Re: Who is a communal/religious/racist leader - Jinnah or Gandhi
Anjaan have your READ any of the posted articles????
Re: Who is a communal/religious/racist leader - Jinnah or Gandhi
well anjaan, even if you don’t want to read the cabinet mission to its full extent, at least try to think logically and pay some attention to pakpatriot’s postulate and that is why the hell Nehru accepted the cabinet mission in its entirety in the first place…And it is not something which we Pakistanis have created. it is an undisputable part of history being narrated by all major Indian historians especially by Abu Kalam Azad in 'India Wins Freedom"…it was one of the biggest regret of Maulana Azad’s life to quit the congress president ship early and let Nehru take it…
Anjann, it is about time for all of us to study indo-pak history in its true context without falling prey to traditional myths…No hard feelings…we are just having an intellectual conversation here and trying to get our message through with an anticipation of no deaf ears present on either side…
Re: Who is a communal/religious/racist leader - Jinnah or Gandhi
How shall we interpret following….
http://www.majinnah.net/cripps%20scheme.html
A consummate statesman that he was, Jinnah saw his chance. He interpreted the clauses relating to a limited centre and the groupings as ‘the foundation of Pakistan’, and induced the Muslim League Council to accept the Plan in June 1946; and this he did much against the calculations of the Congress and to its utter dismay.
Do I say something else? Does Jinnah’ communal stand justify riots? Can you remind me if Congress agitations ended in riots, or Congress people used riots as a weapon to achieve some goals?
(I, hereby, do not mean that Congress people were neat and clean.)
And if Jinnah really believed that Hindus and Muslims cannot live together, why he agreed with the Governor General post of an Independent Pakistan when majority of Muslims were left behind to live with Hindus? Was it a principal stand or a personal ego?
(700000 people were killed during partition days.)
Once you have started a relating thread…you must mention that ‘killings or communal riots’ are to be considered as traditional myths.
Re: Who is a communal/religious/racist leader - Jinnah or Gandhi
Please convince me that Jinnah was not responsible for riots……
http://www.bharatvani.org/books/mla/ch2.htm
The Muslim League was now definitely and irrevocably on the war-path. Its war was declared against the Hindus and the Sikhs, against whose opposition it was to establish its independent State of Pakistan. The speeches made by Mr. Jinnah and other Muslim League leaders were provocative in the extreme, and such as to give the Muslims not only broad hints, but clear instigation to attack non-Muslims and by this method of warfare to bring them to their knees if possible, and to force them into the acceptance of Pakistan.
Some of the things said by Mr. Jinnah on this occasion are these:
“What we have done to-day is the most historic act in our history. Never have we in the whole history of the League done anything except by constitutional methods. But now we are forced into this position. Today we bid good-bye to constitutional methods.”
Again, referring to the new threat and programme of Direct Action, he said,
“To-day we have forged a pistol and are in a position to use it.”
Again, talking of the threat of Direct Action he said:
“We mean every word of it. We do not believe in equivocation.”
Then he quoted the Persian Poet, Firdausi, in these words:
“If you seek peace, we do not want War. But if you want War, we will accept it unhesitatingly.”
Still more provocative speeches, if possible, were made by other Muslim League leaders on this occasion. Nawabzada Liaqat Ali Khan, now Prime Minister of the Dominion of Pakistan, elucidating the implications of the Direct Action threat, said:
“Direct Action means resort to non-constitutional methods, and that can take any form which may suit the conditions under which we live. We cannot eliminate any methods. Direct Action means any action against the Law.”
Re: Who is a communal/religious/racist leader - Jinnah or Gandhi
Dude, whether Jinnah interpreted the Cabinet Misson plan as a declaration of Pakistan is irrelevent. The point is that there would have been a united India and the partition could have been prevented.
Jinnah was communal, Thats for sure. But to imply that he intended to start a civil war is not correct. The Congress also caused riots. Read the Second article I posted and it will talk about the riot caused by disobedience movement caused by the Congress and the murder of the soldier in Calcutta I believe.
Gandhi on his part was able to attone by fasting and forcing people to stop, this is why he called of his civil disobedience plan at one point because it was causing violence. You obviously dont know your history if you think the Congress never caused violence. It was actually one of the reasons why Jinnah parted ways with Gandhi, because Jinnah did not believe in disobedience which he fet would simply cause civil unrest and more problems. The question is can you prove any of the politicions of that era didnt cause riots? Includng GANDHI?
Jinnah’s over all plan I dont know, had he written a manifesto, we may have, but he failed to give a clear outline of his intentions. He died before he could really make a difference. He did want a Muslim majority state. This would be made up of the areas that already comprised the majority Muslim population. My guess would be that he intended to cause the least amount displacement by choosing to form Pakistan out of the Muslim Majority states that already existed. He may have intended for a gradual peacful movement of Indian Muslims into the new state. Unfortunately, this didnt happen.
And yes, 700000 did die. I hope you will chalk at least some of the blame on your own hero Nehru.. It was he who went against the Congress Mission plan. Whether you like it or not, Congress is just as responsible for Pakistan as Jinnah and the Muslim league..
I have heard your own CONGRES MEMBER saying that this was the most foolish act ever commited! If your accusing Jinnah of being Egotistical, then Nehru is no less… Being a failed lawyer faced by a much more western and far more skilful politician, Nehru always had an inferiority complex…
Re: Who is a communal/religious/racist leader - Jinnah or Gandhi
The Ignoramuses and the incompatibles
Pran Chopra Tuesday June, 14 2005
Source: The Asian Age
I knew two Jinnahs. I met the first on a wintry day in Jallandhar, in 1941. He had gone there to address a huge rally, and I to report it. What I saw was the quintessence of a contradiction. Only a few minutes into the meeting and Jinnah was in full flow, defending Islam against the infidels, a one-man army of ghazis, rousing, mobilising Indian Muslims to make a Muslim India. Togadia would have been a pip-squeak in comparison. Minutes later the call to prayers came from a nearby mosque. The entire hundred or so men on the dais and the thousands on the ground immediately went into the ordained poses, up, down, and in between. Except the ghazi. He sat on in the chair, one foot resting on the other knee, and lazily surveyed the scene around him. Then he lit a cigar. For the next half an hour he moved only to flick the ash off the cigar. The prayer ended, and promptly the defence of Muslims was in full swing again, cigar and all, while the devout were still shaking the dust off their backs.
I could not help admiring the man’s gall. Nor could Sheikh Abdullah, whom I met for the first time that day, on the train back to Lahore. This power of Jinnah to mesmerise the faithful, in a language (English) which most of them could not understand, was seen many a time again. Each time it was a well rehearsed performance. It added up to the fastest drama in history because it created a new country of millions in the shortest time on record. Fastest, and about the most tragic.
Brief glimpses of the second Jinnah began to appear as the historic partition approached. Concerns shifted from the massacres going on around us to the aftermath which awaited both countries. Jinnah’s clinical use of manufactured passions had done its work. Without it he might never have got even the "moth-eaten" Pakistan which history gave him. But by now, or soon after, he might also have begun to receive intimations that he would not be given much time to repair what he was going to leave behind. One could sense the change during the brief conversations that sometimes fell in my lap at a house some 30 yards down from Claridges, on the same roundabout. That was his home in Delhi in those days.
Whether he became secular then or was communal before is a debate which, I suspect, would have looked as irrelevant to him then as it is to us today. He reached for the tool he thought he needed for the job in hand. One tool on that Jallandhar maidan. Another in the Assembly hall in Karachi. A knife to cut something out of what was his own motherland too. Something else to build a whole new cake out of that slice. But the conviction grew in him that for the future of the Pakistan which he found on his hands the past must be overcome. He was as sincere as he was worried about what would happen if his new voice did not reach his people.
One can only speculate on what he would have done, before it became too late to do anything, if he had known in time that he would only get the kind of Pakistan he got. But there is no need to speculate on how sad he must have been when the ignoramuses around him silenced him.
Re: Who is a communal/religious/racist leader - Jinnah or Gandhi
PakPatriot…
So we have reached some understanding that Jinnah was communal, or at least he played the communal card. May be unintentionally, but he inspired people to kill each other and your country glorifies the blood shedding day of ‘Direct Action Plan’, and later many-many thousands had to die so that Jinnah could become Governor General of an independent State.
Was Gandhi communal? If Gandhi used to recite verses of Gita and Quran in his prayer meetings, did it make him communal?
Gandhi believed in Ram Rajya. Was the Ram of his Ram Rajya a Hindu king who would degrade non-Hindus in an independent India?
Gandhi started a policy of Muslim appeasement (Re support of Khilawat movement) that India is still paying a heavy price for that, but this also does not make him communal.
Gandhi’ or Congress’ some agitations ended in violence. But on such incidents Gandhi took back his agitations, halted the movements at the cost of freedom struggle.
Not only that, Gandhi used to visit the violence affected areas and with personal efforts always succeeded in curbing violence.
Nehru was a 2/3 atheist. He was not communal. He had political strains against many others, like Patel, Subhas and off course against Jinnah. He had hurt Jinnah by deliberately sidelining him on many occasions…..did it give a copy right to Jinnah to send thousands of Hindu-Muslims to gallows?
Re: Who is a communal/religious/racist leader - Jinnah or Gandhi
Gandhi had also inspired to kill people… SO DID THE REST OF THE CONGRESS… And yet your countries glorifes their sturggles, even though none no Indian of today could give two hoots for their ideology.
And we have also understand that unintensionally, NEHRU caused the death of close to a million people…
The only diffenrece between Gandhi is Jinnah is your last line, that Gandhi attoned, Jinnah did not. Still, that does not make him the evil megalomaniac you people make him out to be. I think Partition was a result of both sides particularly Nehru.
Re: Who is a communal/religious/racist leader - Jinnah or Gandhi
I don't think either of them were racist. Considering Gandhi worked hard for Dalit / Harjan rights as well some incidences where he acted to protect Muslims in Hindu-Muslim rights, it's quite reasonable to call him a good guy in this regard.
Jinnah was Muslim leader - but I don't think that makes him a 'communal' person in the negative sense that word is used. Many a times Jinnah's Muslim politics is mistaken for Muslim communalism
Re: Who is a communal/religious/racist leader - Jinnah or Gandhi
^Agreed! We tend to see him in light of present conflicts which have been conitnues over the past 50 plus years... Communalism is a far more sensative topic now after the partition. At time before partition, communalism hadnt gotten the same noteriety that it has now..
Re: Who is a communal/religious/racist leader - Jinnah or Gandhi
ghandi never said anything bad about any religen including islam
And in "Young India", he wrote:
"I wanted to know the best of one who holds today's undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind....I became more than convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet, the scrupulous regard for his pledges, his intense devotion to this friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle. When I closed the 2nd volume (of the Prophet's biography), I was sorry there was not more for me to read of the great life
Re: Who is a communal/religious/racist leader - Jinnah or Gandhi
I doubt Jinnah ever said anything negative about Hinduism the Religion either...
Gandhi's greatest fault however was the mixing of religion with politics, even if it was in a positive way. It only end up biting you in the rear end in the end.
Re: Who is a communal/religious/racist leader - Jinnah or Gandhi
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Behold the real Jinnah
His vanity and ambition had much to do with the choices he made
Anupam Gupta
Described by one of his leading biographers, Stanley Wolpert, as “disjointed ramblings”, Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s speech at the inaugural session of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan continues to kindle debate even though the storm that almost claimed L.K. Advani has blown over. “What was he talking about? Had he simply forgotten where he was? Had the cyclone of events so disoriented him that he was arguing the opposition’s brief?” asks Wolpert (Jinnah of Pakistan, 1984).
Just three days later, on August 14, 1947, the Quaid-e-Azam was back to his organised “cold and remote” self, as Mountbatten’s Press Attache Allan Campbell-Johnson — then in Karachi along with the Mountbattens — recounts. “He makes only the most superficial attempt to disguise himself as a constitutional Governor-General, and one of his first acts after putting his name forward was to apply for powers under the 9th Schedule rather than Part II of the 1935 Act which gave him at once dictatorial powers unknown to any constitutional Governor-General representing the King. Here indeed is Pakistan’s King Emperor, Archbishop of Canterbury, Speaker and Prime Minister concentrated into one formidable Quaid-e-Azam.” (Mission with Mountbatten, 1951). Pushed unceremoniously off the political stage by Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement in 1920, and unable to regain a stable foothold till the late 1930s when he finally switched over from ‘liberal communalism’ to extreme communal politics, Jinnah — the creator of Pakistan — has only himself to blame for the demonisation of his public persona.
For few individuals in history have applied themselves with such single-mindedness of purpose as Jinnah did to accomplish a goal so unnatural within so brief a span of time.
Pre-1937, writes Sir Penderel Moon, correctly identifying the inverse nexus, Gandhi’s rise to ascendancy in the Congress was more or less coincident with Jinnah’s estrangement from it (Divide and Quit, 1961). Post-1937, Jinnah’s virulently passionate and unbending espousal of the two-nation theory became a dramatic counter-point to the Mahatma’s lifelong pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity as the essential basis of Indian independence.
Replying to a letter from a certain Sarfaraz Husain of Nainital, Swami Vivekananda had written on June 10, 1898: “For our own motherland a junction of the two great systems, Hinduism and Islam — Vedanta brain and Islam body — is the only hope. I see in my mind’s eye the future perfect India rising out of this chaos and strife, glorious and invincible, with Vedanta brain and Islam body.” (The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol 6).
For all the startling richness of this metaphor, Gandhi’s approach to the problem of Hindu-Muslim unity was at once deeper and more practical. From the Khilafat movement, his first major experiment in secular nationalist mobilisation (doubted by many at that time and even today), to his ‘rejection’ of Partition 27 years later as he battled communal savagery in Calcutta, setting himself up as a “One Man Boundary Force” — the Mahatma was convinced that there could be no abiding solution to India’s problems, and no genuine freedom either, other than on the basis of Hindu-Muslim unity. And he found it impossible to act otherwise, even in his death.
With great respect to Sarojini Naidu, only one man on the sub-continent fully deserved the honour of being called “the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity” and he was Gandhi, not Jinnah.
In the ‘pure’ doctrinal sense, of course, and beyond the sidelines of the freedom struggle, it was Savarkar — the mature ideologue and not the young revolutionary — who was, or should have been, Jinnah’s main foe.
In his notes of an half-hour-long meeting with Lord Linlithgow on January 12, 1940, K.M. Munshi recounts his telling the viceroy at the end: “If there is no alliance between nationalist India and Britain it may be that we may go, may be for a long time, but then V.D. Savarkar and Jinnah will fight it out.” (Pilgrimage to Freedom, 1967).
And yet, as B.R. Ambedkar pointed out, and strange though it might appear, Savarkar and Jinnah — instead of being opposed to each other — were “in complete agreement”: that there were two nations in India, one Muslim and the other Hindu. They differed only as regards the terms and conditions on which the two nations should live. Jinnah wanted India to be cut up into two while Savarkar wanted both to live in one country with the Hindus as the dominant nation and the Muslims as the servient one (Pakistan or the Partition of India, 1946). A partly critical, partly sympathetic, but on the whole a highly instructive analysis of the demand for Pakistan, Ambedkar’s book also contains a keen insight into Jinnah’s psyche and personality.
Jinnah, said Ambedkar, was “too self-opinionated, an egotist without the mask”, with a degree of arrogance “not compensated by any extraordinary intellect or equipment”. And, possibly for that reason, he was unable to reconcile himself to a second place and work with others in that capacity for a public cause even though he was neither a tool of the British nor a soldier of fortune”.
That Jinnah’s vanity and ambition had much to do with his choice of the path that he pursued in the late 1930s and ’40s, frustrating all efforts at compromise, cannot be denied. Next to the whole colonial policy of the British, it was the single most important factor contributing to the transformation of Pakistan from “an undergraduate squib” (in Lord Wavell’s words) into a sovereign state. The invective that he heaped upon Maulana Azad, calling him the “showboy” of the Congress, and his refusal even to shake hands with him, saw Jinnah plumbing the lowest depths of vulgarity in public behaviour. Part of a scarcely concealed strategy to establish himself as the sole spokesman of India’s Muslims, this cynical mix of pride, prejudice and politics was the real Jinnah. To search for any other is both irresponsible and futile.
The writer is counsel for the Liberhan Commission. The views expressed are his own
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=73100