Jinnah and Creation of Pakistan: My Thoughts
Acknowledgement: Immensely benefited from a series of interviews in YouTube by Professor Ishtiaq Ahmed (University of Stockholm, Sweden) and his publications, Jinnah: His Successes, Failures and Role in History (2020) and Pakistan: The Garrison State (2013).
Jinnah was often considered as an arrogant and inflexible. He had an attitude of ‘my way or highway.’ He was a brilliant lawyer who knew how to win a case. To him, achieving a goal by all means was paramount. His speeches and statements were within the context of the need of the hour and the audiences, which at times would convey contradictory messages. For example, in his August 11, 1947 speech (often quoted and basis of Ayesha Jalal’s book, The Sole Spokesman, 1985) Jinnah stated Pakistan to be a secular state in which every citizen will be free to follow his own religion; but in August 13 statement, he emphasized the essence of Pakistan is to be an Islamic state (after all that was the linchpin of his Two-nation theory and the basis of partitioning of Indian dominion into two countries). Jinnah was not a scholar or a politician like Gandhi and Nehru as he never wrote or published anything in his life. All we know about him is through his speeches and statements.
Jinnah became politically disillusioned with the arrival of Gandhi in India in 1915 as he began to realize that the leadership of Congress was gradually shifting towards Gandhi and Nehru. Earlier, Jinnah was one of the most prominent leaders of the Congress. But now a partition of India as a separate country for Muslims had became an ultimate lure for him for which he started working relentlessly with a sole objective of becoming its leader and founder.
After a massive defeat of Muslim League in 1936 election and Nehru’s retreat from the original understanding of a possible partnership of Congress and Muslim League to form a government, Jinnah started carving a separate path for himself and the creation of Pakistan became a legal challenge and obsession for him for which he honed a Two-nations theory. Earlier, he would firmly object using religion in political and state affairs but now he changed his stance. He intelligently figured out that the Islam could be the most powerful and persuasive instrument to bring the Indian Muslims under one umbrella. And he started promoting “Islam” as a fundamental element for the creation of a new country. He wanted Pakistan at any cost, even letting three crore Muslims who were to be left in India after partition “massacred” (he used such extreme words on repeated occasions). Jinnah was not “bluffing” Britain with the concept of Pakistan as is often portrayed. He started demanding Pakistan as a separate country for Muslims on numerous occasions after 1940.
Britain after all was the one to make a final decision which realized that Nehru’s perception of an independent India was more in line with socialist Soviet framework. Jinnah, on the other hand, keenly wanted to have Pakistan on a British template. Most importantly, Britain foresaw that Pakistan could become a buffer state to prevent Soviet’s encroachment from the north and an Islamic arc to safeguard future supply of oil from the western front.
I tend to believe that after the partition the Indian leaders were somewhat sympathetic or even allegedly appeasing towards the Muslims who remained in India. They realized that the Muslims were passing through very difficult times. First, they had lost many privileges of their 800 years rule in India. Second, their numbers had plunged from 25% (before partition) to only 10%. Third, they had become a weaker and vulnerable minority as the resourceful, better educated, skilled and professionals had mostly migrated to Pakistan. Those left behind were mostly farmers, workers, un- or semi-skilled laborers, petty shop keepers and small businessmen.
With a thumping majority of Narender Modi-BJP-RSS-Hindutva government in last two elections, the game completely changed for the Indian Muslims. According to government’s own and independent reports, socio-economic and political status of Muslims which was already worsening, started exacerbating dramatically after Modi. In contrast, Dalits’ positions were significantly improving after implementation of Mandal commission report in 1990.
Modi was already notorious internationally for being an accomplice of Gujrat riots of 1992 as a Chief Minister for which his US visit was banned in 1995. Just within last two years, Modi’s government and his affiliates took some punitive measures against Indian Muslims by curtailing status of Jammu & Kashmir by Article 370, excluding persecuted Muslims from seeking refugee & legal status in India under CAA, NRC rules solely based on religion in a secular country, labelling Tablighi as “jihadi corona”, declaring inter-religious marriage as “love Jihad” and incidence of Delhi riots where 72% killed were Muslims in a population of 13% — at the same time blaming Muslims for inciting the riot.
At the end: Gandhi and Nehru perhaps did not want a partition of India. Britain wanted a division to counter a possible future incursion from Soviets and a gateway to supervise oil supply from the Middle East. For Jinnah, creation of Pakistan had become one of the biggest legal challenges of his career. Further, it was to provide him an opportunity to be known as a founder of a new nation and its sole leader as the Governor General.
Over many years of my discourse and negative impression of Jinnah, I must admit that the creation of Pakistan (that includes Bangladesh too) was inadvertently a precious gift to the Muslims from him after seeing how Indian Muslims are being treated under Modi-BJP India today, despite of numerous negative coverage and reports of human right violations in reputable world media and western agencies. India is now showing its true colour of extreme xenophobia and bigotry against Muslims (branding them as termites and traitors by Shah, home minister), while the whole world is watching 24/7. Even after 300 years of Moghul rule, it is going through a kind of PTSD (unique in the field of psychology by considering oneself victim after many generations passed). And retaliating on a minority which is only 14.5% and highly vulnerable, poor and weak without much influence on India’s politics and economy.
One could always argue that Muslims would have been in a bigger majority in an undivided India. May be true. But in a joint Hindu and Muslim population of undivided India, Muslims would have been roughly 34% and Hindus 66% even today. Muslims would still have had hard time in getting any mandate approved unless certified by a majority Hindus, beside unending confrontation and hostility. To avoid plight of humanity after partition on both sides of border and during migration, a drastic solution was needed during and pre-1947 era, perhaps a forced migration of all Muslims from India to Pakistan and all Hindus from Pakistan to India.
About Mahmood Iqbal
An Economist (PhD). Former Principal Economist, The Conference Board of Canada. A Retired Adjunct Professor, Carleton University, Canada. The author of “No PhDs Please: This is Canada.” Besides doing research on serious economic and policy issues for the last 25 years, like to write journalistic pieces on subjects of interest. An amateur Photographer. … Blog appears to be appropriate venue to post my wondering thoughts without any peer pressure and academic review process.
Originally published at http://ipotpourri.wordpress.com on April 28, 2021.
