Pakistani and western scholars have shown beyond all doubt that Jinnah was a liberal secularist and also a democrat.
MANCHESTER: This is with reference to Raza Rumi’s article of January 21 titled “'Jinnah’s Pakistan’ is not dead”.
The usurpers who turned Pakistan into a security state, used Islam to further their violent ideology and hold the nation hostage, have nevertheless kept Jinnah as the national icon. This makes it imperative that we do not allow the right wing to misrepresent and misappropriate Jinnah.
As Raza Rumi and other Indian, Pakistani and western scholars have shown beyond all doubt that Jinnah was a liberal secularist and also a democrat. It was the Congress’s intransigence and arrogant refusal to acknowledge that it had failed to gain even the tiniest mandate from India’s Muslims. As a result, this moved Jinnah to build a consensus that resulted, first, in the Cabinet Mission Plan, and once that failed, in Pakistan.
Usman Khan
Published in The Express Tribune, January 22nd, 2011.
