Assembled In Pakistan

Standard textbooks either ignore Jinnah maturing into a seasoned and liberal politician, or, as is the practice in Pakistani historiography, underplay his articulation of a secularised rather than a communitarian-based polity. To his detractors he appears flighty; his followers and disciples are dazed by his brilliance. The fact is Jinnah’s feet were as frequently off the ground as on it.

Pakistani professor Sikandar Hayat has produced a lengthy biography of the Qaid-i-Azam. Meticulously researched, he focuses on the notion of charisma and charismatic leadership to build the case for Jinnah’s undiminished appeal and enormous popularity. There are good things in his book: the author’s creative sense is in charge throughout. He draws upon a fund of resounding phrases from Jinnah which owe more to feeling than to serious analysis. From start to finish, Jinnah appears to be politically correct, working painstakingly for the good of his co-religionists. There are no breaks in his public life, no ideological shifts, no change in strategy, no reordering of priorities. As if this is not enough: Hayat proceeds to establish his icon’s greatness by comparing him with Lenin, Mustafa Kemal Pasha and Nkrumah.

Jinnah was a man of many qualities, but was not infallible. He showed little imagination, vision or feeling in preparing a blueprint for a divided India. He paid scarce attention to the consequences of Partition, the bloodshed, the displacement and the dispossession of millions. He also allowed the rabble-rousers and the mullahs to exploit Muslim sentiments. In the end, he played into the hands of certain vested interests, notably the professional and the landed class of Uttar Pradesh, Bengal and Punjab.

Doubtless, the Congress erred in its engagement with Muslims, but there was no reason why Jinnah should have talked of ‘two nations’, or said Hindus and Muslims belonged to "two different civilisations based on conflicting ideas and competition". His conflictual model was based on a false premise. It did not reflect the long history of synthesis and acculturation. He should have read a bit of Mohammad Iqbal to know what a Naya Shivala (New Temple) is all about.

Hayat ignores the fact that the two-nation theory is grounded in the mistaken belief that Hindus and Muslims constitute autonomous entities, with no common points of contact and association, and that religious loyalty takes precedence over ties and bonds of relationship based on inter-social connections and cross-cultural exchanges.

The author must also know that Jinnah was not everybody’s Qaid. There were those who repudiated, though not always for the same reasons, the two-nation theory and adhered to their vision of a united India. They included the turbaned men with flowing gowns and beards. They included Maulana Azad, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Husain Ahmad Madani, Rafi Ahmad Kidwai and scores of other men and women who chose to live in India, their homeland.

Keeping polemics apart and setting aside officially sponsored perspectives, let us not decry each other’s position, which may well converge on certain points. Instead, let’s re-evaluate the histories of our nationalist movement in order to disperse the clouds of mutual distrust and suspicion.

Happily, in today’s political climate in the subcontinent, social scientists, too, can build bridges of understanding by demonstrating how the histories of India and Pakistan have been both ‘separate’ and intertwined, and that too much of separateness has been read unnecessarily, both in the past and in the present, only to either fortify religious prejudices and cultural distancing or to exploit ‘secular’ and ‘Islamic’ nationalism to achieve political goals.