Iqbal and Jinnah

THE year 2002 is the Allama Iqbal year as declared by the government of Pakistan. December 25 is the birthday of the Quaid-i-Azam, M. A. Jinnah. It is, therefore, appropriate on this day to recall the interaction between them with regard to the implementation of the Pakistan idea.

Iqbal and Jinnah, the two founding fathers of Pakistan, were two distinctly different personalities. For this reason alone a study of their interaction in a common cause is of great interest to students of our history. We have direct evidence of Iqbal’s views recorded by him in his letters to Jinnah, but unfortunately Jinnah’s replies to these letters are not available. We have, therefore, to depend for evidence of Jinnah’s responses either directly from his observations in his foreword to these letters or indirectly from Iqbal’s letters themselves.

Iqbal was responsible for giving the concept of a Muslim homeland but he passed away in April 1938, two years before the movement for it was actually set afoot by Jinnah in March 1940. Iqbal, as president of the Punjab Provincial Muslim League, had been in touch with Jinnah in the years 1936-37 through correspondence. It was during this period that he exercised effective influence on Jinnah’s thinking about the future of Muslim India and the constitutional dispensation that he had proposed earlier.

This is evident from Letters of Iqbal to Jinnah published for the first time in 1942 with a foreword from Jinnah in which he says: “I think these letters are of very great historical importance, particularly those which explain his views in clear and unambiguous terms on the political future of Muslim India. His views were substantially in consonance with my own and had finally led me to the same conclusions as a result of careful examination and study of the constitutional problems facing India, and found expression in due course in the united will of Muslim India as adumbrated in the Lahore resolution of the All India Muslim League, popularly known as the ‘Pakistan Resolution’ passed on March 23, 1940.”

It is an important declaration coming as it does from the founder of the country giving due credit to his illustrious predecessor for moulding “the united will of Muslim India” for a demand to divide the subcontinent on the basis of Hindu/Muslim majority areas.

Iqbal had given a lead to the people in this direction in his presidential address to the Muslim League session at Allahabad in December 1930. He argued that the principle of European democracy could not be applied to India without recognizing the fact of communal entities. He voiced the demand for a separate Muslim state because “the life of Islam as a cultural force in this country (India) very largely depends on its centralization in a specific territory.”

He specified the territory by saying, “I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sindh and Balochistan amalgamated into a single state ... the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim state appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India.”

In his letter of May 28, 1937 to Jinnah, Iqbal, while discussing the problem of Muslim poverty refers to socialism or social democracy (he uses these terms synonymously) and argues that if Hinduism accepts Jawaharlal Nehru’s socialism it must cease to be Hinduism, and goes on to assert: “For Islam the acceptance of social democracy in some suitable form and consistent with the legal principles of Islam, is not a revolution but a return to the original purity of Islam.”

Iqbal concludes by suggesting that in order to make it possible for Muslim India to solve the problems it faced, poverty being one of them, “It is necessary to redistribute the country and to provide one or more Muslim states with absolute majorities. Don’t you think that the time for such a demand has already arrived? Perhaps this is the best reply you can give to the atheistic socialism of Jawaharlal Nehru.”

We may pause here to take note of Jinnah’s reaction to Iqbal’s suggestion. A master of timing his political moves, Jinnah obviously thought it was not the appropriate time because the Muslims were not yet sufficiently organized and disciplined. Iqbal expresses his agreement with him in his next letter of June 21, 1937, in the context of a suggestion by some Muslims in Punjab to hold a North-West India Muslim conference presumably for the purpose of making Iqbal’s proposal public.

Jinnah seems to have turned down the suggestion because the time for holding such a convention was not ripe. However, Iqbal goes on to say: “But I feel that it would be highly advisable for you to indicate in your address (at the Lucknow session of the Muslim League) the line of action that the Muslims of North-West India would be finally driven to take.”

The difference between Iqbal’s and Jinnah’s perception and approach in the matter is obviously the difference between a man inspired by a vision and a cautious politician waiting for the appropriate time. It so happened that in the following three years the Muslims had ample experience of the working of the Congress governments in the Muslim minority provinces which went a long way to galvanize the Muslim public opinion against the Congress and its concept of composite nationalism. The sentiment of Muslim nationalism of which Iqbal was a catalyst and a symbol received a further impetus. Finally, it was in March 1940 that Jinnah decided to translate Iqbal’s vision into a formal demand and the Muslim League passed the Pakistan Resolution.

As we have seen in the letter of May 28, 1937, Iqbal had made reference to “one or more Muslim states with absolute majorities.” He is however, more specific in his letter of June 21, 1937 when he says: “why should not the Muslims of North-West India and Bengal be considered as nations entitled to self-determination just as other nations in India?” Here he does not only include Bengal, the other Muslim majority area in the subcontinent but also treats it as a separate nation from the Muslims of North-West India. This is in line with his thinking about the “redistribution of the country on the lines of racial, religious and linguistic affinities” which he had asked for earlier in the same letter.

Could one, therefore, surmise that the use of the word states in the plural in the Lahore Resolution was an echo of what Iqbal had suggested to Jinnah in his letters? Later, under some political exigency, Jinnah changed his mind as it was in the Muslim League Legislators Resolution at the Delhi Convention of April 1946 that the word state in the singular with Pakistan as its name was used. However, the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971 as a separate and independent state after a bloody war which could have been avoided if better sense had prevailed with our military and political leaders of the day, has proved the validity of the original concept put forward in Iqbal’s letters and the Lahore Resolution.

A divergence of opinion seems to have emerged between Iqbal and Jinnah on the question of the Sikander-Jinnah agreement reached at the Lucknow session of the Muslim League in 1937. Sir Sikander Hayat Khan, as the head of the Unionist Party, was the chief minister of Punjab at that time. The Unionist Party was a purely Punjabi party consisting mainly of Muslim feudals having support of some Hindu and Sikh feudals. Iqbal had apprehensions about Sir Sikander’s intentions. He reported to Jinnah in his letter of October 30, 1937, that the idea, as one of Sir Sikander’s party members had told him, was to slacken the activities of the provincial League.

On November 1, 1937, Iqbal again wrote to Jinnah informing him of his talk with Sir Sikander and some members of his party “about the differences between the League and the Unionist Party. Statements have been issued to the press by both sides, each side presenting its own interpretation of the terms of the Jinnah-Sikander agreement. This has caused much misunderstanding.”

In his next and last letter written on November 10, 1937, Iqbal is far more candid and frank in expressing his apprehensions and in fact goes on to denounce the Sikander-Jinnah Pact itself — a handiwork of Jinnah himself. Here is what he has to say: “After having several talks with Sir Sikander and his friends I am now definitely of the opinion that Sir Sikander wants nothing less than the complete control of the League and the Provincial Parliamentary Board... Sir Sikander tells me that you agreed to their majority in the Board... I personally seen no harm in giving him the majority that he wants but he goes beyond the pact when he wants a complete change in the office holders of the League, especially the secretary who has done so much for the League.

“He also wishes that the finances of the League should be controlled by his men. All this to my mind amounts to capturing of the League and then killing it. Knowing the opinion of the province as I do, I cannot take the responsibility of the handing over the League to Sir Sikander and his friends. The pact has already damaged the prestige of the League in this province: and the tactics of the Unionists may damage it still further. They have not so far signed the creed of the League and I understand do not mean to.”

Iqbal’s attack on Sir Sikander was actually part of his fight against the domination of the feudal landlords in the Punjab Provincial Muslim League — a point which has been forcefully brought out by Dr Ashique Hussain Batalvi in his book on the last two years of Iqbal’s life. One does not know about Jinnah’s immediate reaction to Iqbal’s criticism. But in his foreword to Letters of Iqbal to Jinnah written in 1942, Jinnah touches upon the subject.

Referring to Iqbal’s “conspicuous part” in the success that the Muslim League had achieved, Jinnah observes: “ He had his own doubts about Sikander-Jinnah pact being carried out and he was anxious to see it translated into some tangible results without delay so as to dispel popular misapprehension about it, but unfortunately he has not lived to see that Punjab has all round made a remarkable progress and now it is beyond doubt that the Muslims stand solidly behind the Muslim League organization.”

Actually the divergence of opinion on the Pact in question is again an indication of the difference of perception and approach between Iqbal and Jinnah. Iqbal was against the dominance of the feudal landlords in principle because he believed in turning the Muslim League into a mass organisation as he has repeatedly emphasised in his letters. Jinnah, on the other hand, was looking for the appropriate time to do so and was prepared, in the meanwhile, to take advantage of any compromise formula which he could evolve with the feudals who enjoyed power and influence in Punjab. Looking at it form this point of view the Sikander-Jinnah Pact was a tactical move, on Jinnah’s part, to tide over the situation created by the overwhelming success of the Unionist Party in the Punjab election of 1936 in which the Muslim League secured no more than two seats.

The situation started changing after the Lahore Resolution which adopted a scheme for the division of the Subcontinent. Iqbal’s vision when translated into a policy objective of the Muslim League inspired and enthused the entire Muslim nation and the Pakistan movement became a mass movement. Finally the Unionist party was wiped out and the Muslim League swept the polls in the 1946 election in the Punjab as well as in the Muslim majority areas and Pakistan became a distinct possibility. To sum up, it was the interaction of Iqbal and Jinnah, the visionary and the practical politician, which was responsible for the creation of Pakistan at the leadership level.

New information order

THE media scene is changing dramatically all over the world. Globalization, accompanied with phenomenal strides in communication technology, has proved to be the catalyst. Had it not been for the fact that capital now flows quite freely across borders and cable and satellite television and powerful transmitters have made it possible for sounds and images to be carried across thousands and thousands of miles, the reach of the media could not have been internationalized with such ease and at relatively affordable cost.

The arrival of the age of the Internet has also made great inroads into the news sector. This has enabled the powers that be — whether they are governments, the corporate sector or ideological groups — to have access to people they could never even have dreamt of addressing directly a few years ago. For instance, before the advent of the CNN how many viewers in Pakistan would have seen the American president delivering live his State of the Union message?

In this race to go global, the print media has not been left behind either. Newspapers have been enterprising and have capitalized on the Internet technology by setting up websites and making their reach global. All major newspapers, even in the most backward country of Asia or Africa, possess their own website. Moreover, cut-throat competition compels the papers, which put up their contents online to update their news at regular intervals, to keep their readers posted with the latest news. Pressflex, a French media institution, recently reported that a survey had confirmed that newspapers with websites outperformed those without sites.

This means that newspapers from all over the world are now just a click of the mouse away. Even though not many people in Pakistan, would go online to read The Washington Post or The Guardian, the local print media is picking up stories of readers’ interest from the press worldwide. With the Berne Convention permitting the reproduction by the press of articles on current issues published in newspapers and periodicals (albeit with a clear indication of the source), we find a globalized print media of sorts emerging.

What is the impact of this phenomenon on Third World politics, economies and societies? The hallmark of the media scene as it has emerged today is that the flow of information continues to be predominantly in one direction — from the North to the South. The situation has not changed much from the decade of the seventies when the MacBride Commission was set up by Unesco under the stewardship of the great champion of Third World rights, Amadou-Mahtar Mbow. Sean MacBride and his associates spoke of the new world information and communication order which would seek more justice, more equity, more reciprocity in information exchange, more self-reliance and cultural identity.

In the last 30 years, the volume of news and views has increased manifold. But as before, it flows from the industrialized countries of the West to the developing states of the Third World. Significantly, a lot of the news about the Third World which emanates from there is being channelled back to it via western agencies. As for the information the West is receiving from the Afro-Asian countries, it is selective and presented with the bias the media brokers want to inject into it.

The industrialized powers have no problems about getting their news and views across to the Third World media. They have the technology as well as the resources and the trained manpower to flood the developing countries with news about the industrialized West. In the battle for the hearts and minds of Third World societies, it has been easy sailing for them. The struggle for a new and balanced information order has proved unwinnable for the Third World.

With the globalization of the media scene, the balance has inexonerably tilted towards the West. Let no one be deceived by the massive and visible presence of the western media in nearly all Third World countries. The false impression created is that they are involved in a gigantic news gathering operation to disseminate it in their home countries. But are they employing our mediapersons to educate their own readers/listeners? We need to disabuse ourselves of this misconception.

It should be clearly understood that the prolific coverage given to third world countries by the television networks such as the CNN and BBC is not designed for their home audience. What we view here on the international channels is not beamed at the US or Britain. Their own programmes continue to be as focused inwards — especially in the US which is famous for its apathy towards the world outside the American continent. Nick Higham, a BBC journalist, who had been sent to New York in the weeks following 9/11, found the general downgrading and marginalization of foreign news staggering. “America’s isolationism (or self-sufficiency, to put it more kindly) has deep roots. The popular media reflect that — and they reflect commercial imperatives.... There is no mass market for foreign news,” he wrote in the British Journalism Review.

Regrettably, Britain is going the same way. Writing in the above journal, Roy Greensdale observed that politics and foreign affairs have become irrelevant to many people in Britain. They have come to believe that “what happens in the rest of the world has no effect on their lives and they can live out their lives perfectly well without the need to know anything about anything from anywhere”.

Even the news magazines, especially the American publications, have different editions for Asia and other regions. The idea ostensibly is to highlight news and views in keeping with the interests of the readers. But the fact is that there is a slant in what is presented in an attractive and professionally produced format to readers in Third World countries. The gullible and unsuspecting among them can swallow it all without any further analysis or questioning.

So powerful and insidious has been the influence of the western media and so extensive the resources at their command, that they have been able to virtually draw upon the local professional expertise to collect information in scores of developing countries, recycle it and send it back to the Third World.

Since no analysis has been done of this new development, it is difficult to draw any conclusion. But it seems plausible that this information explosion which we witness today influences policy-making and opinion formation profoundly in every country. In view of the processes used for news gathering, news transmission, news processing and news presentation — quite a bit of it done mechanically or with the help of technicians who are not journalists — the implications of the new media trends need to be taken more seriously than they are.

It is heartening that at a time when we have a surfeit of the electronic media, the newspaper — the oldest medium of news — has not lost its readership. According to the World Association of Newspapers, circulations grew by 4.8 per cent between 1997 and 2001. According to the same source, there was a growth in newspaper jobs even though advertising declined.

Where does all this take us? First of all, it is important that the Third World governments should not commit the mistake they first did which gave the western media a foothold in the developing societies. They should not clamp down on the indigenous press and television/radio. Only when the local media lacks credibility and is not taken seriously as a source of authentic news that the foreign media emerges as a more reliable purveyor of information — right or wrong. Just as bad democracy must be treated with more democracy, bad media must be countered with more freedom so that the reading public can itself develop the capability to sift the wheat from the chaff.

Here it may be added that literacy and education also have a direct bearing on the performance of the media. When the people are educated and have learnt to analyze and think, they are more discerning in what they accept as the truth no matter where it comes from. By promoting professionalism and an ethical approach in the media and guaranteeing the right to freedom of expression any society can counter the inroads from foreign quarters.

Officers on spurious duty: OF MICE AND MEN

REGIMES may come and regimes may go but Officers on Special Duty (OSDs) go on for ever. Whether it is an elected government in power or a military junta, they don’t seem inclined to do away with this institution. It has become one of the oddities of administration in Pakistan, oddity in the sense that the OSD has no duty at all, whether special or ordinary. If I remember right, it was someone in ZAB’s time as PM who discovered its usefulness.

I too was an OSD once and loved the paid holiday. I have been reminded of it by a recent news report that, at any given moment, there are fifty to sixty OSDs of Grade 20 and above in the federal government. But they don’t sit idle as I did. They are pulling strings all the time to get posted, but since every one of them wants a job with a clout, it’s not easy. Some of the present ones who were in the bad books of the military regime had no strings to pull, so they just prayed. Now their prayers have been answered and they can easily find an MNA or even a minister to speak for them with Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali.

The report stirred nostalgia for the good old days. Alas! they numbered only ninety in my case (it was the second year of General Ziaul Haq who made the number fashionable) but even so they are memorable and constituted a golden interregnum in my career as a public servant. Thinking of them I am always overcome by an intense desire to be OSD again.

They say that if one is not a player of the game of politics and is only a spectator, or at best an unwilling participant, as government servants are, he should avoid getting labelled. For example, if you are branded as a PPP man, the moment the PML or some other anti-PPP regime comes into power you at once become persona non grata and are made OSD. If the law and service rules were not there you would have been sent home for good.

Similarly, if you are known all over as an uncompromising Islam-pasand in your political affiliation, and have been indiscreet enough to let your views be known in your official performance, a PPP government will not tolerate you and you will find yourself an OSD in no time, unless you have some other qualities which make you beloved of PPP leaders.

The trouble is that being impartial or apolitical is not the best way service-wise. Regimes in Pakistan are like President Bush: “If you are not with us you are with our enemy.” They want to feel that you are as faithful as a dog. If you are neutral and wish to be known as such, you may not be made OSD but you will not be considered for promotion also. You will be superseded or sidelined, or simply forgotten by the rulers even if you are in Grade 22. Meeting you at a wedding the PM will say, “I can’t recall your name. What are you doing these days?”

In my case it was like this. At the tail-end of October 1978 I was joint secretary in a ministry (Minorities Affairs) where nobody took any notice of me. No one wanted that job since it was a real backwater. Otherwise it offered the best of working conditions. I went to office late and came back early, like Charles Lamb in the India Office. In between I would call on friends and dawdle over their cup of tea and biscuits to pass the time. The file work, done in spurts, didn’t take more than half an hour. Visitors were most welcome.

If you are in government service can you visualise a more blissful official existence? Hardly. But, as they say, the best-laid schemes of mice and men oft go astray, although, in my case, the scheme was not laid by me. It was a bounty from the Almighty, probably for being content with my lot. One day the blow fell, and overnight I was transformed into an OSD.

What had happened was that General Ziaul Haq had inducted politicians of the green hue into his cabinet of ministers. The one who fell to my lot was greener than the others and a committed enemy of the PPP. Somebody whispered into his ear that I had been mentioned in the White Paper, the record of ZAB’s so-called black deeds. So I got the order of the boot without being heard. So much for justice by defenders of the faith.

Reporting to the Establishment Division, then in Rawalpindi, I was given the glad tidings that I was free to go where I liked (except abroad), that I didn’t have to attend any office or show my face regularly to any authority and I need not even come to receive my salary. The cheques would be delivered at my residence. What a wonderful surprise! I said to myself.

So till the end of January 1979, when I was sent to do a course in the staff College at Lahore, I had a jolly good time. It was a lovely winter in Islamabad. Every morning I would put on a three-piece suit (as against the Shalwar-kameez prescribed by Zia) and go out either on my own or with the family and visit all sorts of places. My stint as OSD lasted three months. A relation of mine probably holds the record. An engineer by profession, he went to live in Lahore, set up a construction business there, and prospered like the devil for full three years. For 36 months he was paid the salary of a Grade-20 officer, plus the annual increments, and made many lakhs.

But the blue-blooded bureaucrat is not happy as OSD. He takes it as punishment, as valuable time wasted. What is good in being a senior officer in Pakistan, an El Dorado for the bureaucracy, if you don’t have an office to show yourself off, people around you to order about, a public to stand before you with folded hands, and the authority to grant and withhold favours? It is the most prestigious profession in the country, even if you are in Animal Husbandry or Meteorology.

A government that is willing to maintain fifty or sixty OSDs for doing nothing, should not be believed when it makes excuses about shortage of funds for much-needed welfare projects — whether that government is elected by the people or imposed by the military.

What the leader left behind: WORLD VIEW

THE recent re-election in Gujarat of the Bharatiya Janata Party government condemned both within the country and internationally for encouraging pogroms against Muslims earlier in the year speaks volumes about the state of secularism in India at the beginning of the 21st century.

The lamentable popular endorsement for an ill-regarded regime is a victory for the forces of Hindutva that have lately dominated the political scene in New Delhi — as well as a reminder, if any were needed, that in less than propitious circumstances, voters cannot be relied upon to act sensibly.

It has been suggested that intimidation kept significant numbers of Gujarati Muslims from exercising their right to vote. That may well be so, and the informal disenfranchisement only reinforces the impression of a democracy in disarray. However, secularism is not something that can sustained by minority communities alone.

There are those who would be inclined to read into such events a vindication of the two-nation theory that underlay the demand for Pakistan. That, however, is by no means the only possible interpretation. After all, the post-1947 Muslim experience in India could also logically be seen as a consequence of that theory. After all, when the ideologues of Hindutva question the possibility of peaceful coexistence between Hindus and Muslims, are they not merely echoing the argument once advanced by communalists of a different stripe?

In the Gujarati context, there is a certain irony in the fact that two of the subcontinent’s most famous sons were born in that state. No matter how one views Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s proclivities on religious matters, it can be said without fear of contradiction that communal violence was anathema to him. And Mohammed Ali Jinnah was never particularly comfortable with the communalist label he attracted after he became the chief spokesman for Muslim separatism.

Jinnah’s official birth anniversary may be considered a less than ideal occasion for a relatively objective discussion of what he stood for or what he achieved. It is traditionally reserved, after all, for paeans of praise. In the process, he is frequently misrepresented, with both his personality and his politics distorted to serve dubious ends. To cite but the most obvious example, the “ideology of Pakistan” cited by politicians and generals alike — the trend acquired particular momentum during the period of darkness inaugurated on July 5, 1977 — bears little resemblance to anything the man hailed as the father of the nation would have been prepared to countenance.

Besides, Jinnah’s politics and personality do not suggest a person keen on deification. And he certainly would not have liked to be deified for all the wrong reasons. He was even willing to countenance the possibility that the fruit of his life’s defining project may be sour.

The “you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques” segment of Jinnah’s speech to Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, has often been cited by liberals as proof of his secular intent. Tellingly, although perhaps not entirely surprisingly, it has also occasionally been censored by Pakistani authorities. We shall return later to that contradiction. Let us turn first to a less frequently quoted part of the address, which is worth recalling at length:

“The question is whether it was possible or practicable to act otherwise than what has been done ... A division had to take place. On both sides, in Hindustan and Pakistan, there are sections of people who may not agree with it, who may not like it, but in my judgment there was no other solution and I am sure future history will record its verdict in favour of it. And what is more it will be proved by actual experience as we go on that that was the only solution ... Any idea of a united India could never have worked and in my judgment it would have led us to terrific disaster. Maybe that view is correct; maybe it is not; that remains to be seen.”

The use twice in two sentences of the phrase “in my judgment” suggests an intriguing element of doubt. Perhaps that is not particularly remarkable, given the evidence that already existed of the senseless violence that accompanied partition. The scale of the mayhem must have been appalling to Jinnah’s sensibilities, and had he foreseen it, he may well have been less disinclined to opt for one of the alternative scenarios that had been under consideration until a few months earlier.

He may, on the other hand, have considered it a price worth paying, had Pakistan in other ways conformed to his vision. He noted in the same speech: “One of the biggest curses from which India is suffering ... is bribery and corruption. That really is a poison. We must put it down with an iron hand.” Well, far from being eradicated or even reduced, bribery and corruption grew exponentially in the decades following this pronouncement. The battle against these twin evils continues, but many people would be inclined to see it as something of a lost cause amid the socio-economic and political realities of Pakistan.

“Black-marketing is another curse,” Jinnah noted, before going on to express equally strong concerns about another “legacy that has been passed on to us”, namely “the evil of nepotism and jobbery”, adding: “I shall never tolerate any kind of jobbery, nepotism or any influence directly or indirectly brought to bear on me.” One can take his assurance at face value, but did Jinnah really think that his colleagues and successors would be equally discerning?

Corruption. Bribery. Black-marketing. Nepotism. Jobbery. Jinnah was not particularly prescient in recognizing that these were among the most pressing problems that the new state faced. The question is, would he have considered a Pakistan awash with these same problems half a century on worth fighting for?

It is not unusual for state founders to be held up to scrutiny in the light of history. This is, to a certain extent, a legitimate pursuit. It is far from unreasonable to assume, for example, that Vladimir Lenin would have at least modified his strategy had he been aware of the kind of excesses that Stalinism would spawn. As we now know, the Soviet Union was unable ever to fully recover from the intolerable burden imposed on it by Uncle Joe. Gandhi would have been equally appalled to realize that the associates and successors of the group that organized his assassination would one day be running India — and the ascendancy of Hindutva would have come as even more of a shock to the considerably more enlightened Jawaharlal Nehru.

Jinnah never had much time for mullas, and the antipathy was, by and large, heartily reciprocated. “Not a single leader of the Muslim League from Jinnah himself to the rank and file,” Maulana Maudoodi had complained in the 1940s, “has an Islamic mentality or Islamic habits of thought ... Their ignoble role is to safeguard the material interests of Indian Muslims by every possible manoeuvre or trickery.” But, although the League’s “Islam is in danger” slogan may have been primarily a political convenience rather than a cry from the heart — the equivalent, arguably, of the resort to Hindu symbolism and imagery by the Congress — did its leadership not realize that such a posture would entail certain consequences?

As Aitzaz Ahsan recounts in his book ‘The Indus Saga’, an inquiry commission comprising High Court justices Mohammed Munir and M.R. Kayani was set up following the anti-Ahmadiyya riots of 1953 in Lahore. The opinion of “all the leading lights of religious knowledge” was solicited during the inquiry and, in the process, the ulema were confronted with Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan, as encapsulated in his aforementioned August 11 speech. “You may belong to any religion or caste or creed,” Jinnah had said, “that has nothing to do with the business of the state.” The judges recorded that they “asked the ulema whether this conception of a state was acceptable to them and every one of them replied in an unhesitating negative”.

The August 11 oration tends to support the thesis that Jinnah’s deviation from the stance that provoked Sarojini Naidu to dub him the ‘Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity’ was strategic rather than a matter of faith, so to speak. He appears to have believed that once the separatist goal had been achieved, it would be possible to cast out the demon of communalism. Was he way off the mark? (The curse of confessional orthodoxy is something that neither Pakistan nor Israel — the only other nation to have been carved out exclusively on a religious basis — have coped with too well. Is it too late to make amends?)

Jinnah died barely a year after partition, leaving behind the mullas as well as the devotees of propertied interests. He also left behind a nation that, by and large, sees no contradiction between paying lip service to his memory and dishonouring his vision. Jinnah did not consider himself infallible. He would not have wanted his life or legacy to be above criticism. But he certainly would have resented being misrepresented or misconstrued, particularly in the service of principles that were entirely alien to his nature.

India today differs dramatically from the conceptions of it entertained by Gandhi or Nehru. But at least “Nehruvian socialism” is openly denounced, and the ruling BJP’s political lineage can directly be traced to the Hindu extremists who successfully plotted to assassinate the Mahatma. In Pakistan, meanwhile, the latest motley collection to have gained the military’s stamp of approval — and, consequently, office — nomenclaturally associates itself with the Quaid-i-Azam.

Jinnah was no stranger to political ploys and strategies. But dishonesty was not one of his natural attributes.

e-mail: mahirali@journalist.com/