Jinnah: the man and the politician
A large number of books have been written by both Pakistani and Western writers about Mohammed Ali Jinnah. The most known among them being Stanley Wolpert’s Jinnah of Pakistan and Ayesha Jalal’s Sole Spokesman, which present deep insights into the life and politics of this great man we fondly call Quaid-e-Azam.
An addition to the array of Jinnah’s biographies is Yasser Latif Hamdani’s third book Jinnah: A Life. Hamdani is a well-known human rights barrister and writer based in Pakistan. His earlier books are Jinnah: Myth and Reality (2012) and Between Worlds, A Pakistani’s Quest to Forge Meaning (2016). Hamdani is also a member of the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn, London, as was Jinnah.
Tracing the life of the great leader from his birth till his passing away, the book presents many little known facts as well as clarifications of many assertions wrongly attributed to the Quaid.
Mohammad Ali Jinnah is often regarded as the person who was bent upon the Partition of India and the tragic events that followed, and a champion of Islam who stood for a new Islamic renaissance. However, Hamdani’s book shows that this is not true on both counts. According to him, Jinnah was an ambassador of Hindu Muslim unity and never mentioned that Pakistan was to be an Islamic state.
So the book sheds light on how eventually came to be regarded as the sole driving force behind the Partition. “The tragic demise of the old ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity and Jinnah’s rebirth as the Quaid-e-Azam of Muslim India did not happen overnight,” writes Hamdani. Throughout the struggle for independence from the British, Jinnah tried to maintain Hindu-Muslim unity but did not get equal response from Congress leaders, making him look for alternatives.
Hamdani writes: “Jinnah stood with his hands extended towards Congress, Gandhi and Nehru but, for some reason, the great future founding fathers of independent India were not forthcoming. Every overture and every attempt by Jinnah to reach out to Nehru was rebuffed by a measure of arrogance that was quite unbecoming of Nehru.”
During the election campaign Jinnah continued to remind the Congress that Muslim League was a patriotic, nationalistic, and liberal political party of Muslims “which was ready to cooperate with Hindus and Sikhs for India’s freedom from colonialism.”
However, after the 1937 elections, rather than form a coalition ministry in UP where Muslim League had won 29 seats and Congress was wiped out on Muslim seats, winning just one, Congress got busy in actions, like mass contact movement aimed at Muslims, which seemed to indicate to Jinnah that “Congress was going to try and absorb the Muslim League in a way so as to completely bulldoze the objective of having adequate safeguard for Muslims.”
This was the turning point for Jinnah. No longer would he call for Hindu-Muslim unity but “rather depend on the Muslim nation whose scabbard he now had his hand on.”
The Lucknow session of Muslim League in 1937 turned out to be a landmark in the history of the subcontinent. As Congress had already declared independence as its goal, the Muslim League, under Jinnah now, committed itself to ‘the establishment of full independence in the form of a federation of free democratic state’ with safeguards for Muslims and other minorities. In his presidential address, Jinnah informed his listeners that “politics was about power, and without power they would remain hapless.” From now on he would no more trust the Congress and would only deal with them as a representative of the Muslim community.
He told the Muslim League session that “they could never expect justice and fair play from Congress which spoke with many tongues.” He was still not the apostle of Muslim separatism and had certainly abjured his role as the bridge between the Congress and the Muslims. He believed in a united India that would treat minorities in a manner that would make them feel as equal citizens without any handicap in a great democratic federation.
In present times, the slogan Pakistan ka matlab kya, La Ilaha il-Allah [What is the meaning of Pakistan? There is no god except Allah] is being used in a way as if Quaid-e-Azam himself raised the slogan. It intrigues the common person when they are told that the Quaid was a secular liberal Muslim. Hamdani, in his book, has given a lot of space to whether the Quaid wanted Pakistan to be a secular state or a theocratic one.
The Quaid’s stance is quite clear from the following instance. During the first and last meeting of All Pakistan Muslim League in 1947 under his chairmanship, “A party worker interrupted him then, saying, ‘… but Quaid-e-Azam, we have been promising people Pakistan ka matlab kya, La Ilaha il-Allah.’
“Jinnah’s reply was forthright: ‘Neither the Muslim League Working Committee nor I have ever passed a resolution [called] Pakistan ka matlab kya — you may have used it to catch a few votes.’”
Hamdani further states: “At no point under his presidency did the Muslim League ever pass a resolution calling for an Islamic state. This is a significant fact which punctures the idea that Pakistan was founded in the name of Islam.”
The last two chapters bring sufficient clarity with respect to the way Jinnah envisaged Pakistan. Sadly, today’s Pakistan is not how Jinnah envisaged it or how it was in his life. Far from being equal citizens that Jinnah imagined them to be, non-Muslim Pakistanis are, at best, second class citizens, discriminated against everywhere and “barred from holding the highest offices in the land and systematically marginalised from the economic and political life of the country.” Under the 1973 Constitution both the offices of the president and the prime minister of Pakistan are reserved for Muslims.
Well-known landmarks in Jinnah’s life are discussed in detail, such as The Lucknow Pact of 1916 that brought forward Jinnah as the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity, is discussed in considerable detail. We read that Jinnah did not support the Khilafat movement and rather remained indifferent to it. “While Jinnah had argued in London that, given the Caliphate being at stake, Muslims had a legitimate communal interests, he wanted to keep the Mullah or the religious clerics as far away from politics as possible. … Everything about the Khilafatists went against the grain of his political outlook,” writes Hamdani.
At one point he became so disillusioned with Congress policies that he retreated to London, with his sister Fatima Jinnah and daughter Dina. However, he did return to India, though not on the appeal of Dr Iqbal, as is commonly believed. Hamdani writes, “It must have been a letter from Sir Fazl-e-Hussain that would have convinced Jinnah to return to India. On 15 May, 1934, the grand old man of Punjab wrote: ‘Muslim India cannot afford to lose you. Men of clear vision, independent judgement and strength of character are very few.’”
There are extensive accounts of other events such as the Lahore Resolution of 1940, the Direct Action call, and the proposals and counter proposals of the Cabinet Mission plan and how Jinnah brilliantly navigates through its constitutional and political traps.
Gandhi and Jinnah disagreed on many points, one of them was non-cooperation. Jinnah believed that non-cooperation was a revolutionary movement and revolutionary movements are never peaceful. Instead he advised his followers to participate in civil service and all the affairs of the country and win Swaraj [self-rule] through parliamentary means. He said that the British were not in India for the benefit of the Indians, but for their own and that the way to counter that was to fight it by expressing themselves through the electoral process.
It is not that Jinnah was opposed to non-cooperation — a movement Gandhi is famous for; he was convinced of non-cooperation as a means to achieve self-rule. “Jinnah’s conception of non-cooperation was to first enter legislatures and councils and then refuse to cooperate from within. Gandhi wanted a complete end to all cooperation; no entry into legislatures; refusal to allow children to study in British schools and for all Indians to quit all jobs in the administration and the military. To Jinnah this meant educational, economic and social suicide for the Indians.”
Along with Jinnah’s beliefs and actions, the political manoeuvring of various politicians including leaders like Gandhi, Nehru, etc. as well as how the British exploited and drove a wedge on communal lines are also discussed.
Conspiracies and political manoeuvrings continued till the end. Hamdani has discussed in quite detail the conspiracies hatched by Gandhi and the Congress government led by Dr Khan Sahib (Ghaffar Khan’s brother) in the then North-Western Frontier Province (NWFP which is now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) as the referendum of 1946 neared in which the provinces were to decide whether they wanted to join India or Pakistan. There were attempts to involve Afghanistan, to make NWFP part of Afghanistan or create a Pathanistan state, illegal use of state powers to distribute arms and money to propagate for Pathanistan; some ulema led by Haji Mirzali Khan Wazir, popularly known as Faqir of Ipi, a staunch enemy of Pakistan, considered war against Pakistan as the greatest service of Islam.
Hamdani’s bold and controversial assertions where he holds Jinnah responsible for the situation in Kashmir came as a surprise. According to him, because of Jinnah’s failure to mobilise the army Kashmir could not become part of Pakistan. In his opinion, perhaps Jinnah did not wish to involve himself in military affairs and, therefore, asked the prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan to get in touch with the army chief Gen Douglas Gracey.
The best thing about it is that the focus of this book isn’t only on Jinnah’s political career and his role in the partition of the country, but also on his formative years spent away from his family, the much talked about relationship with Ruttie Petit, his career as a lawyer— he was the only one among the many stalwarts who actually practiced as a lawyer and stood up for even those whom he did not agree with.
Unlike most biographies, this book does not separate his personal life from the political and delves quite deeply in his early life, even talks about the controversy surrounding his birth place and date, whether it is October 10, 1875 or December 25, 1876 and whether he was born in Jhirk near Thatta or Karachi also finds some mention.
His relationship and marriage with Ruttie finds considerable space. While Ruttie converted to Islam in order to marry Jinnah, he believed that there should be no bar on inter-communal marriage as can be seen by his support for the Special Marriage Amendment Act in 1912. The law provided for either conversion by one or renunciation by both. Jinnah was of the view that legislation ought to allow marriage between people of different faiths. Ruttie’s conversion to Islam was merely a formality because of the law, than by religious conviction, as his attempts at having the Special Marriage Act amended to allow marriage without conversion or renunciation.
Though Jinnah’s marriage had gone through several ups and downs, he still loved her. It seems that Jinnah quite enjoyed her antiques to shock and awe. Though it was bound to create controversy, especially amongst the Muslim clerics, Jinnah in her case was quite adventurous, always standing up for his wife where needed. He loved her so much that when after her death Jinnah buried her he broke down completely.
Overall, Jinnah: A Life is a very well-researched book where arguments and analyses are backed by multiple sources, with extensive use of quotations from letters, books, and other documents.
It would not be wrong to say that the book presents Jinnah not just as a leader but as a human being.
The reviewer is a freelance journalist and tweets @naqviriz; she can be reached at naqvi2012rizwana@hotmail.co.u