Daily Times

The world will keep reassessing Mr Jinnah’s contribution and his stature as well as his ability and vision as a political leader and statesman. He brought together, under one flag and on one platform disorganized and scattered Muslims, and made them realize that they were a nation. Mr Jinnah carved out a state where none existed and brought a new nation on the map of the world. Beverly Nicholas in his famous book Verdict on India, describes Jinnah as ‘the most important man in Asia’ and called his meeting with Mr Jinnah as ‘a dialogue with a giant’.

Mr Jinnah played a major role in trying to bring the Hindu and Muslim community together in their quest for freedom from British rule that freedom fighter Gopal Krishna Gokhale once said of Jinnah: “He is the best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity.” In 1925, Viceroy Lord Reading offered a knighthood to Jinnah. His response: “I prefer to be plain Mr Jinnah.”

At the end of second round table conference, Mr Jinnah was disappointed and depressed that he remarked ‘Heaven help India!’. So great was his disappointment that he decided to settle down in UK and practice at the Privy Council. Muslims of India sensed a danger of being reduced to everlasting serfdom as a minority with no vestige of power. Jinnah then returned and united a nation of 100 million with one voice and one flag.

Jinnah’s case for Pakistan was the case of his lifetime. During much of its existence, Pakistanis have been encouraged to believe that Mr Jinnah created Pakistan in the name of Islam as a theocratic state. Others have disagreed, arguing the founding father wanted a Muslim-majority but secular and progressive country.

The debate over the two competing and contradictory visions has intensified in recent years amid growing schism. At the heart of this debate are some public addresses Mr Jinnah has given around the time of the partition of India in 1947. His 11th August address was a clear cut vision for Pakistan, but it too was lost in the controversies and tainted historic descriptions claiming its veracity.

On 11 August 1947, the Pakistan Constituent Assembly met for the first time. The inaugural session was presided by Shri Jogindranath Mandal, president of the Scheduled Caste Federation and a member from East Pakistan. In this session, the constituent assembly elected Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah as the first president of the Constituent Assembly. Various members then spoke to convey their felicitations to Mr. Jinnah on having achieved Pakistan and having been elected as the president of the PCA. The last such member to speak was Kiran Shankar Roy of the Congress Party, who also asked Mr. Jinnah to make a statement as to whether Pakistan would be a secular state or not.

Mr. Jinnah then spoke extempore in one of the historic speeches in the history of the subcontinent. The first governor general of Pakistan said “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the state”. Thus he laid the basic foundation of a pluralistic society what Pakistan was to become.

Jinnah gave no religious or communal rationale for the creation of Pakistan. The speech clearly contained no reference to Islam. He told his listeners that a nation that was not divided in of itself could not be held in subjection. The most important part of this speech which has not been emphasized is this: “We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim community, because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on, and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnavas, Khatris, also Bengalis, Madrasis and so on, will vanish. Indeed if you ask me, this has been the biggest hindrance in the way of India to attain the freedom and independence and but for this we would have been free people long long ago. No power can hold another nation, and specially a nation of 400 million souls in subjection; nobody could have conquered you, and even if it had happened, nobody could have continued its hold on you for any length of time, but for this.”

Jinnah the statesman was mindful of the fact that the Muslims he had led were a multitude and not necessarily the united nation his leadership had papered over. Similarly he was aware of the fact that the Pakistan he had so dexterously carved out of India did not only have Muslims as its inhabitants but large Hindu and Sikh minorities as well. Since the entire rationale for the Pakistan Movement had been the rights of the Muslim minority in British India, he was mindful of the existence of religious and ethnic minorities within the borders of Pakistan. Here he quoted the example of the Protestant-Catholic conflict in Great Britain. He said: “As you know, history shows that in England, conditions, some time ago, were much worse than those prevailing in India today. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants persecuted each other. Even now there are some States in existence where there are discriminations made and bars imposed against a particular class. Thank God, we are not starting in those days. We are starting in the days where there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State. The people of England in course of time had to face the realities of the situation and had to discharge the responsibilities and burdens placed upon them by the government of their country and they went through that fire step by step. Today, you might say with justice that Roman Catholics and Protestants do not exist; what exists now is that every man is a citizen, an equal citizen of Great Britain and they are all members of the Nation.”

Jinnah, however, faced a much convoluted situation, than the protestants and Roman Catholics after the partition, since he was cognizant of the complicated interplay of religion and politics in Indian society. Jinnah offered a solution to this problem by stating that: “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 however was to be the consequence of an enlightened state policy that Jinnah believed Pakistan would follow i.e. of maximum accommodation of religious minorities in the national mainstream and to usher a prosperous and progressive state where a Muslim or a Hindu would not be limited by his personal faith but would be part of the mainstream as a Pakistani. Tragically Mr. Jinnah’s vision has not come to pass.

Mr Jinnah may have won Pakistan’s case in 1947,but his case is in trial again.His ideals and contents of speech seems alien to the very fabric and understanding of Pakistan. Inclusive Pakistan has turned into an exclusive nation state, built upon political misadventures and dogmatic ideal.

Yet if we are to fully realize the vision of Jinnah’s Pakistan, then the country’s elites must fully embrace the vision that Jinnah set out as opposed to forging new identities to fulfill political agendas and distorting the country’s history.The nation and its polity must pay heed to Jinnah’s advice: “With faith, discipline, and selfless devotion to duty, there is nothing worthwhile that you cannot achieve.”