Essay

Mr. Advani’s statement in Karachi did not emit as much light as it generated heat. Maqbool Ahmed Siraj pleads for a relook at the course of events that made a few individuals villains of the drama in which everybody had a part.


Lal Kishen Advani was not wide off the mark when he declared founder of Pakistan Mohammad Ali Jinnah a secularist. Jinnah was though creator of Pakistan, he never aspired for it as the final solution of the problem faced by Muslims in pre-independence India. Jinnah was led into a situation from where retracing the step became difficult.


Notwithstanding the grave ideological dilemmas within the Sangh parivar and the consequent brouhaha and the tumult the BJP has undergone on this score, Advani stated a fact that few students of history would be able to disprove. More so today when several declassified documents pertaining to those cataclysmic events are available for dispassionate study and throw better light on pulls and pressures that impacted policies, issues and events in 30s and 40s when concept of Pakistan emerged on the political horizon of the subcontinent.


Communalism is defined as collective antagonism built against others around linguistic, regional and religious identities. Jinnah was far from being communal leader in this narrow sense of the word. He despised interplay of religion with politics and was a non-practising Muslim. He avoided mosque even on Fridays. He had difficulty in reciting a few verses of the Quran even while Gandhiji had several chapters (surahs) of the Quran by heart. He shaved his beard regularly, was always dressed in Western style suits stitched in London or at Laffan Tailors in Bombay. on arriving in London, the first thing he did was to anglicise his Gujarati name Mohammed Ali Jinnahbhai to ‘M.A. Jinnah.’ Being a chain smoker, he even used to drink. He married a Parsi girl after courtship. Never would he quote an incident from the Islamic past or the scriptures for analogy. Urdu letters received from his followers were read to him by proxy. He employed both Hindus and Muslims in his personal staff. He scarcely wanted to be seen in the company of ulema or religious clerics.


Jinnah did not favour the formation of Muslim League in 1905 and till 1937 mocked at the concept of a separate state for Muslims. He was a true nationalist and was conferred the title of ‘Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity’ by Hindu leader Gopal Krishan Gokhale. Gokhale wrote to Sarojini Naidu: Jinnah has true stuff in him, and that freedom from all sectarian prejudices which will make him the best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity.


He joined the Muslim League on October 10, 1913 under the oath that his loyalty to Muslims and the League would ‘in no way impinge upon the nation and imply even the slightest shadow of disloyalty to the larger national interest’ (Jinnah of Pakistan by Stanley Wolpert). By then the issue of Muslim representation had gained importance. Gandhiji’s loyalist role at the War Conference (1919) to drum up support for the British war effort caught the entire Congress leadership off balance. It was particularly devastating to Jinnah. Tilak and Sarojini Naidu supported Jinnah in his anti-British stance. When Gandhiji started campaigning for recruitment of sepoys for the British army and went to villages in Gujarat, Jinnah asked him: You are a votary of Ahimsa, how can you ask us to take up arms? It was the same Jinnah in whose memory people of Bombay built ‘Peoples Jinnah Hall’ in the Congress’ Bombay regional office and today it stands camouflaged under the abbreviated name ‘P.J.Hall’. It was raised out of donations by people after he won elections from Bombay.


The Congress opposition to the division of Bengal, which would have empowered the Muslims in an area where they were in majority, etched to relief the contours of Congress’ communal politics. Congress conducted vigorous campaign against the division and began to unravel its Brahmin face. Most of its meetings began with singing of Vande Matram extracted from Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s novel Anand Math, a novel calling for expulsion of Muslims and Christians from Bharat. Congress’ insistence on sending Muslim representatives from Muslim minority provinces such as Mumbai and Madras and carefully avoiding nomination of Muslims from their majority provinces like Punjab or Bengal too reinforced the Muslim fears that a fair deal was not possible for the community under a future Congress dispensation. There was a rankling sense of disenchantment in the nascent Muslim leadership that while Congress was interested in empowering the Brahmins as a community, it would like only a few individuals to be elevated from other communities to be used as stooges.


Secondly, Gandhiji’s frequent reference to religion and seeking help from religious symbols began to spawn doubts. While Jinnah insisted on purely constitutional means to secure independence, Gandhiji appealed to religious sensitivities to fuel the freedom campaign. By the late 20s of the last century it became evident that by temperamental orientation, Gandhi and Jinnah were pursuing different paths even though in the later part of the freedom campaign, clash of egos posed a major problem between Jinnah and Nehru. It was felt that Congress had developed a coercive power to shape the course of freedom movement and cared two hoots about interest of other sections of people. The tendency became apparent when 19 leaders including Jinnah and K. M. Munshi (the founder of Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan) were made to leave the Home Rule League of Annie Besant.


The initial parting of ways came about when Jinnah was publicly berated in the 1920 Nagpur session of the Congress for opposing the Non-Cooperation Movement in the wake of the Khilafat Agitation. Gandhiji’s outrageous remarks about Muslims being bullies and Hindus cowards, and publication of his personal views about Muslims being the killers of cow, more definitively tilted the scales against social harmony between two principal communities.


Another watershed came about when the Muslim League’s amendment in (Motilal) Nehru Report were rejected in 1928. The amendments had suggested proposals for determining legislative representation in various Assemblies and were targeted at ending the ‘separate electorate’ then being followed. There was strong support for acceptance of these amendments even within the Congress as is evident from the comments of veteran Congress leader S. K. Bandhopadhyay. Jinnah spoke out his heart in the National Convention held in Calcutta on December 22, 1928 thus: Do heed to my words. Until and unless Hindus and Muslims join together, India cannot advance. Therefore, we should not allow any logic, any argument or philosophy to hinder the progress towards a compromise. Nothing can please me more than this.’ Rejection of the amendments saddened Jinnah immeasurably. Crestfallen, he set sail for London to establish his practice in Privy Council in 1930 even while Hindu-Muslim relations were deteriorating due to emergence of Hindu Sangathan in India which was a corollary to Khilafat Agitation.


Jinnah had contemptuously rejected Poet Sir Mohammad Iqbal’s theory of a Muslim state in the north-west India. Journalist Frank Moraes is on record to have written (Indian Express, September 11, 1965) that in an encounter with Jinnah in a London hotel, the latter had compared Iqbal’s vision of a Muslim federated state as a ‘dream of a poet’ which had nothing to do with reality. (Iqbal himself had clarified in his letter to Oxford University Prof. A. J. Thomson that he had pleaded for merely a Muslim province in his presidential address at the Allahabad session of the Muslim League held in December 1931 and that such a province would be part of the Indian Federation.) Jinnah took no notice of Chaudhury Rahmat Ali’s pamphlet which propounded the theory of Pakistan (P=Punjab, K=Kashmir, S=Sindh and Stan from Baluchistan) which was circulated in England in 1937. Even this pamphlet left out the Muslim dominated East Bengal.


Congress’ refusal to make a coalition government with Muslim League in the United Province (now Uttar Pradesh) in violation of the tacit pre-poll understanding, gave a severe jolt to the League. A majority gained by the Congress made Jawaharlal Nehru to declare that there were only two forces, Congress and the (British) Government. This superciliousness aroused disgust. Several historians such as Bandhopadhyay (Qaide Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Creation of Pakistan), Shivarao (Framing of India’s Constitution) and Stanley Wolpert (Jinnah of Pakistan) have critically scrutinized Nehru’s arrogant attitude at this turn of the freedom movement. They consider this as a forerunner to ultimate parting of ways between the Congress and the League.


League observed the ‘Day of Deliverance’ in 1939 when the Congress ministries were dismissed all across India. League was joined by Dravid leader E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker. This is a pointer to the fact that opposition to Congress did not emanate from League alone.


Even the much maligned 1940 Lahore Resolution did not talk about Pakistan. The Indian press dominated by uppercastes dubbed it ‘Pakistan Resolution’ and propagated it as such. The League named it Pakistan Resolution only a year later only something as fait accompli. But even then Jinnah was not averse to seeking ways to a fair deal for Muslims. Several historians, prominent among whom is Dr. Ayesha Jalal (The Sole Spokesman, Jinnah, Muslim League and Demand for Pakistan, Cambridge University Press) opine that Jinnah was using Pakistan demand merely as ‘a bargaining counter’ and not as a final solution. Perhaps S. K. Bandhopadhyay’s comment that ‘Jinnah suffered from a positive envy vis-à-vis Hindus and the phobia of Muslims being subordinated in a united India’ moulded his course in the next few years.


Disillusioned with Nehru’s arrogant attitude, Jinnah did not lose hope. He maintained contact with Gandhiji which resulted in 14 rounds of meeting with him. He hinged hopes on Gandhiji’s integrity to find a solution to Hindu-Muslim discord.


The failure of the Cabinet Mission Plan (1946) which envisaged a 3-tiered structure of the government at states, their zones and the federal government, came very close to clinching a resolution of the differences and freedom for an undivided India is recent history. Congress having accepted it (League had accepted it through a resolution earlier than this) on July 7, 1946, went back on it. Jawaharlal Nehru’s statement in Bombay on July 10, 1946 brought the situation to square one. Failure of the plan ‘set in train an unfortunate series of consequences’ in the words of nationalist Congress leader Maulana Azad (India Wins Freedom). Later efforts to avert a failure of the Plan and bring the two sides to an agreement proved fruitless.


Kanji Dwarkadoss, a leading chronicler of the age, concludes: ‘Jinnah did not win Pakistan. The Congress leaders, Gandhi, Nehru and Patel lost Pakistan to Jinnah’.


Legal expert and author H. M. Seervai, a Parsi by faith, in his book which was authored during the 90s, says: ‘It is reasonably clear that it was the Congress which wanted Pakistan. It was Jinnah who was against partition but accepted it as the second best.’ (Partition of India-Legend and Reality, page 132).


It is of course true that Jinnah regarded Muslim and Hindus as different nations but tried his utmost to seek peace for both of them within a single state. It is not a cardinal sin even in modern times to differentiate between people even when they are categorised within the same civilizational entity. Jinnah’s outlook was that of a ‘communitarian’ rather than a ‘communal’ leader. Nowhere does his role seem tinged with communalism. He was not for a theocratic state. He wanted to raise Pakistan as a modern Muslim state which respects all faiths, sects and shades of thought. He never envisioned a Talibanised state where intra-Islam differences would lead to bloodshed as is happening there for the last two decades. Perhaps Advani’s statement needs to be seen in this light. Be it Jinnah, Mahatama Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru or Patel, they were all great men. They all had the common interest of delivering India to Indians in the best shape. But their hopes and aspirations, ambitions and egos, purity and venality, dreams and passions, prides and prejudices, stupidity and negligence, sicknesses and personal idiosyncracies, all played part in shattering the dream of a United India. This is stuff the history is made of.

Author can be reached at maqbool_siraj@yahoo.com.