Mr. Jinnah returned from England in 1934, and set out to galvanise the Muslim League into a most dynamic organisation. "We are a Nation" he asserted, "with our own distinctive culture and civilisation, language and literature, art and architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of value and proportion, legal/ laws and moral code, custom and calendar, history and tradition, aptitude and ambitions; in short, we have our own distinctive outlook on life and of life. By all canons of international law we are a Nation."

In subsequent years, Mr. Jinnah, popularly known by the title 'Quaid-e- Azam' (the Great Leader), came to symbolise the Muslim aspirations for a separate independent homeland, and in 1940 the Muslim League, under his inspiring leadership, demanded that India should be partitioned and the Muslim majority areas should constitute the sovereign, independent State of Pakistan. It was his ardent advocacy and unbending character, his unshakable determination and his 'Power of persuasion that brought about the successful fruition of the Muslim struggle in the shape of Pakistan.

Iqbal, Jinnah, and Pakistan: The Vision and the Reality /*/

Iqbal saw the vision, Jinnah gave it a concrete shape, so goes the popular story about the creation of Pakistan, perhaps the only modern nation other than Israel that owes its existence to a nationalism inspired by religion. But the similarity ends there. Israel was created as the homeland for all Jews. Though the term occurs in Iqbal's writing too, he did not have in mind a homeland for Muslims at large, not even for all the Muslims of South Asia. What Iqbal had envisioned in 1930 was a territorial fulfillment of the "final destiny of the Muslims at least of North-West India," who were later in the same paragraph described as being "the most living portion of the Muslims of India whose military and police service has made the British rule possible in this country," and who "will eventually solve the problem of India as well as of Asia."/1/ A bit further on Iqbal said, "I demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim state in the best interests of India and Islam. For India, it means security and peace resulting from an internal balance of power; for Islam, an opportunity to rid itself of the stamp that Arabian Imperialism was forced to give it, to mobilise its law, its education, its culture, and to bring them into closer contact with its own original spirit and with the spirit of modern times."/2/ Several points can be noted here. Iqbal tacitly excluded the Muslims of Bengal, although they also formed a majority within their region and had in fact briefly enjoyed a separate state of their own. Typically for Iqbal, whose

favourite image in poetry was the "royal falcon," the salvation of Islam and India lay with the "virile and martial" races of Punjab, North-West Frontier, Baluchistan, and Sind, the areas where the Muslims were relatively backward in education and economic and social status.

One cannot accuse Iqbal of blatant regionalism -- he was scathing about what he called "Punjab Ruralism" -- rather one should be aware of the romantic streak that underlay his remarks: his faith in the strength of the untainted primitive that would transform both India and Islam, ridding the former of Western political imperialism and the latter of Perso-Arabic cultural imperialism. Depending solely on his faith, Iqbal, Janus-like, had one face toward the past -- a recovery of the pristine nature of Islam- and another toward the future -- a society fully assonant with modern times. Such a posture is easy in the realm of ideals, where all contradictions melt away in the heat of one's vision. In the realm of reality, Iqbal had to demand a Muslim majority state, with the proviso that the more undiluted the majority the better. It was only coincidental that Iqbal's envisioned consolidated state happened to be the region to which he belonged.

Be that as it may, Iqbal's vision reached its territorial fulfillment in the post-1971 Pakistan with its boundaries almost what he had in mind and with its minuscule non-Muslim population. How does one, then, view the pre-1971 history of Pakistan? As an aberration? Should one regard the current Fundamentalist Phase as a fresh beginning, or should one say that after what Professor Ziring calls the Punjabi, the Pathan and the Sindhi phases things have come full circle and we are back at a new Muhajir phase? Must history repeat itself in Pakistan? That is why one must be extremely careful extrapolating relationships between visions and realities.

Iqbal remained a visionary till his end, although his vision did not remain limited to the Muslims of the North-West India. In 1937, in a private and confidential letter to Jinnah, he wrote, "Personally I think that the Muslims of North-West India and Bengal ought at present to ignore Muslim minority provinces. This is the best course to adopt in the interests of both Muslim majority and minority provinces."/3/ Even as Iqbal expanded his vision to include Bengal, Jinnah's Muslim League was gearing itself to launch a major campaign "to protect Islam and the Muslims" in those same minority provinces. It was the hue and cry raised against the atrocities allegedly perpetrated by the Congress ministries in the United Provinces and Bihar that eventually gave the League the nationwide stature and strength to challenge the regional parties in the so-called Muslim majority province where it had not fared well at all. One may well conclude that for quite a while Jinnah and others in the Muslim League paid little attention to Iqbal's vision. We have no evidence on record to indicate otherwise. The only immediate response in 1930 was from Ch. Rahmat Ali and his associates at Cambridge who were themselves not taken seriously. We don't have Jinnah's letters to Iqbal, but reading between the lines of Iqbal's correspondence one gathers the impression that Jinnah was rather dubious of the whole thing. In 1937 Iqbal wrote at length on the matter of separate states and warned Jinnah about the rising demand in

the Punjab. He repeatedly asked Jinnah to hold the annual session of the League in Lahore./4/ Jinnah, however, stayed away, not only in 1937 but also in 1938. Only after Iqbal's death did the League hold its historic session of 1940 in Lahore, where the Pakistan Resolution was passed. Thus Iqbal's idea went abegging for a long while, as did Ch. Rahmat Ali's Pakistan Scheme. Their time came only when the nature of the political arena changed and it became expeditious for the Muslim League in its strategy to overcome the regional groups and emerge as the authoritative voice of the Muslims of India. As sketched by Professor Metcalf, it was not that the ideology overwhelmed the minds of the leaders by its sheer irrefutability, it was that the leaders adopted the ideology when the limited provincial arenas became more open and more likely to be effected by national events. This development in the final analysis was perhaps more dependent on the decisions made by the British colonial power than on what was said by either the Congress or the Muslim League.

Looking back -- no doubt with the advantage of hindsight -- one can see that at the time Iqbal made his initial proposal there were only two core issues: (1) provincial autonomy within a loose federal scheme; and (2) a realignment of state boundaries, including the partition of some states, to better reflect the linguistic and ethnic loyalties of the people of those states. The matter of provincial autonomy seemed particularly important to the Muslims, who feared a strong centre controlled by a non-Muslim majority. The Nehru Report (1928) was perhaps the last Congress document that meaningfully sought to come to some understanding with the Muslims of India while treating them as a communal whole. More importantly, it was the last Congress statement in favour of a relatively loose federal system for future India. Rejected by the League, by 1930 the Nehru Report had been forsworn even by the Congress. The "Progressives," led by Motilal's son Jawaharlal, preferred a polity which should consist of weak states and a strong centre, a scheme they thought necessary given the objective conditions in India. A strong centre was also very attractive for the Hindu communal elements, who during the Twenties had come to be quite powerful within the Congress. This ironic coalition doomed forever any chance of creating a loose federal system in India. It also made it impossible for the Muslim League, i.e. Jinnah, to give up anything in the way of separate electorate, weightage in seats, or autonomous states. It was against this background that Iqbal made his bold, ideological statement in Allahabad, while Jinnah was in London at the Round Table Conference making a last-ditch effort on behalf of his cherished goals of constitutional reforms and protection of the rights of the Muslims within a unitary India. It was the growing intransigence of the Hindu communal elements and the shortsighted self-righteousness of the other leaders within the Congress, and not just some intrinsic truth in Iqbal's message, that gradually turned Jinnah into a votary -- at least publicly -- of the higher communalism of Iqbal.

Nevertheless, Jinnah remained flexible. As late as 1946, he would have gone along with an All India federal system if the Congress had agreed to the Cabinet Mission plan in its entirety. As for the ideological bias behind Iqbal's vision -- the Two-Nation theory -- Jinnah negated it in no uncertain terms on 11 August 1947, in his very first speech to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan. There is not a single remark in that speech that pertains to the concept that the Hindus and the Muslims are two separate

nations with two separate destinies. In fact, the word Islam does not even occur in it. Jinnah exhorts the members of the Constituent Assembly to keep in mind the problems of law and order, bribery and corruption, black-marketing, and nepotism and jobbery, but not one word is said about any expected unfolding of the pristine nature of Islam./5/ According to Jinnah, religion had "nothing to do with the business of the State." While Iqbal believed that Islam itself was no less a polity, Jinnah declared to his listeners:

"If you change your past and work together in a spirit that everyone of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his colour, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make. We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim community -- because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on, and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnavas, Khatris, also Bengalees, Madrasis, and so on -- will vanish. We should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State."/6/

Notwithstanding Professor Syed's arguments, one still wonders what Iqbal might have thought of Jinnah's remarks if he had been alive. After all, in that same address of 1930, Iqbal had asked his listeners:

"Is religion a private affair? Would you like to see Islam, as a moral and political ideal, meeting the same fate in the world of Islam as Christianity has already met in Europe? Is it possible to retain Islam as an ethical ideal and to reject it as a polity in favour of national politics in which religious attitude is not permitted to play any part?"/7/ Obviously Iqbal's own answer to these questions was a resounding no. It thus becomes difficult to go along with the notion that Iqbal had a vision which Jinnah put into reality as Pakistan. More likely that Jinnah found in Iqbal's vision a potent rallying cry for the Muslims at a particular moment in the political history of colonial India, a common enough kind of political opportunism. On the other hand, it may even be more plausibly argued, as suggested by S. M. Ikram, that a major shift had already taken place in the previously politically backward Muslim majority provinces and their new leadership was making itself felt in national councils, leading to a "marked shift in the community's political objectives."/8/ In other words, the rallying cry had become so loud by 1940 that Jinnah had to adopt it for his own, much in the way he had earlier championed separate electorates

after he was convinced that they were what the community desired even though he was personally against them, not out of any opportunism but out of his conviction in a certain style of political behaviour. It was not the irrefutability of some ideology but the inevitability generated by diverse forces -- many of them beyond Jinnah's control -- which forced his conversion.

It is also clear that Iqbal and Jinnah did not always see eye to eye. The 1916 pact between the League and the Congress, a crowning achievement for Jinnah, was roundly criticised by Iqbal, who was opposed to any scheme that adversely affected, even in the slightest way, the majority position of the Muslims in the Punjab. In 1928, Iqbal resigned as Secretary of the All India Muslim League because he felt that the League was hedging on the issue of full provincial autonomy. In the thirties, Iqbal was dubious of any attempt to create ties between the League and the Unionist Party in the Punjab. He gave full support to a splinter group, the Punjab Provincial Muslim League, after it was set up in 1936, and repeatedly protested to Jinnah about the so-called Jinnah-Sikandar Pact of 1937. Nehru, in his Discovery of India, quotes a comment that Iqbal made to him a few months before his death: "What is there in common between Jinnah and you? He is a politician, you are a patriot."/9/ Jinnah was aware of Iqbal's prominent position -- his hold over the Indian Muslim imagination -- and his high regard for Iqbal was no doubt also genuine. But it is also true that he often followed an independent line and, as said earlier, if one carefully reads Iqbal's letters to Jinnah, it seems that Jinnah usually avoided taking the ideological stances urged upon him by Iqbal./10/

Why then did Iqbal choose Jinnah for his confidences? He apparently did so because, ideological differences aside, he believed in Jinnah's integrity, because Jinnah was the only Muslim leader with an unchallenged national status, and because Jinnah had no provincial or regional ties of any kind. Iqbal was struggling to crystallise an ideology -- what he called a "communalism of a higher kind" -- that would reflect, on the one hand, the universals of Islam as seen by Iqbal and, on the other, take advantage of the particular demographic configuration in India. Iqbal could confide in Jinnah because Jinnah was an outsider. The leaders from the Muslim majority provinces, judging by their behaviour at the time, could not be expected to give up their class interests for the sake of Iqbal's communal gains. On the other hand, the leaders from the Muslim minority areas could justifiably be very suspicious of any political scheme that left them out in the cold. Iqbal needed Jinnah and his Muslim League. Likewise, Jinnah needed a rallying cry that would make the League invulnerable against the Congress as well as against the regional parties in the Muslim majority states.

Earlier, Gandhi had captured the Indian political scene with his mixture of religion and politics. The popularity of the frenzied Khilafat movement had also shown how easy it was to bring the Muslims of India to a common platform in the name of religion. Jinnah and the League decided to go the same way. Their politics of protecting separate electorates and reservation of seats turned into a programme to protect Islam. Given the heightened communal antagonism at the time and the fact that the impending

implementation of the federal part of the Government of India Act of 1935 made the regional parties eager to obtain some national affiliation, the new programme of the Muslim League and its permanent President met with total success on both the fronts. The leaders of the Muslim minority provinces, reacting against the short-sighted policies of the Congress, carried the cry of "Protect Islam" to the Muslim masses and enrolled them by hundreds of thousands into the ranks of the League, while the leaders of the Muslim majority provinces came humbly to Jinnah in 1937 and reluctantly agreed to acknowledge the League's hegemony over them. Iqbal, in his presidential address of 1930, had remarked, "One lesson I have learnt from the history of Muslims. At critical moments in their history it is Islam that has saved Muslims and not vice versa."/11/ The question whether the League saved Islam is not worth asking, but it is clear that Islam did save the Muslim League: in 1937, the League had won only 4.6 percent of the total Muslim votes; in 1946, it polled 75 percent./12/

By 1940 Jinnah had indeed brought the League quite a way, but in the process the vision of Iqbal had also gone through a transformation, perhaps of a kind that Iqbal might not have approved of. In 1930, before an audience of less than 75 people, Iqbal had said, "I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single state. Self-Government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim state appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims at least of North-West India."/13/ In 1940, the Pakistan Resolution, presented before a crowd of over 50,000 people, demanded that "geographically contiguous units (be) demarcated into regions which should be so constituted, with such territorial readjustments as may be necessary, that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority, as in the North Western and Eastern Zones of India, should be grouped to constitute 'Independent States' in which the constituent units should be autonomous and sovereign."/14/ When someone suggested during the debate that followed that instead of the vague word "zones" the names of the provinces should unambiguously be indicated, Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan, the permanent Honorary Secretary of the League and the right hand man of Jinnah, replied amidst a burst of applause, "It is for a reason that we have not mentioned the names of the provinces. If we say the Punjab that would mean the boundary of our state would be at Gurgaon, whereas we want to include in our proposed dominion Delhi and Aligarh, which are centres of our culture and education. Rest assured that 'territorial adjustments' does not mean that we will have to give away any part of the Punjab."/15/

Is it still fair to Iqbal to identify his vision with Jinnah's reality? Jinnah's presidential address in Iqbal's home city contained not one mention of Iqbal's scheme or the reasons he gave for it; instead Jinnah anchored his ideological remarks in a letter from Lajpat Rai to C. R. Das written some fifteen years earlier!/16/

It is hard not to believe Edward Thompson when he asserts that Iqbal, near the end of his life, had very serious reservations about the proposed Pakistan.

"In The Observer I once said that he (Iqbal) supported the Pakistan plan. Iqbal was a friend, and he set my misconception right. After speaking of his despondency at the chaos he saw coming 'on my vast undisciplined and starving land' he went on to say that he thought the Pakistan plan would be disastrous to the British Government, disastrous to the Hindu community, disastrous to the Moslem community. 'But I am the President of the Moslem League and therefore it is my duty to support it.'"/17/

The Pakistan that came into existence in August 1947 was not the consolidated state that Iqbal had envisioned in 1930; it certainly did not consist of the "Independent States" that the resolution of 1940 called for; in its cut-up form it was not even the "independent state" of the resolution of 1946. Neither did it come about through some smooth transition that Jinnah may have envisaged. It was a truncated Pakistan and its emergence was preceded by the worst communal carnage that the subcontinent had ever experienced. Jinnah may have had near-dictatorial powers within the Muslim League, but he had himself become a prisoner of the rhetoric about Pakistan that he had allowed to be let loose around him. By 1945-46, the Pakistan concept had taken on a life of its own, independent of what Jinnah may or may not have felt about it. Inflamed communal passions, the urgency of the British to conclude their rule in India, the resolve of the Sikhs to ensure their own right of self-determination, the growing determination of the Congress leaders to obtain a strong unitary India, no matter what its size -- on all this Jinnah had no control. Pakistan became inevitable, not because that was the destiny of Islam in India, but because of the particular configuration of a number of diverse forces at a certain moment in history. By the same token, after 1947, Jinnah, in spite of the accumulation of power in his hands, could not have curbed the conflicts that soon began to appear within Pakistan even if he had lived longer, for if Pakistan was inevitable then Bangladesh was inevitable too. If one is not careful in choosing one's means one may discover that they have chosen the end for him.

This is not to denigrate the role of Iqbal's vision and Jinnah's leadership in the creation of Pakistan. It is merely to suggest that by defining the existing reality of Pakistan too much in terms of the popular equation "Iqbal plus Jinnah equals Pakistan," the people of that nation are not likely to resolve the dilemma concerning their political and cultural identity which has plagued them during their short but eventful history. The new boundaries, the existence of strong ethnic and regional groups, the minuscule size of the non-Muslim population, the prevalent socio-economic conditions -- all demand that a new, totally fresh start should be made. To make such a start the people of Pakistan will have to do two things. First, they will have to use critical scrutiny to thaw away the charisma that seems to have frozen around Iqbal and Jinnah, and make them more real and human and thus more relevant. To paraphrase the words of Bertolt Brecht's Galileo: Unfortunate is not that country that lacks in heroes but that which

needs heroes. Secondly, they will have to delve deep into themselves as they are now, and not as they think they were in the past, recent or remote. After all Iqbal did tell them:

"Why should I ask the 'wise men' what my beginning was? I am busy discovering what my destiny is."

NOTES

/*/ Originally published as "Afterword" in Iqbal, Jinnah, and Pakistan: The Vision and the Reality, edited by C. M. Naim; Syracuse, 1979. /1/ Jamil-ud-Din Ahmad, ed., Historic Documents of the Muslim Freedom Movement, Lahore: Publishers United, 1970, pp. 126-127. /2/ Ibid., p. 128. /3/Letters of Iqbal to Jinnah, Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, n.d., p. 23. Letter dated 21 June 1937. /4/ Ibid., pp. 23, 24. Letters dated 21 June and 11 August 1937, respectively. /5/Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah: Speeches as Governor General of Pakistan 1947-1948, Karachi: Government of Pakistan, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, n.d., pp. 6-10. /6/ Ibid., pp. 8-9. /7/ Jamil-ud-Din Ahmad, op. cit., 123-124. /8/ S. M. Ikram, Modern Muslim India and the Birth of Pakistan (1858-1951), Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1970, 2nd revised edition, p. 191. /9/ Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India, New York: John Day, 1946, p. 355. According to Ashiq Husain Batalvi (Iqbal ke Akhiri Do Sal, Lahore: Iqbal Akadami, 1969, reprint, pp. 571-575), this meeting took place in January 1938. Batalvi's version does not contain the above remark; he excludes it even when he quotes from Nehru. He makes a point, however, to include another remark that Iqbal was reported to him to have made: "Jinnah is the real leader of the Muslims, I (Iqbal) am only an ordinary footsoldier of his." Batalvi also reports another interesting exchange between Iqbal and Nehru: "Dr. Sahib (Iqbal) asked Pundit Nehru, 'How many people in the Congress agree with you on Socialism?' 'About half-a-dozen,' Punditji replied. Dr. Sahib said, 'How strange! In your own party you have only halfa-dozen men who think like you, yet you ask me to advise the Muslims to join the Congress! Should I consign ten crore Muslim to flames for the sake of just six men?' At that Punditji became silent.'"

Batalvi's version is based on what was reported to him by two persons who were present at that meeting. There is no reason to reject either version outright. /10/ We don't have Jinnah's replies, but from Iqbal's letters one does get the impression that Jinnah's replies must have been cursory and dealt only with the issues of realpolitik. In his later letters Iqbal seems to have given up on discussing ideological issues with Jinnah. /11/ Jamil-ud-Din Ahmad, op. cit., p. 137. /12/ Khalid B. Sayeed, Pakistan: The Formative Phase 1857-1948, London: Oxford University Press, 1968, 2nd edition, pp. 177-178. /13/ Jamil-ud-Din Ahmad, op. cit., p. 126. For the number of people at the Allahabad session, see Saeed, op. cit., p. 176 /14/ Jamil-ud-Din Ahmad, op. cit., p. 382. /15/ Ashiq Husain Batalvi, Hamari Qaumi Jidd-o-Jahd: January 1940-December 1942, Lahore: Maj. (Retd.) Altaf Husain, 1975, p.22. The amendment was suggested by Batalvi, who had been very close to Iqbal in his last years. /16/ Jamil-ud-Din Ahmad, op. cit., p. 377-378. /17/ Edward Thompson, Enlist India for Freedom, London: Victor Golancz Ltd., 1940, p. 58. From 19 May 1936 till his death on 21 April 1938 Iqbal was the President of the Punjab Provincial Muslim League. The letter to Thompson must have been written early in 1938. Batalvi (Iqbal ke Akhri Do Sal, pp. 580-590) makes a valiant effort to cast doubt on Thompson but fails to convince. He is right, however, in his criticism of Nehru's version (Discovery of India, p. 354). But then Nehru was writing from memory while he was in prison and had no access to books to check for accuracy.

On Bhagat Singh, his vision and Jinnah s support for his struggle

A few days ago, Irfan Habib, a noted researcher and author of TO MAKE THE DEAF HEAR Ideology and Programme of Bhagat Singh and His Comrades sent his thoughtful piece on the legendary Bhagat Singh.

Incidentally, Bhagat Singh was hanged on Pakistan s Republic Day - March 23 though nine years prior to that - in Lahore - thereby adding another dimension to the symbolism of March 23 for Pakistanis. Bhagat Singh for his principles, struggle for just causes and valour is a shared hero.

I am quoting some of the passages from Habib s article below. Citing a Tamil newspaper editorial of 1931, Habib writes:

One of the most articulate and strong reaction was seen in far away Tamil Weekly called Kudi Arasu, where Periyar E.V. Ramasami wrote an editorial on March 29, 1931. Besides being critical of Gandhi and the Congress for failing to save him, Periyar saw in young Bhagat Singh an ally who stood for rationalism and spoke against caste oppression. He began by writing there is no one who has not condoled the death of Mr. Bhagat Singh by hanging. There is none who has not condemned the government for hanging him. The above lines reflect the widespread acceptance of Bhagat Singh as a national hero, much beyond the limits of Punjab, and more significantly, within this short political life. There is no reason to believe that his persona was created by scholars through their exploration and interpretation of historical records.

Habib concludes with these words-

Bhagat Singh was not only against communal and divisive politics, he hated and mocked at the Indian caste system, which makes the people untouchable on the basis of their birth in a particular caste. He reiterated in his writings and statements that all exploitations-economic, social or cultural, had to go if we want to build a strong nation. Echoing these views in his own way, Periyar wrote further in the editorial that to abolish untouchability we have to abolish the principle of upper and lower castes. In the same manner, to remove poverty we have to do away with the principle of capitalists and wageearners. So socialism and communism are nothing but getting rid of these concepts and systems. These are the principles Bhagat Singh stood for. Periyar concluded his piece by saying that Bhagat Singh had not fallen sick, suffered and died as it normally happens with people. He gave his life for the noble cause of showing to India, nay to the world, the path of real equality and peace. He has reached a great height, a feat never achieved normally by any one else.

Bhagat Singh s ideal and supreme sacrifice has the potential to enliven millions of struggling lives. Like Che Guevara, Bhagat Singh will continue to inspire all those who are committed to secular socialist values and reject the caste based hierarchical society.

As I was about to publish this post, Umer Chauhdry the bright student sent me this piece on Bhagat Singh. I had faintly known of Quaide Azam s respect for Bhagat Singh but Umer made the whole incident so accessible and immediate:

Bhagat Singh, nevertheless, found a supporter in the mainstream politics and that was in Jinnah. Jinnah who was himself isolated by the encroachment of religion in politics at that time and considered it undesired rose in support of Bhagat Singh. In his incisive speech to the Constituent Assembly on September 12 and 14, 1929, Jinnah harshly condemned the criminal colonial rule and the Government s actions against revolutionaries:

The man who goes on hunger-strike has a soul. He is moved by the soul and he believes in the justice of his cause; he is not an ordinary criminal who is guilty of cold-blooded, sordid, wicked crime.

What was he driving at? It is the system, this damnable system of Government, which is resented by the people.

And the last words I wish to address the Government are, try and concentrate your mind on the root cause and the more you concentrate on the root cause, the less difficulties and inconveniences there will be for you to face, and thank Heaven that the money of the taxpayer will not be wasted in prosecuting men, nay citizens, who are fighting and struggling for the freedom of their country.

In our part of the sub-continent, we conveniently forget the role played by non-Muslims in the struggle of liberation from the British colonialism. All non-Muslims are grouped in one category to be completely rejected by the rulers of Pakistan irrespective of their message and their history. The same fate met Bhagat Singh. That he was supported by Jinnah is a fact never mentioned in the corridors of power or in the text-books of Pakistan Studies. It is not surprising, though. Bhagat Singh, a symbol of resistance, could never be the hero of the government that is not based on the will of the people..

If Jinnah Is Secular, What Is Gandhi?

Author: N.S. Rajaram Publication: The Vijay Times

Date: June 8, 2005 Neither Gandhi nor Jinnah was secular in practice. It is time to re-examine history dispassionately.

Secularism as a gimmick

During his recent to Pakistan Sri L.K. Advani seems to have stirred a hornet s nest by stating that Jinnah, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan was a secular figure who wanted Pakistan to be a secular country. The reaction in India, especially among Hindu organizations was prompt and vehement, with some Hindu leaders going so far as to denounce Sri Advani as a traitor for calling Jinnah secular. This is a bit puzzling see the same groups that denounce secularism as a fraud being upset that Jinnah was saddled with the same evil.

Beyond all the fire and smoke, one good thing that Sri Advani s statement has done is to make us look beyond simplistic stereotypes and re-examine history. Modern Indian mythology holds Jinnah to be communal and Mahatma Gandhi to be secular, but Sri Advani now calls Jinnah secular. What is the reality?

These widely discordant views highlight two facts about modern India: the confused state of understanding of secularism, and the Indian intelligentsia s inability to view history, or even look at personalities dispassionately. Secularism in India is a travesty. Something that self-styled Gandhians forget, or don t want to be reminded of is that Gandhi did not advocate separation of religion from public life. Jinnah s claim to being secular rests on the speech he made in the Pakistan Assembly after independence, which is what Sri Advani quoted. Here is the key section of the famous speech:

You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan... You may belong to any religion or caste or creed- that has nothing to do with the business of the State.... We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State... Now I think we should keep in front of us our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State...

This is secularly unexceptionable. It is no different from what Nehru - though not Gandhi - might have said and did say at various times. But as always actions speak louder than words, and Jinnah was not true to his word, especially in the years leading to the Partition. To gain his end of a homeland for the Muslims, he invoked the Two Nation Theory propounded by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. Gandhi and the Congress initially opposed it but capitulated when Jinnah and his followers let loose an orgy of violence against the Hindus in the name of Direct Action.

But Jinnah s demand for Pakistan did not evolve in a vacuum. He had started his political career as a staunch nationalist, as an advocate of Hindu-Muslim unity. He and Gandhi were both followers of Gopala Krishna Gokhale. What soured him was Gandhi s support for the Khilafat launched by the notorious Muslim fundamentalist brothers, the Maulanas Mohammed Ali and Shaukat Ali. Gandhi launched his Non-Cooperation Movement in support of the Khilafat. This was one of the most bizarre and tragic episodes in Indian history that is still misrepresented in history books.

We need not go into the details, but essentially it was for the restoration of the Sultan of Turkey as the Caliph following Turkey s defeat in World War I. Gandhi launched the Khilafat Non-Cooperation movement on August 21, 1920, promising the Ali Brothers Swaraj within the year. What was this Swaraj to be? In Gandhi s words:

To the Mussalmans Swaraj means, as it must, India s ability to deal effectively with the Khilafat question. .It is impossible not to sympathize with this attitude. .I would gladly ask for the postponement of the Swaraj activity if we could advance the interest of the Khilafat.

The Ali Brothers saw this as a Jihad against the British. Gandhi had also provided the Ali Brothers funds from the Tilak Swaraj Fund. The results were catastrophic. The promised Swaraj within the year did not materialize, and the Jihad was now turned against the Hindus. It was particularly virulent in Kerala where it is known as the Moplah Rebellion, which took several months to bring under control. Because of massacres and forced conversions, it virtually changed the demography of Malabar.

Gandhi was stunned by the horrors of what he had helped unleash. Still he lamely defended the Jihad by calling the Jihadis God fearing, and they were fighting for what they consider as religion, and in a manner they consider as religious. To add insult to injury, Gandhi s protg Mohammed Ali publicly said: However pure Mr. Gandhi s character may be, he must appear to me from the point of view of religion inferior to any Mussalman, even though he be without any character.

How did the Congressmen feel about it? Jinnah had warned Gandhi against joining hands with reactionaries like the Ali Brothers, and soon left the Congress in disgust. Achyut Patawardhan, a Congressman, wrote:

the Himalayan error of Gandhiji s leadership was the support he extended on behalf of the Congress and the Indian people to Khilafat Movement. .Apart from the fact that Khilafat was an unworthy reactionary cause, Mahatma Gandhi had to align himself with a sectarian revivalist Muslim leadership of Mullahs and Maulvis. He was thus unwittingly responsible for jettisoning sane, secularist modern leadership among the Muslims of India, and foisting upon the Indian Muslims a theocratic orthodoxy of Maulvis.

The fruits of this Himalayan blunder are still with us in the form of the general backwardness of the Muslim masses. It was this group that Jinnah went to for support with his promise of Pakistan.

In summary, neither Jinnah nor Gandhi was a secular politician. Jinnah might have been the architect of Pakistan, but the foundation had been laid by others. Whether one agrees with him or not, Sri Advani has done us a favor by forcing a re-examination of myths presented as history.

Theocratic, Democratic or Secular: What Jinnah desired ? Submitted by Mohammad Shoaib Ishaq on November 3, 2010 1:30 pm2 Comments

This question has been roaming in my mind since the bad patch of Pakistan has started. What Quaid-eAzam desired? An Extreme Theocratic country, a Corrupt Democratic one or a Simple Secular state. It is hard to answer and has always remained unanswerable. But I believe the solution lies with in it.

Large chunks of our population are chanting for a theocratic state just like Iran, only because their national leaders have declared it as the unified solution for Pakistan. But they aren t unaware of the fact that in IRAN there is only one prominent sect and most of all they are one nation. Their supreme leader is backed by all unanimously. Whatever he says is the final verdict and faces no major opposition. If theocracy is implemented in Pakistan the scenario would be completely different and the aftermaths

would be disastrous. Why? Because by the grace of God, we have been divided into 70 sects or more (huh)? I don t know the exact no. of sects running these days but yeah they may be around it. And every sect would try to implement their version of Islam and declare the opposite one as Kafir . So the Theocratic State would soon crumble like a cookie and fall face down. I would like to highlight some quotes from my supreme leader Quaid-e-Azam, what he said regarding theocracy.

The great majority of us are Muslims. We follow the teachings of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). We are members of the brotherhood of Islam in which all are equal in rights, dignity and self respect. Consequently we have a special and a very deep sense of unity. But make no mistake: Pakistan is not a theocracy or anything like it. Broadcast talk to the people of Australia recorded on 19th Feb, 1948.

On one more occasion he said again.

The constitution of Pakistan has yet to be framed by the Pakistan Constituent Assembly. I do not know what the ultimate shape of this constitution is going to be, but I am sure that it will be of a democratic type, embodying the essential principle of Islam. Today, they are as applicable in actual life as they were 1,300 years ago. Islam and its idealism have taught us democracy. It has taught equality of man, justice and fairplay to everybody. We are the inheritors of these glorious traditions and are fully alive to our responsibilities and obligations as framers of the future constitution of Pakistan. In any case Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic State to be ruled by priests with a divine mission. We have many nonMuslims Hindus, Christians, and Parsis but they are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the same rights and privileges as any other citizens and will play their rightful part in the affairs of Pakistan.

Broadcast talk to the people of the United States of America on Pakistan recorded February, 1948.

In the first quote Jinnah has clearly mentioned that Pakistan would not be a theocracy in any case at all. Because some how he knew its going to be a wild goose chase .

Now lets consider the second quote where Jinnah has again mentioned it strongly that theocracy would not be the destination of Pakistan, instead he emphasized that the constitution would be some sort of Democratic Type.

Now, let s have a quick look at what Democracy is in Pakistan. Hmmm, Democracy is something from the people, by the people and for the people. But none of these 3 qualities are found in here. Our ruling elite are never from the people they drop out from the sky or return from exile or it s the family business. They are not by the people pretty easy to rig the electing authorities or use big paper slips called PARCHI to enter the ring, more the investment in the campaign better the outcomes. And they are certainly not for the people it s like once in a lifetime opportunity just like a lottery, using it wisely filling their bank accounts and making there property in foreign countries as you know property rates in Pakistan these days is unpredictable. And as they say Democracy is the best revenge , yes it is the best revenge but from the people of Pakistan for voting them and bringing them into limelight.

From the speaking of Quaid-e-Azam it is obvious he was in the favor of a democratic system. Here is a quote in this regard.

You have to stand guard over the development and maintenance of democracy, social justice and the equality of manhood in your own native soil. With faith, discipline and selfless devotion to duty, there is nothing worthwhile that you cannot achieve.

Address to the officers and men of the 5th Heavy and 6th Light Regiments in Malir, Karachi February 21, 1948.

Democracy is a major hit in a country where the system is not corrupted but if the same system is corrupted democracy won t prevail. It would have a vice versa affect on the country. We don t have to look around anywhere else the best e.g. is our own beloved country. I believe Jinnah was in search of Spiritual Democracy in which the leader is voted out from the people and he is a man of stature and character having a sound knowledge in both fields i.e. religion and national affairs. When I say religion I don t mean to forcibly implement Islamic laws on all or make the state an extremist s colony. Our religion gives rights to each n every religion to practice their faith prosperously. Here is one more quote from jinnah in this regard.

You are free; you are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State.

Presidential Address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on 11th August, 1947.

Here comes the last entity, Secular-ism. A secular system is where the nationals of the country are free to do what ever they want to do. The state matters and religious matters are kept separate and no religious interference is entertained in the state s decisions. This topic has been widely discussed and argued by numerous authors / columnists that Jinnah wanted a Secular Pakistan . Partition came into being on the base of Two Nation theory . It was obvious that Muslims and Hindus cannot co-exist in each others presence and therefore parted out. Now if a nation was formed on the basis of religious belief how can one say that it should be secular? Religion was the foundation on which our leaders stood firmly and demanded separate land. In his point of view as mentioned below it could have been a disaster.

Any idea of a United India could never have worked and in my judgment it would have led us to terrific disaster.

Presidential Address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on 11th August, 1947.

At least I haven t seen any quotation or saying by Jinnah in favor of Secularism. Mostly of our authors emphasizing on secularism try to omit the religious aspect from the nation. But in Islam, the secular prospective is very clear regarding people practicing their own beliefs and no one is forcedly obstructed. Therefore why be secular? Even at one occasion Jinnah was addressing State bank of Pakistan and he favored the Islamic Economic system to be introduced.

We must work our destiny in our own way and present to the world an economic system based on true Islamic concept of equality of manhood and social justice. We will thereby be fulfilling our mission as Muslims and giving to humanity the message of peace which alone can save it and secure the welfare, happiness and prosperity of mankind

Speech at the opening ceremony of State Bank of Pakistan, Karachi July 1, 1948

He never wanted the secular approach, or he should have mentioned it anywhere. But the irony of the situation is that it seems that the solution towards progress for our country lies in Secularism.

Decades have passed and commentators are still arguing on the fact that either Pakistan should be a Theocratic State, a Democratic State or a Secular State. Concluding it all, I firmly believe what Quaid-eAzam desired was a Spiritual Democratic State or Islamic Democratic State . I would end with this quote where he adores the Islamic ideology.

Pakistan not only means freedom and independence but the Muslim Ideology which has to be preserved, which has come to us as a precious gift and treasure and which, we hope other will share with us -

Message to Frontier Muslim Students Federation June 18, 1945

Aza adi Special: Jinnah s Vision of Pakistan Understanding Pakistan Project Team August 14th, 2007 By: Yasser Latif Hamdani

Today being the 60th anniversary of Pakistan s independence is an opportunate moment to look at Quaid-e-Azam s vision of Pakistan delivered 60 years ago, by Mr. Jinnah, Pakistan s undisputed Leader, Governor General and elected President of the Constituent Assembly elaborated his vision for the future of Pakistan.

Jinnah s vision is unambiguous.

The state would be completely impartial to religion of the individual. The state where every citizen would be equal and there would be no distinction between citizen on the basis of faith or caste or creed. A lot of controverey has emerged about this speech. Any student of political science would tell you that is the classic exposition of a modern secular democratic state. However, the issue of whether this

constitutes a secular state or an Islamic state is besides the point. A rose by any name is after all a rose.

Here is what Mr. Jinnah said on that fateful day. It is worth reading in the full:

I know there are people who do not quite agree with the division of India and the partition of the Punjab and Bengal. Much has been said against it, but now that it has been accepted, it is the duty of every one of us to loyally abide by it and honourably act according to the agreement which is now final and binding on all. But you must remember, as I have said, that this mighty revolution that has taken place is unprecedented. One can quite understand the feeling the exists between the two communities wherever one community is in majority and the other is in minority. But the question is whether it was possible or practicable to act otherwise than has been done. A division had to take place. On both sides, in Hindustan and Pakistan, there are sections of people who may not agree with it, who may not like it, but in my judgment there was no other solution and I am sure future history will record its verdict in favour of it. And what is more it will be proved by actual experience as we go on that that was the only solution of India s constitutional problem. Any idea of a United India could never have worked and in my judgment it would have led us to terrific disaster. May be that view is correct ; may be it is not; that remains to be seen. All the same, in this division it was impossible to avoid the question of minorities being in one Dominion or the other. Now that was unavoidable. There is no other solution. Now what shall we do? Now, if we want to make this great State of Pakistan happy and prosperous we should wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of the people, and especially of the masses and the poor. If you will work in co-operation, forgetting the past, burying the hatchet you are bound to succeed. If you change your past and work together in a spirit that every one of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his colour, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make.

I cannot emphasize it too much. We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities the Hindu community and the Muslim community-because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabies, Shias, Sunnis and so on and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnvas, Khatris, also Bengalis, Madrasis, and so on-will vanish. Indeed if you ask me this has been the biggest hindrance in the way of India to attain the freedom and independence and but for this we would have been free peoples long long ago. No power can hold another nation, and specially a nation of 400 million souls in subjection ; nobody could have conquered you, and even if it had happened, nobody could have continued its hold on you for any length of time but for this. Therefore we must learn a lesson from this. You are free ; you are free to go to your

temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed-that has nothing to do with the business of the State. As you know, history shows that in England conditions some time ago were much worse than those prevailing in India today. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants persecuted each other. Even now there are some State in existence where there are discriminations made and bars imposed against a particular class. Thank God we are not starting in those days. We are starting in the days when there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one state. The people of England in course of time had to face the realities of the situation and had to discharge the responsibilities and burdens placed upon them by the Government of their country and they went through that fire step by step. Today you might say with justice that Roman Catholic and Protestants do not exists ; what exists now is that every man is a citizen, an equal citizen, of Great Britain and they are all members of the Nation.

Now, I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.

Many have alleged that this was the only time he expressed such a vision. Unfortunately, these people are not very well versed with the life and work of Quaid-e-Azam Mahomed Ali Jinnah, who was after all a staunch secular Indian nationalist for most of his life and had turned to the Pakistan idea only after exhausting all the options for a United India. Here are some of his other statements regarding what kind of Pakistan he wanted:

25th October 1947. Interview with Reuters Duncan Hooper note: not to be confused with his interview with Reuters Doon Campbell which has been quoted in detail else where.

Minorities DO NOT cease to be citizens. Minorities living in Pakistan or Hindustan do not cease to be citizens of their respective states by virtue of their belonging to particular faith, religion or race. I have repeatedly made it clear, especially in my opening speech to the constituent Assembley, that the minorities in Pakistan would be treated as our citizens and will enjoy all the rights as any other community. Pakistan SHALL pursue this policy and do all it can to create a sense of security and confidence in the Non-Muslim minorities of Pakistan. We do not prescribe any school boy tests for their loyalty. We shall not say to any Hindu citizen of Pakistan if there was war would you shoot a Hindu?

30th October 1947. To a Mass Rally at University Stadium Lahore.

The tenets of Islam enjoin on every Musalman to give protection to his neighbours and to the Minorities regardless of caste and creed. We must make it a matter of our honor and prestige to create sense of security amongst them.

Same Day. On Radio Pakistan.

Protection of Minorities is a sacred undertaking. (On Partition Massacres) Humanity cries out loud against this shameful conduct and deeds. The civilized world is looking upon these doings and happenings with horror and the fair name of the communities concerned stands blackened. Put an end to this ruthlessly and with an Iron hand.

9th January 1948. Tour of Riot affected areas of Karachi.

Muslims! Protect your Hindu Neighbours. Cooperate with the Government and the officials in protecting your Hindu Neighbours against these lawless elements, fifth columnists and cliques. Pakistan must be governed through the properly constituted Government and not by cliques or fifth columnists or Mobs.

25th January. Address to the Karachi Bar association on the occasion of Eid Milad un Nabi.

I would like to tell those who are misled by propaganda that not only the Muslims but Non Muslims have nothing to fear. Islam and its idealism have taught us democracy. Islam has taught Equality, Justice and fairplay to everybody. What reason is there for anyone to fear. Democracy, equality, freedom on the highest sense of integrity and on the basis of fairplay and justice for everyone. Let us make the constitution of Pakistan. We will make it and we will show it to the world.

3rd February 1948. Address to the Parsi Community of Sindh.

I assure you Pakistan means to stand by its oft repeated promises of according equal rights to all its nationals irrespective of their caste or creed. Pakistan which symbolizes the aspirations of a nation that found it self to be a minority in the Indian subcontinent cannot be UNMINDFUL of minorities within its own borders. It is a pity that the fairname of Karachi was sullied by the sudden outburst of communal frenzy last month and I can t find words strong enough to condemn the action of those who are responsible.

21st March 1948. Mass Rally at Dacca.

Let me take this opportunity of repeating what I have already said: We shall treat the minorities in Pakistan fairly and justly. We shall maintain peace, law and order and protect and safeguard every citizen of Pakistan without any distinction of caste, creed or community.

22nd March 1948. Meeting with Hindu Legislators.

We guarantee equal rights to all citizens of Pakistan. Hindus should in spirit and action wholeheartedly co-operate with the Government and its various branches as Pakistanis.

23rd March 1948. Meeting with the Scheduled Caste Federation .

We stand by our declarations that members of every community will be treated as citizens of Pakistan with equal rights and privileges and obligations and that Minorities will be safeguarded and protected.

13 June 1948. Speaking to Quetta Parsis.

Although you have not struck the note of your needs and requirements as a community but it is the policy of my Government and myself that every member of every community irrespective of caste color, creed or race shall be fully protected with regard to his life, property and honor. I reiterate to you that you like all minorities will be treated as equal citizens with your rights and obligations provided you are loyal to Pakistan.

Jinnah s address to the people of the US in Feb 1948.

In any case Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic State to be ruled by priests with a divine mission. We have many non- Muslims Hindus, Christians, and Parsis but they are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the same rights and privileges as any other citizens and will play their rightful part in the affairs of Pakistan.

So what did Jinnah stand for?

He stood for justice and fair play for every one regardless of religion caste or creed. Let us make a solemn promise to ourselves on this Day that we shall honor this vision of Pakistan as a pluralist, inclusive and progressive democratic state.

Jinnah And Jefferson : Dreams From Two Founding Fathers August 14th, 2010 | 34 Comments Originally published by Washington Post on the independence day of the US and Jefferson s death anniversary, we reproduce the same article on our Independence Day.

By Akbar Ahmed

Sunday, July 4, 2010

You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship. . . . We are starting in the days when there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one state.

These are the words of a founding father but not one of the founders that America will be celebrating this Fourth of July weekend. They were uttered by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, founder of the state of Pakistan in 1947 and the Muslim world s answer to Thomas Jefferson.

When Americans think of famous leaders from the Muslim world, many picture only those figures who have become archetypes of evil (such as Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden) or corruption (such as Hamid Karzai and Pervez Musharraf). Meanwhile, many in the Muslim world remember American leaders such as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, whom they regard as arrogant warriors against Islam, or Bill Clinton, whom they see as flawed and weak. Even President Obama, despite his rhetoric of outreach, has seen his standing plummet in Muslim nations over the past year.

Blinded by anger, ignorance or mistrust, people on both sides see only what they wish to see, what they expect to see.

Despite the continents, centuries and cultures separating them, Jefferson and Jinnah, the founding fathers of two nations born from revolution, can help break this impasse. In the years following Sept. 11, 2001, their worlds collided, but the things the two men share far outweigh that which divides them.

Each founding father, inspired by his own traditions but also drawing from the other s, concluded that society is best organized on principles of individual liberty, religious freedom and universal education. With their parallel lives, they offer a useful corrective to the misguided notion of a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West.

Jefferson is at the core of the American political ideal. As one biographer wrote, If Jefferson was wrong, America is wrong. If America is right, Jefferson was right. Similarly, Jinnah is Pakistan. For most Pakistanis, he is The Modern Moses, as one biography of him is titled.

The two were born subjects of the British Empire, yet both led successful revolts against the British and made indelible contributions to the identities of their young nations. Jefferson s drafting of the Declaration of Independence makes him the preeminent interpreter of the American vision; Jinnah s first speeches to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan in 1947, from which his statement on freedom of religion is drawn, are equally memorable and eloquent testimonies. As lawyers first and foremost, Jefferson and Jinnah revered the rule of law and the guarantee of key citizens rights, embodied in the founding documents they shaped, reflecting the finest of human reason.

Particularly revealing is the overlap in the two men s intellectual influences. Jefferson s ideas flowed from the European Enlightenment, and he was inspired by Aristotle and Plato. But he also owned a copy of the Koran, with which he taught himself Arabic, and he hosted the first White House iftar, the meal that breaks the daily fast during the Muslim holy days of Ramadan.

And while Jinnah looked to the origins of Islam for political inspiration for him, Islam above all emphasized compassion, justice and tolerance he was steeped in European thought. He studied law in London, admired Prime Minister William Gladstone and Abraham Lincoln, and led the creation of Pakistan without advocating violence of any kind.

No one in public life is free of controversy, of course, not even a founding father. Both were involved in personal relationships that would later raise eyebrows (Jefferson with his slave mistress, Jinnah with a bride half his age). In political life, the two suffered accusations of inconsistency: Jefferson for not being robust in defending Virginia from an invading British fleet with Benedict Arnold in command; Jinnah for abandoning his role as ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity and becoming the champion of Pakistan.

The controversies did not end with their deaths. Jefferson s views on the separation of church and state generated animosity in his own time and as recently as this year, when the Texas Board of Education dropped him from a list of notable political thinkers. Meanwhile, hard-line Islamic groups have long condemned Jinnah as a kafir, or nonbeliever; Jinnah Defies Allah was the subtitle of an expos in the December 1996 issue of the London magazine Khilafah, a publication of the Hizb ut-Tahrir, one of Britain s leading Muslim radical groups. (Jinnah s sin, according to the author, was his insistence that Islam stood for democracy and supported women s and minority rights.)

But today such opinions are marginal ones, and the founders many contributions are commemorated with must-see national monuments the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, Jinnah s mausoleum in Karachi that affirm their standing as national heroes.

If anything, it is Jefferson and Jinnah who might be critical. If they could contemplate their respective nations today, they would share distress over the acceptance of torture and suspension of certain civil liberties in the former; and the collapse of law and order, resurgence of religious intolerance and widespread corruption in the latter. Their visions are more relevant than ever as a challenge and inspiration for their compatriots and admirers in both nations.

Jefferson and Jinnah do not divide civilizations; they bridge them.

akbar@american.edu

Akbar Ahmed is the Ibn Khaldun chair of Islamic studies at American University s School of International Service. This essay is adapted from his new book, Journey Into America: The Challenge of Islam.

Nations within a Nation The Search for a Pakistani Nation 2 March 16th, 2011 | 1,140 Comments By Adnan Syed

Indeed, world is ruled by little else but ideas.

John Maynard Keynes

The Two Nation Theory and Inequality in the New State of Pakistan

The two nation theory was primarily based on distinctive majority-two-nations within United India. The distinction was cultural as well as religious, where both of these characteristics freely overlapped each other. Given the dominance of religion within the edifice of the Muslim nation, it was inevitable that religion will form a large part in the new nation state that was carved due to the Muslim nation identity. And given a strong tradition of political Islam within the Muslim body, it was inevitable that the very political Islam will find its way through the vague contours of the shifting idea of an Indian Muslim nation that was formed mainly as a reaction to the changing landscape of nineteenth and twentieth century India.

Since Pakistan was a political unit demanded by the sudden rise in Indian Muslim nationalism in a span of 7 years, it remained a reactive idea. It was an alternative to recognition of the Muslim nation; and when that recognition was denied, Pakistan was born. And this is where the reactive nature of the idea became its own worst enemy. Since events transpired so quickly in those momentous seven years from 1940 to 1947, Muslim League remained focused on their immediate goal of winning recognition of a Muslim nation within United India, it likely never completely delved into the details of governing the new Muslim state.

When the new nation is formed around an ideal of cultural and religious identity, ML leadership found it hard for the new state to not turn and impose the very religious inspired identity upon all who live inside the boundaries of the newly formed nation. The very violation (or the perception of violation) of equality is what gave rise to the newly formed nation state of Pakistan. What Pakistani founders failed to realize was that if the new found state is to repeat the same mistake, its sub nations will feel

immediately threatened, in a way similar to how Muslims felt due to perceived Hindu dominated India. As it happened, new nations within Pakistan did quickly rise to protect their interests and ideals.

Suddenly it becomes clear what Jinnah was thinking on August 11, when he all but proclaimed Pakistan as a secular state. He probably had a good idea of what would entail if Pakistan would opt for the route of an Islamic state. He knew firsthand the ferocity of nationalism when recognition is denied and core ideals of nations within a nation are threatened. And he knew well that nationalism based on other identities can be extremely potent and infectious. Proclaiming Pakistan as a secular state did not negate the idea of Pakistan. It was a perfectly sound continuation of an idea of Pakistan that was rooted in perceived inequality. That Pakistan was never a certain outcome was certain. But once Pakistan became a reality, it was imperative that it did not follow the very mistake that became its reason of existence.

Alas, the founding fathers of Pakistan never followed through on Jinnah s speech of August 11. They either failed to see that precluding all Pakistanis from equality irrespective of their faith and caste will give rise to further nationalism within the new state of Pakistan. Or maybe they naively believed that Islam would allow complete equality to Muslims and non Muslims.

Jinnah was the visible exception as we hear him say again and again that the new nation was not going to be a theocratic state. He clearly said that religion would have nothing to do with the affairs of the state. But we also hear him invoking Islam during the movement for Pakistan. Jinnah used Islam to unite the Muslim polity. This was an expensive bargain; to invoke Muslims as a nation, he had to call on for Islamic principles that Muslims can relate to. Otherwise, the free-flowing multi-dimensional identities of Indian Muslims (cultural, lingual, regional) would overwhelm their collective Indian Muslim identity. He valiantly tried to keep the Muslim nationalism separate from Islamic theocracy. But he probably did not realize that invoking religious bedrock for a nation was that huge of a bargain. To complicate the matters, right after partition, all religious parties jumped into the cracks between Muslim and Islamic nationalism, stoking the uncertainty even further, and highlighting the Islamic angle of the movement at the cost of Muslim nationalism movement.

If Jinnah occasionally wavered in resolving the contradictions between the demands of Muslims and inequality inside a theocratic state, his comrades completely dropped the ball after his death. Within 6 months of his death, the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan was passing a resolution assigning sovereignty to Allah and holding Islamic laws as a guideline for the future constitution of Pakistan. Except one, all of Jinnah s colleagues voted for Objectives Resolution. By embarking Pakistan on the path of an Islamic state, founding fathers were sowing the seeds of distrust and fears within the nation of Pakistan, which was composed of various sub-nations primarily along ethnic lines. Maulana Abu-al-Ala

Moudoudi, who correctly saw the creation of Pakistan as a product of Muslim nationalism ( chaste prostitution he scoffed once on this very idea) jumped in as the Muslim League failed to follow through on making Pakistan an equal for all Muslim majority nation. MJ Akbar rightly said that Moudoudi s children wrested Pakistan from Jinnah s children. But Jinnah s children repeatedly catered to Moudodi s children because they never ever realized that negating Pakistan as an Islamist state was never ever a violation of the raison d tre of Pakistan.

Once Pakistan tried to impose Pakistani nationalism with a healthy dose of religion mixed in, minorities either fled the country, or rose against it. East Pakistan rebelled against the unjustness inside the nation of Pakistan, as it feared (rightly or wrongly) that its cultural identity will yield to the religious-nationalist Pakistani identity. East Pakistan was gone within 24 years of the birth of Pakistan.

Recognizing the Nation of Nations that is Pakistan

Still some 63 years after its birth, as Pakistan struggles to define itself as a nation, it is never too late to realize that Pakistan is a nation of many nations. It may also want to hark back to its origins and see that the perception of injustice and failure to recognize the identity of an Indian Muslim nation is what gave birth to Pakistan. That this 160 million strong nation of diverse nations cannot exist if it doesn t accord equality as equal Pakistanis. However the religious discourse in Pakistan is so strong that even though Pakistan feels its inherent contradictions, it is powerless to do anything about it. There is a violent Baloch uprising going on, and Sindhi nationalism is kept at bay only by a party led by Sindhis that has strong appeal throughout Pakistan. If democracy is derailed once again, there is no telling how ferocious Sindhi nationalism will be against the state of Pakistan.

There are no fast and easy answers to the conundrum that is the Pakistani state. Pakistan did not get here overnight and will not heal quickly as well. However, in my humble opinion, if Pakistan has to survive as a viable state, the strong religious induced Pakistani nationalism that is threatening smaller nations within Pakistan needs to be checked by Pakistanis themselves. This is easier said than done. So let s start with the basic lessons from history:

1) For smaller nations within the union of Pakistan to have any say, it is imperative that democracy must continue. Too many of unelected leaders (General Sher Ali and others of Yahya s rule, General Zia-ulHaq s Islamist coterie) have reinforced the so called Islamist ideology of Pakistan, thereby threatening the smaller nations within the union, and weakening the foundations of the Pakistani state. Only

continued democracy can ensure representation of all nations; allowing proper representation is the first step in recognizing the rights of a nation.

2) The nation of Pakistan is simply a second derivative of various ethnic nations. There is no top down ideology of Pakistan, except a simple pledge to all of its nations that their culture, language, and rights are guaranteed by the state of Pakistan. Therefore Pakistan must realize that the idea of a religious narrative and a central language for the nation is perceived as a violation of the rights of the very nations that make up Pakistan. And if the history is any guide, perception is everything when it comes to national causes.

3) Keynes famously said that ideas of economists and political philosophers are more powerful than commonly understood. Indeed, world is ruled by little else but ideas. The idea of an equal and secular Pakistan for all Pakistanis, independent of the religious ideology, is far more powerful than any of us realize. Today, Pakistan still has a free press, a working democracy and an independent judiciary. This environment, if allowed to continue, will spur critical thinking and introspection, and will allow the inherent contradiction of the official narrative to come under intense scrutiny. Eventually, this atmosphere of free exchange of ideas should look at Jinnah and his view on secularism. Our founders talked about Islam as embodying the principles of equality, fraternity and social justice . But they explicitly negated theocracy. Their idea of a moderate Islam as a guiding light for a fair and just society was far removed from the theocratic state that Moudoudi or other ulema wanted. Today, we understand the free flowing overlap a bit better that obscured religious and social lines for the Indian Muslim. We can take a step further 63 years later, and say that we do not need to carry the religion bogey carried by our founders to justify equality anymore. Separating religion from politics is the first step towards making all Pakistanis equal.

4) The birth of a nation state is a result of the binding of a nation around a cause. When a country turns around to deny the very justice for all of its inhabitants in the new state, then it begins living in contradiction. Pakistan s salvation, at the end, will lie in the lessons gleaned from its birth.

(Concluded)

Memorable Quotes from Jaswant Singh s Book on Jinnah June 11, 2010 by KashifHKhan The following are some of my favorite quotes from Jaswant Singh s book, Jinnah: India-PartitionIndependence.

The basic and structural fault in Jinnah s notion remains a rejection of his origins; of being an Indian, having been shaped by the soil of India, tempered in the heat of Indian experience. Muslims in India were no doubt subscribers to a different faith but that is all; they were not any different stock or of alien origin.

It is in this, a false minority syndrome that the dry rot of partition first set in, and then unstoppably it afflicted the entire structure, the magnificent edifice of an united India. The answer (cure?), Jinnah asserted, lay only in parting, and Nehru and Patel and others of the Congress also finally agreed. Thus was born Pakistan .

Religion in all this was entirely incidental; Pakistan alone gave him all that his personality and character demanded. If Mr. Jinnah was necessary for achieving Pakistan, Pakistan too was necessary for the fulfilment of Mr. Jinnah.

His opposition was not against the Hindus or Hinduism, it was the Congress that he considered as the true political rival of the Muslim League, and the League he considered as being just an extension of himself. During innumerable conversations with him I can rarely recall him attacking Hindus or Hinduism as such. His opposition, which later developed into almost hatred, remained focused upon the Congress leadership [M.R.A. Baig, Jinnah's secretary].

As [Maulana Azad] wrote in his memoirs, he had come to the conclusion that Indian federation should deal with just three subjects: defence, foreign affairs and communications; thus granting the maximum possible autonomy to the provinces. According to the Maulana, Gandhi accepted this suggestion, while Sardar Patel did not.

For, along with several other there is one central difficulty that India, Pakistan, Bangladesh face: our past has, in reality never gone into the past , it continues to reinvent itself, constantly becoming our

present , thus preventing us from escaping the imprisonment of memories. To this we have to find an answer, who else can or will?

Jaswant Singh s Views on Jinnah June 11, 2010 by KashifHKhan Below are some revealing excerpts from Jaswant Singh s interview regarding his book, Jinnah: IndiaPartition-Independence. They challenge the commonly held views about Jinnah in India. I agree with Jaswant s central thesis that Partition was forced upon Jinnah by Nehru and Patel.

[ An unlikely Indian admirer; Jawed Naqvi ; DAWN; Monday, 17 Aug, 2009; Excerpts; Copy and Paste]

Did he see Jinnah as a nationalist?

Oh yes. He fought the British for an independent India but also fought resolutely and relentlessly for the interest of the Muslims of India. The acme of his nationalistic achievement was the 1916 Lucknow Pact of Hindu-Muslim unity.

What did he admire about Jinnah most?

I admire certain aspects of his personality. His determination and the will to rise. He was a self-made man. Mahatma Gandhi was the son of a Diwan. All these (people) Nehru and others were born to wealth and position. Jinnah created for himself a position. He carved in Bombay, a metropolitan city, a position for himself. He was so poor he had to walk to work he told one of his biographers there was always room at the top but there s no lift. And he never sought a lift.

Did he believe the common Indian lore that Jinnah hated Hindus?

Wrong. Totally wrong. That certainly he was not his principal disagreement was with the Congress Party. He had no problems whatsoever with Hindus. I think we have misunderstood him because we needed to create a demon. We needed a demon because in the 20th century the most telling event in the subcontinent was the partition of the country.

Jaswant Singh said had Congress accepted a decentralised federal country then, in that event, a united India was ours to attain. The problem, he added, was Jawaharlal Nehru s highly centralised polity. He said: Nehru believed in a high centralised policy. That s what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity. That even Gandhi accepted. Nehru didn t. Consistently he stood in the way of a federal India until 1947 when it became a partitioned India.

Was it wrong to see Jinnah as the villain of partition as Indians are taught?

It is. It is not borne out of the facts we need to correct it.. Muslims saw that unless they had a voice in their own economic, political and social destiny they will be obliterated. That was the beginning (of their political demands) For example, see the 1946 election. Jinnah s Muslim League wins all the Muslim seats and yet they dont have sufficient numbers to be in office because the Congress Party has, without even a single Muslim, enough to form a government and they are outside of the government. So it was realised that simply contesting elections was not enough All of this was a search for some kind of autonomy of decision making in their own social and economy destiny.

Speaking about Jinnah s call for Pakistan, Jaswant Singh said:

From what I have written, I have found it was a negotiating tactic because he (Jinnah) wanted certain provinces to be with the Muslim League, he wanted a certain percentage of (seats) in the central legislature. If he had that there would not have been partition.

Nehrus heirs and the Congress party could find his claims unacceptable, he was told.

Jaswant Singh said: I am not blaming anybody. I am not assigning blame. I am simply recalling what I have found as the development of issues and events of that period.

Had Mahatma Gandhi, Rajaji or Azad rather than Nehru taken the final decisions a united India would have been attained?

Yes, I believe so. We could have (attained a united India).

On Jinnah s relationship with Mahatma Gandhi, he said:

Jinnah was essentially a logician. He believed in the strength of logic. He was a parliamentarian. He believed in the efficacy of parliamentary politics. Gandhi, after testing the water, took to the trails of India and he took politics into the dusty villages of India.

Jaswant Singh explained that Jinnah had two fears of Gandhi s style of mass politics. First, if mass movement was introduced into India than the minorities in India could be threatened and we could have Hindu-Muslim riots as a consequence. Second, this would result in bringing religion into Indian politics and he (Jinnah) didnt want that.

Jaswant Singh pointed out that Jinnah s fears were shared by Annie Besant and added that events had shown that both were correct.

At the end of their lives both Jinnah and Gandhi died failed men?

Yes, I am afraid I have to say that.. I cannot treat this (the outcome of their lives) as a success either by Gandhi or Jinnah.. the partition of India and the Hindu-Muslim divide cannot really be called Gandhiji s great success Jinnah got a moth-eaten Pakistan but the philosophy that Muslims are a separate nation was completely rejected within years of Pakistan coming into being.

The full article is available at: http://archives.dawn.com/archives/19892

Nehru was draftsman of partition

Kanchan Gupta | New Delhi

There are now no more points left to score; all have already been scored, no great issues of partition left to resolve, except one: An ability to understand what, after all, did this partition achieve? Jaswant Singh asks in the closing chapter of his new book, Jinnah - India, Partition, Independence, scheduled to be released on August 17. He then answers the question, Other than constant pain and the suffering of crores of humans, all around, which has now finally moulded itself into a kind of a sealed and an abrasive continuity. This has become ours, India s proverbial cross

The 654-page book is a political biography of the founder of Pakistan, what Jaswant Singh describes as the epic journey of Mohammed Ali Jinnah from being the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity to the Quaid-e-Azam of Pakistan . It is also the senior BJP leader s personal journey of discovery he has accessed, used and presented a wealth of documents, including those in the custody of Pakistan. While doing so, he has been cautious not to tread the path to controversy.

In its opening pages, the book provides a grand sweep of India s encounter with Islam, cuts to the uprising of 1857, and then to the freedom struggle. Here onwards, it is the story of Jinnah the constitutionalist seeking a place for himself on the stage of national politics, dominated by Jawaharlal Nehru and crowded by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi s favoured men and women in the Congress. And how, having failed to secure that place, Jinnah increasingly turned towards crafting a constituency of his own the Muslims and, with the help of the Muslim League, appropriated the role of the sole spokesman of the community.

All this, of course, is known. What Jaswant Singh has done is to locate events and situate them in the context of his thesis: Had the Congress, especially Nehru, been far-sighted and more accommodative towards Jinnah, India would not have been partitioned. After all, to quote from the book, Jinnah s opposition was not against the Hindus or Hinduism, it was the Congress that he considered as the true political rival of the Muslim League, and the League he considered as being just an extension of himself .

Jaswant Singh further elaborates this point, The Muslim community for Jinnah became an electoral body; his call for a Muslim nation his political platform; the battles he fought were entirely political between the Muslim League and the Congress; Pakistan was his political demand over which he and the

Muslim League could rule. But Jinnah s idea of Pakistan never quite worked out the way he thought it would. He died soon after getting his moth-eaten Pakistan and before he could mould his idea into an identity . That task was undertaken years later by Gen Zia-ul-Haq through his Islamisation programme.

Jinnah was, to my mind, fundamentally in error proposing Muslims as a separate nation , writes Jaswant Singh, which is why he was so profoundly wrong when he simultaneously spoke of lasting peace, amity and accord with India after the emergence of Pakistan ; that simply could not be. But Jinnah alone was not to blame. The West played a devious role to create a perch for itself in the subcontinent. And, Nehru did not oppose the two-nation theory vigorously enough.

It is in the false minority syndrome that the dry rot of partition first set in, and then unstoppably it afflicted the entire structure, the magnificent edifice of a united India. The answer (cure?), Jinnah asserted, lay only in parting, and Nehru and Patel and others of the Congress also finally agreed, writes Jaswant Singh.

Seeking to strike a fine balance, Jaswant Singh has let history as it unfolded since 1930 speak for itself, but that hasn t prevented Nehru from emerging bruised. For him, Nehru, was one of the principal architects, in reality the draftsman of India s partition who began questioning himself, his actions, his thoughts soon enough Nehru was draftsman of partition

Kanchan Gupta | New Delhi

There are now no more points left to score; all have already been scored, no great issues of partition left to resolve, except one: An ability to understand what, after all, did this partition achieve? Jaswant Singh asks in the closing chapter of his new book, Jinnah - India, Partition, Independence, scheduled to be released on August 17. He then answers the question, Other than constant pain and the suffering of crores of humans, all around, which has now finally moulded itself into a kind of a sealed and an abrasive continuity. This has become ours, India s proverbial cross

The 654-page book is a political biography of the founder of Pakistan, what Jaswant Singh describes as the epic journey of Mohammed Ali Jinnah from being the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity to the Quaid-e-Azam of Pakistan . It is also the senior BJP leader s personal journey of discovery he has accessed, used and presented a wealth of documents, including those in the custody of Pakistan. While doing so, he has been cautious not to tread the path to controversy.

In its opening pages, the book provides a grand sweep of India s encounter with Islam, cuts to the uprising of 1857, and then to the freedom struggle. Here onwards, it is the story of Jinnah the constitutionalist seeking a place for himself on the stage of national politics, dominated by Jawaharlal Nehru and crowded by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi s favoured men and women in the Congress. And how, having failed to secure that place, Jinnah increasingly turned towards crafting a constituency of his own the Muslims and, with the help of the Muslim League, appropriated the role of the sole spokesman of the community.

All this, of course, is known. What Jaswant Singh has done is to locate events and situate them in the context of his thesis: Had the Congress, especially Nehru, been far-sighted and more accommodative towards Jinnah, India would not have been partitioned. After all, to quote from the book, Jinnah s opposition was not against the Hindus or Hinduism, it was the Congress that he considered as the true political rival of the Muslim League, and the League he considered as being just an extension of himself .

Jaswant Singh further elaborates this point, The Muslim community for Jinnah became an electoral body; his call for a Muslim nation his political platform; the battles he fought were entirely political between the Muslim League and the Congress; Pakistan was his political demand over which he and the Muslim League could rule. But Jinnah s idea of Pakistan never quite worked out the way he thought it would. He died soon after getting his moth-eaten Pakistan and before he could mould his idea into an identity . That task was undertaken years later by Gen Zia-ul-Haq through his Islamisation programme.

Jinnah was, to my mind, fundamentally in error proposing Muslims as a separate nation , writes Jaswant Singh, which is why he was so profoundly wrong when he simultaneously spoke of lasting peace, amity and accord with India after the emergence of Pakistan ; that simply could not be. But Jinnah alone was not to blame. The West played a devious role to create a perch for itself in the subcontinent. And, Nehru did not oppose the two-nation theory vigorously enough.

It is in the false minority syndrome that the dry rot of partition first set in, and then unstoppably it afflicted the entire structure, the magnificent edifice of a united India. The answer (cure?), Jinnah asserted, lay only in parting, and Nehru and Patel and others of the Congress also finally agreed, writes Jaswant Singh.

Seeking to strike a fine balance, Jaswant Singh has let hist