Jinnah and political discourse in Pakistan
When Dr Tahirul Qadri used to address press conferences or give interviews to TV channels from Canada, Jinnah’s portrait could be seen in the background. Even some Jamaat-e-Islami leaders talk positively about him. The leader of the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (reincarnation of the Sipah-e-Sahaba) recently invoked the Quaid in support of his demand for establishing an Islamic political system in Pakistan. On March 23, 2014, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa staged a street march in Lahore for reaffirming commitment to Pakistan and the Islamic political system.
The increased use of a commonly shared historical icon should promote political harmony and consensus-building on the nature and direction of Pakistan’s present and future politico-economic and social arrangements. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Pakistan’s social and political order is facing greater fragmentation and, at times, it appears that Pakistan might become an increasingly unmanageable society.
Jinnah is not necessarily invoked in popular political discourse to understand what he stood for and why and how he began to employ Islamic symbols and principles to articulate a nationalism to counter the Congress party nationalism’s based on secularism and a single nation in India. There is no desire to know what he meant when he emphasised the Islamic idiom in the post-1934 period. He also talked of a modern democratic state system, constitutional rule and equal citizenship irrespective of religious or any other considerations.
Today, Jinnah’s legacy is often pursued to strengthen partisan political agendas. Those who wish to dominate the present and want to give respectability to their partisan views of state and society often attempt to rewrite history in order to justify what they are currently doing in the political and cultural domains. Therefore, those advocating a conservative, Islam-based religious state system only talk of Jinnah’s Islamic discourse and give their own preferred meanings to the idioms and terms used by him. Those advocating a secular system mention those statements of Jinnah that serve their current political agenda.
However, it is a matter of great satisfaction that there have also been efforts to undertake a sober and non-partisan understanding of Jinnah. Well-researched and scholarly articles and books have appeared since the centenary celebrations of Jinnah in 1976. This has contributed to a comprehensive understanding of Jinnah’s personality, political orientations and political career, especially since 1934 when he returned from England, revitalised the All-India Muslim League and led the demand for a separate homeland for the Muslims of British India. These writings have relied on official documents, personal papers of the leaders, the Muslim League’s records, memoirs of Jinnah’s contemporaries and writings on Jinnah and the Partition.
The wrings of Shariful Mujahid, Ayesha Jalal, Stanley Wolpert, Waheeduzzaman — to name a few accomplished works — offer a comprehensive view of Jinnah, covering his personality, role and leadership in the freedom movement. These writers place his leadership in a broader academic context of the study of freedom movements, leadership and the nation-building processes.
A recent publication, The Charismatic Leader: Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and the Creation of Pakistan by Dr Sikandar Hayat (OUP, 2014), is an updated edition of the book published in 2008. It not only maintains the strong theoretical framework of the earlier edition, but also adds discussion on some issues that are part of the current discourse on the Pakistan Movement and the role of Jinnah.
The central theme of the book is the notion of charisma while studying the leadership of Jinnah. The author pulls together all the major theoretical writings on charisma in the social sciences and combines it with a dispassionate, analytical and documented study of the political career of Jinnah to describe him as a charismatic leader for the Muslims of British India who had complete faith in him for securing their identity, rights and interests. By establishing Pakistan as a homeland for the Muslims of British India, Jinnah changed the course of history and left a strong imprint on it. The author focuses mainly on the post-1934 period to analyse how Jinnah’s charisma was established, surpassing the attributes of charisma as articulated by Max Weber, Edward Shills, David Apter, Dankwart Rustow and others.
The evolution of the political identity of the Muslims that became the basis for movement for a separate homeland can be fully understood from the discussion in the book on the six phases of Hindu-Muslim relations and the evolution of the Muslim political struggle in British India (pp.135-146). This needs to be coupled with the analysis of Jinnah’s political transition from a champion of Hindu-Muslim unity to an ardent advocate of Muslims’ identity, rights and interests and the demand for a separate homeland (pp.88-109, 258-262).
The discussion of the political context and the text of the Lahore Resolution, March 1940, (pp.273-283) is instructive for those who often get bogged down in polemical debates on this issue for justifying current partisan political agendas. The author discusses the British opposition to the making of Pakistan, rejecting the arguments of many Indian writers that the creation of Pakistan was a British conspiracy to weaken an independent India. The fast moving political developments in 1946-47 have been dealt with some detail in an easy-to-understand narrative of how and why the All-India Muslim League accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan and then walked out on it. This also includes its decision to join the interim government in October 1946.
Jinnah is a national symbol whose relevance has increased over time. There is a need to pursue a non-partisan and research-based understanding of the development of Jinnah’s political orientations, his politics and the changes therein and how he articulated an alternative nationalism to the Congress-led secular, one-nation nationalism.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 30th, 2014.
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COMMENTS (47)
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@Huma:
"‘to counter the Congress party nationalism’s based on secularism and a single nation in India’ but in reality congress never stood for these principles and the discrimination of Muslims in India today is testament to this fact. Just google Muslim discrimination India."
If Muslims are so bad off in India, why don't you see them migrating en-mass to Pakistan? Instead, Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh are illegally migrating to India by the millions over the past several decades.
On the demographic basis while the percentage of non-Muslims in Pakistan has shrunk from 25% to 4% today, Muslim population has increased from 12% to current 15+% in India. Karachi was a Hindu majority (51%) before partition, what is right now? Demographic data is the surest indication of discrimination.
How do you explain all those facts?
@Rex Minor:
"Mr Jinnah knew that the religion of Islam is based on Egalitarianism, a democratic order and not a monarchist authoritative system, and will therefore guarantee the rights of all cititizens irrespective of their faiths or ethnic divide."
If that is the case, why are non-Muslims have been, in perpetuity, reduced to second class citizen in the Islamic constitution of Pakistan. Have you read the Objectives Resolution?
@Shahzad:
"Jinnah and the league accepted the cabinet mission plan which meant provincial autonomy to all provinces including Muslim majority provinces under the Indian Union . This was rejected by Nehru and Patel "
The reason Nehru rejected the Cabinet Mission plan was because he realized that it was just a red herring. The real intention of the CM plan was a ruse to sooner than later establish total separation and form Islamic state/s.
@Indian Catholic: @Rex Minor: You have a PhD in misinformation......
Couldn't agree more.
@vinsin:
And where do the human rights originate from? And countries which do not uphold human rights, do so either because of ignorance, cultural shortcomings or merely because of politics..
Rex Minor
@Rex Minor: Don't know exactly what you want to say? India is a signatory of UN Charter and was partitioned as Nehru/Congress insists on making India a secular state based on Human rights but after independence changed his idea as he became obsessed with kashmir valley. UN Charter doesn't mention anything that you have said. It is based on Universal Human Values. What do you mean by morality and ethics? what do you mean by non-believers countries? How do you think India can contribute when it didn't exist at that time and similar for others countries? If it based on Ibrahimic religion then why Muslims and Jews countries never implemented it?
@vinsin : Human rights as outlined in the UN charter are decrived from the divine scriptures and reflect the values of the Ibrahimic religions. There has been ZERO contribution from the countries of non believers including China, Japan, India or other exotic lands of combodia, vietnam or whoever.. There can be no morality or ethics without the existance of God the creator of the Universe, said Kant !! And it was Voltair who said along the lines that had we not God, we hads to invent one.
Rex Minor
Et Mod., the modified version for clarification.
Rakib, Please do not make things more complicated with your narratives than they actualy are! The German basic law is not secular nor are Pakistan laws Islamic per se.. A secular Government simply means that the church has no authority in the Government administration, equaly the Government has no authority in the affairs of the Church. Your statement regarding Government money being routed through 100,000 churches to poors, needy and elderly but such moneys are not available to mosques or ttemples, is misleadingly incorrect. True is that the Church finances its programs from the religion tax it recieves from its followers which includes kindergartens/ madrassas, schools and hospitals independent of State run institutions. As I wrote earlier that the constitution or the grundgesatz of the country is not secular but reflects the values of the Ibrahimic religions, which can only be amended by the two third majority of the parliamentarians.
Rex Minor
@Rakib: You have to study history. Those countries are secular because laws are not derived from religion and have common code and believe in Human Rights.
Human Rights - Women Rights, Child Rights, Animal Rights, Religious Building Laws, Freedom of religion, Religious Clothing laws.
Out of those six India has not implemented even a single one. Some of the laws are required in one country but may not be in others. The reason Child Rights and Animal Rights never implemented in complete in western countries because of appeasement to Jews after world war 2. But parliament their keep discussion those issue. But few no country is 100% secular or has implemented human rights.
Please publish.
@Feroz : man you are a superhero... Very well said
@Wonderer: Would the Congress have been able to stop the British- banged up and bankrupt after WWII- from leaving India in 1947? Of course not. Was the AIML aiming to make sure they didn't leave without dividing India first? Yes! Therefore could the Congress have seen off the British and kept India divided before September 1948 (not that Nehru could have known how long Jinnah would survive even had he known of Jinnah's health issues)? Highly unlikely. There's your rebuttal.
@Various Commenters Re India & Secularism: Hindus had no desperate reason to opt for Secularism since they have no Central Authority.There is no church/authority/organization to seek Autonomy from. The view of many here is excessively burdened with Church-State history which is no longer relevant in Europe and was never relevant in Hindu-majority India.
Secular scene world over may be amusing. US Prez can be a Believer. It's the State that needs to be Secular. USA is considered to be Secular. Sweden is Christian but is considered Secular. In US, religious lobby will neither permit Abortion nor Euthanasia. In Sweden both are perfectly legal. In Southern States of USA not easy to promote Stem-Cell Research; or, buy a bottle of whiskey on a Sunday . In Christian Holland (Amsterdam), the night life is all agog on Sabbath! Iceland is Christian. It was not only the first to permit abortion but along with Finland it is probably the only country outside Muslim world where a Mosque is constructed at the cost of the State! Talk of appeasement, hindutvas!
Germany is Secular as per their Basic Law (Grundgesetz). The State is supposed to be neutral when it comes to different religions. And yet, Government monies are routed through a network of 100,000 Churches to poor, needy and elderly but such monies are not available to mosques or temples. Financial affairs of Indian Temple of Tirupathi which is the richest one in India is being run by Officers belonging to govt admin service who can not be interfered with by Temple though the Rituals are carried out only by the Priests where State can’t interfere. Govt of TamilNadu has an Official Qazi, employed by Govt who declares the Eid day but same Govt does not have a State Hindu Priest. India subsidizes Muslim Pilgrims but collects taxes from Hindu pilgrims and spends on Hindu "Kumbh Mela"-the largest congregation at a single place in the world.
Different Societies are at different stages of "Secularization" (which is not the same as "Secularism") but mostly because while State can be divorced from Religion; Politics can never be. And in Democracies, votes are important, sops are important and sensibilities of one’s Constituency are most important. Nowhere else it is better demonstrable than in India and to a lesser extent in certain States of USA.
And yet a bunch of deeply religious politicians legislate in a manner secular WITHIN the parameters of the Preamble to Constitution which declares India as a Secular Socialist Democratic Republic. It is the kind of balance that exists between Parliament and Supreme Court; Prime Minister and President; personal religiosity and public good. And the understanding that Parliamentary Debates are concerned with Here; Religious Discourses are concerned with Hereafter. Parliament is concerned with Proximate; Religion deals with Ultimate. Follow the former and respect the latter and don’t mix up issues and if there is an impasse, check with Supreme Court. And thus Democracy and Secularism empower each other. Nice in theory; it is all not perfect in practice always & therefore no Indian secularist ever claims divine infallibility.
Jinnah claimed that Hindus and Muslims are two separate nations and they cannot live together and so the need for creation of Pakistan Having sowed these seeds of separatism it has also created seed of permanent separatism which cannot be easily brought together and is there for generations to come. We have to live with it till a whole new generation bereft of ideologies particularly religious comes up.
@Rex Minor: A government that orders people being killed on the basis of religion is NOT secular.
It is good that partitione happened. Jinnah should be declared as the indirect libarator of Hindus. Pakistan is experimenting with Islamism to the full extent. Good luck with that. A young country with 20 crore population had all the potential to become a modern developed Muslim majority country. Now India should seriously think about errecting barbed electrified wires along the entire India Pakistan border. It will be too late before Pakistani policy makers realize that a religion based state is not at all viable.
Rex Minor. You dont get anything right about India as long as you associate India with Hindus only. May be then the direction of your thinking get right about India.
@vinsin:
I get the impression that Indian Hindus are trying to interpret secular Governments, separation of the power of Church (which is mighty and levies upto 10 percent tax on followers income in the German republic or in Britain where the Queen is also the head of the Anglican Church) from the Government which has the mandate from thhe peoples representatives, as having Godless constitutions.
rex Minor
ET moderator! Please allow this reply to the only Indian woman who is using improper vocabulary..
GP65,
Madam, I did say "Secular Government" not secularism per se! Not a single country in the West, including the USA has a secular constitution!!! They all reflect the values of the Ibrahimc religion! And if you have not seen Moses which is depicted and supposedly holding the Bible on the building of the Supreme Court of the USA, then try to have a look at the building next time. No other head of the Government in the world talks more about God in his "God bless you" than the President of the USA.. Now you should know why MAJ wanted to escape from Bharatya'?
Rex Minor
@Sheesh!:
No one has claimed that Adolf Hitler, who was popularly elected by the German electrorates was a secular, nor any other chancellor of the republic who followed him was a 'Secular' the term that Indians have been using. The current Chancellor of Germany is the head of the CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC UNION party and is a committed christian!!! I agree that Indian catholic is off the topic and part of your narrative too.
Rex Minor
@Huma: The day Pakistani citizens like you pull your heads out of the sand, the world will look a better place. Your efforts to point out religious discrimination in India, will not absolve you of the guilt of annihilating religious minorities legally as well as through devious means like rapes and forced conversions. For your kind information the Muslim %age of the Indian population has risen from 11% in 1947 post Independence to 15% today, must be due to heavy discrimination as you suggest ?? So because India has discriminated against its minorities it has had Muslim Presidents, Chief Justices of the Supreme Court, Home Minister, Foreign Minister, Chief Ministers, Chief of Election Commissioner, Speaker of Parliament, Chiefs of Armed Forces, Heads of Intelligence Agencies etc. No Islamic country has as yet appointed a Muslim lady as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, it was India that broke that barrier for Muslim ladies. Sure as per your logic religious minorities have to be heavily discriminated against, to rise to such high levels. With your kind of reasoning it is no wonder that black looks white and red like blue. The richest and most popular musicians, actors and Artists in India are Muslims. Today a single work of modern contemporary artists like S H Raza, Tyeb Mehta and M F Husain sell for millions of Dollars, a price Pakistani artists cannot visualize in their dreams. Did Pakistani Muslims make them the richest or did secular Indians ? It is so sad that the Muslims who understand their religion and the message do not live in Islamic countries but secular ones and all Indians are very proud of it. Indian Muslims 90% of those residing in Indian domain in 1947 had no wish or desire to be taken in by golden promises made to shift to Pakistan. Do you still live in dreamland believing Indian Muslims will ever want to migrate to Pakistan. They value not just their Indian passport but also the liberal ethos denied to them in Islamic countries, not willing to give up on the glorious Indian Civilization they have been part of. Pakistani Muslims may be literate but they do need an education. Please travel around the world with an open mind without the blinkers and you will realize the wonderful place the world is. It does not mean it cannot get better.
@Rex Minor: Secular government is one that treats all citizens equal before law regardless of their religion. I doubt that the 6 million Jews that Hitler sent to the gas chamber would agree that Hitler was secular. No other sane person would either.
The rest of your response to @Indian Catholic was your usual off topic rant
ET please allow rebuttal to outright lies and misinformation which can be easily verified as being untrue.
@Rex Minor: Secularism was introduced for the first time in Germany under Hitler? Wow. Is there no limit to your ignorance?. It was introduced by Thomas Jefferson in US over 150 years before Hitler assumed power in Germany.
Also nice try discrediting secularism by association with Hiler. However, a regime that kills Jews just for being Jews was anything but secular. Secularism means all people are equal before the law regardless of the religion they pracitice.
@Huma: Well congress since gandhi believed that the true representatve for Muslims are Mullahs and Muslims are incapable of thinking individually. You can check 1970 report of columbia university on Indian Muslims. Also Indian Muslims never understood secularism and human rights.
@Indian Catholic: Separation of religion and state is long in Indian Subcontinent, No kings forced his view of religion on other in Indian known history except for cholas and that to limited incident. Democracy was practised in Ujjain, Kalinga and at local level in all over tamil nadu.
@Singh: Indian Muslims were forced to stay in India by Liaquat nehru pact. 85-90 of the Muslims voted for Pakistan in 1946.
@bharatiya: That wont make India a secular state. Indian Muslims have rejected secularism and said will riot of constitution implemented.
@Shahzad: The cabinet mission plan did not support one man one vote. It also gave the Muslim majority provinces the right to secede 10 years later. Those two conditions made it not worthwhile to hold on to a flawed union temporarily.
I am not sure how long would it take for us to realize that Jinnah is not relevant in modern Pakistan. You can discuss him to death, but the issue is that the only vision he could effectively articulate was of a "muslim majority state". While that happened in 1947, on every other issue he said different things to different audiences - a consummate lawyer/politician. He died too soon to have a concrete policy about state and governance, even he could. Hence, you can find all shades of players, from Jamaat to communists, claiming to be fighting for "Jinnah's Pakistan". Time has come for Pakistanis to chart a fresh vision for their country, and avoid looking for solace in Jinnah.
Jinnah and the league accepted the cabinet mission plan which meant provincial autonomy to all provinces including Muslim majority provinces under the Indian Union . This was rejected by Nehru and Patel . Please read Ayesha Jalal , the dole spokesman , Jaswant Singh , partition of India and Perry Anderson , London book review .
'to counter the Congress party nationalism’s based on secularism and a single nation in India' but in reality congress never stood for these principles and the discrimination of Muslims in India today is testament to this fact. Just google Muslim discrimination India.
@Rex Minor: You have a PhD in misinformation. Separation of church and state occurred in the "Enlightenment period" of the early 18th century, long before Hitler was even born.
It may also please you to know that India along with Singapore are the only two countries where total separation of church and state is enshrined in the Constitution.
Long before Islam, Christianity believed in egalitarianism but that didn't stop our popes from waging wars and crusades. Many of these wars were among Christians themselves. Separation of church and state was thus a means to ensure that the two would not commingle.
@Gp65: Just wanted to narrate my recent experience why minorities may need UCC more than others. Recently I had to apply for a certain legal document for my son and one of the requirements for that was our marriage certificate. As always I showed our church-issued marriage certificate, but this time they said that it had no legal standing and I needed to return with a registered marriage certificate post-haste.
So after more than a decade into our marriage, my wife and I trudged to our neighborhood sub-registrar's office to get married once again, this time the legal way. The clerk told me that I just needed to submit the form with photographs, address and age proof and I could collect the marriage certificate in the evening. On perusing the form, I saw that it mentioned "Marriage under the Hindu Marriage Act", so I asked for the Christian form which comes under the Special Marriage Act. That's when the clerk tells me that I now needed to wait a month. I asked my lawyer and I find that this is a mandatory one-month cooling-off period where anybody who has an objection to our marriage can protest, same as the reading of banns we underwent when we got married in church many moons ago.
I therefore had no option but to wait a month. It was later I found that Christians couples who are strapped for time rush to the nearest Arya Samaj, convert to Hinduism, rush with that certificate to the sub-registrar and get their marriage certificate on the same day under the Hindu Marriage Act.
@vinsin read mj akbar, noted journalist of India. he said " India is secular not bcoz gandhi was secular, gandhi was secular bcoz India is secular". read Salman rushdie. he said that he spent his childhood in both India and Pakistan. the difference is that Muslims in India are Indian first, marathi, bihari, Tamil next and muslims down the line but in Pakistan, it is the opposite.
Neither Mr Iqbal nor Mr jinnah were very much familiar with the religion of Islam or had the expertise kowledge of Quraanic divine writings; nevertheless they both had the vision , to use the authors words, of a separate home land for the muslims of the British India. Mr Jinnah was a man of law and after his personal experience with the Congress leadership, came to the conclusion to form an independent country from the majority muslim entities, whereas the Congress leadership simply wanted to have a Hindustan from the so called British India. Mr Jinnah knew that the religion of Islam is based on Egalitarianism, a democratic order and not a monarchist authoritative system, and will therefore guarantee the rights of all cititizens irrespective of their faiths or ethnic divide. The rest of the deliberations expressed by great authors and the Pseudo philosohers is more of a specculative nature, as the author explains most convincingly to suit their own political agendas.
Rex Minor PS Secularism is not Godliness as the liberals often debate about in the subcontinent, but simply the separation of the Government from the Church(religion) which was introduced for the first time by the German third reich under Adolh Hitler after a concord with the Vatican.
Even though I will not get published. Jinnah's desire of separation and its result are obvious for evryone to see in Pakistan. The gap between India and Pakistan since partician is glaring. Bangladesh is better off than Pakistan since its inception. If Pakistan did not have nukes (technology it derived from China, North Korea etc.) It would be no different than Afghanistan. Blasphemy, coups, assasinations, polio, IMF/US handouts, military/ISI dominance, etc. were not Jinnah's objectives. The man was a lawyer not a politician and made decisions using his heart instead of his brain. The number of Muslims who stayed in India is evidence of this flawed partition.
Whatever the reasons may be, one thing is sure that Jinnah has done a great job in asking for a separate country for Muslims...., especially for Indians....
@Wonderer: And Muslims would be fighting Direct Action Day till that day.
@Prakash my answer has not got published.
Pakistan would have never come into existence if Congress had known in about 1946 the exact and actual position of Jinnah's health.
Rebuttals welcome.
@Prakash:
If that is your definition of secularism, you need to open up a dictionary my friend.
Jinnah will be appropriated by anyone and everyone who do not have a crutch to stand on. If you are for secularism, you can quote from some speech. If you are an Islamist, you can take solace from his actions. If you are for democracy, Jinnah was for democracy. If you are for Dictatorship you can take some heart from Jinnahs quest for modernism. There are many a bundle of contradictions from which we can all choose and fortify our argument, Jinnah no longer around to contradict anything. All this is simply another form of reformed exploitation.
@Prakash: You and @vinsin are both partially correct. There is no discrimination against non-Hindus in the. Onstitution as you correctly point out and IPC and civil laws applies equally to people of all religions. However personal laws differ depending on your religion. Since UCC is not implemented, the requirement that all Indians are equal before law - a basic requirement of secularism is true as far civil and criminal laws go but not for personal laws.
@vinsin: What are you talking about ,In India Person from any religion can become PM,President but not in Pakistan-which shows the difference between secular and Islamic country.
ModiFied : the Muslims aren't thru with Muslims vs Muslims violence yet. The violence with non Muslims is a side show for the Muslims
It is a good article. You should have also included position of Hindu Mahasabha at that time. Demands of five mosques etc. Also that Congress created Secular Constitution but never implemented and India is as of now the same country as was before Independence i.e pluralistic society. There is huge misconception in Pakistan and among some Indians that India is a secular state. Indian laws are still based on religion and many religion are banned also.
If Jinnah was right in dividing India on religious grounds, that should hold good in dividing every country in the world where there is significant Muslim population. If true, this is the sure recipe for problems in many countries. Are we heading for a Muslim vs Non-Muslim violence for ever?
We need to get rid of feudalism and the Punjabi establishment to fulfill Jinnah's dreams.
how could jinnah be secular? I mean then why would he like to create Pakistan- as a Muslim majority secular state carved out from a Hindu majority secular India. it's confusing. I mean a secular state is a secular state where majority and minority les not matter