Daily Times

A lot of people get upset that I mention Jinnah every now and then in my articles for many different reasons. Consequently, the personal ridicule and abuse that I have faced is extraordinary. For some unknown reason, I get a flurry of emails from across the border full of abuses and attacks, even though my articles are hardly ever addressed to our friends from across the border. Our own Pakistani brethren get upset for the same reason i.e. I claim that Jinnah was secular, because secular is a bad word for them.

Another fashionable statement, now getting a lot of traction, is that those liberals relying on Jinnah to make the case for a secular Pakistan are deluding themselves and that this Pakistan is exactly what Jinnah would have wanted. Sure, Jinnah, whose record on civil liberties and commitment to human rights is second to none, would have wanted a Pakistan where minorities are persecuted and sectarianism is rampant (including against his own Shia sect). It is a preposterous claim to say the least. Jinnah, by all accounts incorruptible and honest to a fault, the only one to be called the best ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity, admittedly without even a hint of bias against any community — Nehru, Gandhi, Gokhale and even someone as critical as Margaret Bourke-white all attest to this — could not have wanted this Pakistan.

In my opinion, no one is above criticism and making Jinnah immune to criticism is a grave mistake that must not be committed by Pakistanis. However, the criticism should at least be based on fact. Positions are ascribed to Jinnah that are by no means his, actions are attributed to him that he did not commit. For example, it is very fashionable amongst Pakistanis to speak about Jinnah’s so called undemocratic actions in the then NWFP. Those who wax eloquent on this issue make two claims, which are untenable factually i.e. Jinnah dismissed the NWFP assembly and Jinnah imposed Governor’s Raj. Both of these allegations are incorrect. At no point was Governor’s Raj imposed in the NWFP under Jinnah and at no point was the NWFP assembly dismissed. A government that had lost the support of the majority of the house was removed by the governor of the NWFP on the governor-general’s advice as per the constitution. I have written about it in detail in my article “Was Jinnah Democratic?” published in this newspaper in December 2011.

So why this vociferous defence of Jinnah all these years you ask? Jinnah is a question of identity for people like me who think of themselves as Pakistanis first instead of being Muslims, Punjabis, Baloch, Pathans, Urdu Speaking, Sindhis etc. I know this does not please people but identity is a choice. I choose to be a Pakistani instead of defining myself by my religion, sect, caste, region, language etc. My identity is derived from the fact that I was born in Pakistan. Just as Pashtuns, Pathans, Baloch and others can choose to be all those things and more, one chooses to be a Pakistani. Is this a naïve statement for Pakistan itself was purportedly created as a result of identity politics? No. Pakistan is an accident of history. As Ayesha Jalal so aptly put it in response to a question at the Lahore Literary Festival, the idea that Pakistan was asked for in the name of religion is a-historical and inaccurate. So we started with a blank slate and it is because of the choices we have made that have led me where we are.

Ironically, those who consider it fair game to attack middle class people like me as ‘political orphans’ (ostensibly because one does not follow their linguistic, racial and caste-based politics, which have done wonders in Karachi) for speaking of Jinnah and Pakistan, turn into crazed lunatics when one says something even remotely critical of their own identities. Recently on Twitter, I was trolled by the ANP Sindh’s storm-troopers who resorted to choicest abuses in Pushto. When I quoted a verse, in good humour, from the famous Pashtun poet, Khushal Khan Khattak, extolling certain anatomical virtues of ‘chokras’ (pleasure boys kept as virtual slaves in Hujras by rich Pashtun men), I was roundly denounced as a racist bigot. The fact of the matter is that just like Faiz, I claim all sub-cultures of Pakistan as my own and part of my Pakistani identity so the question of being racist does not arise. Of course, my source for the above mentioned Khattak quote, William Dalrymple, was never subjected to any criticism, probably because he is a great ‘gora’ orientalist and I am merely a brown man from the plains of Punjab. Not even a tad bit racist is it?

The answer to the question of identity is always a complicated one. In the end the true essence of a democratic state is that it can accommodate all kinds of identities. It also means that when we communicate with each other, we assume good faith unless given reason to the contrary. We must also have the courage to accept criticism and not just dole it out, without resorting to arbitrary tags and compartmentalisation. Just as a Pashtun or a Baloch or Sindhi or an Urdu speaker or a Punjabi has the right to live honourably according to his or her own lights, I have the right to live as a Pakistani first, second and last. Since all identities are imagined, my identity as a Pakistani is no more, no less sacred than religious, cultural, ideological, linguistic or racial identities you subscribe to. So let us live and let live.

The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore and the author of the book Jinnah: Myth and Reality. He can be contacted via twitter @therealylh and through his email address yasser.hamdani@gmail.com