Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
I don't see what's wrong in Advani saying good things about Jinnah. It is time for those Hindutva liking guys to accept the 57 year old fact and move on. Jinnah has said secular things and pro-religious things at various times. But he is admired as the father of Pakistan and all Indians must respect that. If some don't like him, too bad.
Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
^right On!
Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
Yes, but a Muslim majority state where muslims run their writ is not necesarilly a theocracy. If Jinnah had said specifically that he wanted a Islamic theocracy then he would have been non secular, but he didnt want this, he simply wanted a secular state in whcih Muslims were in the majority… He didnt even want the Muslims to run their writ.. He said that you are free to pray in your temple mosque or wherver “thats not the business of the state.”
Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
This topic and utterances of Advani have nothing to do with Hindutva ideology. There is nothing wrong in paying homage to Jinnah, even if we find reasons against him; he is well respected in Pakistan.
Re Advani,…Calling Jinnah secular, or repenting for Babri demolition…..Advani could start this debate from Indian soil, but he chose the Pakistan stage….is a well planned tactic, or he has lost balance.
Jinnah fought for independence of India, and we must expect his portrait in Parliament soon???
If an Indian says that Pakistan is reversible; he is an idiot, and if he says that Jinnah was secular; he needs treatment.
In 1940 Jinnah declared that Hindus and Muslims are two different identities, in 1946 Aug, he encouraged these two different identities to kill each other and 11 Aug 1947 he says that in Pakistan Hindus and Muslims cease to be as religious groups.
What Jinnah actually wanted?
Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
He wanted a place where a large population of prepartition India which happened to be Muslims could live in peace and practice their values without suppression at the joined hands of the hindus and Brits; which had turned into a major phenomenon post 1857 for reasons which could rquire an entirely diff discussion. So it was only natural that since Jinnah asked for a corner for Muslims, 'Islam' was brought in. That does not in any way support the claim or allegation that Jinnah was not secular. That Hindus and Muslims did clash and kill each other at times was also natural with the dividing gap between the masses that was intentionally being widened by the leaders. Muslims were being subjected to bias by Hindus and the English and naturally that caused frustrations. So again clashes dont prove that Jinnah was antisecularism. If some of his speeches portray him as a hard core Islamist for the mere fact that he was working for muslims, most of his speeches post Pakistan, loudly declare the fact that he wanted equality and harmony among all religions, casts and sects, if not 'secularism' by name.
It's truly ironic how some Indians have made a fuss out of it all, let's not forget who's making the huge deal here; India's most non-secular faction...which it seems is sore after all these years just because a huge majority of human beings that belonged to a diff religion were able to get what they wanted and won freedom. So look who's concerned about secularism; the extreme oppositte side of secularism. If at all, Jinnah would have been much less of a nonsecular leader than the RSS extremists. So where is this all coming from? sheer hatred...? so burn, Pakistanis cant help out...
Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
can applying same in iraq help or hurt sunnis/shias/kurds
Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
keep it factual. going to useless extremes and conclusions only calls for useless arguments and a bad taste. His wive’s were muslims and he did not have any extra marital affairs. Had it been so ppl who accept and know he indulged in other things you mentioned would have known and accepted this too.
Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
Haris, these are all lame arguments. If jinnah was secular, who is Modi? You always count how many people were killed in Gujrat riots, but after Jinnah' Direct Action Day' there was a massacre...I am under impression that it is a news for pak citizens.
I think Modi is a very sacred, peaceful and human loving person!!!
Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1139760.cms
Mahatma offered Jinnah the Premiership
Perhaps the most intriguing speculation about recent Indian history and politics - in the wake of the furore surrounding remarks made in Pakistan by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader LK Advani - is what would have happened if Mohammmad Ali Jinnah had accepted Mahatma Gandhi’s offer of being prime minister of undivided India.
Although Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel were averse to the idea when it was put to them by the Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, there is little doubt that if Gandhi had insisted, they would have had no option but to accept it. Gandhi may not have been an ordinary member of the Congress, his moral stature was so high that no one could have opposed his express wishes.
Nehru and Patel were of course appalled at the suggestion, with the former being “shocked to learn”, as historian Stanley Wolpert says in his biography of Jinnah “that the Mahatma was quite ready to replace him as premier with the Quaid-e-Azam”.
Jinnah, on the other hand, was not unresponsive. Mountbatten noted, “Mr. Gandhi’s famous scheme may yet go through on the pure vanity of Mr Jinnah!”
Yet, if it was never seriously considered, it is apparently because of the viceroy’s personal animus towards Jinnah, whom he considered to be a “psychopathic case”. As Mountbatten said: “Until I met him, I would not have thought it possible that a man with such a complete lack of administrative knowledge or sense of responsibility could achieve or hold down so powerful a position.”
So, probably, the last chance to save India from partition floundered, first, on Gandhi’s failure to insist that his idea be given a fair try. Secondly, because of Nehru’s and Patel’s objections, presumably because they were keen on the top positions for themselves. As Nehru later said, they were getting on in years and did not want to wait for too long for India’s independence. And thirdly, because Mountbatten was unable to interact with the “frigid, haughty and disdainful” Jinnah as freely as he did with Nehru.
There were others, too, who were less open to the idea of the Quaid-e-Azam as the prime minister. George Abell, one of Mountbatten’s aides, expressed the fear that there might be a civil war since Jinnah’s cabinet would be wholly subordinate to the Congress majority in the central legislature while the civil servant V.P. Menon said that the move might create political complications since it would “place Jinnah in the position of having to adjust his views to those of the Congress”.
Even if Gandhi’s suggestion is seen as utopian and “unrealistic”, as Nehru had said, it nevertheless shows that on the eve of partition, Jinnah did not have the kind of unflattering image as he would later have in India. That image is the result of the communal riots that accompanied the division of the country and in the aftermath of the call for “direct action” given by the Muslim League in August 1946.
Notwithstanding these negative aspects of Jinnah’s politics, no student of Indian history can forget his role as the “ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity”, as he was called by Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Sarojini Naidu in the 1920s and 1930s. It is evidently this reputation of being the ambassador to which Gandhi was harking back when he wanted him to be the prime minister.
As is obvious, therefore, Jinnah’s career in politics can be divided into two halves. The first half saw him in the secular camp, engaged in the task of bringing Hindus and Muslims together. That his belief in secularism never died is evident from the speech on Aug 11, 1947, to the Pakistan Constituent Assembly which Advani referred to while in Pakistan.
But the second half of Jinnah’s political career undoubtedly saw him abandoning secularism for the sake of communal politics, as when he projected the Muslim League as the only party which could save the Indian Muslims from coming under a Hindu raj ushered in by the Congress after independence.
This stance followed the resounding defeat suffered by the League at the hands of the Congress in the 1937 elections which convinced Jinnah and other Muslim leaders that their party had little chance of defeating the seemingly all-powerful Congress in the foreseeable future. It could only do so by whipping up communal sentiments and identifying the Congress as a party only of the Hindus. In arguing his case against the Congress’s claim to represent all the communities in India, Jinnah floated his two-nation theory, which portrayed Hindus and Muslims as belonging to two separate “nations”.
Arguably, he did not believe in it as ardently as he claimed, for, otherwise, he would not have accepted the Cabinet Mission’s plan for a federal India in which the Muslim-majority states of what is today Pakistan and Bangladesh would have been a part of the Union of India. If this plan fell through, the reason is, as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad says in his book “India Wins Freedom”, that Nehru said that the Congress would enter the Constituent Assembly unfettered by any agreement. Jinnah used this disclaimer to withdraw his acceptance of the Cabinet Mission plan and call for “direct action”.
There were two opportunities, therefore, for avoiding the partition. One was Gandhi’s offer to Jinnah to be prime minister. And the other was the Cabinet Mission plan, which had secured the approval of both the Congress and the Muslim League, till Nehru made his fateful observation.
Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
Jinnah resigns in heaven for being praised by, who else...Advani.
Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
I honestly believe that Jinnah was secular. By exactly the same standards, Advani is also secular.
Interesting viewpoints come up when Jinnah and partition are discussed.
One view is that a separate country was only a bargaining chip; Jinnha wasn't too keen on this; he was forced into this because of the perfidy of the congress. Hence the hindus are to be blamed for the partition
Another view is that the two nation theory is almost god's word and hence muslims put in all they had to finally obtain Pakistan.
If you think about this, these two are mutually contradictory views. An average non-theocratic but practicing muslim in Pakistan would probably subscribe to both the views, without realising that if the first is true, then the two-nation theory is a pack of cards and if the second is true, it doesn't really add prestige to the efforts of the muslim leaders to apportion a big chunk of the reason for partition to the hindus.
Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
^ thats a good point cs.
And I would like to hear what the pakistanies say to this. Because they are the people in dilemma.
Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
Here is a very fair article by Ayaz Amir… Please Read.. Talks about Jinnah, his falling out with Gandhi and the famous Cabinet Mission …
travesty of history
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/ayaz.htm
By Ayaz Amir
STRANGE that one of history’s cradles, the Indian peninsula, should have so little truck with genuine history, as opposed to myth-making and mythology.
Is there any Indian Herodotus? Or Thucydides or Tacitus? One of the richest histories of the world, full of blood, conquest and great achievement without any chronicler, not even an apology of a Gibbon. Before Alberuni who accompanied the armies of Mahmud Ghaznavi, we have the Hindu holy texts, the Upanishads, Kautilya’s Arthashastra and Megasthene’s account of the court of Chandragupta Maurya. But nothing that can be credited as historical writing.
Indian history — that is, historical writing — begins with the coming of the Muslims. This is a remark made not in the spirit of drum-beating because we of the sub-continent are prickly to an inordinate degree, apt to stand on our dignity and pick quarrels about the wrong things, but just a bald statement of fact.
Before the coming of the British it was but dimly understood in India that the birthplace of Buddhism was India, that the divine Siddharta was a prince of India, not of any faraway land. So complete was the extermination of Buddhism from India in the early centuries of the last millennium that the fact that such a faith had once existed and indeed flourished ceased to form part of India’s historical memory.
Muslim historians — for the most part court historians — sang the praises of their own kings. Except for Alberuni, they had little interest in the India that had existed before them. Theirs are contemporary accounts not explorations of the past. It was the European arrival in India which spurred interest in Indian studies and, in time, through scholars such as Max Muller who translated the Upanishads laid the basis of the Hindu revivalist movement which grew towards the end of the 19th century.
Two conclusions arise: firstly, about the poverty of Indian historiography; secondly, about the lack of a developed historical sense as late as the second half of the 19th century.
Given this poverty of history-writing, is it any wonder if history has a strong parochial bias in both India and Pakistan, with scholars on both sides of the divide viewing the confused and tumultuous events of the first half of the 20th century, culminating in the partition of India, through their own rose-tinted or hate-filled glasses?
True, the black-and-white approach to history is more securely ensconced in Pakistan than in India, Pakistanis glorifying their champions and refusing to see any fault in them while demonizing the Indian side completely. India, by contrast, has produced a better tradition of historical writing. Even so, the biases and prejudices which rise to the surface when, say, the birth of Pakistan or the role of Jinnah is discussed, continue to be breathtaking.
Small wonder then if there has been such a storm in the dovecots of the Hindu right because of L. K. Advani’s not flattering but fair remarks about M. A. Jinnah during his Pakistan visit. What did Advani say? That…”His (Jinnah’s) address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947 is a classic, a forceful espousal of a secular state in which every citizen would be free to practise his own religion but the state shall make no distinction between one citizen and another on the grounds of faith.” Since this is no more than the truth, why such a reaction in India?
Because the image of Jinnah thus evoked runs counter to his demonizing which has been standard fare in India since 1947. Every child in India is brought up on the belief that Jinnah played the communal card by invoking the two-nation theory and this is what led to the breakup of Mother India. It’s a good line as far as selective history goes but nowhere near the truth.
Jinnah was a leading light of the Congress, a figure on the Indian stage, before Gandhi arrived in India from South Africa. That he was a staunch nationalist who stood uncompromisingly for Indian freedom goes without saying. What Indians of this generation find hard to understand is that far from being a communalist, he abhorred any intrusion of religion into politics. And it was on this very point that his differences with Gandhi first arose.
For what Gandhi did when he took up the mantle of Congress leadership was to bring to the politics of mass mobilization words and slogans steeped in Hindu symbolism. What was the objective of the freedom struggle? The setting up of Ram Raj. How on earth could Muslims be expected to rally to such a call?
The Muslim demand as articulated most ably by Jinnah was that Hindus and Muslims, before anything else, represented two distinct communities, each with their different outlook on life. The recognition of this reality far from dividing the nationalist movement would strengthen it by bringing Muslims and Hindus under a common flag of struggle.
That Hindus and Muslims were two communities was not something invented by Jinnah, as most Indians would like to believe, but a simple recognition of reality. Hindus and Muslims did not become two communities in the 19th or 20th centuries. They were two communities, and remained as such, from the moment the first Muslim set foot on Indian soil.
This was a truth best captured by Nirad Chaudhri in his ‘Autobiography of An Unknown Indian’, one of the most perceptive observers of the Indian condition, and perhaps for this very reason not universally loved in India. He writes:
“When I see the gigantic catastrophe of Hindu-Muslim discord of these days I am not surprised, because we as children held the tiny mustard seed in our hands and sowed it very diligently. In fact, this conflict was implicit in the very unfolding of our history, and could hardly be avoided. Heaven preserve me from the dishonesty, so general among Indians, of attributing this conflict to British rule, however much the foreign rulers might have profited by it. Indeed they would have been excusable only as gods, and not as man the political animal, had they made no use of the weapon so assiduously manufactured by us, and by us also put into their hands. But even then they did not make use of it to the extent they might easily have done. This, I know, is a very controversial thesis, but I think it can be very easily proved if we do not turn a blind eye to the facts of our history.”
The Muslims of India did not begin with the demand for Pakistan. Indeed, before 1940 only a few hotheads or political dilettantes spoke about it. Even Iqbal in his famous Allahabad address spoke about a special dispensation for Indian Muslims ‘within’ not without the framework of a united India. Haunted by the fear of being swamped by a Hindu majority — fears which the more questionable tenets of Hindu revivalism did nothing to dissipate — they wanted to be recognized as a separate community entitled to special constitutional safeguards. (Not all that strange a demand if we consider the constitutional dispensation in force in a country like Lebanon.) Only on the Congress’s refusal to accept this point of view, did the Muslim League leadership, very late in the day, move towards the demand for Pakistan.
Along the way there were other slip-ups. In the words of Ram Gopal whose ‘Indian Muslims’ should be a must read for students of that period, “When the Congress decided to accept office (in the U.P. after the 1937 elections) and proceeded with its ministry-making efforts, the League put forward its claim for a share on the strength of its pre-election understanding with the Congress. There were prolonged negotiations between the leaders of the two bodies, but there was no workable arrangement reached. It was one of the most fateful and distressing failures in the political history of India; it gave strength to the belief, held by some adventurous Muslim leaders, that the Muslims should have a separate homeland.”
What most Indians of this generation do not realize, or haven’t been told with enough emphasis, is that as late as 1946 the Muslim League leadership accepted the Cabinet Mission plan envisaging a united India. The Congress too accepted it before Nehru went back on the Congress’s committed word by introducing fresh reservations which wrecked the accord.
Maulana Azad’s ‘India Wins Freedom’ gives one of the best accounts of this episode. In vain did he plead with his colleagues to accept the Cabinet Mission plan which would have preserved a united India. Patel and Nehru were adamant. Accepting the plan would have meant compromising with the Muslim League which they were not prepared to accept. Towards the end it was not the Muslim League but the Congress which was hell-bent on partition.
Did Jinnah and the Muslim League not play the communal card in the 1946 elections? They did, the battle-cry of the League in those elections was the slogan, “Muslim hai to Muslim League mein aa” (if you are a Muslim come to the Muslim League). But the dragon’s teeth had been sown much before and the fire spouting as a result led not only to partition but one of the worst orgies of plunder, rape and blood-letting in the history of the 20th century.
Who’s to blame? Jinnah or a massive failure of understanding on the part of the Congress leadership? Not that Pakistanis regret partition. Far from it. It would, however, help if with the calming of the storms accompanying partition we could somehow arrive at a more judicious writing of history.
Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
I dont think that a seperate state was a bargaining chip. Its wasnt being bargained for until the Cabinet Mission. Jinnah and other leaders were bargaining for a Union, for some kind of guarantee that in independant India, Muslims would not be Politically swamped by the Hindu Majority… Anyways, he was forced into as you said by the perfidy of the congress as you said.
I dont blame Hindus the religous group, I blame Hindus the Political group for the same reason I dont accept the second view because Jinnah didnt speak in terms of the religous groups, but political groups, one being the Hinuds the other the Muslims.. The settlement that was eventually reached was not really based on religous line, but on political lines. Im not sure if that the response you looking for s clarify a little more though…
Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
Modi had a direct hand in the riots.. He didnt call for his own form of the Direct Action Plan, but rather, according to some sources, simply allowed these riots to occur even though he could have done something, and that he may have facilitated the riots aswell..
Jinnah didnt intend for the Direct Action Plan to turn violent. It doesnt fit with his historical personality. Simply not anticipating the violence happend on a number of occasions. Happend to Gandhi aswell!! How would you excuse Gandhi?
When Nehru decided to not accept the Cabinet Mission agreement, did he not anticpate the Blood shed of the Partition? And yet we still see him a secular?
Jinnah was a known to be secular…
Modhi is a part of a political party which openly espouses Hindutava. Which is a clear referance to the HIndu religion… Comparing Modhi to Jinnah is useless for your argument!
Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
Jinnah meant that these two were two seperate religous POLITICAL groups. He was identifying two POLITICAL groups based on relgion. He realized that in India, these two POLITICAL groups were identified by their religions, but in the new state of Pakistan, they would ceace to be two seperate entites, while their religions wouldnt change, they would cease to be two seprate religous POLITICAL groups, and simply be citizens of one state. Their religions would be irrelevent.
He was suspicious of Hindu POLITICAL dominance, not of Hinduism the religion..
Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
Pak patriot and others…When I read your replies, I doubt if Pakistan history mentions of ‘Direct Action day’ and the massacre took place as a result of this threat. A frank and true reply is awaited..........
Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
I think your very biased, and you ignore the faults of your own leaders and glorify them woithout any reall understaning of Partition hitory... Direct Action plan is not seen as anything negative in Pakistan the same way as the actions of Gandhi, such as his mixing of of religon and politics, and the caes of violence that his non violent plans caused are glossed over or not mentioned... I already told you that no one of any real credibilty believes that Jinnah called for civil war, and your useing the Direct Action plan as your sole criteria of judging Jinnah is useless and just illustrates your lack of insight into the history surrunding the times...
Here is another view by a writer in New Delhi...
PLEASE READ IT..
Jinnah: before & after 1920 Congress session
By M.J. Akbar
“WELL, young man. I will have nothing to do with this pseudo-religious approach to politics. I part company with Congress and Gandhi. I do not believe in working up mob hysteria.” The young man was a journalist, Durga Das. The older man was Mohammad Ali Jinnah. The reference is from Durga Das’ classic book, India from Curzon to Nehru and After. Jinnah said this after the 1920 Nagpur session, where Gandhi’s non-cooperation resolution was passed almost unanimously.
On October 1, 1906, 35 Muslims of “noble birth, wealth and power” called on the fourth earl of Minto, Curzon’s successor as Viceroy of India. They were led by the Aga Khan and used for the first time a phrase that would dominate the history of the subcontinent in the 20th century: the “national interests” of Indian Muslims. They wanted help against an “unsympathetic” Hindu majority. They asked, very politely, for proportional representation in jobs and separate seats in councils, municipalities, university syndicates and high court benches. Lord Minto was happy to oblige. The Muslim League was born in December that year at Dhaka, chaired by Nawab Salimullah Khan, who had been too ill to join the 35 in October. The Aga Khan was its first president.
The Aga Khan wrote later that it was “freakishly ironic” that “our doughtiest opponent in 1906” was Jinnah, who “came out in bitter hostility toward all that I and my friends had done... He was the only well-known Muslim to take this attitude... He said that our principle of separate electorates was dividing the nation against itself”.
On precisely the same dates that the League was formed in Dhaka, Jinnah was in nearby Kolkata (Calcutta) with 44 other Muslims and roughly 1,500 Hindus, Christians and Parsis, serving as secretary to Dadabhai Naoroji, president of the Indian National Congress. Dadabhai was too ill to give his address, which had been partially drafted by Jinnah and was read out by Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Sarojini Naidu, who met the 30-year-old Jinnah for the first time here, remembered him as a symbol of “virile patriotism”.
Her description is arguably the best there is: “Tall and stately, but thin to the point of emancipation, languid and luxurious of habit, Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s attenuated form is a deceptive sheath of a spirit of exceptional vitality and endurance. Somewhat formal and fastidious, and a little aloof and imperious of manner, the calm hauteur of his accustomed reserve but masks, for those who know him, a naive and eager humanity, an intuition quick and tender as a woman’s, a humour gay and winning as child’s ... a shy and splendid idealism which is of the very essence of the man.”
Jinnah entered the central legislative council in Calcutta (the capital of British India then) on January 25, 1910, along with Gokhale, Surendranath Banerjea and Motilal Nehru. Lord Minto expected the council to rubber stamp “any measures we may deem right to introduce”.
Jinnah’s maiden speech shattered such pompousness. He rose to defend another Gujarati working for his people in another colony across the seas, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Jinnah expressed “the highest pitch of indignation and horror at the harsh and cruel treatment that is meted out to Indians in South Africa”.
Minto objected to a term such as “cruel treatment”. Jinnah responded at once: “My Lord! I should feel much inclined to use much stronger language.” Lord Minto kept quiet.
On March 7, 1911, Jinnah introduced what was to become the first non-official act in British Indian history, the Wakf Validating Bill, reversing an 1894 decision on waqf gifts. Muslims across the Indian empire were grateful.
Jinnah attended his first meeting of the League in Bankipur in 1912, but did not become a member. He was in Bankipur to attend the Congress session. When he went to Lucknow a few months later as a special guest of the League (it was not an annual session), Sarojini Naidu was on the platform with him. The bitterness that divided India did not exist then. Dr M.A. Ansari, Maulana Azad and Hakim Ajmal Khan attended the League session of 1914, and in 1915, the League tent had a truly unlikely guest list: Madan Mohan Malviya, Surendranath Banerjea, Annie Besant, B.G. Horniman, Sarojini Naidu and Mahatma Gandhi.
When Jinnah did join the League in 1913, he insisted on a condition, set out in immaculate English, that his “loyalty to the Muslim League and the Muslim interest would in no way and at no time imply even the shadow of disloyalty to the larger national cause to which his life was dedicated” (Jinnah: His Speeches and Writings, 1912-1917, edited by Sarojini Naidu).
Gokhale that year honoured Jinnah with a phrase that has travelled through time: it is “freedom from all sectarian prejudice which will make him (Jinnah) the best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity”. In the spring of 1914 Jinnah chaired a Congress delegation to London to lobby Whitehall on a proposed Council of India bill.
When Gandhi landed in India in 1915, Jinnah, as president of the Gujarat Society (the mahatmas of both India and Pakistan were Gujaratis), spoke at a garden party to welcome the hero of South Africa. Jinnah was the star of 1915. At the Congress and League sessions, held in Mumbai at the same time, he worked tirelessly with Congress President Satyendra Sinha and Mazharul Haque (a Congressman who presided over the Muslim League that year) for a joint platform of resolutions. Haque and Jinnah were heckled so badly at the League session by mullahs that the meeting had to be adjourned. It reconvened the next day in the safer milieu of the Taj Mahal Hotel. The next year Jinnah became president of the League for the first time, at Lucknow.
Motilal Nehru, in the meantime, worked closely with Jinnah in the council. When the munificent Motilal convened a meeting of fellow-legislators to his handsome mansion in Allahabad in April, he considered Jinnah “as keen a nationalist as any of us. He is showing his community the way to Hindu-Muslim unity”. It was from this meeting in Allahabad that Jinnah went for a vacation to Darjeeling and the summer home of his friend Sir Dinshaw Manockjee Petit (French merchants had nicknamed Dinshaw’s small-built grandfather petit and it stuck) and met 16-year-old Ruttie.
I suppose a glorious view of the Everest encouraged romance. When Ruttie became 18 she eloped and on April 19, 1918, they were married. Ruttie’s Parsi family disowned her, she separated from Jinnah a decade later. (The wedding ring was a gift from the Raja of Mahmoodabad.)
As president Jinnah engineered the famous Lucknow Pact with Congress president A.C. Mazumdar. In his presidential speech Jinnah rejoiced that the new spirit of patriotism had “brought Hindus and Muslims together ... for the common cause”. Mazumdar announced that all differences had been settled, and Hindus and Muslims would make a “joint demand for a representative government in India”.
Enter Gandhi, who never entered a legislature, and believed passionately that freedom could only be won by a non-violent struggle for which he would have to prepare the masses. In 1915 Gokhale advised Gandhi to keep “his ears open and his mouth shut” for a year, and see India. Gandhi stopped in Kolkata on his way to Rangoon and spoke to students. Politics, he said, should never be divorced from religion. The signal was picked by Muslims planning to marry politics with religion in their first great campaign against the British empire, the Khilafat movement.
Over the next three years Gandhi prepared the ground for his version of the freedom struggle: a shift from the legislatures to the street; a deliberate use of religious imagery to reach the illiterate masses through symbols most familiar to them (Ram Rajya for the Hindus, Khilafat for the Muslims); and an unwavering commitment to the poor peasantry, for whom Champaran became a miracle.
The massacre at Jallianwala Bagh in 1919 provided a perfect opportunity; Indian anger reached critical mass. Gandhi led the Congress towards its first mass struggle, the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1921.
The constitutionalist in Jinnah found mass politics ambitious, and the liberal in him rejected the invasion of religion in politics. When he rose to speak at the Nagpur session in 1920, where Gandhi moved the non-cooperation resolution, Jinnah was the only delegate to dissent till the end among some 50,000 “surging” Hindus and Muslims. He had two principal objections.
The resolution, he said, was a de facto declaration of swaraj, or complete independence, and although he agreed completely with Lala Lajpat Rai’s indictment of the British government, he did not think the Congress had, as yet, the means to achieve this end; as he put it, “it is not the right step to take at this moment ... you are committing the Indian National Congress to a programme which you will not be able to carry out”. (Gandhi, after promising swaraj within a year, withdrew the Non-Cooperation Movement in the wake of communal riots in Kerala and of course the famous Chauri Chaura incident in 1922. Congress formally adopted full independence as its goal only in 1931.) His second objection was that non-violence would not succeed. In this Jinnah was wrong.
There is a remarkable sub-text in this speech, which has never been commented upon, at least to my knowledge. When Jinnah first referred to Gandhi, he called him “Mr Gandhi”. There were instant cries of “Mahatma Gandhi”. Without a moment’s hesitation, Jinnah switched to “Mahatma Gandhi”. Later, he referred to Mr Mohammad Ali, the more flamboyant of the two Ali Brothers, both popularly referred to as Maulana. There were angry cries of “Maulana”. Jinnah ignored them. He referred at least five times more to Ali, but each time called him only Mr Mohammad Ali.
Let us leave the last word to Gandhi. Writing in Harijan of June 8, 1940, Gandhi said, “Quaid-i-Azam himself was a great Congressman. It was only after the non-cooperation that he, like many other Congressmen belonging to several communities, left. Their defection was purely political.” In other words, it was not communal. It could not be, for almost every Muslim was with Gandhi when Jinnah left the Congress.
History might be better understood if we did not treat it as a heroes-and-villains movie. Life is more complex than that. The heroes of our national struggle changed sometimes with circumstances. The reasons for the three instances I cite are very different; their implications radically at variance. I am not making any comparisons, but only noting that leaders change their tactics.
Non-violent Gandhi, who broke the empire three decades later, received the Kaiser-I-Hind medal on June 3, 1915, (Tagore was knighted the same day) for recruiting soldiers for the war effort. Subhas Bose, ardently Gandhian in 1920, put on uniform and led the Indian National Army with support from Fascists. Jinnah, the ambassador of unity, became a partitionist.
The question that should intrigue us is why. Ambition and frustration are two reasons commonly suggested in India, but they are not enough to create a new nation. Jinnah made the demand for Pakistan only in 1940, after repeated attempts to obtain constitutional safeguards for Muslims and attempts at power-sharing had failed. What happened, for instance, to the constitution that the Congress was meant to draft in 1928? On the other hand, Congress leaders felt that commitments on the basis of any community would lead to extortion from every community. The only exception made was for Dalits, then called Harijans.
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who remained opposed to partition even after Nehru and Patel had accepted it as inevitable, places one finger on the failed negotiations in the United Provinces after the 1936-37 elections, and a second on the inexplicable collapse of the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 which would have kept India united — inexplicable because both the Congress and the Muslim League had accepted it. The plan did not survive a press conference given by Nehru. Jinnah responded with the unbridled use of the communal card, and there was no turning back.
A deeply saddened Gandhi spurned August 15, 1947, as a false dawn (to quote Faiz). He spent the day not in celebrations in Delhi but in fasting at Kolkata. Thanks to Gandhi — and H.S. Suhrawardy — there were no communal riots in Kolkata in 1947. Facts are humbling. They prevent you from jumping to conclusions.
The writer is editor-in-chief, Asia Age, New Delhi.
Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
Mr Haris (Moderaor), ......you must be thinking of closing this thread.
This time I expect you to close it without making any partial comments, unlike you did while closing 'Out of Kargil'.
Re: BJP prez Advani resigns for praising Jinnah
heh, no i’m not closing it, atleast not yet. btw what was so partial about the closing lines in the kargil thread…? 