ALL through his public life (1904-48), Jinnah stood for gradualism, moderation, flexibility and the evolutionary process, for constitutionalism and consensual politics. It is not usually recognized that there exists an organic relationship between these attributes. For one thing, both the evolutionary process and the constitutional approach presuppose, and flourish only in, a climate of consensual politics; for another, gradualism, moderation, flexibility help facilitate such a climate. And in a democratic polity a major sine-qau-non for orderly progress is the existence of consensual politics.
Consensual politics, in turn, depends upon a number of factors - such as (i) the building up of, and reaching out for, consensus on fundamental issues at any given moment; (ii) devising rules of the game as well as adhering to them by and large; and (iii) owning up to the modern tradition of tolerance.
Initially, politics in colonial India was the business solely of the political elite. Till the middle 1930s Jinnah believed in elite politics. The masses, steeped in illiteracy, and poverty, and readily susceptible to being easily worked up to frenzy, had little inclination or ability to develop an informed opinion on the complex issues concerning Indian’s relationship with the imperial power.
Hence, he felt, these issues better be resolved by the political notables on their constituent’s behalf. But they should be their genuine and authoritative representatives. That condition alone vested them to speak and take decisions on their constituent’s behalf.
His emphasis on the principle of a leader getting the constituent’s mandate prior to speaking on their behalf led him to prefer to be elected rather than nominated. Early in 1904, when several elderman of the Bombay Municipal Corporation - Pherozshah Mehta, Sir Chimanlal Setalvad, Ibrahim Rahimtoola, G.M. Parekh and G.R. Lowndes - mooted the idea of getting him nominated on the Corporation, Jinnah preferred election and took part in the polls on February 17.
Much later, in 1913, he decided not to seek re-election to the Imperial Legislative Council, when his independent stance on Bhupendranath Basu’s Special Marriage (Amendment) Bill (1911-12) caused some misunderstanding in certain Muslim circles. But since he was considered pivotal to see the Wakf alal Aulad Bill through the Council after its return from the Home Government and the Legislative Department, Maulana Shibli Nomani launched a campaign to get him nominated on the Council, and he was nominated for a term on January 11, 1913. But once the Wakf Bill was assented to by the Governor-General on March 7, he resigned from the Council.
In 1920, although he opposed Gandhi’s “triveni” of boycott as a means to right the Khilafat and Punjab wrongs, he did not offer himself for election under the Montford Reforms (1919), if only in deference to the overwhelming national consensus on the boycott of elections. Again, in February 1934, when requested by Sir Mohammad Yakub, All India Muslim League’s General Secretary, to assume presidentship, Jinnah wired back from London; “Will accept Presidentship AIML, if all parties unite, and am elected by Council.”
In these instances, his decision not to seek re-election in 1913 and 1920, and his insistence upon being elected by the re-united League Council indicate the importance he accorded the principle of consensus. By the same token, his initial opposition to the separate electorates’ demand, put forward by the Simla Deputation in 1906, stemmed not so much because of his Congress orientation but more because of his reservations about the Deputationists’ representative status and mandate. “May I know who elected the gentlemen who are supposed to represent Bombay” [on the Deputation], he asked sarcastically.
Despite his initial reservations both about the personnel of the Deputation and the principle of separate electorates itself, he showed “flexibility” and began adjusting himself to the principle. He did this as he came increasingly in touch with the objective realities of the Indian Muslim situation as a result of his increasing involvement with mainstream Muslim politics, represented at the time by the Anjuman-i-Zia-ul-Islam, Bombay’s foremost Muslim religio-political body, the Muslim League, Aligarh and Nadwa. In February 1909, he settled for “communal representation” if Muslim representation was not raised from the suggested one-fourth to one-third of elected seats.
On January 4, 1940, he fought and won the election to represent Bombay Muslims on the Imperial Council under the separate electorates proviso in the 1909 Act. By October 1916 he was urging his “Hindu brethren” to shun resistance to the separate-electorates demand since it was “a mandate of the (Muslim) community,” and since, moreover, it was “not a matter of policy but a mater of necessity.” Shortly afterwards, he persuaded the Congress leaders, including the extremist Tilak, to concede the demand and got it corporated in the Congress-League, Lucknow Pact of 1916.
In the late 1920’s, when he found that separate electorates had become a “stumbling block” in the way of a Hindu-Muslim and Congress-League settlement, he offered to waive it in the Delhi Muslim Proposals (1927), provided the Hindus and the Congress conceded the setting up of five autonomous Muslim provinces in the north-west and north-east of India.
In a closely argued speech at the All Parties National Convention (1928) at Calcutta, he told the delegates, “here I am not speaking as a Mussalman but as an Indian...”
By early 1929 when he found that neither the Hindus were willing to meet the conditions of the separate-electorates waiver, nor the Muslim consensus was in its favour, he left it “open to any community at any time to abandon separate electorates” in his Fourteen Points (1929).
