial Muslim state, and secondly because they feared that Pakistan led by the secular Jinnah and his Muslim League would not be an Islamic state.

Our dragging of Islam into our politics for decades and the state-sponsored Islamisation programme under General Zia ul Haq have buried the true ideology and political struggle of the Quaid under the debris of autocratic and self-centred politics of the dictators.

We need to rediscover the Jinnah that we lost during the dark decades of military dictatorships aligned with the religious and right wing political groups.

A careful reading of Jinnah’s political life in the Congress Party and later in the Muslim League, and his ideas about politics, constitutionalism, representation and every other issue concerning statehood and government would reveal that he was a modernist-rationalist to the core.

His ideas and thoughts about the state of Pakistan have been equally, if not more, been misrepresented in his own country.

What, in a nutshell, was the ideology of Jinnah?

He was essentially a secular Muslim, not that he rejected religion as something irrelevant on a personal level, but wanted the state of Pakistan to be neutral among various religious communities of Pakistan. This is one of the old renaissance ideas that have transformed relations between societies and states in the modern world.

It is not strange that we find the religious right of Pakistan and the Indian Sangh Parivar with its core elements of the RSS in total agreement in portraying Jinnah as non-secular. Theirs is a distorted view of history, and specifically of Jinnah, that is meant to serve their narrow political interests.

Neither Indian Hindu parties nor Islamic groups in Pakistan feel comfortable with the real Jinnah. Islamic groups in Pakistan may not treat Jaswant Singh any differently than he has been by the Sangh Parivar for characterising Jinnah as secular. Maybe they treat him here with some respect, but that is for a different reason.

Secularism may be a controversial idea among common Pakistanis beyond those who may have a nuanced understanding of the origin and significance of this philosophy. But what have our military dictators and supporting political outfits using the shell of the Muslim League have done to other two political ideas — democracy and constitutionalism?

Four military generals sitting under Jinnah’s portrait have suspended and abrogated constitutions and sent elected governments packing. In every episode, they had the evergreen political class on their side. Nothing could be more insulting to Jinnah and his political legacy than what the dictators and their political associates have done.

As we try to rebuild Pakistan as a democratic state, we need to revisit Jinnah, recover him from the usurpers and shape the future of Pakistan according to his ideas of democracy, constitutionalism, peaceful struggle for rights, and the separation of religion from the state. Therein lies our future.

Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais is author of Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2008) and a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences. He can be reached at rasul@lums.edu.pk

 

[Halaku Khan]

It is interesting that at the time Jinnah was traveling around India, whipping up passions in favour of Pakistan, he was also secretly in touch with Churchill and other high British officials. From a previous post:

The British had decided on Partition to serve their own strategic ends. On 29 March 1945, after Viceroy Lord Wavell met Prime Minister Churchill in London he recorded: “He (Churchill) seems to favour partition of India into Pakistan, Hindustan and Princestan.”

Sir Martin Gilbert, the British biographer of Winston Churchill revealed that Churchill had asked Jinnah to dispatch secret letters to him by addressing them to a lady, Elizabeth Giliat, who had been Churchill’s secretary. This secret interaction continued for years. Jinnah’s key decisions between 1940 and 1946, including the demand for Pakistan in 1940, were taken after getting the nod from Churchill or Lord Linlithgow and Wavell, both Churchill's admirers.

It may be that Jinnah was secular in his natural inclinations - his early history indeed seems to suggest that. However, it is equally true that he colluded with the British and whipped up the most retrogressive Islamist forces in order to achieve his ambition, which coincided with the strategic interests of the colonial powers. It is a standard imperial tactic to empower the most retrogressive and violent forces on either side of any controversy. Good old "divide and rule".