Daily Times

When I started practising law about a decade ago, our present Chief Justice of Pakistan, Mr Saqib Nisar, was a Judge in the Lahore High Court. We were in awe of him because he was considered, rightly, to be one of the fairest and most competent judges in the High Court. The first time I appeared before him in a case, I could feel my legs tremble; such was his persona.

Justice Saqib Nisar was fearless and that showed in his judgment in the Misbah case. Misbah Iram Rana (or Molly Campbell) was a young British girl whose father abducted her and brought her to Pakistan about 10 years ago. The girl’s British Non-Muslim mother had through the High Commission filed a writ of Habeas Corpus. The religious right was arrayed against the girl’s Non-Muslim mother and was staunchly with her Muslim father who had a flowing beard. They argued that a Muslim girl could not be returned to a Non-Muslim mother. Undaunted Justice Saqib Nisar ordered that the girl be returned to her mother. Later that judgment was reversed in appeal but one could see that Justice Saqib Nisar was a man of principle.

This is why when a friend messaged me the other day telling me that the Chief Justice of Pakistan had made certain questionable statements about the Hindu community, I refused to believe him. Then I heard his statement myself and I was shell-shocked. What the CJP said, describing the Two Nation Theory, was that there were two nations, one was Muslim and the other he didn’t even like to name, implying that he had contempt for them. I am not sure what made a man like Justice Nisar make such a statement, but on this Independence Day I think it should be an occasion for revisiting the Two Nation Theory and trying to sift fact from fiction. To begin with there is no occasion for denigrating the Hindu Community on the basis of Two Nation Theory. Mr Jinnah, to whose person the said theory is most commonly associated, wrote a letter in July 1947 to the editor of the Time Magazine in New York some of which deserves to be reproduced here. The Founder of Pakistan wrote:

“I am in receipt of your letter dated 24 June and I am returning herewith your two cover pages of the Time Magazine. As I think the description Mohamed Ali Jinnah his Moslem Tiger wants to eat the Hindu Cow is offensive to the sentiments of the Hindu community, I cannot put my autograph on the cover page of the Time Magazine as requested by you…. Yours Faithfully M A Jinnah”

Mr Jinnah repeatedly made it clear that his quarrel was not with the Hindu community but with the Congress leadership. He made it absolutely clear that he would not countenance any statements that would in any way denigrate the Hindu community. The Two Nation Theory as espoused by Mr Jinnah after 1940 was not based on any kind of hatred or ill will for the Hindus. Nor did it state that Hindus and Muslims could not live together. On the contrary the Lahore Resolution was clear that significant Hindu and Sikh minorities would live in Pakistan and would be treated as equal citizens of the state and similarly significant Muslim minority would live in Hindustan and they expected similar equal treatment by the Hindustan dominion. To Mr Jinnah India was not equal to Hindustan but rather Hindustan and Pakistan together.

The Two Nation Theory therefore was a consociationalist theory aimed at achieving a consociational democracy in the subcontinent where an autonomous Muslim majority federation would come together with an autonomous Hindu majority federation and work together either by treaty relations or in form of a confederation. The idea was effective safeguards and power sharing between Hindus, Muslims and other minorities of the subcontinent. It was a formula aimed at thwarting the very real threat of a permanent installation of a Caste Hindu Majority government in Delhi. Standing with Jinnah were not just Muslims but many other minority groups, including Christians of Punjab, Dalits within the Hindu community and Dravidian leadership from south India. This was a significantly different vision of Pakistan than what we have today. Religion or religious ideology was just not the point.

Today as we celebrate our Independence Day, it is important to hark back to Jinnah’s vision of the state and its citizenship, which has been obscured by superfluous constitutional provisions aimed at discriminating against Non-Muslim minorities

Mr Jinnah did not see his idea of Two Nation Theory in any way a contradiction to his liberal democratic beliefs about the idea of citizenship. It was this liberal democratic belief in the equality of citizenship that made Mr. Jinnah emphasize on no less than 33 occasions after partition that minorities in Pakistan were to be equal citizens and that there would be no bar against them. Most notably on 11 August 1947, Jinnah said “Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in 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.” This was manifestly a secular vision for the state.

Today as we celebrate our Independence Day, it is important to hark back to Jinnah’s vision of the state and its citizenship, which has been obscured by superfluous constitutional provisions aimed at discriminating against Non-Muslim minorities. Similarly one hopes that the CJP will issue a clarification of his remarks in Quetta, which have disappointed many of his admirers and created an unfortunate perception that he is somehow partial to Muslims and that Non-Muslim Pakistanis should not expect justice and fair play from him. This would be contrary to the ideals and aspirations around which Pakistan, itself a demand of a minority, was created. Happy Independence Day.

The writer is a practising lawyer. He blogs at http://globallegalforum.blogspot.com and his twitter handle is @therealylh

Published in Daily Times, August 14^th 2017.