INEXPLICABLY, the most convincing answer to the query of how critical was Jinnah’s role comes from rather unsuspecting quarters: in H.V. Hodson’s The Great Divide, the most authoritative British account of the imperial retreat from the subcontinent.
He says, “Of all the personalities in the last act of the great drama of India’s rebirth to independence, Mohammad Ali Jinnah is at once the most enigmatic and the most important. …[I]t is barely conceivable that events would have taken the same course, that the last struggle would have been a struggle of three, not two, well-balanced adversaries, and that a new nation state of Pakistan would have been created, but for the personality and leadership of one man, Mr Jinnah. …[T]he irresistible demand for Pakistan, and the solidarity of the Indian Muslims behind that demand, were creations of that decade [1937-1947] alone, and supremely the creations of one man.”
It is relevant how Alfred Broachard evaluated Kemal Atatürk’s role in the making of modern Turkey: “Without Napoleon, without De Gaulle, there would still be a France. Without Washington, there would certainly be the United States. Without Lenin, it is certain that there would be the Soviet Union; but without Atatürk, it is certain that there would have been no Turkey.”
But before Atatürk, Turkey had a territorial, political, cultural and ethnic existence in history for over five centuries. In contrast, Pakistan was not even a “geographical expression” barely 15 years before its emergence. Hence if Atatürk’s presence was so critical for Turkey, how much more should have been Jinnah’s in the emergence of Pakistan? Leonard Mosley and a host of other contemporary observers and historians rate Jinnah as the critical variable and characterise Pakistan as a “one-man achievement”. No wonder, Stanley Wolpert credits Jinnah with having significantly altered “the course of history”, modified “the map of the world”, created “a nation state”, and having thus “virtually conjured up that country into statehood by the force of his indomitable will”.
In tandem, comparing Jinnah to Bismarck, the Economist had this to say: “In a recent poll the Germans voted Bismarck (1815-98) the greatest of all time. On any standard they were wrong, for even in the same genre Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah stands higher. It took Bismarck the same seven years, from the Schleswig-Holstein war to the treaty of Frankfurt, to create the German Empire as it took Jinnah, from the Lahore Resolution of 1940 to Independence Day, to make Pakistan.
“But Bismarck started with all the advantages; a 100-year old nationalism, the Prussian army and civil service, the Ruhr, 15 years of experience of high office, and youth enough still to have 20 years as chancellor before him in 1879. Jinnah began with nothing but his own ability and the disgruntlement of a religious minority … at an age so great that he only survived his creation by one year and without any experience of public office until he nominated himself governor-general.”
On a theoretical plane, the above comments underline a basic assumption — that is, in the making of an historical event, the prime role is played by the individual rather than by mere circumstances that give rise to him, a view that has come to be known as a ‘great man’ theory. At the other end of the continuum is the social Darwinist theory that regards man as “a creature of his environment, whether natural or social”, that gives primacy to circumstances in the making of an historical event.
Its foremost exponent is, of course, Karl Marx, who asserts that: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weigh like a nightmare on the brain of the living.
And just when they seem engaged in revolutionising themselves and things, in creating something that has never yet existed, precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them names, battle cries and costumes in order to present the new scene of world history in this time-honoured disguise and this borrowed language.”
By any criterion, the creation of an altogether new nation of Pakistan out of India’s body politic was a significant historical event. In its making, both character and circumstances are equally crucial, if only because without their interacting on, and mutually affecting, one another all the while, the final configuration of events, and the integration of interests, could never have been produced.
In the first instance, circumstances make, not create, the character what it is, and what it tends to become. But the character, once it has emerged on the scene, begins to play an increasingly crucial role. On the strength and because of his inherent attributes, he moulds, shapes and exploits to the utmost the circumstances he inherits to suit, advance and achieve his ultimate purposes and objectives. In the final analysis, then, circumstances alone cannot create a historic character which rises to the occasion, helps crystallise the historical forces, causes a new integration by harmonising them with each other, brings about their confluence and configuration, and, finally, works through a series of bold decisions and heroic actions.
As J. Christopher Harold said of Napoleon, Jinnah was both “a product ... of circumstances” and “man who, pursuing his own destiny, shaped circumstances that governed the course of history”.
The writer is HEC National Distinguished Professor.
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