Daily Times

Jinnah’s idea of Pakistan was of a secular democratic state. Pakistan departed from that vision repeatedly, first in March 1949 with the Objectives’ Resolution, then in 1956 when it decided to call itself an Islamic Republic. It is not that Jinnah had not referred to Islam as a positive unifying force for Muslims of British India but his invocation had always been ontologically emptied. It could be no other way because Jinnah himself explained to young Raja of Mahmudabad that any attempt to create an Islamic state in Pakistan would lead to its immediate dissolution, going so far as to asking the impetuous Raja to distance himself from the Muslim League if he was to engage in such rhetoric. This was as he said because Muslims were divided in 72 sects. Our attempts to Islamise Pakistan have proved Jinnah right repeatedly.

In December 1947, he said in clear terms that he had nothing to do with the slogan Pakistan kamatlabkiya and pointed out that not a single resolution of the Muslim League had committed Pakistan to such an ideal. Later speaking at the Karachi Bar Association on the occasion of Eid-Milad-un-Nabi, he told his listeners that a modern democratic Pakistan would never be in conflict with Shariat. He was merely expressing his belief as a modern Muslim that Islam is compatible with modern constitutional democracy that promises equality to every citizen. This statement of his has been distorted to read that Pakistan would be based on Shariat. What he said was qualitatively different but to Jinnah-bashers and Pakistan’s Islamist ideologues alike, the words are cited again and again as Jinnah having changed his mind. In any event a statement however misconstrued made at a religious function in the Bar Association cannot trump Jinnah’s clear unequivocal statement before the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan.

Whether Indians can be mature enough to appreciate Jinnah’s many services to India or not is their problem, but to me as a Pakistani it is clear that our salvation lies in following Jinnah’s inclusive democratic and secular vision

Then Jinnah-bashers and Neo-Islamists raise the spurious objection that Jinnah never used the word secular. What they forget is that even Ambedkar and Nehru had been averse to using the word secular in Indian Constitution in 1950 because the word was subject to misinterpretation. The Constituent Assembly of India has the record of that debate. It was not until 1976 that the word secular was finally added to it. The word secular does not appear even once in the US Constitution but US is the most constitutionally secular state in the world. Jinnah stood for a Pakistan where religion would not be the business of the state but a matter merely between man and God. This is the definition of a secular state whether the naysayers want to admit it or not. Jinnah repeatedly told his listeners that Pakistan would not be a theocracy to be run by priests with a divine mission. The opposite of a theocracy run by priests with a divine mission is a secular state.

Jinnah was right about the rise of Hindu majoritarianism in India. He could see it as early as the 1920s. However both as the father of Pakistan and a Shia, he would be most disappointed by the Sunni Muslim majoritarianism that has come to rule the roost in Pakistan. For example Jinnah referred to Sir Zafrullah Khan as his Muslim son and the most capable Muslim in all of India. In 1974 Pakistan declared Zafrullah Khan’s community Non-Muslim and has put fetters on their very existence. This to Jinnah would be unthinkable because he had promised the Ahmadis that they would be treated at par with any other Muslim sect. It was based on that promise that Ahmadis had sided with and given their all in support of the Pakistan Movement.

Whether Indians can be mature enough to appreciate Jinnah’s many services to India or not is their problem, but to me as a Pakistani it is clear that our salvation lies in following Jinnah’s inclusive democratic and secular vision. A Pakistan crafted on those lines would rise to great heights and stand proudly in the comity of nations. Jinnah’s Pakistan alone can serve Islam by showing the world that a pluralistic democratic Muslim majority state can stand for peace and stability. Islam can be a positive binding force if it is ontologically emptied of the clerical superfluity and sectarian supersets that have sapped its essential vitality. The true eternal spirit of Islam can only exist in a modern democratic and secular Pakistan.

Yasser Latif Hamdani is an Advocate of the High Courts of Pakistan