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Introduction
Pakistan, one of the largest Muslim states in the world, is
a living and exemplary monument of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali
Jinnah. With his untiring efforts, indomitable will, and
dauntless courage, he united the Indian Muslims under the
banner of the Muslim League and carved out a homeland for
them, despite stiff opposition from the Hindu Congress and the
British Government.
Father of the Nation Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah's
achievement as the founder of Pakistan,
dominates everything else he did in his long and crowded
public life spanning some 42 years. Yet, by any
standard, his was an eventful life, his personality
multidimensional and his achievements in other fields were
many, if not equally great. Indeed, several were the roles he
had played with distinction: at one time or another, he was
one of the greatest legal luminaries India had produced during
the first half of the century, an `ambassador of Hindu-Muslim
unity, a great constitutionalist, a distinguished
parliamentarian, a top-notch politician, an indefatigable
freedom-fighter, a dynamic Muslim leader, a political
strategist and, above all one of the great nation-builders of
modern times.
What, however, makes him so remarkable is the fact that
while similar other leaders assumed the leadership of
traditionally well-defined nations and espoused their cause,
or led them to freedom, he created a nation out of an inchoate
and down-trodeen minority and established a cultural and
national home for it. And all that within a decase. For over
three decades before the successful culmination in
1947, of the Muslim struggle for freedom in the
South-Asian subcontinent, Jinnah had provided political
leadership to the Indian Muslims: initially as one of the
leaders, but later, since 1947, as the only prominent leader-
the Quaid-i-Azam.
For over thirty years, he had guided their affairs; he had
given expression, coherence and direction to their ligitimate
aspirations and cherished dreams; he had formulated these into
concerete demands; and, above all, he had striven all the
while to get them conceded by both the ruling British and the
numerous Hindus the dominant segment of India's population.
And for over thirty years he had fought, relentlessly and
inexorably, for the inherent rights of the Muslims for an
honourable existence in the subcontinent. Indeed, his life
story constitutes, as it were, the story of the rebirth of the
Muslims of the subcontinent and their spectacular rise to
nationhood, phoenixlike.
Early Life
Born on December
25, 1876, in a prominent mercantile family in Karachi
and educated at the Sindh Madrassat-ul-Islam and the Christian
Mission School at his birth place, Jinnah joined the Lincoln's
Inn in 1893 to become the youngest Indian to
be called to the Bar, three years later. Starting out in the
legal profession withknothing to fall back upon except his
native ability and determination, young Jinnah rose to
prominence and became Bombay's most successful lawyer, as few
did, within a few years. Once he was firmly established in the
legal profession, Jinnah formally entered politics in 1905
from the platform of the Indian National Congress.
He went to England in that year alongwith Gopal
Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915), as a member of a Congress
delegation to plead the cause of Indian self-governemnt during
the British elections. A year later, he served as Secretary to
Dadabhai Noaroji (1825-1917), the then Indian National
Congress President, which was considered a great honour for a
budding politician. Here, at the Calcutta Congress session
(December 1906), he also made his first political
speech in support of the resolution on self-government.
Political
Career
Three years later, in January
1910, Jinnah was elected to the
newly-constituted Imperial Legislative Council. All through
his parliamentary career, which spanned some four decades, he
was probably the most powerful voice in the cause of Indian
freedom and Indian rights. Jinnah, who was also the first
Indian to pilot a private member's Bill through the Council,
soon became a leader of a group inside the legislature.
Mr. Montagu (1879-1924), Secretary of
State for India, at the close of the First World War,
considered Jinnah "perfect mannered, impressive-looking, armed
to the teeth with dialecties..."Jinnah, he felt, "is a
very clever man, and it is, of course, an outrage that such a
man should have no chance of running the affairs of his own
country."
For about three decades since his entry into
politics in 1906, Jinnah passionately believed in and
assiduously worked for Hindu-Muslim unity. Gokhale, the
foremost Hindu leader before Gandhi, had once said of him,
"He has the true stuff in him and that freedom from all
sectarian prejudice which will make him the best ambassador of
Hindu-Muslim Unity: And, to be sure, he did become the
architect of Hindu-Muslim Unity: he was responsible for the
Congress-League Pact of 1916, known popularly as Lucknow Pact-
the only pact ever signed between the two political
organisations, the Congress and the All-India Muslim League,
representing, as they did, the two major communities in the
subcontinent."
The Congress-League scheme embodied in this pact
was to become the basis for the Montagu-Chemlsford Reforms,
also known as the Act of 1919. In retrospect, the
Lucknow Pact represented a milestone in the evolution of
Indian politics. For one thing, it conceded Muslims the right
to separate electorate, reservation of seats in the
legislatures and weightage in representation both at the
Centre and the minority provinces. Thus, their retention was
ensured in the next phase of reforms.
For another, it represented a tacit recognition
of the All-India Muslim League as the representative
organisation of the Muslims, thus strengthening the trend
towards Muslim individuality in Indian politics. And to Jinnah
goes the credit for all this. Thus, by 1917, Jinnah
came to be recognised among both Hindus and Muslims as one of
India's most outstanding political leaders. Not only was he
prominent in the Congress and the Imperial Legislative
Council, he was also the President of the All-India Muslim and
that of lthe Bombay Branch of the Home Rule League. More
important, because of his key-role in the Congress-League
entente at Lucknow, he was hailed as the ambassador, as well
as the embodiment, of Hindu-Muslim unity.
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Constitutional Struggle
In subsequent years, however, he felt dismayed
at the injection of violence into politics. Since Jinnah stood
for "ordered progress", moderation, gradualism and
constitutionalism, he felt that political terrorism was not
the pathway to national liberation but, the dark alley to
disaster and destruction. Hence, the constitutionalist Jinnah
could not possibly, countenance Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's
novel methods of Satyagrah (civil disobedience) and the triple
boycott of government-aided schools and colleges, courts and
councils and British textiles. Earlier, in October
1920, when Gandhi, having been elected President of the
Home Rule League, sought to change its constitution as well as
its nomenclature, Jinnah had resigned from the Home Rule
League, saying: "Your extreme programme has for the moment
struck the imagination mostly of the inexperienced youth and
the ignorant and the illiterate. All this means
disorganisation and choas". Jinnah did not believe that ends
justified the means.
In the ever-growing
frustration among the masses caused by colonial rule, there
was ample cause for extremism. But, Gandhi's doctrine of
non-cooperation, Jinnah felt, even as Rabindranath Tagore
(1861-1941) did also feel, was at best one of negation
and despair: it might lead to the building up of resentment,
but nothing constructive. Hence, he opposed tooth and nail the
tactics adopted by Gandhi to exploit the Khilafat and wrongful
tactics in the Punjab in the early twenties. On the eve of its
adoption of the Gandhian programme, Jinnah warned the Nagpur
Congress Session (1920): "you are making a
declaration (of Swaraj within a year) and committing the
Indian National Congress to a programme, which you will not be
able to carry out". He felt that there was no short-cut to
independence and that Gandhi's extra-constitutional methods
could only lead to political terrorism, lawlessness and chaos,
without bringing India nearer to the threshold of freedom.
The future course of events was not only to
confirm Jinnah's worst fears, but also to prove him right.
Although Jinnah left the Congress soon thereafter, he
continued his efforts towards bringing about a Hindu-Muslim
entente, which he rightly considered "the most vital
condition of Swaraj".
However, because of the deep distrust between
the two communities as evidenced by the country-wide communal
riots, and because the Hindus failed to meet the genuine
demands of the Muslims, his efforts came to naught. One such
effort was the formulation of the Delhi Muslim Proposals in
March, 1927. In order to bridge Hindu-Muslim
differences on the constitutional plan, these proposals even
waived the Muslim right to separate electorate, the most basic
Muslim demand since 1906, which though recognised by
the congress in the Lucknow Pact, had again become a source of
friction between the two communities. surprisingly though, the
Nehru Report (1928), which represented the
Congress-sponsored proposals for the future constitution of
India, negated the minimum Muslim demands embodied in the
Delhi Muslim Proposals.
In vain did Jinnah argue at the National
convention (1928): "What we want is that Hindus and
Mussalmans should march together until our object is
achieved...These two communities have got to be reconciled and
united and made to feel that their interests are common".
The Convention's blank refusal to accept Muslim demands
represented the most devastating setback to Jinnah's life-long
efforts to bring about Hindu-Muslim unity, it meant "the
last straw" for the Muslims, and "the parting of the
ways" for him, as he confessed to a Parsee friend at that
time.
Jinnah's disillusionment at the course of
politics in the subcontinent prompted him to migrate and
settle down in London in the early thirties. He was, however,
to return to India in 1934, at the pleadings of his
co-religionists, and assume their leadership. But, the Muslims
presented a sad spectacle at that time. They were a mass of
disgruntled and demoralised men and women, politically
disorganised and destitute of a clear-cut political
programme.
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Reorganization of
Muslim League
Thus, the task that awaited Jinnah was anything
but easy. The Muslim League was dormant: primary branches it
had none; even its provincial organizations were, for the most
part, ineffective and only nominally under the control of the
central organization. Nor did the central body have any
coherent policy of its own till the Bombay session
(1936), which Jinnah organized. To make matters worse,
the provincial scene presented a sort of a jigsaw puzzle: in
the Punjab, Bengal, Sindh, the North West Frontier, Assam,
Bihar and the United Provinces, various Muslim leaders had set
up their own provincial parties to serve their personal ends.
Extremely frustrating as the situation was, the only
consultation Jinnah had at this juncture was in Allama
Iqbal (1877-1938), the poet-philosopher, who
stood steadfast by him and helped to charter the course of
Indian politics from behind the scene.
Undismayed by this bleak situation, Jinnah
devoted himself with singleness of purpose to organizing the
Muslims on one platform. He embarked upon country-wide tours.
He pleaded with provincial Muslim leaders to sink their
differences and make common cause with the League. He exhorted
the Muslim masses to organize themselves and join the League.
He gave coherence and direction to Muslim sentiments on the
Government of India Act, 1935. He advocated that the
Federal Scheme should be scrapped as it was subversive of
India's cherished goal of complete responsible Government,
while the provincial scheme, which conceded provincial
autonomy for the first time, should be worked for what it was
worth, despite its certain objectionable features. He also
formulated a viable League manifesto for the election
scheduled for early 1937. He was, it seemed, struggling
against time to make Muslim India a power to be reckoned
with.
Despite all the
manifold odds stacked against it, the Muslim League won some
108 (about 23 per cent) seats out of a total of 485 Muslim
seats in the various legislature. Though not very impressive
in itself, the League's partial success assumed added
significance in view of the fact that the League won the
largest number of Muslim seats and that it was the only
all-India party of the Muslims in the country. Thus, the
elections represented the first milestone on the long road to
putting Muslim India on the map of the subcontinent. Congress
in Power With the year 1937 opened the most mementoes
decade in modern Indian history. In that year came into force
the provincial part of the Government of India Act, 1935,
granting autonomy to Indians for the first time, in the
provinces.
The Congress, having become the dominant party
in Indian politics, came to power in seven provinces
exclusively, spurning the League's offer of cooperation,
turning its back finally on the coalition idea and excluding
Muslims as a political entity from the portals of power. In
that year, also, the Muslim League, under Jinnah's dynamic
leadership, was reorganized de novo, transformed into a mass
organization, and made the spokesman of Indian Muslims as
never before. Above all, in that momentous year were initiated
certain trends in Indian politics, the crystallization of
which in subsequent years made the partition of the
subcontinent inevitable.
The practical manifestation of the policy of the
Congress which took office in July, 1937, in seven out
of eleven provinces, convinced Muslims that, in the Congress
scheme of things, they could live only on sufferance of Hindus
and as "second class" citizens. The Congress provincial
governments, it may be remembered, had embarked upon a policy
and launched a PROGRAMME in which Muslims felt that their
religion, language and culture were not safe. This blatantly
aggressive Congress policy was seized upon by Jinnah to awaken
the Muslims to a new consciousness, organize them on all-India
platform, and make them a power to be reckoned with. He also
gave coherence, direction and articulation to their innermost,
yet vague, urges and aspirations. Above all, the filled them
with his indomitable will, his own unflinching faith in their
destiny.
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The New
Awakening
As a result of Jinnah's ceaseless efforts, the
Muslims awakened from what Professor Baker calls (their)
"unreflective silence" (in which they had so
complacently basked for long decades), and to "the
spiritual essence of nationality" that had existed among
them for a pretty long time. Roused by the impact of
successive Congress hammerings, the Muslims, as Ambedkar
(principal author of independent India's Constitution) says,
"searched their social consciousness in a desperate attempt
to find coherent and meaningful articulation to their
cherished yearnings. To their great relief, they discovered
that their sentiments of nationality had flamed into
nationalism". In addition, not only had they developed"
the will to live as a "nation", had also endowed them
with a territory which they could occupy and make a State as
well as a cultural home for the newly discovered nation.
These two pre-requisites, as laid down by Renan,
provided the Muslims with the intellectual justification for
claiming a distinct nationalism (apart from Indian or Hindu
nationalism) for themselves. So that when, after their long
pause, the Muslims gave expression to their innermost
yearnings, these turned out to be in favor of a separate
Muslim nationhood and of a separate Muslim state.
Demand for
Pakistan - "We are a nation"
"We are a nation", they claimed in the
ever eloquent words of the Quaid-i-Azam.
"We are a nation with our own distinctive
culture and civilization, language and literature, art and
architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of values and
proportion, legal laws and moral code, customs and calendar,
history and tradition, aptitudes 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".
The formulation of the Muslim demand for
Pakistan in 1940 had a tremendous impact on the nature and
course of Indian politics. On the one hand, it shattered for
ever the Hindu dreams of a pseudo-Indian, in fact, Hindu
empire on British exit from India: on the other, it heralded
an era of Islamic renaissance and creativity in which the
Indian Muslims were to be active participants. The Hindu
reaction was quick, bitter, malicious.
Equally hostile were the British to the Muslim
demand, their hostility having stemmed from their belief that
the unity of India was their main achievement and their
foremost contribution. The irony was that both the Hindus and
the British had not anticipated the astonishingly tremendous
response that the Pakistan demand had elicited from the Muslim
masses. Above all, they failed to realize how a hundred
million people had suddenly become supremely conscious of
their distinct nationhood and their high destiny.
In channelling the course of Muslim politics
towards Pakistan, no less than in directing it towards its
consummation in the establishment of Pakistan in 1947,
non played a more decisive role than did Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad
Ali Jinnah. It was his powerful advocacy of the case of
Pakistan and his remarkable strategy in the delicate
negotiations, that followed the formulation of the Pakistan
demand, particularly in the post-war period, that made
Pakistan inevitable.
Cripps
Scheme
While the British
reaction to the Pakistan demand came in the form of the Cripps
offer of April, 1942, which conceded the principle of
self-determination to provinces on a territorial basis, the
Rajaji Formula (called after the eminent Congress leader
C.Rajagopalacharia, which became the basis of prolonged
Jinnah-Gandhi talks in September, 1944), represented
the Congress alternative to Pakistan.
The Cripps offer was rejected because it did not
concede the Muslim demand the whole way, while the Rajaji
Formula was found unacceptable since it offered a "moth-eaten,
mutilated" Pakistan and the too appended with a plethora of
pre-conditions which made its emergence in any shape remote,
if not altogether impossible. Cabinet Mission
The most delicate as well as the most tortuous negotiations,
however, took place during 1946-47, after the elections which
showed that the country was sharply and somewhat evenly
divided between two parties- the Congress and the League- and
that the central issue in Indian politics was Pakistan.
These negotiations began with the arrival, in
March 1946, of a three-member British Cabinet Mission.
The crucial task with which the Cabinet Mission was entrusted
was that of devising in consultation with the various
political parties, a constitution-making machinery, and of
setting up a popular interim government. But, because the
Congress-League gulf could not be bridged, despite the
Mission's (and the Viceroy's) prolonged efforts, the Mission
had to make its own proposals in May 1946.
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Cabinet Mission
Plan
These proposals stipulated a limited centre,
supreme only in foreign affairs, defense and communications
and three autonomous groups of provinces. Two of these groups
were to have Muslim majorities in the north-west and the
north-east of the subcontinent, while the third one,
comprising the Indian mainland, was to have a Hindu majority.
A consummate statesman that he was, Jinnah saw his chance. He
interpreted the clauses relating to a limited centre and the
grouping 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.
Tragically though, the League's acceptance was
put down to its supposed weakness and the Congress put up a
posture of defiance, designed to swamp the League into
submitting to its dictates and its interpretations of the
plan. Faced thus, what alternative had Jinnah and the League
but to rescind their earlier acceptance, reiterate and
reaffirm their original stance, and decide to launch direct
action (if need be) to wrest Pakistan. The way Jinnah
maneuvered to turn the tide of events at a time when all
seemed lost indicated, above all, his masterly grasp of the
situation and his adeptness at making strategic and tactical
moves.
Partition Plan By the close of
1946, the communal riots had flared up to
murderous heights, engulfing almost the entire subcontinent.
The two peoples, it seemed, were engaged in a fight to the
finish. The time for a peaceful transfer of power was fast
running out. Realizing the gravity of the situation. His
Majesty's Government sent down to India a new Viceroy- Lord
Mountbatten. His protracted negotiations with the various
political leaders resulted in 3 June (1947)
Plan by which the British decided to partition the
subcontinent, and hand over power to two successor States on
15 August, 1947. The plan was duly accepted
by the three Indian parties to the dispute- the Congress the
League and the Akali Dal (representing the Sikhs).
Leader of a
Free Nation
In recognition of his
singular contribution, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah was
nominated by the Muslim League as the Governor-General
of Pakistan, while the Congress appointed Mountbatten
as India's first Governor-General. Pakistan, it has been truly
said, was born in virtual chaos.
Indeed, few nations in the world have started on
their career with less resources and in more treacherous
circumstances. The new nation did not inherit a central
government, a capital, an administrative core, or an organized
defense force. Its social and administrative resources were
poor; there was little equipment and still less statistics.
The Punjab holocaust had left vast areas in a shambles with
communications disrupted. This, along with the en masse
migration of the Hindu and Sikh business and managerial
classes, left the economy almost shattered.
The treasury was empty, India having denied
Pakistan the major share of its cash balances. On top of all
this, the still unorganized nation was called upon to feed
some eight million refugees who had fled the insecurities and
barbarities of the north Indian plains that long, hot summer.
If all this was symptomatic of Pakistan's administrative and
economic weakness, the Indian annexation, through military
action in November 1947, of Junagadh (which had originally
acceded to Pakistan) and the Kashmir war over the State's
accession (October 1947-December 1948) exposed her
military weakness. In the circumstances, therefore, it was
nothing short of a miracle that Pakistan survived at all. That
it survived and forged ahead was mainly due to one
man-Mohammad Ali Jinnah. The nation desperately needed in the
person of a charismatic leader at that critical juncture in
the nation's history, and he fulfilled that need profoundly.
After all, he was more than a mere Governor-General: he was
the Quaid-i-Azam who had brought the State into being.
In the ultimate analysis, his very presence at
the helm of affairs was responsible for enabling the newly
born nation to overcome the terrible crisis on the morrow of
its cataclysmic birth. He mustered up the immense prestige and
the unquestioning loyalty he commanded among the people to
energize them, to raise their morale, land directed the
profound feelings of patriotism that the freedom had
generated, along constructive channels. Though tired and in
poor health, Jinnah yet carried the heaviest part of the
burden in that first crucial year. He laid down the policies
of the new state, called attention to the immediate problems
confronting the nation and told the members of the Constituent
Assembly, the civil servants and the Armed Forces what to do
and what the nation expected of them.
He saw to it that law
and order was maintained at all costs, despite the provocation
that the large-scale riots in north India had provided. He
moved from Karachi to Lahore for a while and supervised the immediate refugee problem in
the Punjab. In a time of fierce excitement, he remained sober,
cool and steady. He advised his excited audience in Lahore to
concentrate on helping the refugees, to avoid retaliation,
exercise restraint and protect the minorities. He assured the
minorities of a fair deal, assuaged their inured sentiments,
and gave them hope and comfort. He toured the various
provinces, attended to their particular problems and instilled
in the people a sense of belonging.
He reversed the British policy in the North-West
Frontier and ordered the withdrawal of the
troops from the tribal territory of Waziristan,
thereby making the Pathans feel themselves an integral part of
Pakistan's body-politics. He created a new Ministry of States
and Frontier Regions, and assumed responsibility for ushering
in a new era in Balochistan. He settled the controversial
question of the states of Karachi, secured the accession of
States, especially of Kalat which seemed problematical and
carried on negotiations with Lord Mountbatten for the
settlement of the Kashmir Issue.
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The Quaid's Last Message
It was, therefore, with a sense of supreme
satisfaction at the fulfillment of his mission that Jinnah
told the nation in his last message on 14 August,
1948:
"The foundations of your State have been
laid and it is now for you to build and build as quickly and
as well as you can". In accomplishing the task he had
taken upon himself on the morrow of Pakistan's birth, Jinnah
had worked himself to death, but he had, to quote richard
Symons, "contributed more than any other man to
Pakistan's survivial".
He died on 11 September, 1948. How true
was Lord Pethick Lawrence, the former Secretary of State for
India, when he said, "Gandhi died by the hands of an
assassin; Jinnah died by his devotion to Pakistan".
A man such as Jinnah, who had fought for the
inherent rights of his people all through his life and who had
taken up the somewhat unconventional and the largely
misinterpreted cause of Pakistan, was bound to generate
violent opposition and excite implacable hostility and was
likely to be largely misunderstood. But what is most
remarkable about Jinnah is that he was the recipient of some
of the greatest tributes paid to any one in modern times, some
of them even from those who held a diametrically opposed
viewpoint.
Recognition by
various personalities
The Aga Khan
considered him "the greatest man he ever met", Beverley
Nichols, the author of `Verdict on India', called him
"the most important man in Asia", and Dr.
Kailashnath Katju, the West Bengal Governor in 1948,
thought of him as "an outstanding figure of this century not
only in India, but in the whole world". While Abdul Rahman
Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, called him
"one of the greatest leaders in the Muslim world", the Grand
Mufti of Palestine considered his death as a "great
loss" to the entire world of Islam.
It was, however, given to Surat Chandra Bose,
leader of the Forward Bloc wing of the Indian National
Congress, to sum up succinctly his personal and political
achievements.
"Mr Jinnah", he said on his death in 1948,
"was great as a lawyer, once great as a Congressman, great
as a leader of Muslims, great as a world politician and
diplomat, and greatest of all as a man of action, By Mr.
Jinnah's passing away, the world has lost one of the
greatest statesmen and Pakistan its life-giver, philosopher
and guide".
Such was Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali
Jinnah, the man and his mission, such the range of
his accomplishments and achievements.
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