IT appears that Imran and his advisers have little knowledge of history and particularly of Gandhi’s civil disobedience movements.

On September 8, 1920 Gandhi moved a resolution in the Extraordinary Session of the Indian National Congress at Calcutta to launch the Civil Disobedience Movement. The Quaid-i-Azam vehemently opposed it. Nothing could swerve him from the constitutional path and when Gandhi asked him to contribute his share for the movement he bluntly refused.

Eventually when in December 1920 the Civil Disobedience Movement Resolution was actually passed the Quaid resigned from the Congress and declared: “Mine is the right way — the constitutional way is the right way”

Gandhi could not control the movement and when an unruly mob attacked a police station at Chouri Choura (a town in Eastern U.P.) and set it on fire killing 24 policemen, Gandhi called off the movement. He apologised relented and went on a fast as a penance.

I need to bring to the notice of all those who consider Mr Jinnah as their Quaid that he never acted unconstitutionally and never broke a law.

Campbell-Johnson in his book Mission with Mountbatten while narrating the events of June 3, 1947 states that in the meeting of Muslim League and the Congress with Viceroy Lord Mountbatten when the Viceroy inadvertently called the interim government the “cabinet,” Jinnah immediately corrected him and said:

“A spade should be called a spade — I always think in constitutional terms.”

August 17, was a sad day when Imran Khan decided to follow Gandhi instead of the founder of Pakistan and announced the plan for a civil disobedience movement if his demands were not accepted.

Imran must realise that politics is not cricket. It is not a sport. The most that can happen in sports is losing a match. In politics the well-being, the future and sometimes the very existence of a nation are at stake.

Inam Khawaja

New York

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2014