@Azlan Haider In form, eh? The 'farmer' is having a "field day"!!!! Great work, really appreciated as always. Thanks for enlightening those of us, who may not be or may not want to be enlightened!
What I find the most absurd is that even JL Nehru has tried to vilify MA Jinnah in his
autobiography.
"
The enthusiasm of the people outside struck him as mob hysteria. There is as much difference between him and the Indian masses as between Savile Row and Bond Street and the Indian village with its mud huts. He suggested once privately that only matriculates should be taken into the Congress ... [this] was in harmony with his general outlook."
This was a malicious falsehood written of a Jinnah who censured the government in 1925.
"
I say it is the greatest stigma on the government of any country in the world to show that after your 150 years of rule, as is the case in this country, you have not given knowledge and light, nay even the three R's, no more than 6 to 7 per cent of the population of this country. Is that going to be your policy? Is that the way you are going to advance India constitutionally and make her fit for self government and for self-defence?"
(A.G. Noorani - Jinnah in India's History)
When there was a systematised attempt by both sides of the border to belittle and malign MA Jinnah, it is no wonder that majority of us have grown up with a distorted view of him and his role in history of the Indian sub-continent, perhaps at display by members
@Waqkz @Farhan Bohra if I understood them correctly.
One can say, in my opinion anyways, that the aim in India to vilify Jinnah was to affix responsibility for the partition of the country on him, and try to forge a new nation on secular ideals where the fundamental issues, which led to the partition in the first place, could be avoided and yet again, remain unaddressed.
On Pakistan's side, as
@Joe Shearer (on numerous previous occassions) and
@Azlan Haider have amply illustrated, the effort to undermine Jinnah in a secular Pakistan started right after Pakistan was born, and had the support of the clergy, which emphasised the prominence of religion over nation in direct opposition of MA Jinnah's aim and aspirations for the new state. However, it is worth mentioning that this re-wrting of the narrative especially gained currency under the late Gen Zia-ul-Haq government.
The task of rewriting history books, and I rely on
'Rewriting the History Of Pakistan' by Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy and Abdul Hameed Nayyar when I state the following, started in earnest in 1981, when General Zia ul Haq declared compulsory, the teaching of Pakistan studies to all degree students, including those at engineering and medical colleges. Shortly thereafter, the University Grants Commission issued a directive to prospective textbook authors/writers specifying that the objective of the new course is to
'induce pride for the nation's past, enthusiasm for the present, and unshakeable faith in the stability and longevity of Pakistan'
[
University Grants Commission directive, quoted in Azhar Hamid, et al. Mutalliyah-i-Pakistan (Islamabad: Allama IqbalOpen University, 1983), p. xi.]
To eliminate possible ambiguities of approach, authors were given the following directives:
To demonstrate that the basis of Pakistan is not to be founded in racial, linguistic, or geographical factors, but, rather, in the shared experience of a common religion. To get students to know and appreciate the Ideology of Pakistan, and to popularize it with slogans. To guide students towards the ultimate goal of Pakistan - the creation of a completely Islamised State (p. xii-xiii of aforementioned report)
In fulfillment of this directive, modern texts of Pakistani history are centred around the following themes:
1. The 'Ideology of Pakistan', both as a historical force which motivated the movement for Pakistan as well as its
raison
d'etre.
2. The depiction of Jinnah as a man of orthodox religious views who sought the creation of a theocratic state
3. A move to establish the
ulema as genuine heroes of the Pakistan Movement.
4. An emphasis on ritualistic Islam, together with a rejection of liberal interpretations of the religion and generation of
communal antagonism.
Modern textbooks invariably portray Jinnah as the architect of an Islamic ideological state:
The All-India Muslim League, and even the Quaid-i-Azam himself, said in the clearest possible terms that Pakistan would be an ideological state, the basis of whose laws would be the Quran and Sunnah, and whose ultimate destiny would be to provide a society in which Muslims could individually and collectively live according to the laws of Islam. (
Azhar Hamid, et al., Mutalliyah-i-Pakistan, p. 221)
Jinnah began his political career as an exponent of Hindu-Muslim unity and as the leader of the liberal left wing of the Congress. His efforts culminated in the Lucknow Pact of 1916 between the Congress and the League. But when he again led the League almost twenty years later, the call was no longer for unity but for Hindu-Muslim separation. What brought about this transformation? It can not, by any stretch of imagination, be any single act, nor any epiphany which changed his direction.
Khalid bin Sayeed, one of his more respected biographers, gives convincing evidence that in the period 1929-1935 the Congress' intransigence was a major factor that changed him from an 'idealist' into a 'realist' who saw no future for Muslims in a united India.
In his personal life, Jinnah was liberal and Westernised and remained as such. Overcoming the taboos of cross-communal relations, he married a Parsi lady in the face of her parents' opposition - a marriage destined to end in tragic separation and the premature death of his wife. Jinnah maintained his inner secularism even in the seething cauldron of communal hatred following Partition, as is evident from the fact that he appointed Joginder Nath Mandal, a Hindu, to serve in Pakistan's first cabinet. His famous 11 August 1947 speech before the nation is the clearest possible exposition of a secular state in which religion and state are separate from each other:
We are starting with the fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State. . . Now I think that we should keep that in front of us as our ideal, and you will find that in due 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. Ö You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the business of the State.(M Munir, From Jinnah to Zia p.30)
In an interview to Doon Campbell, Reuter's correspondent in New Delhi in 1946, Jinnah made it perfectly clear that it was a Western style democracy that he wanted for Pakistan:
The new state would be a modern democratic state with sovereignty resting in the people and the members of the new
nation having equal rights of citizenship regardless of their religion, caste or creed.(
M Munir, From Jinnah to Zia p.29)
In contrast, in Maulana Maudoodi's Islamic state, 'sovereignty rests with Allah' (mentioned by
Oscar earlier). Thus, Jinnah rejects the basis for a theocratic state. This is stated even more explicitly in his 1946 speech before the Muslim League convention in Delhi:
'What are we fighting for? What are we aiming at? It is not theocracy, nor a theocratic state.' (
Jamiluddin Ahmed, Recent Writings and Speeches, p. 248)
@Joe Shearer @Azlan Haider add or correct where I may be off.
@LadyFinger @ebrahym Thought you both might be interested in this thread, where it becomes serious anyways
@Hiptullha Good attempt! But now my troll mode is off. Sorry, won't be able to oblige your ignorant rants anymore.
Maybe next time? However, a great attempt!
@SarthakGanguly The friendly 'bigot' is required to comment if any.
@Arsalan Tagging you in case you want to add anything anywhere in the thread. Also (and I must confess here) to show you that am not always in a troll mode, and you are fairly right in pointing me out at times when I go overboard