Daily Times

The resolution calling for the creation of Pakistan was passed in 1940. Seven years later, Pakistan came into being. In December 1943, Jinnah talked to British author Beverley Nichols about his ideas. Nichols published the interview next year in his book, Verdict on India. In the book, Nichols calls Jinnah the ‘most important man in Asia’ whose ‘100 million Muslims will march to the left, to the right, to the front, to the rear at his bidding, and at nobody else’s.’ The chapter about Jinnah is entitled, ‘Dialogue with a giant.’

Jinnah had agreed to be interviewed for half an hour, but ended up giving Nichols almost three. The dialogue in the book was reviewed by Jinnah. It covers many issues. Five stand out.

Firstly, when asked why he had not defined Pakistan with enough precision to placate the many critics of the idea, Jinnah took umbrage. He reminded Nichols that the British had defined the very complex Irish question in just ten sentences and he had given many more than ten sentences on ‘the principles and practice of Pakistan’. He added, “It is beyond the power of any man to provide, in advance, a blue-print in which every detail is settled”.

Secondly, when Nichols asked Jinnah to name the vital principles of Pakistan, Jinnah said he could express them in five words: “The Muslims are a nation.”

Nichols asked Jinnah that when he said the Muslims were a nation, was he thinking in terms of religion? Jinnah replied: “Partly, but by no means exclusively… Islam is not merely a religion but a realistic and practical code of conduct… our history, our heroes, our architecture, our music, our laws, our jurisprudence… are not only fundamentally different but often antagonistic to the Hindus. We are different beings.”

Thirdly, Nichols asked if Muslims were likely to be richer or poorer in Pakistan. Jinnah responded that to all peoples, political freedom was more important than economic prosperity. He then went on to say: “A sovereign nation of a hundred million people… is hardly likely to be in a worse economic position than if its members are scattered and disorganized, under the dominance of two hundred and fifty million Hindus whose one idea is to exploit them”.

Fourthly, Nichols asked whether Pakistan would be able to defend itself. Jinnah replied: “We are a brave and united people who are prepared to work, and, if necessary, fight…. Obviously, there will be a transition period. We are not asking the British to quit overnight”.

Finally, Nichols asked Jinnah what was wrong with the idea of a United India, as put forward by Congress and supported by many in Britain. Jinnah replied: “A ‘United India’ means a Hindu-dominated India.” Then he quipped: “India is a British creation.”

When Nichols responded by saying that his critics had argued that Pakistan itself was a British creation, Jinnah disagreed vehemently and said that “the British should divide and quit…. that is the only liberal course, the only generous course, the only safe course is Pakistan.”

Jinnah assumed that all 100 million Muslims who resided in British India would join Pakistan and they would be living in geographically contiguous areas. In actual practice, a third of them decided to stay in India. Pakistan was split into two wings, with no connecting corridor, and eventually its eastern wing seceded. This was the ‘moth-eaten’ Pakistan that he did not want but was forced to accept. There was no time to develop a Plan B

In concluding the chapter, Nichols offered his endorsement of Jinnah’s views. He wrote, “Pakistan offers not insuperable difficulties, economic, ethnographic, political or strategic, and is likely, indeed, to prove a good deal easier of attainment than a large number of similarly problems that the world has successfully resolved in the past fifty years…The constant friction between the Hindus and Muslim nations has produced something which strongly resembles a cancer in the body politic. There is only one remedy for a cancer, in its advanced stage, and that is the knife.”

The book convinced Winston Churchill that Pakistan needed to be created. He campaigned for it, along with several others, and eventually Jinnah’s wish was granted. Seventy years have passed since the creation of Pakistan. The assumptions put forward by Jinnah to justify its creation are essentially hypotheses that can be put to an empirical test.

Jinnah had acknowledged that he had only given a high-level definition of Pakistan. Perhaps that was by design, since he may have known that any attempts to sharpen the definition would risk alienating one group or another among his followers. But, in retrospect, this ambiguity of vision would prove very costly. Was Pakistan meant to be an ideological state or a secular state? That question continues to bedevil the country to this day.

Jinnah assumed that all 100 million Muslims who resided in British India would join Pakistan and they would be living in geographically contiguous areas. In actual practice, a third of them decided to stay in India. Pakistan was split into two wings, with no connecting corridor, and Punjab and Bengal were divided. This was the ‘moth-eaten’ Pakistan that he did not want but was forced to accept. There was no time to develop a Plan B.

Jinnah’s hypothesis was that Muslims were a nation. But the bond of religion proved too weak on which to found and ultimately to run a nation. Intra-Muslim differences proved to be as divisive as the inter Muslim-Hindu differences.

The first expression of the failure of this hypothesis was the gulf that developed between Bengali and non-Bengali Muslims, showing that ethnic bonds mattered more than religious bonds. The share of sub-continental Muslims residing in Pakistan after the 1971 secession fell to less than half, a far cry from Jinnah’s vision.

The second expression was the continued deterioration of intra-Muslim harmony in Pakistan. It had always been present but it escalated with time into riots and lynchings. The fault lines today run not just along inter-sectarian lines but also along intra-sectarian lines.

Economically, Pakistan fell behind India, which became a member of the elite club known as BRICS. Even the economy of Bangladesh, once viewed as the basket case of the subcontinent, achieved parity with Pakistan in its per capita income. In his defence, Jinnah had hoped that the British would not quit overnight, allowing Pakistan to set up its military organization. But the British quit overnight.

To make matters worse, Pakistan got into an ill-advised fight with India over Kashmir within a few months of independence. That all but guaranteed that India would not supply Pakistan with the promised arms and munitions. The position of Indian Muslims worsened after Partition as did the position of minorities in Pakistan. Several wars were fought between India and Pakistan; a future war involving nuclear weapons cannot be ruled out.

Pakistan is not a safe place. Relations with Afghanistan have deteriorated. Ties with Iran have begun to fray as Pakistan continues to move closer to its arch-nemesis, Saudi Arabia. New tensions have developed with long-time ally, the US. China remains our only staunch ally.

Nichols did not discuss military rule with Jinnah, the staunch constitutionalist. And yet it came, perhaps the inevitable consequence of basing the creation of a country on the religion of its inhabitants.

As the decades passed, four dictators would present themselves as saviours-of-the-nation and Pakistanis would get used to the sight of uniformed generals addressing them, with each draping himself in a cloak of legitimacy by speaking underneath a portrait of Jinnah.

The writer is the author of Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan. He can be reached at ahmadfaruqui@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, January 18^th 2018.