Jinnah's Pakistan: Ahead of time

[Veeru]

Jinnah's Pakistan: Ahead of time

Ruchika Talwar

I was stunned, definitely, but not surprised at Salman Taseer's assassination. His death is just another episode in a drama that continues to be staged in Pakistan. The curtain rose on this drama when Pakistan's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah gave that monumental, memorable, yet futile speech to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947. And I quote him:

“You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State.”

Jinnah, who is still widely regarded as a secular man, was the right man man in the wrong place. His concept of a new “State of Pakistan”, as he noted in his speech quoted above, was floated before the wrong audience. Everything doesn't sell everywhere.

The drama I refer to is the longstanding and seemingly never-ending struggle that Pakistan's secular, liberal, progressive forces have been engaged in. This tug-of-war between the merchants of intolerance and the philanthropists of peace began the very day the idea of Pakistan was conceived.

Salman lost his life to this tug-of-war.

The secular, liberal, progressive forces of Pakistan have been dying a slow and painful death for decades.

Many others in Pakistan have fallen prey to such predators. The modus operandi of Salman's assassination reminded me the way Benazir Bhutto (BB, as I had come to call her towards the last days of her life) lost her life. Salman and BB, both died fighting intolerance — intolerance of religion, of democracy, of peace, of human rights. And, such crusaders die such deaths in Pakistan.

This reminds me of a famous piece of poetry by Munir Niazi, a renowned Pakistani poet, whose work in the Punjabi language hasn't seen many a parallel. The poem goes:

kujh unjh wi raahwaan aukhiyaan sun,

kujh gall wich gham da tauq wi si,

kujh shehr day lok wi zaalim sun,

kujh saanu maran da shauq wi si.

( my path was tough anyway,

and I had a noose of sorrow around my neck,

the people of my city were cruel,

but even I had a fascination for dying.)

These lines sum up the attitude and outlook of the brave and brazen of Pakistan. And such people, obviously, become popular and visible and audible. BB was all these. Salman was only the latter two. Despite that, he lost his life in a bizzare fashion. They die fighting at the hands of the same intolerance they have fought all their lives. Their cause becomes their end.

Even though both BB and Salman died similar deaths, there was a cardinal difference in their public persona. BB was a leader of the masses. Salman, for that matter, wasn't someone the down-trodden of Pakistan looked up to but, of late, he came to champion the cause of an outright underdog. That's what got him into the league of popular leaders like BB. BB was unbelievably brave, sometimes bordering on stupidity (considering the circumstances of Pakistan, not to take anything away from her, especially when she's not around to defend herself).

When Jinnah gave that famous speech, he made another wrong assessment in context of the new “State of Pakistan”. I quote him again:

“... 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.”

Only Jinnah's spirit knows today how wrong he was when he uttered these words.

In the light of Salman's murder, Jinnah's words fail him. He stands alone, with no one by his side to join forces with his ideology. I quote Munir Niazi again:

Welay to aggey langh jaan di sazaa,

bandaa kalla reh jaanda ae.

(the price you pay for being ahead of time,

you stand alone).

Perhaps, the time for Jinnah's Pakistan of August 11, 1947, hasn't come yet.


Jinnah's Pakistan: Ahead of time

 

[Masterchief]

One must never give up hope, jinnah was secular,the society should become more tolerant and when this thing happens pakistan will be a successful nation, and the change is happening the younger generation has started questioning the mullahs, they are moderate and patroitic and they are secular.

 

[NmHqh2JbVo]

One must never give up hope, jinnah was secular,the society should become more tolerant and when this thing happens pakistan will be a successful nation, and the change is happening the younger generation has started questioning the mullahs, they are moderate and patroitic and they are secular.

It might be a good idea to give the mullahs(I am not quite sure what it means, but only guessed) guarantee of certain type of state funding.

 

[PRACTICAL PATRIOT]

It might be a good idea to give the mullahs(I am not quite sure what it means, but only guessed) guarantee of certain type of state funding.

why dont you first have idea of what it is and then reply?

what you wrote makes no sense. mullahs don't do anything for money.

 

[greatsequence]

One must never give up hope, jinnah was secular,the society should become more tolerant and when this thing happens pakistan will be a successful nation, and the change is happening the younger generation has started questioning the mullahs, they are moderate and patroitic and they are secular.

Neither was jinnah secular nor is pakistan and never it will be. There are more students in madrassas than ever before and a lot of them belong from the middle class. very few in pakistan are secular. Although I would say the polarization in our society is increasing.

 

[StingRoy]

Polarization in Pakistani society will increase with increase access to outer world. The more you interact with other liberal countries, the harder it will be for some people to hold on to strong Islamic fundamentals... It may not be in majority today, but someday in not too distant future, you will see this change.

There is nothing wrong in being an Islamic nation, but at the same time you also need to accommodate changing ideas along with changing times. Being a Liberal Islamic nation is the best step forward if you want to step on to the global platform and bring wider prosperity and global respect for your country.


EDIT: Wanted to quote Jinnah's words from the article above.

“... 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.”

 

[NmHqh2JbVo]

why dont you first have idea of what it is and then reply?

what you wrote makes no sense. mullahs don't do anything for money.

Of course they don't. They don't need money. But at least they have to fight the change of their current status quo of "I don't need money", do they?

Everybody will be doing something satisfying to themselves. Would someone tell me the Mullahs are not doing something to their own likeness. Don't tell me it's 100% for "others.".

They are doing it because they like it. The guy shot the Governor dead because he like the governor be dead. It's just as simple as that.

Nobody's world makes sense without the concept of "me."

Give me a mullah who would not use the world "I/me" during his entire life time.

 

[Rafi]

I believe that there is a "secular" space in Pakistan and it is growing - don't get me wrong the people are also firm believers in the Almighty - but we need both Deen and Dunya, and regarding religious schools- no people are not sending there kids there because they fear they will be exploited.

 

[Rafi]

No Pakistan is Islamic and will always Inshalla remain so, we will become more like Turkey as the years go by. The fanatics and the extremists are on the wrong side of history, because their creed has nothing to offer the world.

Most of Pakistan's middle classes and working and upper classes who make up the vast majority of the Officer's in the Armed Forces, intellectuals, press etc are moderate and true Muslims - the extremists make the most noise because they are already in the dustbin of history, and that is why they are lashing out of violence trying to push the society back.

Pakistan Zindabad.

 

[Hutchroy]

Don’t try to beat the mullahs at their own rhetorical game

In the aftermath of the Taseer assassination, there has been plenty of reflection and strategizing amongst progressive and liberal minded people about how best to make Pakistan a less crazy country. I must confess that at this juncture, I am personally at a bit of a loss of how best to proceed. But one thing I would note is that trying to take on the right-wing (i.e. the rest of the country) on religious terms is bound to fail.

The logic of the religious-terms lobby is this: Pakistanis are religious people and things like the blasphemy law have strong religious connotations. Ergo, to defeat their worldview, you must engage with them on their terms, and show why things like the blasphemy law are unjust from an Islamic point of view.

This strategy is alluring but doomed to fail, in my view. The point is simple: you can’t beat someone at their own game. You can’t beat Barcelona by trying to out-pass them. You can’t beat Rafa Nadal by trying to out-muscle him from the baseline. And you can’t beat mullahs by citing the Quran or what the Prophet said to some random woman when she was throwing trash on him. Sorry, but it won’t work.

Here’s the thing: any time you cite some verse from the Quran or some story from 1400 years ago to show that you’re right, the mullahs will cite some other verse from the Quran or some other story from 1400 years ago to show that they’re right. I hate to break this to you, but organized religions tend to send mixed messages on everything from rights to violence to duties to whatnot (and yes, fundos, I’ve read the Quran — twice, once with translation). So that’s a bit of a cul de sac in that debate.

Similarly, citing Jinnah and that “you are free to go to your temples” speech is also bound to fail. Jinnah was a lawyer and a politician, and lawyers and politicians make careers out of saying different things at different times to suit different audiences. That’s their job. The fact is, Jinnah stoked communal sentiment when he had to, and made secular-progressive sounds when he had to. So again, I say potato, and you say death to Israel — who’s to say who’s right? More generally, once you’ve ceded the substantive space upon which you will engage in combat, you’ve already lost half the battle.

Personally, I liked an idea that Cafe Pyala mentioned, which is to hoist the mullahs, their allies, and their enablers on their own collective petard. Pursue cases of blasphemy of other religions against them — find like-minded lawyers, strategize on which courts to file complaints in, and go after them the way they go after helpless people. Filing cases against high profile figures (leaders of religious parties, “scholars” and other assorted mullah types) as inciters to violence would also not be a bad idea, but I’m not sure how the legalities of all this would work. It would be great if we could get some lawyers to speak up about the viability of some of these tactics

 

[Dance]

Neither was jinnah secular nor is pakistan and never it will be. There are more students in madrassas than ever before and a lot of them belong from the middle class. very few in pakistan are secular. Although I would say the polarization in our society is increasing.

Oh really? And you've asked every single Pakistani on whether they are secular or not. It's like that argument that 90% of Pakistanis support the blasphemy law. People need to learn the meaning of secular before they start writing

 

[ares]

Though Jinnah might have been a secular person in his personal life..his means to an end were thoroughly non-secular and this dichotomy of his is what confounds the Pakistani nation today ..as it still tries to identify itself.

 

[khanz]

Oh really? And you've asked every single Pakistani on whether they are secular or not. It's like that argument that 90% of Pakistanis support the blasphemy law. People need to learn the meaning of secular before they start writing

I feel there a large bunch of pakistanis who are secular but they don't admit for fear of being labelled anti-muslim pakistanis are illiterate,emotional and ignorant they think secular means anti-islam when all it means is a seperation of religion from the state you are still free to practice religion in a secular country but government does not bring religion into politics or force it upon anyone but mention the word secularism to a pakistani and they start foaming at the mouth just look at the reaction on this forum .