On 7 February 1935 Mr. Jinnah declared “religion is a matter merely between man and god and should never be allowed in politics”. This was a life long position. In 1920 it was on this basis Jinnah had broken away from Gandhi, when the latter began using religion in politics.
What happened in the 12 years leading up to Partition is well known. As H M Seervai, the great Indian constitutional lawyer, wrote: It was Nehru and Patel who stood for partition and it was Mr Jinnah who stood for a United India. This is a statement from India’s finest constitutional lawyer who overturned the so called conventional wisdom on partition. If one carefully studies the Transfer of Power Papers and the work of Dr Ayesha Jalal it becomes clear as day that Jinnah tried till the very end to come to an honourable settlement with the Indian National Congress but his efforts were spurned. AG Noorani, Indian Supreme Court lawyer and journalist extraordinaire, has written in some detail about it and his arguments are unimpeachable.
Jinnah, the only politician to be called the Best Ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity, was committed to secular polity all his life.Gokhale had said about him :
“Jinnah has true stuff in him, and that freedom from all sectarian prejudice which will make him the best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity.” To argue that he suddenly turned into an Islamist is a terrible reduction of history. It is true that Jinnah did argue on several occasions after partition that the kind of state he had in mind, inclusive and democratic, was not in conflict with Shariat and this was aMuslim modernist’s vision. This was a vision that held that modern democracy and human rights were in perfect conformity with the spirit of Islam. Many famous Muslim figures have held this view since late 19th Century. Midhet Pasha, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Jamaluddin Afghani and Syed Ameer Ali amongst others were proponents of this view. Even Kemal Ataturk, addressing his followers from the pulpit in 1919 declared that Islam was a faith of reason and logic that did not stand in the way of modern republicanism. It was this quest that led Ataturk to commission a wholly Turkish translation of the Holy Quran to be distributed amongst the Turks in the early 1930s. Ataturk and Jinnah, leaders of predominantly Muslim majority nation states, had to couch their modernist ideas in language that was comprehensible to the common Muslims in their countries. Ataturk had explained this strategy in his famous 8 day speech in 1928 reversing his own policy having introduced a state religion in the Turkish Constitution in 1924.
The first two constitutions of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan did not have state religions. In 1973 all of this changed when state religion was introduced. Jinnah would never have wanted that
Secularism means the impartiality of the state to religion. While it has been postulated as a complete separation of religion and state, even the US Supreme Court recognizes that at times religion has a secular purpose. Secular purpose jurisprudence holds that where religion serves a secular purpose, i.e. not primarily religious, cannot come at the expense of religious freedom of one group or another.
Consider the example of Great Britain. It is a secular state and yet the Anglican Church is woven into the British Constitution. All of the Scandinavian states similarly have Lutheranism built into their constitutional structure but in terms of secularism they are considered far more secular than United States of America. Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark do not have the kind of rigid separation of state that USA does and despite that US remains a far more religious country than these states. Secularism does not take one form. There is the French and US models, which stand in sharp contradiction to Britain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. Yet the latter are far more secular than the former, as I said earlier. This is one of life’s great mysteries that can be resolved only when we see the histories of these countries separately without reference to one model or the other.
That Jinnah wanted Pakistan to be a secular state is an undeniable fact whether Pakistanis or Indians deny it, for their own very different reasons. 4 days before Independence Jinnah had written to Lord Mountbatten to make changes to Pakistani oath of office. He had asked for the reference to God to be removed from his oath of office and also that of the ministers. Presumably this was because he did not want to set a precedent by which only believers would become the heads of states, prime ministers or ministers in the state. The alternative of course is that he himself was not a believer. Since Jinnah was an extremely private person who did not wear his religion on his sleeve, we will never know for sure. The second change was that the words “solemnly swear” were changed to “solemnly affirm”. The difference is something we lawyers are well aware. To swear is to swear to a deity such as God. To affirm does not do so. Interestingly Indian oaths of office retained both references. It is a searing irony that today Pakistan has an elaborate religious oath of office in complete contradiction to what Jinnah had wanted in 1947. It was not always like this. The first two constitutions of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan did not have state religions. In 1973 all of this changed when state religion was introduced. Jinnah would never have wanted that.
Then again contradicting Jinnah is a bit of a habit for Pakistanis. As I have written on numerous occasions, in 1944, in response to a question about Ahmadis, Jinnah had famously said “Who am I to declare someone a Non-Muslim, if he professes to be a Muslim”. We all know who his right hand man was. Sir Zafrullah Khan, Pakistan’s first Foreign Minister, was as devout an Ahmadi as they come. In complete contrast to this we passed the second amendment to the Constitution in 1974 declaring them Non-Muslim for the purposes of law and constitution. In 1984 the military dictator promulgated the ordinance XX which was entirely contradictory to the Constitution’s protections. This Ordinance violates not just Article 20 of the Constitution but also violates all laws of natural justice. Under this law Ahmadis’ places of worship are destroyed both by the mobs and the states and even their graves are desecrated. It is a strange law that prohibits the reading of the Quran and erases Kalimas from buildings. Had it been in any other country, our rulers would be crying out “Islamophobia”.
The writer is a barrister and the author of the book Jinnah a Life published by Pan Macmillan India