I AM taking a couple of week’s pause in the intended series of articles begun last week to write about a subject that is germane to the one I will touch upon in the Kashmir series. In that series I will suggest that Pakistan has paid a very high price by keeping the Kashmir dispute alive for nearly six decades. The decision on the part of Islamabad to take a bit of a breather from an active pursuit of the Kashmir case may have already contributed to the impressive performance of the economy in the about-to-be concluded financial year. There is need to continue this trend.

The ministry of finance’s Economic Survey, 2004-05 was released to the public on June 3 three days before the announcement of the budget for the year 2005-2006. It estimated a rate of GDP growth of almost 8.4 per cent in 2004-05, full two percentage points higher than in the previous year. At this rate, Pakistan is now the third fastest growing economy in Asia after China and Singapore. After a decade and a half, Pakistan’s GDP growth rate has overtaken that of India’s. Pakistan could maintain this pace if it decided to continue giving a high priority to economics than to its quarrel with India.

There are great rewards to be reaped by following this approach. At an estimated $736, income per head of the population Pakistan is approaching the threshold that separates poor countries from middle income nations. It has been at this threshold before only to pull back largely because of political volatility and persistent problem with India. Pakistan’s per capita income is now, once again, more than that of India’s. If Pakistan cannot match India’s military strength — and there is no need why it should do that — it can at least give its neighbour some stiff competition in economics.

An eight plus rate of growth in gross domestic product is impressive in and of itself. It is the highest rate of increase in national income in more than two decades. The performance this year suggests an accelerating trend. For the last three years, the annual growth rate has been higher than in the year before. This year’s performance is much higher than last year’s increase in GDP of 6.4 per cent which, in turn, was significantly higher than the growth rate of 5.1 per cent in 2002-03. Has a trend been established? I will come back to this question momentarily.

Since 2002-2003, the size of the economy has grown by 21.2 per cent. Since the population increased by 5.8 per cent, the income per head of the population grew by more than 15 per cent. As the rate of population increase has begun to decline with significant reductions in fertility, even a slightly lower GDP growth rate could keep the per capita income increasing at a rate of more than six per cent a year. At this rate — more than three times the rate of increase in population — it should be possible to bring about a rapid reduction in the incidence of poverty.

The government claims that this has already begun to happen with the incidence of poverty declining helped in part by the expansion of agriculture. Extrapolating from the estimate provided last year, the incidence of poverty may have declined by 10 per cent and the pool of poverty may have shrunk by five million people to about 45 million. This would imply that the proportion of people living in absolute poverty is now of the order of 30 per cent of the population.

Both the number of the poor and their share in the population is large but, once again, the trend is in the right direction. One of the ugly features of the Pakistani economy in the decade of the 1990s and the early years of the present decade was the large and rapid addition to the number of poor and an increase in both urban and rural unemployment. This trend appears to have been reversed.

Do these positive changes in the state of the economy indicate a trend or are they the result of the coalescing of a number of happy circumstances? Is the spurt in economic growth the consequence of 9/11 as several commentators have suggested? Could the high rate of GDP growth be sustained as was suggested in the budget speech? Has Pakistan finally left behind economic sluggishness and joined the ranks of rapidly growing economies of Asia?

The government would like to believe that a new trend has been set and that the days of economic distress are behind us. Some analysts believe that this is a repeat of the past when Pakistan did well — as was the case in the days of Ayub Khan and Zia ul-Haq — when the unconstrained flow of foreign money produced high levels of economic growth. My own view is that, this time around, there are significant changes in some of the economic fundamentals to warrant greater optimism about the future.

There is an impression that the constraints placed by the United States treasury department on the flow of remittances through informal channels may have resulted in the large increase through the banking system of the amount of money being sent home by Pakistanis living abroad. These measures have also been adopted by other countries with a significant number of Pakistani workers. There is also fear among some people who had brought capital out of Pakistan and lodged it in America and Europe that it may not be safe to keep this money in these countries. There is no doubt that some of the flight of capital has been reversed.

Money is also coming into the country as a result of new aid commitments made by the United States and other western donors to reward the country for its efforts aimed at fighting international terrorism. Multilateral financial banks — the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank — have significantly increased their lending programmes to Pakistan. The greater interest of these institutions in the country’s development certainly reflects the American desire to help Pakistan but some of this renewed emphasis is also the result of better management of the economy.

If the recent impressive performance of the economy is not entirely due to the capital flows induced by 9/11, as I happen to believe, can it be traced to major structural changes brought about by clever public policy? This is an important question and it is being actively debated in the country. To provide a convincing answer will require some deep analysis which I will undertake some time in the future. Today, I will write about the status of the economy in the middle of 2005 and what this may mean for the future, returning to a more fuller analysis of the contributors to growth in future articles.

The sharp increase in gross domestic product was made possible by a 12.5 per cent rise in manufacturing output, 7.5 per cent growth in agricultural production and 7.9 per cent increase in the estimated output of the service sector. These achievements notwithstanding, the government acknowledged that the economy was now faced with some serious problems. Inflation has returned with the rise in price for the year estimated at 9.3 per cent, the highest level in eight years.

External accounts have also come under pressure with the trade deficit for the nine month period from July 1, 2004 to March 31, 2005 increasing to $4.2 billion, 2.62 times higher than the deficit of $1.6 billion in the previous year. Imports, fuelled by increased investment, grew to $14.4 billion while exports were only $10.2 billion in the first nine months of 2004-2005 financial year.

Agriculture, buoyed by good weather, played an important role in helping the economy to grow rapidly. Output of major crops increased by 17.3 per cent compared to only 1.9 per cent the year before. The high growth rate for the year, therefore, represents in part recovery from the previous year’s poor performance. Cotton output increased by 45.5 per cent while that of wheat rose by 8.5 per cent. Rice production, however, increased by only 2.9 per cent. Whether this improvement in agricultural output represents a structural change introduced by increase in investment in irrigation, switch to better technology, and use of market mechanisms for determining planting decisions is something time will tell. Agriculture was not the only sector that performed well. Output of large-scale manufacturing increased by 15.4 per cent, an impressive rate but almost three percentage points lower than that achieved in 2003-04. Nonetheless, this was the second highest growth rate achieved in three decades. However, small scale manufacturing output increased by only 6.3 per cent. This sector has to do better for the country to solve the acute problem of urban unemployment.

The government has suggested that the country is now on track to continue at a rate of growth of some six to eight per cent a year. To sustain this rate, the economy will need to receive investments of some 25 to 30 per cent of the gross domestic product. This is well below the achievement of 2004-2005. Investment continued to perform relatively poorly, increasing at 16.9 per cent in the current financial year. This is even lower than 17.3 per cent recorded in the previous year.

This decline in the rate of investment was the result in part of a drop in public sector commitment of some 0.4 per cent while private sector investment increased by 10.9 per cent. While the amount of capital going into economic development may be less than that needed, the fact that there is a move towards greater private sector involvement suggests a happy trend. The decline in investment by the government was particularly large in large scale manufacturing, with a reduction of 26.6 per cent. This, too, is a good trend since many of the distortions from which the economy is still not fully recovered were the result of the government’s ownership and management of large-scale enterprises.

Distribution of private sector investment reflects the structure of incentives put together in recent years. The amount invested in construction increased by almost 80 per cent, partly in response to the tax incentives given last year to the housing sector and partly the result of money flowing in from the outside. Transport and communication sector was the second most attractive area for the private sector, with investment increasing by 42.2 per cent. Investment in manufacturing increased by 24 per cent with textile and construction industries claiming a large proportion of the increase. The automobile sector continued to attract new investment.

All these are very positive developments but a great deal remains to be done and may not be accomplished if the government does not adopt a well articulated long-term strategy. Does the budget for the year 2005-2006 contain elements of such a strategy? I will address this question next week.

PRESIDENT General Musharraf has repeatedly appealed to the silent majority to unite against extremists, reject those who preach religious and political intolerance and help eradicate corruption.

Addressing a meeting in Okara, the general had said “Pakistan faces internal threat — Nobody will be allowed to retard progress — You must stand up to quell the minority of extremists who want to push Pakistan backward.”

No educated, enlightened Pakistani would disagree with the general’s appeal, but unfortunately, the ground realities are quite the opposite and recent events have shown that the general has not been able to achieve his noble objectives. Unfortunately, the very people who can make his vision into reality are those who are in government and do not seem to be in a position to deliver.

No doubt, corruption in high places of government have been reduced, but the wheeling and dealing continues and everybody is laughing all the way to the bank, stuffing their locker with share certificates, sale deeds and files of plots that do not exist and applications for cars that have yet to be delivered.

The prime minister has stated that the economy is doing well and “the winds of growth, change and enlightenment are blowing across the country and the masses will benefit from its trickle down effect in due time.”

However, according to the country assistance plan of UK’s department for Pakistan, the military and its growing corporate interests are hampering poverty reduction efforts and effectiveness of bureaucracy and judiciary in Pakistan.

It states: “there are powerful obstacles like land ownership, titled distribution of income and wealth and differences based on kinship, ethnicity, religion and gender hamper development. The role of military in economic fields had been increasing and corruption remains a major problem in all sectors.”

What we need in Pakistan is not a “trickle or a drizzle”, but a downpour of good governance, strict enforcement of the rule of law and transparent, across the board, accountability that is visible now and not in due course of time.

According to foreign experts, corruption, lack of vision, commitment and sincerity to good governance and ineptitude of our legislators are the major roadblocks to good governance and democracy in Pakistan and the root cause of repeated military interventions.

At the same time, events relating to the abuse and rape of women in Balochistan, Punjab and Sindh and the recent events in Karachi have shown that all is not well with Pakistan and the internal threat is as dangerous as before. And lack of good governance, enforcement of the rule of law, basic facilities, corruption, mismanagement and abuse of authority are still part of our system of governance.

But is this an “internal threat”, or a clash of vision and ideology between the enlightened, educated and privileged few and the less unfortunate, uneducated masses, who have been denied even basic amenities like clean water, health and education and who live in slums?

Certain political parties have strong reservations about the general’s “enlightened moderation” and feel that it is a threat to the religious ideology of Pakistan and would resist, with force if necessary, any such changes

There is also a school of thought that the present parliamentary system cannot solve the serious problems facing Pakistan, as an imbalance exists between the legislature, executive and the judiciary and this imbalance is poisoning our society besides being the basis of all our evils.

They feel that under the present system, the prime minister is forced to compromise and make concessions to the parliamentarians, whose votes are crucial, as they can make or break a government. Thus, the prime minister continuously under threat of losing their support and his position is undermined even before he becomes the head of the government. This results in bad governance/lack of governance.

As such, the system promotes intellectual and moral corruption and ensures that persons of character, who do not compromise on principles, will not be able to succeed and lead the nation. The experts conclude that we have to remove the British parliamentary system and replace it with presidential system of government.

In our 57 years as a nation, we have mutilated our constitution beyond recognition, under the doctrine of necessity and in what has been perceived as the best interests of the country. We have tried various forms of government and leaders in different disguises. Each one has failed to improve the quality of life of the ordinary citizens and to establish good governance, the rule of law, accountability or a code of conduct in government.

The general consensus is that only true democracy, through free and fair elections under the 1973 Constitution, can provide us this. But can we have a fair and free election in a country where votes are cast on the basis of sect, tribal and feudal loyalties and pressures? It is an accepted fact that the vast majority of the population that lives in the rural areas of Pakistan, dare not vote against tribal chiefs or feudal lords on whom they depend for their very survival. Keeping in view the complex social and cultural values that we have inherited, it is up to the experts to decide what is the best type of government that would provide us with good governance.

But watching the behaviour of our legislators, it seems that the primary purpose of parliamentarians, who in many cases lack appropriate grooming, education and training, is to be elected to become ministers and serve their own personal agenda.

Unqualified ministers misuse power and pressure members of the bureaucracy to serve their purpose in case of resistance, remove and replace them by less strong individuals. As such, experienced civil servants and technocrats are prevented from employing their expertise to bring progress to the country.

Whichever system we need to adopt is for the experts to decide, but this is the last chance the country has to end lawlessness and chaos. As Mr. Amjad Shah had written: We owe it to our future generations and are also answerable to those who have laid down their lives and made great sacrifices for this country. We must remember the epitaph to an unknown soldier, written by W.H. Auden: “To save your world you asked this man to die. Would this man, could he see you now, ask why”?

After observing the compromises on the “core” issues that President Musharraf has made since he took over the reins of this country, one has to agree that the present system of governance is not working and if we do not break the old moulds, we too would have a hard time to answer our future generations and those who have sacrificed their lives for this nation.

TONY BLAIR’S Commission for Africa has left me bewildered. As an anthropologist interested in “traditional” medicine, I was delighted to see its report’s attempt to take an Africa-centred point of view.

Reading a sentence stating that “history shows African cultures to have been tremendously adaptive, absorbing a wide range of outside influences” is a relief to those of us who have tried for years to make this point. The commission is far better placed than any academic to bring to the world’s attention the energy and ingenuity with which African people have engaged and resolved the problems facing them.

But I was frustrated by what seems to be our incapacity to escape our own mental traditions — the casts of mind that always seem to come into play when we imagine Africa. Nowhere were these more in evidence than in the report’s discussion of the role of religion in African social life. On the one hand, it justly draws attention to the significance of religions in enriching social relations, creating accountability and empowering local people.

On the other hand, the report seems to be impressed by religion chiefly because of its potential usefulness as a tool for economic development. We are told that religion succeeds where the state fails, that faith leaders have a significant role to play in shaping social attitudes, that religion can be a model for the state and that it commands the kind of loyalty and energy that was given to nationalist causes during and just after Africa’s struggles for independence.

To regard religion in Africa in these terms is to put their religion where our politics should be. Our error begins with the place in our imaginations that we force Africa to occupy. We are subject to “African exceptionalism”: a sense that Africa is so different, so impossible to organise, that any undertaking is practically pointless. It is the sense that African people are unruly as citizens and irresponsible as politicians and bureaucrats. Africa’s state is always behind. We never perceive it as leading the way. Economically and politically, Africa is held back, not yet caught up. Exceptionalism heightens the temptation to look at the continent as a problem or an illness.

The diagnostic gaze makes us disinclined to see things as a whole. We are always looking first to locate and to isolate the problems, and then to find isolable solutions, whether they be social institutions or practices (eg religion) or medical treatments (eg vaccines). The search is to find the one thing that will be the remedy, which must be generalisable and preferably patentable. We manage the process, control the outcome, and have no longer-term obligation to share the condition.

There is a risk in seizing on religion as a remedy for the problems of the nation state. The risk is of the return of the 19th century idea of “primitive mentality”: the idea that “they” are less rational than “we” are. The view that religion maintains the social fabric credits institutions instead of people. It shifts our attention from intellect to emotions, from analysis to belief. Isolating religion from the broader web of social life directs our attention away from the larger political and economic processes in Africa, but which are also happening outside it and which include what is happening to us.

Africa is maintained in the world economy as a kind of frontier. In this sense, Africa is our future. Far from being behind, it lies before us. The contradictions between profitable production and social protection are nowhere more visible than there. What happens in Africa happens violently, more vividly and rapidly than here, but where that change leads is also where we are headed. The logic of the marketplace seems unassailable in its entry into the politics of public services. In Britain, recent decades have seen the persistent advance of privatisation in areas formerly held in the public interest. Religion has the benefit of not being about profit or profitability. In the context of religion’s redistributive logic, cost and benefit are perhaps more equitably balanced. When we see things in this way we are in a better position to compare like with like, and the results can be enlightening.

It has been clear for some time that we are in a moment of significant change. With the end of the Soviet Union has come the sense that socialism can no longer provide the logic for a redistributive social justice. The left has no popular language for systematic criticism of the free-market fundamentalism that, via Washington’s foreign policy, has appropriated democracy as an idea. An argument based on the premise of shared sacrifice has to begin somewhere. So the debate about religion and money in Africa is an argument worth having even if one is on the other side. — Dawn/Guardian Service

The writer is a lecturer in anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

“WELL, young man. I will have nothing to do with this pseudo-religious approach to politics. I part company with Congress and Gandhi. I do not believe in working up mob hysteria.” The young man was a journalist, Durga Das. The older man was Mohammad Ali Jinnah. The reference is from Durga Das’ classic book, India from Curzon to Nehru and After. Jinnah said this after the 1920 Nagpur session, where Gandhi’s non-cooperation resolution was passed almost unanimously.

On October 1, 1906, 35 Muslims of “noble birth, wealth and power” called on the fourth earl of Minto, Curzon’s successor as Viceroy of India. They were led by the Aga Khan and used for the first time a phrase that would dominate the history of the subcontinent in the 20th century: the “national interests” of Indian Muslims. They wanted help against an “unsympathetic” Hindu majority. They asked, very politely, for proportional representation in jobs and separate seats in councils, municipalities, university syndicates and high court benches. Lord Minto was happy to oblige. The Muslim League was born in December that year at Dhaka, chaired by Nawab Salimullah Khan, who had been too ill to join the 35 in October. The Aga Khan was its first president.

The Aga Khan wrote later that it was “freakishly ironic” that “our doughtiest opponent in 1906” was Jinnah, who “came out in bitter hostility toward all that I and my friends had done... He was the only well-known Muslim to take this attitude... He said that our principle of separate electorates was dividing the nation against itself”.

On precisely the same dates that the League was formed in Dhaka, Jinnah was in nearby Kolkata (Calcutta) with 44 other Muslims and roughly 1,500 Hindus, Christians and Parsis, serving as secretary to Dadabhai Naoroji, president of the Indian National Congress. Dadabhai was too ill to give his address, which had been partially drafted by Jinnah and was read out by Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Sarojini Naidu, who met the 30-year-old Jinnah for the first time here, remembered him as a symbol of “virile patriotism”.

Her description is arguably the best there is: “Tall and stately, but thin to the point of emancipation, languid and luxurious of habit, Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s attenuated form is a deceptive sheath of a spirit of exceptional vitality and endurance. Somewhat formal and fastidious, and a little aloof and imperious of manner, the calm hauteur of his accustomed reserve but masks, for those who know him, a naive and eager humanity, an intuition quick and tender as a woman’s, a humour gay and winning as child’s ... a shy and splendid idealism which is of the very essence of the man.”

Jinnah entered the central legislative council in Calcutta (the capital of British India then) on January 25, 1910, along with Gokhale, Surendranath Banerjea and Motilal Nehru. Lord Minto expected the council to rubber stamp “any measures we may deem right to introduce”.

Jinnah’s maiden speech shattered such pompousness. He rose to defend another Gujarati working for his people in another colony across the seas, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Jinnah expressed “the highest pitch of indignation and horror at the harsh and cruel treatment that is meted out to Indians in South Africa”.

Minto objected to a term such as “cruel treatment”. Jinnah responded at once: “My Lord! I should feel much inclined to use much stronger language.” Lord Minto kept quiet.

On March 7, 1911, Jinnah introduced what was to become the first non-official act in British Indian history, the Wakf Validating Bill, reversing an 1894 decision on waqf gifts. Muslims across the Indian empire were grateful.

Jinnah attended his first meeting of the League in Bankipur in 1912, but did not become a member. He was in Bankipur to attend the Congress session. When he went to Lucknow a few months later as a special guest of the League (it was not an annual session), Sarojini Naidu was on the platform with him. The bitterness that divided India did not exist then. Dr M.A. Ansari, Maulana Azad and Hakim Ajmal Khan attended the League session of 1914, and in 1915, the League tent had a truly unlikely guest list: Madan Mohan Malviya, Surendranath Banerjea, Annie Besant, B.G. Horniman, Sarojini Naidu and Mahatma Gandhi.

When Jinnah did join the League in 1913, he insisted on a condition, set out in immaculate English, that his “loyalty to the Muslim League and the Muslim interest would in no way and at no time imply even the shadow of disloyalty to the larger national cause to which his life was dedicated” (Jinnah: His Speeches and Writings, 1912-1917, edited by Sarojini Naidu).

Gokhale that year honoured Jinnah with a phrase that has travelled through time: it is “freedom from all sectarian prejudice which will make him (Jinnah) the best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity”. In the spring of 1914 Jinnah chaired a Congress delegation to London to lobby Whitehall on a proposed Council of India bill.

When Gandhi landed in India in 1915, Jinnah, as president of the Gujarat Society (the mahatmas of both India and Pakistan were Gujaratis), spoke at a garden party to welcome the hero of South Africa. Jinnah was the star of 1915. At the Congress and League sessions, held in Mumbai at the same time, he worked tirelessly with Congress President Satyendra Sinha and Mazharul Haque (a Congressman who presided over the Muslim League that year) for a joint platform of resolutions. Haque and Jinnah were heckled so badly at the League session by mullahs that the meeting had to be adjourned. It reconvened the next day in the safer milieu of the Taj Mahal Hotel. The next year Jinnah became president of the League for the first time, at Lucknow.

Motilal Nehru, in the meantime, worked closely with Jinnah in the council. When the munificent Motilal convened a meeting of fellow-legislators to his handsome mansion in Allahabad in April, he considered Jinnah “as keen a nationalist as any of us. He is showing his community the way to Hindu-Muslim unity”. It was from this meeting in Allahabad that Jinnah went for a vacation to Darjeeling and the summer home of his friend Sir Dinshaw Manockjee Petit (French merchants had nicknamed Dinshaw’s small-built grandfather petit and it stuck) and met 16-year-old Ruttie.

I suppose a glorious view of the Everest encouraged romance. When Ruttie became 18 she eloped and on April 19, 1918, they were married. Ruttie’s Parsi family disowned her, she separated from Jinnah a decade later. (The wedding ring was a gift from the Raja of Mahmoodabad.)

As president Jinnah engineered the famous Lucknow Pact with Congress president A.C. Mazumdar. In his presidential speech Jinnah rejoiced that the new spirit of patriotism had “brought Hindus and Muslims together ... for the common cause”. Mazumdar announced that all differences had been settled, and Hindus and Muslims would make a “joint demand for a representative government in India”.

Enter Gandhi, who never entered a legislature, and believed passionately that freedom could only be won by a non-violent struggle for which he would have to prepare the masses. In 1915 Gokhale advised Gandhi to keep “his ears open and his mouth shut” for a year, and see India. Gandhi stopped in Kolkata on his way to Rangoon and spoke to students. Politics, he said, should never be divorced from religion. The signal was picked by Muslims planning to marry politics with religion in their first great campaign against the British empire, the Khilafat movement.

Over the next three years Gandhi prepared the ground for his version of the freedom struggle: a shift from the legislatures to the street; a deliberate use of religious imagery to reach the illiterate masses through symbols most familiar to them (Ram Rajya for the Hindus, Khilafat for the Muslims); and an unwavering commitment to the poor peasantry, for whom Champaran became a miracle.

The massacre at Jallianwala Bagh in 1919 provided a perfect opportunity; Indian anger reached critical mass. Gandhi led the Congress towards its first mass struggle, the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1921.

The constitutionalist in Jinnah found mass politics ambitious, and the liberal in him rejected the invasion of religion in politics. When he rose to speak at the Nagpur session in 1920, where Gandhi moved the non-cooperation resolution, Jinnah was the only delegate to dissent till the end among some 50,000 “surging” Hindus and Muslims. He had two principal objections.

The resolution, he said, was a de facto declaration of swaraj, or complete independence, and although he agreed completely with Lala Lajpat Rai’s indictment of the British government, he did not think the Congress had, as yet, the means to achieve this end; as he put it, “it is not the right step to take at this moment ... you are committing the Indian National Congress to a programme which you will not be able to carry out”. (Gandhi, after promising swaraj within a year, withdrew the Non-Cooperation Movement in the wake of communal riots in Kerala and of course the famous Chauri Chaura incident in 1922. Congress formally adopted full independence as its goal only in 1931.) His second objection was that non-violence would not succeed. In this Jinnah was wrong.

There is a remarkable sub-text in this speech, which has never been commented upon, at least to my knowledge. When Jinnah first referred to Gandhi, he called him “Mr Gandhi”. There were instant cries of “Mahatma Gandhi”. Without a moment’s hesitation, Jinnah switched to “Mahatma Gandhi”. Later, he referred to Mr Mohammad Ali, the more flamboyant of the two Ali Brothers, both popularly referred to as Maulana. There were angry cries of “Maulana”. Jinnah ignored them. He referred at least five times more to Ali, but each time called him only Mr Mohammad Ali.

Let us leave the last word to Gandhi. Writing in Harijan of June 8, 1940, Gandhi said, “Quaid-i-Azam himself was a great Congressman. It was only after the non-cooperation that he, like many other Congressmen belonging to several communities, left. Their defection was purely political.” In other words, it was not communal. It could not be, for almost every Muslim was with Gandhi when Jinnah left the Congress.

History might be better understood if we did not treat it as a heroes-and-villains movie. Life is more complex than that. The heroes of our national struggle changed sometimes with circumstances. The reasons for the three instances I cite are very different; their implications radically at variance. I am not making any comparisons, but only noting that leaders change their tactics.

Non-violent Gandhi, who broke the empire three decades later, received the Kaiser-I-Hind medal on June 3, 1915, (Tagore was knighted the same day) for recruiting soldiers for the war effort. Subhas Bose, ardently Gandhian in 1920, put on uniform and led the Indian National Army with support from Fascists. Jinnah, the ambassador of unity, became a partitionist.

The question that should intrigue us is why. Ambition and frustration are two reasons commonly suggested in India, but they are not enough to create a new nation. Jinnah made the demand for Pakistan only in 1940, after repeated attempts to obtain constitutional safeguards for Muslims and attempts at power-sharing had failed. What happened, for instance, to the constitution that the Congress was meant to draft in 1928? On the other hand, Congress leaders felt that commitments on the basis of any community would lead to extortion from every community. The only exception made was for Dalits, then called Harijans.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who remained opposed to partition even after Nehru and Patel had accepted it as inevitable, places one finger on the failed negotiations in the United Provinces after the 1936-37 elections, and a second on the inexplicable collapse of the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 which would have kept India united — inexplicable because both the Congress and the Muslim League had accepted it. The plan did not survive a press conference given by Nehru. Jinnah responded with the unbridled use of the communal card, and there was no turning back.

A deeply saddened Gandhi spurned August 15, 1947, as a false dawn (to quote Faiz). He spent the day not in celebrations in Delhi but in fasting at Kolkata. Thanks to Gandhi — and H.S. Suhrawardy — there were no communal riots in Kolkata in 1947. Facts are humbling. They prevent you from jumping to conclusions.

The writer is editor-in-chief, Asia Age, New Delhi.