Liaqat Ali Khan with Mahomed Ali Jinnah
By Yasser Latif Hamdani
It is amazing that given the confusion created about the word “secular” in Pakistan by both the right and the left has so thoroughly disoriented the thought process of our intelligentisia, especially that which is christened by the state, that it has failed to capitalize on the fact that Pakistan’s founding father was not just unambiguously secular but was the most secular statesman in the history of the greater Muslim world, even more so than the great Kemal Ataturk, who is justifiably hailed as the father of secularism in the Muslim world. Even Kemal Ataturk through an amendment to the constitution of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 instituted Islam as the state religion [1], which remained in the constitution till 1928 when Ataturk had it removed. Jinnah never instituted a state religion and blocked every resolution or move whether in the Pakistani Constituent Assembly or the All India Muslim League Central Working Committee [2].
The knee jerk reaction to this statement by our intelligentsia is to quote the several statements where Jinnah appealed to Islamic principles, Islamic social justice, Islamic democracy etc. Pervez Hoodbhoy de-constructed this myth of Jinnah’s references to Islam very well in his piece “Jinnah and the Islamic State” wherein he proved quite convincingly that Jinnah’s references to Islam were ambiguous and certainly no indicator that he wanted an Islamic state per se. What Hoodbhoy didn’t do was go far enough and claim the obvious i.e. the absence of a religious state means a secular state. Instead Hoodbhoy made much of a fact that Jinnah did not use the word “secular” publicly atleast. This ofcourse makes no sense when one considers that the US Constitution does not mention the word secular but is the most secular constitution in the world.
What makes a constitution secular? The legal definition of a secular constitution is any constitution which does not have a state religion. Jinnah – for all his references to Islamic principles- never allowed for any expression of the same in any resolution or legislative act. One gentleman arguing with me on Jinnah’s secularism made a rather ironic and contradictory statement that the Government of India Act 1935 did not envisage an Islamic state so Jinnah’s decision to make a Hindu the first law minister of Pakistan did not constitute an indication of a secular state. Ofcourse this makes no sense. The GOIA 1935 did not have a state religion and therefore was a secular constitution. Yet Jinnah went on to describe the government constituted under the GOIA 1935 an “Islamic Democracy”. He was doing so because he knew – as Kemal Ataturk had known before him – that Islam is such a strong part of the Muslim mindset that any attempt at modernity or democracy that does not justify itself in Islamic terms is bound to fail.
On 11th August 1947, Jinnah stood up to speak as the first president of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, it was after Kiran Shankar Roy, a Congress stalwart and a member of the PCA from Bengal, had spoken. Roy had – after congratulating Jinnah asked him to make a clear pronouncement on whether Pakistan would be a secular or an Islamic state. Jinnah in response gave what was the clearest pronouncement of secularism by any leader or statesman in all of history. After observing that the first responsibility of any state was to maintain law and order and then spend some time speaking about the curse of blackmarketing which was rampant (leading to Bengal famine in the mid 1940s), Jinnah spoke about partition as an event on which the history was yet to pass its verdict. He spoke of the angularities of majority and minority and the need to bury these pointing out that a “India – a nation of 400 million” could not have been kept under subjection of foreign rule had it not been for these divisions. He emphasized the need to begin a anew and spoke of completely religious freedom declaring that a citizen’s religion was no business of the state. He then recounted the experience of Catholics and Protestants in Great Britain historically.
As you know, history shows that in England, conditions, some time ago, were much worse than those prevailing in India today. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants persecuted each other. Even now there are some States in existence where there are discriminations made and bars imposed against a particular class. Thank God, we are not starting in those days. We are starting in the days where there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State. The people of England in course of time had to face the realities of the situation and had to discharge the responsibilities and burdens placed upon them by the government of their country and they went through that fire step by step. Today, you might say with justice that Roman Catholics and Protestants do not exist; what exists now is that every man is a citizen, an equal citizen of Great Britain and they are all members of the Nation. Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State. [3]
Jinnah had throughout the Pakistan Movement tried to keep a dignified distance from the votaries of a theocracy. Evidence of his close colleague and friend Raja of Mahmudabad is particularly enlightening.
The Raja started off by saying that since the Lahore resolution had been passed earlier that year, if and when Pakistan was formed, it was undoubtedly to be an Islamic State with the Sunna and Shariah as its bedrock. The Quaid’s face went red and he turned to ask Raja whether he had taken leave of his senses. Mr. Jinnah added: `Did you realize that there are over seventy sects and differences of opinion regarding the Islamic faith, and if what the Raja was suggesting was to be followed, the consequences would be a struggle of religious opinion from the very inception of the State leading to its very dissolution. Mr. Jinnah banged his hands on the table and said: We shall not be an Islamic State but a Liberal Democratic Muslim State.[4]
Leading to its very dissolution ! We see some of the signs of that dissolution right now – consequences of our inability to follow Jinnah’s advice. This is also indicative of the reality of Muslim unity. The very reason Jinnah – the westernized barrister- could command the overwhelming support of the Muslims of different shades of opinion is because he was non-religious.
The claim that Jinnah was secular is based on :
1. His record as the “Ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity” and as a “legislator”.
For example in 1912, Jinnah alienated many of his Muslim supporters by giving his wholehearted support to the Special Marriage Amendment Bill, which sought to provide mixed religion marriages legal protection. He argued that the bill would provide equality but he was opposed by many members on the grounds that the bill contravened the Koran. Undaunted Jinnah asked the law member who had opposed the bill if he “would deny that there is a certain class of educated and enlightened people who rightly think that a gravest injustice is done to them as long as liberty of conscience is held from them”.
This was a position through out his life believe it or not. Rubbishing the idea that Muslim sensibilities would be hurt, he asked:
“Is this the first time in the history of legislation in this country that this Council has been called upon to override Musalman Law or modify it to suit the time? The Council has over ridden and modified the Musalman law in many respects.”[5]
In 1919 Jinnah gave evidence before the Joint Select Committee appointed by Parliament on the Government of India Reform Bill. The following views were expressed by him in answer to questions put by members of the Committee on the Hindu-Muslim question.
EXAMINED BY MAJOR ORMSBY-GORE.Q. 3806.—You appear on behalf of the Moslem League— that is, on behalf of the only widely extended Mohammedan organisation in India ?—Yes.
Q. 3807.—I was very much struck by the fact that neither in your answers to the questions nor in your opening speech this morning did you make any reference to the special interest of the Mohammedans in India: is that because you did not wish to say anything ?—No, but because I take it the Southborough Committee have accepted that, and I left it to the members of the Committee to put any questions they wanted to. I took a very prominent part in the settlement of Lucknow. I was representing the Musalmans on that occasion.
Q. 3809.—On behalf of the All-India Moslem League, you ask this Committee to reject the proposal of the Government of India?—I am authorised to say that—to ask you to reject the proposal of the Government of India with regard to Bengal [i.e., to give the Bengal Muslims more representation than was given them by the Lucknow Pact].
Q. 3810.—You said you spoke from the point of view of India. You speak really as an Indian Nationalist ?—1 do.
Q. 3811.—Holding that view, do you contemplate the early disappearance of separate communal representation of the Mohammedan community ?—I think so.
Q. 3812.—That is to say, at the earliest possible moment you wish to do away in political life with any distinction between Mohammedans and Hindus ?—Yes. Nothing will please me more than when that day comes.
Q. 3813—You do not think it is true to say that the Mohammedans of India have many special political interests not merely in India but outside India, which they are always particularly anxious to press as a distinct Mohammedan community? —There are two things. In India the Mohammedans have very few things really which you can call matters of special interest for them—I mean secular things.
Q. 3814.—I am only referring to them, of course.—And therefore that is why I really hope and expect that the day is not very far distant when these separate electorates will disappear.
Q. 3815.—It is true, at the same time, that the Mohammedans in India take a special interest in the foreign policy of the Government of India ?—They do; a very.—No, because what you propose to do is to frame very keen interest and the large majority of them hold very strong sentiments and very strong views. [[There seems to be a confusion in the text of the reply. –FWP]]
Q. 3816.—Is that one of the reasons why you, speaking on behalf of the Mohammedan community, are so anxious to get the Government of India more responsible to an electorate ?—No.
Q. 3817.—Do you think it is possible, consistently with remaining in the British Empire, for India to have one foreign policy and for His Majesty, as advised by his Ministers in London, to have another ?—Let me make it clear. It is not a question of foreign policy at all. What the Moslems of India feel is that it is a very difficult position for them. Spiritually, the Sultan or the Khalif is their head.
Q. 3818.—Of one community ?—Of the Sunni sect, but that is the largest; it is in an overwhelming majority all over India. The Khalif is the only rightful custodian of the Holy Places according to our view, and nobody else has a right. What the Moslems feel very keenly is this, that the Holy Places should not be severed from the Ottoman Empire— that they should remain with the Ottoman Empire under the Sultan.
Q. 3819.—I do not want to get away from the Reform Bill on to foreign policy.—1 say it has nothing to do with foreign policy. Your point is whether in India the Muslims will adopt a certain attitude with regard to foreign policy in matters concerning Moslems all over the world.
Q. 3820.—My point is, are they seeking for some control over the Central Government in order to impress their views on foreign policy on the Government of India ?—No.
EXAMINED BY MR. BENNETT
Q. 3853.—. . . .Would it not be an advantage in the case of an occurrence of that kind [i.e., a communal riot] if the maintenance of law and order were left with the executive side of the Government ?—1 do not think so, if you ask me, but I do not want to go into unpleasant matters, as you say.
Q. 3854.—It is with no desire to bring up old troubles that I ask the question ; I would like to forget them.—If you ask me, very often these riots are based on some misunderstanding, and it is because the police have taken one side or the other, and that has enraged one side or the other. I know very well that in the Indian States you hardly ever hear of any Hindu-Mohammedan riots, and I do not mind telling the Committee, without mentioning the name, that I happened to ask one of the ruling Princes, “How do you account for this?” and he told me, “As soon as there is some trouble we have invariably traced it to the police, through the police taking one side or the other, and the only remedy we have found is that as soon as we come to know we move that police officer from that place, and there is an end of it.”
Q. 3855.—That is [a] useful piece of information, but the fact remains that these riots have been inter-racial, Hindu on the one side and Mohammedan on the other. Would it be an advantage at a time like that [that] the Minister, the representative of one community or the other, should be in charge of the maintenance of law and order ?—Certainly.
Q. 3856.—It would ?—If I thought otherwise I should be casting a reflection on myself. If I was the Minister, I would make bold to say that nothing would weigh with me except justice, and what is right.
Q. 3857.—I can understand that you would do more than justice to the other side; but even then, there is what might be called the subjective side. It is not only that there is impartiality, but there is the view which may be entertained by the public, who may harbour some feeling of suspicion?—With regard to one section or the other, you mean they would feel that an injustice was done to them, or that justice would not be done?
Q. 3858.—Yes; that is quite apart from the objective part of it.—My answer is this: That these difficulties are fast disappearing. Even recently, in the whole district of Thana, Bombay, every officer was an Indian officer from top to bottom, and I do not think there was a single Mohammedan—they were all Hindus—and I never heard any complaint. Recently that has been so. I quite agree with you that ten years ago there was that feeling what you are now suggesting to me, but it is fast disappearing.
EXAMINED BY LORD ISLINGTON
Q. 3892.—. . . .You said just now about the communal representation, I think in answer to Major Ormsby-Gore, that you hope in a very few years you would be able to extinguish communal representation, which was at present proposed to be established and is established in order that Mahommedans may have their representation with Hindus. You said you desired to see that. How soon do you think that happy state of affairs is likely to be realized?—1 can only give you certain facts: I cannot say anything more than that: I can give you this which will give you some idea: that in 1913, at the All-India Moslem League sessions at Agra, we put this matter to the lest whether separate electorates should be insisted upon or not by the Mussalmans, and we got a division, and that division is based upon Provinces; only a certain number of votes represent each Province, and the division came to 40 in favour of doing away with the separate electorate, and 80 odd—1 do not remember the exact number—were for keeping the separate electorate. That was in 1913. Since then I have had many opportunities of discussing this matter with various Mussulman leaders; and they are changing their angle of vision with regard to this matter. I cannot give you the period, but I think it cannot last very long. Perhaps the next inquiry may hear something about it.
Q. 3893.—You think at the next inquiry the Mahommedans will ask to be absorbed into the whole?—Yes, I think the next inquiry will probably hear something about it.[6]
2. Jinnah insistence on a parliamentary form of government representative of and responsible to the people regardless of religion, caste or creed and not to or by priests with a divine mission:
On 21st May, 1947, Jinnah described clearly what kind of state he envisaged in Pakistan:
The basis of the central administration of Pakistan and that of the units to be set up will be decided no doubt, by the Pakistan Constituent Assembly. But the Government of Pakistan can only be a popular representative and democratic form of Government. Its Parliament and Cabinet responsible to the Parliament will both be finally responsible to the electorate and the people in general without any distinction of caste, creed or sect, which will the final deciding factor with regard to the policy and programme of the Government that may be adopted from time to time… The minorities in Pakistan will be the citizens of Pakistan and enjoy all the rights, privileges and obligations of citizenship without any distinction of caste creed or sect. They will be treated justly and fairly. The Government will run the administration and control the legislative measures by its Parliament, and the collective conscience of the Parliament itself will be a guarantee that the minorities need not have any apprehension of any injustice being done to them. Over and above that there will be provisions for the protection and safeguard of the minorities which in my opinion must be embodied in the constitution itself. And this will leave no doubt as to the fundamental rights of the citizens, protection of religion and faith of every section, freedom of thought and protection of their cultural and social life. [7]
In an interview with Duncan Hooper he said:
Minorities DO NOT cease to be citizens. Minorities living in Pakistan or Hindustan do not cease to be citizens of their respective states by virtue of their belonging to particular faith, religion or race. I have repeatedly made it clear, especially in my opening speech to the constituent Assembley, that the minorities in Pakistan would be treated as our citizens and will enjoy all the rights as any other community. Pakistan SHALL pursue this policy and do all it can to create a sense of security and confidence in the Non-Muslim minorities of Pakistan. We do not prescribe any school boy tests for their loyalty. We shall not say to any Hindu citizen of Pakistan ‘if there was war would you shoot a Hindu?’[8]
In his address to the people of the United States of America, Jinnah said:
In any case Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic State — to be ruled by priests with a divine mission. We have many non- Muslims — Hindus, Christians, and Parsis — but they are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the same rights and privileges as any other citizens and will play their rightful part in the affairs of Pakistan.[9]
Speaking toParsi gathering in Karachi in February 1948, he said:
I assure you Pakistan means to stand by its oft repeated promises of according equal rights to all its nationals irrespective of their caste or creed. Pakistan which symbolizes the aspirations of a nation that found it self to be a minority in the Indian subcontinent cannot be UNMINDFUL of minorities within its own borders. It is a pity that the fairname of Karachi was sullied by the sudden outburst of communal frenzy last month and I can’t find words strong enough to condemn the action of those who are responsible. [10]
On 22nd March 1948, meeting with Hindu Legislators in an effort to stem their exodus to India, he said
We guarantee equal rights to all citizens of Pakistan. Hindus should in spirit and action wholeheartedly co-operate with the Government and its various branches as Pakistanis. [11]
On 23rd March 1948 meeting the ‘Scheduled Caste Federation’, he said:
We stand by our declarations that members of every community will be treated as citizens of Pakistan with equal rights and privileges and obligations and that Minorities will be safeguarded and protected.[12]
Speaking to Quetta Parsis in June 1948, he said:
Although you have not struck the note of your needs and requirements as a community but it is the policy of my Government and myself that every member of every community irrespective of caste color, creed or race shall be fully protected with regard to his life, property and honor. I reiterate to you that you like all minorities will be treated as equal citizens with your rights and obligations provided you are loyal to Pakistan. [13]
3. The fact that even those statements where Jinnah appealed to Islamic principles or Islam itself, he did so to drive home that democracy, equality of citizenship, communal harmony were all compatible with Islam:
It has become fashionable for both Jinnah’s Islampasand latter day supporters and his detractors to selectively quote Jinnah’s references to Islam. One favorite amongst our Islamists and Jinnah-haters alike is the selective quote of Jinnah’s speech at Sindh Bar on the occasion of Eid Miladun Nabi i.e. Birthday of the Prophet. It is usually quoted as :
“Why this feeling of nervousness that the future constitution of Pakistan is going to be in conflict with Shariat Laws? Islamic principles today are as applicable to life as they were 1,300 years ago.”
“Islam is not only a set of rituals, traditions and spiritual doctrines. Islam is also a code for every Muslim, which regulates his life and conduct in even politics and economics and the like.”
This shows the bankruptcy of those who are quoting it. The missing parts are :
Islam and its idealism have taught us democracy. Islam has taught Equality, Justice and fairplay to everybody. What reason is there for anyone to fear. Democracy, equality, freedom on the highest sense of integrity and on the basis of fairplay and justice for everyone. Let us make the constitution of Pakistan. We will make it and we will show it to the world [14]
So Jinnah speaking on a religious occasion used that occasion to drive home the point that we should be a democratic and egalitarian state. How is that non-secular? Whenever Jinnah spoke of “Islamic principles” he qualified the statement with “democracy”, “equality”, “fairplay”, “brotherhood of man” and “social justice”.
Oddly enough some people have made a big deal about Jinnah’s letter to Pir of Manki Sharif. The Pir had asked Jinnah if lives of Muslims shall be subject to Shariat? Scholars like Ishtiaq Ahmed have deliberately distorted the facts in issue when they claimed that Jinnah agreed to this demand, even if tactically as a political move. What Jinnah had promised was that affairs of the Muslim community would be subject to Shariat i.e. the Muslim personal law. No where did Jinnah promise to make Shariat the civil and criminal law of Pakistan. Shariat in British India referred to Personal Law. It is this law that is still in force in India.
Section 2 of the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act of 1937 of India reads:
2. Application of Personal Law of Muslims.- Notwithstanding any customs or usage to the contrary, in all questions (save questions relating to agricultural land) regarding intestate succession, special property of females, including personal property inherited or obtained under contract or gift or any other provision of Personal law, marriage, dissolution of marriage, including talaq, ila, zihar, lian, khula and mubaraat, maintenance, dower, guardiaship, gifts, trusts and trust properties, and wakfs (other than chartities and charitable institutions and charitable and religious endowments) the rule of decision in case where the parties are Muslims shall be the Muslim Personal Law (Shariat). [15]
This is the law in secular India today. Muslims of India are governed by Shariat in their affairs as a community. Does it affect Indian secularism in anyway? Communal Personal laws are an accepted part of English Jurisprudence. So it does not quite follow that Mr. Jinnah was referring to anything but this when he promised Pir of Manki Sharif that the affairs of Muslim community (not nation interestingly) shall be run by Shariat in Pakistan and that no Muslim would be forced to accept any unIslamic law, which implies – for those who use this double-edged sword to prove the impossible- that there was an element of choice that a Muslim may accept an unIslamic law out of his or her free will. This would obviously make it consistent with Jinnah’s life long support to mixed marriages bill.
Jinnah was secular despite his references to Islam and Islamic principles -few and far between-, because he believed in a non-religious polity based on popular will and because he was a dogged opponent of any discrimination or religious bars whatsoever. To him the state and the citizen were bound in a social contract whereby the state was bound to the principle of complete impartiality in dealing with its subjects. There was to be n0 difference whatsoever between citizens of the state on any distinguishing basis. This was Jinnah’s vision for Pakistan. This was a consistently secular vision.
————-
1. P. 394, Andrew Mango Ataturk , Woodstock and New York 1999
2. For example see Jinnah’s speech at the Delhi Session of the Muslim League of 1943 after Dr. A H Kazi tried to introduce a resolution committing Pakistan to Khilafat-e-Rashda
4. http://www.dawn.com/events/pml/review38.htm
5. p. 21, Ian Bryant Wells, Ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity, Permanent Black New Delhi
7. p.845, Zaidi, Z.H. (ed) (1993) Jinnah Papers: Prelude to Pakistan, Vol. I Part I. Lahore: Quaid-i-Azam Papers Project
8. p. 61, Jinnah Speeches and Statements 1947-1948, Oxford 1997
9. p. 125 Ibid
10. p.102-103 Ibid
11. p. 153 Ibid
12. p. 154 Ibid
13. p. 223 Ibid
14. p. 98 Ibid
Pak Tea House 
True, Jinnah may not have used the word “Secular” but if we were to objectively render his 11th August 1947 description of Pakistan, in a single word, it most certainly would be “Secular”. Assuming, if he had explicitly used the single-word term “Secular” – only to be followed by the two-word term “Objectives Resolution” – the country would still have landed in the same mess as today. The same two-word factor also led to the evaporation of Jinnah’s pro-minority legacy from the national policy.
A “Liberal Democratic Muslim state”, Jinnah says. Liberal, yes. Democratic, yes.
But ALSO Muslim.
Note his relative secularism, compared to the hard Islamists.
But also note his soft Islamism.
No Hindu politician who talks of a Liberal Democratic Hindu state would be taken for a secularist as the term is usually understood.
But I hasten to add YLH has done useful work here and Jinnah WAS secular, by MUSLIM standards.
“Jinnah WAS secular, by MUSLIM standards.”
There was a time ofcourse when Jinnah was secular by Indian standards….
Then ofcourse a Mahatma insisted he was a Muslim…
So yes… Jinnah was limited by his Muslim constituency in more ways than one.
YLH
Jinnah was limited by his Muslim constituency. It is the biggest truth about the man, very likely.
But if there ever is going to be secularism in the Muslim world, you have to make a start somewhere. Jinnah tried. Let that be credited to him. Let there be honour where honour is due.
B. Civilian was furious with me when I said that a Muslim moving towards liberalism deserves double congratulations, because it is such a hard course to take.
But I was actually understating. I think such Muslims deserve ten times the credit.
When I read people like the Canadian Irshad Manji who has crticised Islamic bigotry, I am amazed by her courage.
For a Hindu to rail against Hinduism is tuppenny hapenny. Anyone can do it, and does. No-one will come to get you, except in a few places in Mumbai or Gujarat.
BTW, Muslims can rail against Hinduism too, in India, and do so everyday.
YLH:
Jinnah was also the most secular political leader of the subcontinent, including the Hindus of India prior to his being hounded out of relevance from the secular scene.
Jinnah after 1940 is a political negotiator building up a constituency and making broad generalizations to build and retain support. He is then a Muslim leader saying things that will play to general Muslim sentiment.
Nehru on the other hand was the progressive voice in a Congress orchestra playing all kinds of notes. Nehru provided the secular coloratura against the religious drone of Gandhi, Patel, Prasad and others. Jinnah had to play the entire band himself.
But I was actually understating. I think such Muslims deserve ten times the credit.
When I read people like the Canadian Irshad Manji who has crticised Islamic bigotry, I am amazed by her courage.
You need to get out more Ganpat. It seems to me PTH is inducing the simple Ganpat with all of his stereotypes to finally start smelling the coffee. It seems that PTH has started seeping through Ganpat’s skin. Its been a while but better late than never.
Yasser:
Great article.
Behaviour of a good muslim can never be other than a secularist.
Hayyer that is an extraordinary description …thanks.
AZW, thanks :)…your encouraging email had something to do with it as well. 🙂
HAYYER;
It is an interesti ng way of putting it, this business of the Congress orchestra versus the Jinnah solo act.
To be fair, even Patel and Prasad, let alone Gandhi, had plenty of time for Muslim views.
Gandhi once said he was a better Muslim than most Muslims.
HAYYER:
Basically, I do agree with you this time.
India being defined by the predominance of a religion – Hinduism – everyone had to dabble in religious indentity politics to gain support. Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru, the lot. It would be superficial to point the finger of accusation only at Jinnah.
Yet that only reinforces my conclusion about the illusory hope of Indian unity. There just was not enough between the Hindus and Muslims to keep them together.
HAYYER:
Since you and I have often fought, let me congratulate you on an extraordinarily powerful imag: that of the Congress orchestra (with its vain, enigmatic prima donna Gandhi, it sprightly, temperamental tenor Nehru, it grim-faced, stolid baritone Patel) versus the uncanny solo Jinnah, doing a dozen roles all by himself: now the sweet Morleyite Liberal, now the proud, sharp-faced lawyerly negotiator, now the fierce-faced Islamist warrior, now the cold, elegant man of the drawing room, now the ranting mob orator invoking the Koran…..Etc.
It wouldn’t be Ganpat without the typos.
Opera cast, I meant, rather than orchestra.
ganpat
“B. Civilian was furious with me when I said that a Muslim moving towards liberalism deserves double congratulations”
what is this pathological lying? get some professional help.
show me when and where did i even respond to your post.
“HAYYER:
Since you and I have often fought…”
actually, you have twice run away without giving him the simple proof for your lies that he had invited you to provide. you had lied about him saying something that he had never said and he had asked you to simply quote his words to him if any such words indeed did exist.
now show me where and when did i even respond to your ‘double congrats’ post.
B.CIVILIAN:
You are quite right about not being the one who took me to task on the “double congratulations” point. That was AZW, in the Obama Greetings thread.
Here is what AZW said:
“Your idea being Muslims fundamentally bad (and therefore needs to be double congratulated for being liberal, among many of your gems) is exactly equal to the ideas of resident Islamic extremists who regularly visit this site.”
Apologies for the mistaken attribution.
B. CIVLIAN:
I was wrong about that attribution.
Granted.
But as for the rest I am surprised at your continued rage.
OK, I said Hayyer, Vajra etc tend to indulge too much in mutual compliments. A bit of an exaggeration.
But your rage is unwarranted. Look how many times I was abused by YLH yet kept my cool and tried to argue reasonably. I don’t regret it. It’s the only successful way to argue.
B. CIVILIAN
I guess what I miss most on this site (interesting though it is) is the freedom for good humoured banter one has on a site like “Outlook India”.
There I have lampooned a guy called Augustus AAA as a hilly-billy “Praise de Lawd” type because he seems a rather popmous Catholic type, and he has hit back with equal merriment depicting me as a Hindu hick eating sitting on the floor.
All good fun, and no grievances.
But here people take banter and ribbing very seriously. No room for a chuckle, a colourful exaggeration.
ganpat
apologies accepted.
similar ‘mistaken attributions’ and worse in case of hayyer, for example, remain unconfessed by you. pointing out such dishonesty on your part has nothing to do with the argument itself. nor has it got anything to do with rage. it is about the basic ettiquete of honest debate; about simple decency.
regards
“I guess what I miss most on this site”..[ganpat]
just because some of us can’t oblige, does not mean that no one will on this site. i’m sure whatever outlook india can do, pth can do better.. regardless of whether some of us consider it a waste of time.
as you should have found out by now, pth censors only for filthy language, especially when it is gratuitously personal. fortunately, we seldom need to censor.
“Jinnah Was The Most Secular Statesman Produced By The Muslim World”
The article starts with a historical misstatement and follows the trend till the end.
Even in the first half of the 20th Centruy Jinnah had no such stature in the Muslim world. There were people around that time in the Muslim world that followed secular politics. Soekarno of Indonesia, Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia, the Wafd party in Egypt was also a secular Party. Nasser continued the tradition. Let us not also forget Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
The article has another deliberate distortion about Ataturk. The republic of Turkey was declared on October 29, 1923 so he had no role in any previous constitution, the new Turkish constitution was promulgated in 1928. The Caliphate was officially abolished on March 3, 1924. There is a long litany of reforms that he undertook between 1924 and 1928 all leading up to the logical conclusion in a secular constitution. In 1926 a new penal code was introduced that abolished the Islamic Courts.
Kamal started a political process to make the changes, penning one liners that he did not change the constitution until 1928 is intellectual dishonesty and subversion of facts to prove a non-existing point that Jinnah’ followed a secular politics and wanted a secular country. He never did. There was nothing in Jinnah’s politics after 1937 that was even remotely connected with secularism. Even after independence he was promoting Islamic principles and sharia law in his speeches.
He was GG from 15 Aug to till the time he was dead in September 1948, can anyone show one reform that he introduced in the country that would have led to creating a secular identity of the country? Any education reforms, anything about reforming women’s status in the country just one little reform to show that he really wanted to make Pakistan a secular or liberal modern state.
As Dr. PH implied that Jinnah was a lightweight intellectually and spoke from the different sides of his mouth. There was no consistency in his thought process and neither was he intellectually capable of defining what he wanted to do in Pakistan after the independence.
In his last known speech about constitution, on January 25, 1948, Jinnah spoke to the Bar Association of Karachi, and said:
“Why this feeling of nervousness that the future constitution of Pakistan is going to be in conflict with Shariat Laws? Islamic principles today are as applicable to life as they were 1,300 years ago.”
A month after that he again mentioned. “You have to stand guard over the development and maintenance of Islamic democracy, Islamic social justice and the equality of manhood in your own native soil.” Address to the officers and men of the 5th Heavy and 6th Light Regiments in Malir, Karachi
February 21, 1948
What is Islamic democracy and Islamic social Justice?
A new form of Secularism? A Jinnah brand of Secularism?
Making up stories and quoting third and fourth rate historians or Journalists cannot change what Jinnah said in his own words.
Show any statement from Jinnah that he wanted Pakistan to be secular country….he never did!
“Jinnah after 1940 is a political negotiator building up a constituency and making broad generalizations to build and retain support. He is then a Muslim leader saying things that will play to general Muslim sentiment.”
Well Said Hayyar!
He played to the audience and that is what Dr. PH wrote in his article and I agree with that entirely.
Hoss,
No one can blame you for being unable to read or make sense.
The 1921 constitution was amended by Ataturk in 1923 to make it a Republic and also to introduce a state religion ie Islam and national language Turkish. The state religion was Islam from 1923-1928 – the first five years of the Republic. This can be confirmed from any primary source.
Ataturk even explained in some detail in 1928 in his famous 6 day speech why he did it then ie introduce a superfluous state religion.
And what is ironic that even the 1921 constitution – which recognized the Caliphate- was also drafted by Kemal Ataturk.so you claim that he didn’t have anything to do with prior to 1923 shows how ignorant you are about this issue.
I think it is written quite clearly above but you are either unable to read or are just too dumb to understand. My guess is latter.
However little knowledge is dangerous and you always prove that with your ignorance (from your claims etc about the banning of the communist party to your inability to argue logically here).
For those who are actually interested in facts and are not making their living as clowns like Hoss, here is a brief run down of post war Turkish constitutional history:
1. 1921 Ataturk drafted and the grand national assembly adopted a constitution recognizing the Ottoman Empire but placing sovereingnty in the nation instead of Sultan.
2. 1923 Ataturk drafted the amendment to 1921 bill making Turkey a Republic and introducing Islam as the state religion and Turkish as national language.
3. 1924 Ataturk and the Grand National Assembly adopted a new constitution of Turkey which kept on the articles pertaining to Islam as the state religion and Turkish as the national language.
5. 1928 (unlike hoss’ claim there was no new constitution in 1928)… Ataturk gave his famous 6 day speech which I am one of the few people who have read in entirety …after which he got the state religion article omitted.
Ataturk was an extraordinary genius and he explains why he had to introduce religion in 1923 in some detail in the 6 day speech.
I find it very strange that I am accused of “distortion” when the gentleman in question -Hoss- is nothing but a distortion.
He then speaks of Bourgiba, Soekarno, Nasser etc as being from the first half of the twentieth century. Again little knowledge of someone who can’t make sense if his life depended on it.
But Indonesia had a state religion under Soekarno and Soekarno was not secular …he was like Bhutto a mix. Nasser gave Al Azhar too much power, prestige and authority. Not entirely secular at all. The only really secular party in the Arab world was Baath Party but it was founded by a Christian …and his Muslim successors are hardly secular in any real sense of the word. The Assads in Syria are Alavi Shiites and are ruling it like a Kingdom? What next King Hussain was secular?
Jinnah was a true secularist in the right sense of the word … He believed in constitutional equality, freedom of religion and a civilian democratic government answerable in a true sense to the people of Pakistan regardless of any distinction. Only Kemal Ataturk had that vision …though in his time he had to resort to measured terror to reform his people. The rest of the secularists mentioned by Hoss mian are merely pipedreamers of the imagination of washed out Stalinist and Trotsykite losers.
Btw the Turkish Republic introduced a law after 1928 but during Ataturk’s lifetime forbidding Orthodox Christians and other Non-Turks (read non-Muslims) to take up as many as 30 professions in the Turkish Republic.
This was done ofcourse to bring Turks upto par with Non-Muslims economically and no doubt contributed to over all secularization of Turkey but as a measure this was obviously not very secular.
Kemal Ataturk was a great pragmatist. His objective was to modernize his people and make them stand at par with the Industrialized world by hook or by crook.
In the long run Ataturk method of modernization works and Jinnah’s doesn’t… in a Muslim society. Ataturk’s method was based on the French model… Jinnah’s was based on the time honored English tradition starting with John Locke. Islam however was closer to French Catholicism …not the Anglican Church.
“making their living as clowns like Hoss,”
The abuses continue…..
Hoss mian,
If you behave like a clown, I reserve the right to call a spade a spade.
The issue is Jinnah’s secularism not Ataturk’s secularism. The point of the article is that “Jinnah Was The Most Secular Statesman Produced By The Muslim World”
Which he was not and the author has not proven otherwise.
I have no intention to match the moderator in abuses.
I will stick to the facts and the facts on the ground are that Jinnah never mentioned or talked about secularism from 1937 till his death and he never wanted Pakistan to be a secular state.
Why the moderator after abusing me removing my posts?
yasserlatifhamdani
March 28, 2010 at 9:47 pm
“Fourth rate historians”
And you won’t qualify as the khabba tatta of those fourth rate historians.
hoss
March 28, 2010 at 10:02 pm
“And you won’t qualify as the khabba tatta of those fourth rate historians.”
Moderators please pay attention to the start of personal abuses by your fellow moderator.
yasserlatifhamdani
March 28, 2010 at 10:11 pm
For those who are actually interested in facts and are not making their living as clowns like Hoss, here is a brief run down of post war Turkish constitutional history:
Here are the posts that he removed. He is right in removing his posts but why mine?
yasserlatifhamdani
March 28, 2010 at 10:21 pm
Hoss mian,
If you behave like a clown, I reserve the right to call a spade a spade.
“Facts” have always eluded you my dear Hoss.
Everytime you write you make new a boo boo. I am sure by now you have googled and found out that 1921 constitution was prepared by Ataturk and it was he who amended in 1923 …
Now you say that Jinnah did not make any statements post 1937 which spoke of secularism. Except for the two references to his legislative career, all the statements quoted above are from 1947-1948. The landmark 11th August speech is as clear pronouncement of a secular state as any in the world (except for a few mullahs in jamaat e islami and clowns like you).
PS I am not removing any posts.
Here is an actual fourth rate politician …one whose unmentionable you may qualify with somewhat of an ease.. Wali Khan. He states emphatically in his book “Facts are sacred” that Jinnah wanted a secular state.
“The landmark 11th August speech is as clear pronouncement of a secular state as any in the world”
Even in that speech he never once mentioned secularism….
“Never once mentioned secularism”
Can you count and tell me how many times the word “secular” occurs in the US constitution?
The speech to the bar came way after the 11 august speech and Jinnah proclaimed that the constitution would not be in conflict with Sharia and Islamic principles..
Yeah, he was promoting secularism….hehe
Aww so now you’ve moved from your assertion that he didn’t promote secularism after 1937.
Typical. Well I have already quoted the Bar speech in the article above. I think only a crook will read the whole thing and still claim what you do. And I am sure out of context snippets from an Eid Milad un Nabi function are a counter-argument in the La La Land you live in.
You remind me of those losers in the US who claim that Jefferson wanted US to be Christian because he wrote a book on Jesus’ teachings.
You still fail to grasp the debate…You are making a claim that Jinnah stood for secularism…you need to prove that from his words that he actually did. I only have to show that he never did. Onus of proof is on you. There is no circumstantial or factual evidence that Jinnah wanted secularism in Pakistan. No reforms, no statements.
He wanted Sharia law and Islamic principles in the constitution.
I think I have proved it abundantly above.
You either haven’t read or are unable to read.
Either way…the burden has shifted for you to disprove the proof that I have given above.
Believe it or not …not everything follows clown rules.
Btw have you counted yet …ie how many times the word secular occurs in the US constitution?
And do you want me to edit your post where you made the boo boo about the 1921 constitution to save you the embarrassment?
yasserlatifhamdani
March 28, 2010 at 10:40 pm
“I think only a crook will read the whole thing and still claim what you do.”
The abuses continue… I hope moderators are paying attention….
Don’t whine. I merely said anyone who still claims what you did earlier after reading the whole thing is a crook. Are you implying that you are one?
And why no umbrage to an equation with fools who think Jefferson wanted a Christian America because he wrote a book on Jesus’ teachings :)?
I have conclusively proven from his speeches that he wanted shaia law.
The article is all about conjectures, false history and portraying “Jinnah Was The Most Secular Statesman Produced By The Muslim World”
And that has not been proven…The ones you are calling “The rest of the secularists mentioned by Hoss mian are merely pipedreamers of the imagination of washed out Stalinist and Trotsykite losers.”
None of them were actually Stalinist and Trotsykyite so that is another distortion of facts.
None of them were actually Stalinist and Trotsykyite so that is another distortion of facts.
Or pipedreamer pipedreamers of the imagination of washed out Stalinist and Trotsykite losers.
They were the leaders of their countries and stood by what they believed.
Jinnah stood by sharia and Islamic principles why portray him anything different?
Hossie baby,
Yes I see why you and half of Jamaat e Islami feels this way …but such triumphalism is indicative of our poor education system.
No you haven’t proven any such thing. Your little cut and paste is in tatters. Like I said we are not playing by clown rules.
Infact Dr. Hoodbhoy who you quote proved the exact opposite in his piece “Jinnah and the Islamic state”.
Also if you read my post clearly…it doesn’t say the men you mentioned were Stalinists or Trotskyites. The Arabs you mentioned were brutal rogue uniformed dictators. By stalinist and trotskyites I meant you.
yasserlatifhamdani
March 28, 2010 at 10:50 pm
Don’t whine. I merely said anyone who still claims what you did earlier after reading the whole thing is a crook. Are you implying that you are one?
The abuses continue….
Hoss:
Relax, no one is removing your posts as far as I can tell. The comments for some reasons are getting into the spam folder since last night. That includes all of our comments as well. The sajha khabba remark by Yasser was absolutely wrong and if that comment comes back I will delete that.
However the intensity of debate sometime induces comments for example dishonest, crook, misguided, stupid, insane, dumb, and unintelligent etc. Live with it. All of us have used these qualifiers to describe individual comments or the way someone tries to subvert discussion in a supposedly dishonest way. You have been no exception in this regard before, and the last thing any moderator needs to worry about is to start looking for criticisms that are levelled rightly or wrongly with less than desirable qualifiers.
The whining continues …hossie baby is in bad mood.
AZW
March 28, 2010 at 11:02 pm
Once a post appears on the board it will not go in to spam automatically.
Would you allow me to use the same words?
At this rate we should have 500 odd posts Inshallah!
Already we broke the hits record for weekends since the inception of this website ;). So things are looking up, up, up.
Adnan,
I admit my sajja khabba comment was in poor taste and glad it was removed.
However equally in bad taste was a nobody who described some of the finest historians “fourth rate”.
I mean only someone completely deluded would term historians like Ayesha Jalal, Andrew Mango, Wolpert, Ainslee T Embree, Anil Seal, Patrick French, Hamza Alavi, Irfan Habib, Dr. Mubarik Ali, H M Seervai, Susan Rudolph, M J Akbar, A G Noorani and H V Hodson “fourth rate”.
Ataturk’s secularism was primarily reactionary and revolutionary, and in that respect, different from Jinnah’s principled and constitutional secularism. Both, although essentially secular, faced different situations. The daunting task of nation-building, was a challenge common to Ataturk and Jinnah both. While Ataturk was confronted with the task of de-theocratizing a clergy-dominated age old Turkey, Jinnah faced the challenge of preventing the theocratization of the newly born Pakistan. The two great leaders faced challenges of different nature.
hoss
i removed the offending comment from YLH you had flagged up. i see that you didn’t want your comment with the offensive words copied and pasted into it removed. well, all you had to do for your comment to stay was not re-use the words that you had found offensive.
your protest at my action has not been removed but it will eventually go for it still contains the words in question and therefore ought not to stay. you can be satisfied that there has been no intention to censor you.
Bciv,
You also removed a post by me that contained none of offending moderators comments. I wanted the moderators attention to the offending posts. AZW claimed that they were going to the Spam and you claim that you removed that too. Who should I believe?
I can post that post again too.
Let me ask you one more time, since AZW has condoned the use of some words by the another moderator, can I use the same words too?
By now you do know that I am saving all the posts here to quell any discrepancy, so be careful about what you imply.
Don’t tell me…you are going to sue Raza Rumi.
Bachay fikr naaa kar. Hum saaray wakeel hain. Aaar paar ho jayen ge! Aja maidaan mein.
yasserlatifhamdani
March 28, 2010 at 11:38 pm
Don’t tell me…you are going to sue Raza Rumi.
Bachay fikr naaa kar. Hum saaray wakeel hain. Aaar paar ho jayen ge! Aja maidaan mein.
Wow! what an enlightening post by a moderator!
Typical. You can’t defend your points now that your assertions are in tatters and in the process you’ve made an even bigger fool of yourself. So the “abuse” red herring and imaginary deletion of posts is being thrown up.
Hossie baby …you should take your business to chowk.com where such tactics are appreciated ;).
Hossie baby …you should take your business to chowk.com where such tactics are appreciated 😉 .
Yeah right…at PTH only a moderator can abuse………
no anyone can abuse but everyone including the moderator in question gets his posts edited and deleted.
PTH is a fair website.
Hoss:
The qualifiers like dumb, stupid, unintelligent, crooks, dishonest, traitor etc. are being used now, and have been used in discussions before on PTH. They have been allowed before, and are an implicit recognition of passions being high and people defending their positions with less than desirable behaviour. You have used a few of the above as well quite liberally before on the forum, and have not been censored before. No one has been singled out selectively based on the comments above. The discussions here get heated and these remarks are used. Do we cheerfully look at the qualifiers? No. Do we censor each and every comment that includes these words? Absolutely not.
However, if someone goes overboard with the similar comments and combine them with excessive mean remarks, they will be censored. Whether it will be an exceptionally uniform treatment based on a scientifically consistent formula where all comments will be equally treated? Absolutely not. This is what I gladly refer to as an officer discretion. I have my criteria, which may be slightly different from what BC or YLH or Raza may have. We will try but we do not expect to be absolutely consistent in our treatment of intense criticisms. You should not either.
And if you feel the heat is unwarranted, and moderators are not acting fast enough to your liking to put it down, feel free to stay away from the kitchen.
“You have used a few of the above as well quite liberally before on the forum,”
I have not used them liberally or it all they were in responses. Why should I stay away from the Kitchen? since you and the moderators are okay with the use of abusive words, I see no reason to hold back either from now on…
hoss
i deleted two posts. one by YLH and the other by you rightly flagging it up.
AZW obviously saw the two removed posts and thought the system had treated them as Spam, not having any way of knowing who had removed them. there is no way of telling how a post was removed or who removed it once it has been removed. so no need to imply conspiracy. there is none.
i see that you’ve re-posted a copy of both posts that i removed. that post of yours i have not removed yet.
Thanks Bciv for clearing that up.
On almost all sites, moderators are usually the last person you expect to resort to abuses. Even on a notoriously poorly managed site chowk, moderators never started hurling the abuses.
PTH is creating new standards, where a moderator is usually the first one to launch abuses.
This is really a deplorable situation.
Then vote with your (virtual) feet.
My vote is to stay here and expose the untruths…No one can make me leave….try as much as you want….
“Expose the untruths”
Oh my god …please don’t full monty my man…we are not ready for that on this website.
If you remain on the website out of your own accord, stop whining.
This is a public site on a free server.
The management of the wordpress owns this site….And only they can remove me….
Come now Hossie baby …no one is removing you from anywhere…not even wordpress.
I just said if you are so unhappy, why bother.
Who said I am unhappy….I am perfectly happy at my ability to expose untruths on this site… I feel great…
Bhatijay, you are hallucinating!
You are the one who is whining non-stop.
Waisay seriously hoss, after being exposed so much every time you open your mouth, what is this desire to expose yourself constantly? Indecent self exposure can lead to horrendous consequences.
Did you show any where is Jinnah talking about Secularism in Pakistan? Not yet!
So who is exposed, the one making the tall and untruthful claims or the one showing the truth!
Bhatijay, usually a person out of arguments starts the abuses and that happens to be you!
You want me post the your abusive posts here again?
sorry for the errors
Did you show anywhere Jinnah talking about Secularism in Pakistan? Not yet!
So who is exposed, the one making the tall and untruthful claims or the one showing the truth!
Bhatijay, usually a person out of arguments starts the abuses and that happens to be you!
You want me to post your abusive posts here again?
Hoss mian,
Your latest response has the uncanny similarity to the Black Knight…in Monty Python:
RTHUR:
You fight with the strength of many men, Sir Knight.
[pause]
I am Arthur, King of the Britons.
[pause]
I seek the finest and the bravest knights in the land to join me in my court at Camelot.
[pause]
You have proved yourself worthy. Will you join me?
[pause]
You make me sad. So be it. Come, Patsy.
BLACK KNIGHT:
None shall pass.
ARTHUR:
What?
BLACK KNIGHT:
None shall pass.
ARTHUR:
I have no quarrel with you, good Sir Knight, but I must cross this bridge.
BLACK KNIGHT:
Then you shall die.
ARTHUR:
I command you, as King of the Britons, to stand aside!
BLACK KNIGHT:
I move for no man.
ARTHUR:
So be it!
ARTHUR and BLACK KNIGHT:
Aaah!, hiyaah!, etc.
[ARTHUR chops the BLACK KNIGHT’s left arm off]
ARTHUR:
Now stand aside, worthy adversary.
BLACK KNIGHT:
‘Tis but a scratch.
ARTHUR:
A scratch? Your arm’s off!
BLACK KNIGHT:
No, it isn’t.
ARTHUR:
Well, what’s that, then?
BLACK KNIGHT:
I’ve had worse.
ARTHUR:
You liar!
BLACK KNIGHT:
Come on, you pansy!
[clang]
Huyah!
[clang]
Hiyaah!
[clang]
Aaaaaaaah!
[ARTHUR chops the BLACK KNIGHT’s right arm off]
ARTHUR:
Victory is mine!
[kneeling]
We thank Thee Lord, that in Thy mer–
BLACK KNIGHT:
Hah!
[kick]
Come on, then.
ARTHUR:
What?
BLACK KNIGHT:
Have at you!
[kick]
ARTHUR:
Eh. You are indeed brave, Sir Knight, but the fight is mine.
BLACK KNIGHT:
Oh, had enough, eh?
ARTHUR:
Look, you stupid bastard. You’ve got no arms left.
BLACK KNIGHT:
Yes, I have.
ARTHUR:
Look!
BLACK KNIGHT:
Just a flesh wound.
[kick]
ARTHUR:
Look, stop that.
BLACK KNIGHT:
Chicken!
[kick]
Chickennn!
ARTHUR:
Look, I’ll have your leg.
[kick]
Right!
[whop]
[ARTHUR chops the BLACK KNIGHT’s right leg off]
BLACK KNIGHT:
Right. I’ll do you for that!
ARTHUR:
You’ll what?
BLACK KNIGHT:
Come here!
ARTHUR:
What are you going to do, bleed on me?
BLACK KNIGHT:
I’m invincible!
ARTHUR:
You’re a looney.
BLACK KNIGHT:
The Black Knight always triumphs! Have at you! Come on, then.
[whop]
[ARTHUR chops the BLACK KNIGHT’s last leg off]
BLACK KNIGHT:
Oh? All right, we’ll call it a draw.
ARTHUR:
Come, Patsy.
BLACK KNIGHT:
Oh. Oh, I see. Running away, eh? You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what’s coming to you. I’ll bite your legs off!
Bhtijay you are so sacred of my showing the truth that you want me to leave the site. If you had any confidence in your arguments , instead of abusing and asking me to leave, you would have stuck to your argument. You don’t have confidence in what you claim here. Your whole article is hallow and full of historical inaccuracies as I have shown in my posts.
“Your whole article is hallow”
Honored. Thanks. :).
Yeps only typos can make you proud of this childish article…..Take pride in that!
hoss, YLH
Taking my life in my hands, this shaking Hindu is stepping recklessly into the middle of the awesome battle……
All that the outsider can say is:
Both of you have a point. Both are right, in a sense.
The evidence for Jinnah’s secularism, in concrete terms, is hard to find. His speeches very often harped on themes that sound remarkably islamist.
Yet Jinnah, by Muslim standards, had plenty secular about him. There is reason to think he was not thinking of a mullah-dominated state, but a much more modern ideal with Islam no doubt having some honour and role, but a limited one.
In other words, hoss seems to be saying: “Where’s the water in that glass?” YLH could reply: “Well it is about a third full – which means plenty when no-one else is offering a drop…..”
Jinnah’s speeches from the late 1930s, I mean.
“In other words, hoss seems to be saying: “Where’s the water in that glass?” YLH could reply: “Well it is about a third full – which means plenty when no-one else is offering a drop…..””
Ganpat,
My point has always been to accept what Jinnah actually was instead of attributing imaginary stuff to him. A certain section of Pakistani intelligentsia, with limited appeal in a certain geographical surroundings, would rather rewrite the history and create false dilemmas. The fallacies in their arguments usually go unanswered because initially the media in Pakistan was managed by the state and now it is managed by the proponents of the so-called ideology of Pakistan.
The efforts to limit the discussions to approved subjects and publication of the writers of the certain bent leads to perpetuating of lies.
Pakistani English media of late has been taking some liberties but subjects like discussing the contradictions in Jinnah’s politics is still a taboo. Jinnah was not god’s messenger. He was an opportunistic politician and there is nothing wrong with being an opportunist in politics.
You can’t make Jinnah what he was not. He changed his long held beliefs to assume a leadership position in the ML and from there on, he confined himself to Muslim League’s communal politics in central India. He got lucky that Muslim Majority provinces joined him because they too were looking for separation from the mainland India. However, despite that, Jinnah did not change his political rhetoric in the Central India and by the time independence came, he was so engrossed in the communal politics that he was unable to look beyond that even after the independence.
I think it was tragic that an agnostic of his stature got caught up in communal politics but I find it even more deplorable that he never was able to extract himself after 1947, out of the ideological space he joined in the 30s.
Pakistan needs to look beyond Jinnah and his politics of the 30s. We don’t need that.
hoss:
It is certainly tempting to boost a politician beyond his merits. We are all prone to that: fix on a hero and then find it painfully hard to admit he or she had serious limits.
Gandhi is one of the best examples of the sad perils of this hero-fixation. Many of the man’s ideas and actions are downright batty, but countless admirers won’t admit the obvious.
One can see why people make so much of Jinnah’s secularism, though. Without that, what can Pakistani secularism build on?
In any case, personal abuse is not the way forward. It just confuses everything.
A couple days ago Ganpat Bhai was accusing PTH to be too bland for his taste and likened it to a bunch of back slapping poets in a civilized Mushiara.
So Ganpat Bhai, you were saying….. 😉
Anyway there are times for jest but this is serious business and I don’t want to trivialize the discussion. I can agree with Ganpat though that each side has a point. It is only natural that great lives, lived in epic times cannot fit an easy description. I have learnt a lot on the PTH and continue to learn each day. One thing I learnt here last year was of the (oft mentioned) excellent two part article that AG Noorani wrote about MAJ in the Indian periodical Frontline. I think the conclusion of that article deserves to be reproduced here at PTH once again since it beautifully yet respectfully highlights all the compulsions and the contradictions surrounding MAJ (and his peers) at that fateful time in our history.
With that I hope all the above debaters will find something they can agree with but also something that will allow them to look at their opponent in sympathy and understanding if not in entire agreement.
“Jinnah’s record from 1906 to 1940 does not obliterate the record of 1940-48 any more than Nehru’s brave fight, against all odds, for secularism in India or Gandhi’s conscious choice of martyrdom alters the record prior to 1947. Gandhi knew his life was in peril, but did not compromise and did not flinch one bit.
The record prior to 1940 only deepens the tragedy that befell Jinnah, and because of him, the India he loved and the community whose interests he sought to advance. Responsibility for the partition was not his exclusively; but his share was enormous.
The League’s Resolution of March 23, 1940, brought partition into the realm of the possible. The collapse of the Cabinet Mission’s Plan of May 16, 1946, for a united India dragged it into the abyss of inevitability. For this, Jinnah was not a bit responsible. That phase deserves a closer study than it has received.
Indians and Pakistanis must come to terms with Jinnah’s record in its entirety. He was of a heroic mould but fell prey to bitterness and the poison that bitterness breeds. In the present age, some will be talking of his virtues; others of his failings alone. Posterity alone will do him justice.
Some day, the verdict of history on Jinnah will be written definitively. When it is written, that verdict will be in the terms Gibbon used for Belisarius: “His imperfections flowed from the contagion of the times; his virtues were his own, the free gift of nature or reflection. He raised himself without a master or a rival and so inadequate were the arms committed to his hand, that his sole advantage was derived from the pride and presumption of his adversaries” (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; The Modern Library; Vol. II, page 240).
(AG Noorani; Assessing Jinnah; Frontline 2005)
this is a relevant bit from a private email exchange:
ataturk was not a minority leader squeezed between a majority party and his own obscurantists, and actually a pincer movement where both opponents had joined hands. congress mullahs were calling MAJ a kafir. So were non-congress mullahs, for whom too congress had a soft corner (gandhi presided over JI’s annual conference even just before partition).
majumdar did mention the fact that nehru might well have been jinnah, had he been a muslim (ie minority) leader, and jinnah a nehru had he been a hindu (ie majority) leader. in fact jinnah was hoping to avoid that right up till 1938.
MAJ had to develop consensus amongst the muslims of india. it was no easy task. he had been ‘set’ this task by JLN himself who had told him that congress was not going to acknowledge the existence of AIML because that was ‘good for india’ or for congress but only if and when AIML’s existence was significant enough not to be easily ignored.
MAJ led a people 100 years behind their hindu compatriots in terms of how far away they were from being reform-minded. He led them in the face of the attacks, antagonism and tactics mentioned above.
in case of punjab, in the 46 elections, AIML did use the barelwi mullahs. pir of manki came on board in nwfp and left immediately after partition when he realised that jinnah was never going to implement sharia or any such absurdity. he returned into the arms of bacha khan – the frontier Gandhi. there hasn’t been a single public meeting address of bacha khan’s that i’ve come across where he failed to not only praise sharia but claim that it was the only law that his people wished to live under and could bring them prosperity. he was no less tolerant a man when it came to other religions than the gandhi of india.
nehru had ambedkar as his law minister. jinnah had mandal. he wasn’t just a hindu but also a dalit like ambedkar. jinnah went one better and had sir zafarulla as his right hand man and pak’s first foreign minister.
nehru and ambedkar brought about the reform of hindu society, as far as the law was concerned. The process itself was set in motion by gandhi and others before him. gandhi made it one with the nationalist movement and the nation.
While JLN reformed the hindu code, he left the muslims at the mercy of their priests (shahbano, rushdie ban etc). what reason do we have to think that congress would have done any different in the case of muslim personal law within a united india? muslims needed to address this issue. esp since they were 100 years behind and in greater need for reform.
even the great ambedkar argued with some hindu scholar about polygamy not being sanctioned by the scriptures, for example. that doesn’t make ambedkar controversial. had he stuck to the stand that he will only entertain arguments based on scientific empiricism and none other, he would have denied himself the easy point, or at least half a point, that he was able to score against the scholar and soften his opposition by exposing the weakness of the religious guy’s position to his supporters and would-be supporters.
JLN did not push through the reforms and seemed to have given in to the likes of rajendra prasad. he waited till he got his renewed mandate in the first general election. then he broke up the reform into bite size chunks. He lost a despondent ambedkar early on, as the latter’s patience ran out.
these were the kind of things jinnah would have had to go through as well. he had set the agenda quite well. no, he was no prolific writer like nehru nor ambedkar. his talk of the ‘i learnt my democracy 1300 years ago’; ‘if you think theocracy is possible in islam then you know nothing of islam’; ‘there would be nothing in the law against the spirit of the sharia and islam’… all have a readily understandable context; specific in time and objective.
jinnah talking of pakistan as the ‘laboratory of islam’ was also telling. laboratories are for innovation and discovery; for doing away with the old and starting with the new, unlike, say, libraries where learning by rote is at least a possibility.
the kba speech was a direct response, as it were, to maudoodi’s speech at lahore law college. maudoodi and islahi, as azw pointed out, termed his 11 aug speech as a blueprint for a land fit for ‘creatures of the devil’. these were the same people/ideology who had shown what they were capable of during the khilafat movement and in its immediate aftermath. They were those who had successfully shouted jinnah out of congress.
if the direction and objectives were not clearly set for some by jinnah’s thousands of speeches and utterances, and his parliamentary record, then the speech that he chose to make within the CA itself, at its inauguration, should have made things clear. mandal as law minster was for the same effect, even stronger, as ambedkar in india. sir zafrulla was a slap in the face of the mullahs.
co-operating with the muslims in order to ‘save the cow from the muslim knife’ did not make gandhi controversial. nor did azad saying that it was alright for muslims to co-operate with hindus because in times of danger one could even have an alliance with ‘scorpions and snakes’ make him controversial.
congress was not controversial despite having muhammad ali jauhar as its president. or hakim ajmal who actually had asked for parity at every level. lajpat rai and malviya did not make congress controversial either. or the fact that rajendra prasad had presided over a mahasabha annual moot as far back as in 1923. the problem with tilak, as far as congress was concerned, one can only assume, was the same as it had with bhose – his excessive fieriness.
cmp
cmp was one of three options available to maj/aiml. only two were acceptable to him. a different two from the same three were acceptable to congress. cmp was not one of the two options acceptable to congress. so the one option acceptable to both parties is what both agreed to in the end.
GORKI:
It’s always a pleasure to hear from you because you have a good temper.
You are almost never angry and that is such a blessing. It’s relaxing to argue with you.
If my Indian friends ask me: “So, what did you learn about the Pakistanis on their website?”, I should sadly have to reply: “Above all, that they seem to be a far more tense and angry lot than we are…..What’s got into them? India is poor and in a dangerous situation, but our people don’t flare up so easily.”
Going on to you actual point about the good ole CMP.
Yes, Gorkibhai, it’s tempting to say: If only Nehru had had more patience, it would all have worked out.
But we are not Nehru.
We do not have the bitter experience he had of struggling with Jinnah over many years, and perhaps thinking: Even if we somehow get Independence with Jinnah still with us in some weak union, what do have to look forward to? On past experience, more endless wrangles, ith the threat of secession always in the foreground. Is it worth it? Why have Independence, even, if this is to be the outcome? Why not let the British rule?
We know, whatever his thoughts at the time, he later confirmed (I quoted the Brecher interview in 1956 on this) he had concluded unity at such a cost just was going to be a disaster even worse than Partition.
Hence his decision.
I can’t blame him.
GORKI:
By the way, please stop harping in the US credit card joke. All I meant to say was that theUS was heavily overborrowed. The credit card is merely a metaphor.
Alas, Gorkibhai, are you becoming infected with a taste for taking everything literally? Is that what the PTH does to one?
I hope not.
My own impression is that two things disillusioned Nehru and the Congress with Jinnah.
One, his insistence that Congress should not appoint any Muslim minister, and in effect, leave Muslims to the League. To Congress this promised the kind of community versus community politics that would make an Independent United India worthless.
Two, the resort to violence in Direct Action Day. Whether Jinnmah was directly responsible or not, his credibility with Hindus seems to have vanished after that.
Once YLH, half in jest, compared the personalities of our freedom struggle with the Star Wars cast and the series; it is not a far fetched analogy for MAJ was no ordinary man and both is life and his times were anything but ordinary.
It may be an exaggeration to say that the events of the 1940’s were of epic proportions but not by much. I myself can liken the time and the struggles of the men of those times to the much loved Indian epic (Ganpat Bhai will like it, so here is to you Ganpat 😉 ) ‘The Mahabharta’.
With apologies to my Pakistani friends who may be less familiar with this book; the struggle surrounding the partition and Independence of events are eerily reminiscent of this ancient Indian epic (I don’t like to say Hindu 😉 ) which is a story of two North Indian families; kinsmen, pitted by fate against each other; they must go through a great many adventures, full of challenges and epic struggles; only to end up confronting one another for the prize; the Kingdom of India!
Last minute negotiations take place by several well intentioned and not so well intentioned mediators.
There is bargaining and deceit; women’s dishonor to be avenged; last minute appeals to reason and yes; inevitably religion and duty all mixed up to the point that it is hard to tell what is ones duty or even virtue from a vice.
Even an offer of a partition is placed on the table, yet it is turned down by one side making a war inevitable.
Struggle ensues; with brother against brother, and kinsman against kinsman; in a famous scene a warrior looks across the battlefield and instead of the enemy sees the faces of his brothers, friends and mentors!!
The Mahabharata is narrated by one of the characters in the epic. One can read it or else see parts of it serialized in an excellent but hard to obtain TV serial by the great Shyam Benegal which itself is based on Nehru’s interpretation of the epic.
I will not go on any longer but come back to the real life epic; the Independence and the partition of British India; parts of which were only appropriately enough documented by Nehru himself.
Here below, is his own words, are his reflection on the motivations of his generation which I think also apply just as well to all who we have discussed on the PTH: MAJ, Gandhi, Patel, Azad and others.
A man with always a keen eye on history; Nehru almost admits that his generation will be judged for its mistakes and gives an explanation for it. We may not agree with him but cannot deny his prediction that the journey will not end with his generation and now we are living it.
It is now our generation made up of Hoss and YLH; BC, AZW, Bin Ismail and Ganpat, and we are the ones left to ‘carry their burden to the next stage of the journey’.
“My generation has been a troubled one in India and the world. We may carry on a little while longer but our day will be over and we shall give place to others, and they will live their lives and carry their burden to the next stage of the journey. How have we played our part in this brief interlude that draws to a close? I don’t know. Others of the later day will judge. By what standards do we measure success or failure? That too I don’t know. We can make no complaints that life has treated us harshly, for ours was a willing choice, and perhaps life has not been so bad for us after all. For only they can sense life who stand on the verge of it, only they whose lives are not governed by fear of death. In spite of all the mistakes we may have made, we have saved ourselves from triviality and inner shame and cowardice. That. For our individual selves has been some achievement. Man’s dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him but once, he must live it as not to be seared with a shame of a cowardly and a trivial past, so live as not to be tortured for years without purpose, so live that dying he can say: “All my life and my strength were given to the first cause of the world-the liberation of mankind” (JLN)
Ganpat,
The insistence on Muslim minister was based on the claim that since League won 87 percent of all Muslim seats, it was sole representative of the Muslims of India. It was a formula Gandhi inked his name to btw and then backed out.
Still it must be remembered that Jinnah did come into the cabinet without this as well..with Asif Ali representing Congress ..Jinnah appointed Jogindranath Mandal on a Muslim seat to claim that League represented Scheduled castes as well.
Ganpat tell me …what do you make of this – Jinnah appointed the same Jogindranath Mandal the first law minister of Pakistan … Isn’t it interesting that an “Islamic” state would have a Hindu Law minister.
The truth is that hiding behind Jinnah’s references to Islam when even those references speak of democracy, equality, sovereignty , social justice etc is an old tactic of Islamists who in any event opposed Jinnah and the Pakistan movement. If we were to put aside our hackneyed views and prejudices …it becomes clear that Jinnah wanted the following principles in his state – whatever you may call it:
1.Equality of citizenship regardless of religion, caste, creed or gender.
2.Parliament with popular sovereignty resting with the people regardless of religion, caste or creed.
3. No color, religious or gender bars.
4. No rule by priests with a divine mission.
These are all points drummed by Jinnah repeatedly! Infact he is the only Pakistani leader to have done so constantly and consistently. Add to that the following :
1. He refused to allow any resolution in the Muslim League committing Pakistan to an Islamic polity.
2. He refused to allow a state religion (something which even Ataturk allowed for a while tactically).
3. His personal secularism: he chose people on merit not faith …Pothan Joseph was the founding editor of Dawn …when Jinnah appointed him Liaqat Ali objected vociferously but Jinnah went with Pothan Joseph. Jinnah chose Mandal to represent the League instead of a Muslim in the interim government and later made him the law minister of the newly founded Pakistan…and let us not forget that he got Jagganath Azad to write the first national anthem of Pakistan. He even offered Khushwant Singh the position of a judge in high court of Lahore.
To me all these points make him the most secular leader produced by the Muslim world. Ataturk and Inonu were plenty secular but their secularism would be termed far more communal in India…especially the bars imposed on Non-Muslims in certain professions in the Turkish Republic to help Turks stand on their feet for a period of time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_exchange_between_Greece_and_Turkey.
It also shows that secularism has many different utilities. In case of Turkey the utility of laicism or secularism was not as much to safeguard the minorities (Republic of Turkey was 99.6 percent Muslim after exodus of Orthodox Christians) but the uplift and modernization of a backward people. Nehruvian Secularism in India aimed at safeguarding minorities…as did Jinnah.. But Jinnah was also aiming at modernization ala Ataturk of the Muslims of India… Here is where all his efforts to bring women in active politics, founding in 1941 a Muslim chamber of commerce, starting an Airline with Isphahani, emphasizing the need of and founding as many as half a dozen newspaper to give Muslim community a voice… encouraging Muslims to take up professions such in commerce, banking, trade etc were all aimed at modernizing a backward agrarian community. But unlike Turkey he did not do this at the barrel of a gun or through state imposed restrictions on any other community. Here too he was proving to be more secular..
No one denies that Jinnah after 1937 was no longer the secular Indian nationalist he once was … But that is not the point … What was the term Bipan Chandra used …”Secular liberal communalism” of Mr. Jinnah…very oxymoronic, very true…especially if you put things in their proper context. It is fair to say that Jinnah post 1937 was as secular as any civilian leader dependent on mass Muslim support could afford to be … And perhaps a little more. Jinnah understood the process of secularization Is irreversible (it still is despite General Zia- give Democratic Pakistan 20 years).
Ganpat Ram
March 29, 2010 at 2:21 am
“Gandhi is one of the best examples of the sad perils of this hero-fixation. Many of the man’s ideas and actions are downright batty, but countless admirers won’t admit the obvious.”
I agree with you here. Politicians should never be revered. They are a creature of many compromises and tons of contradictions. Jinnah, Nehru and Gandhi all shared those traits. While Jinnah was only called Kafir, Gandhi was murdered for standing up to the obscurantist. Adversary is part of a politician’s life, why should that be a matter of perpetual hero worship? Did Jinnah on many occasions not deride Gandhi or Nehru? He certainly did so what if a few mullah called Jinnah a kafir. The same mullah in Pakistan abused ZAB much more than that they even abused his mother, does that mean we should now all be in awe of ZAB? Take the Obama’s case. He is an inherently nice and a decent person, but we all know what some folks are doing to him, does that mean that the democratic party elevate Obama to saint level? Look at Bush, he was also called tons of names, and was constantly referred to as a bozo. So the abuses are part and parcel of a politician’s life. Jinnah did not become some holy figure because a few abused him and disagreed with him vehemently.
In India while many may worship Gandhi, millions others ridicule and abuse him regularly too, so is the case with Nehru. Do they deserve better? Yeah sure, they do. But you can’t stop people from abusing them.
Similarly, there should never be any reason to always show deference to Jinnah. There should not be any issue if some choose to abuse him. There are plenty of reasons for people to abuse him.
Funny that some cite Jinnah’s appointment of a few non Muslims to a few position as a symbol of his secular orientation. Obama has Jewish COS; does that mean that tomorrow some should cite that as a sign of Obama’s love for Jews? Daniel Pipes is a known Muslim basher in the US but recently in Canada he took exception to Wafa’s abuse of Mohammed at a synagogue; does that make him a Muslim supporter?
Jinnah perhaps believed in merit more than the religious orientation but in the state’s affairs he never showed any inclination to make Pakistan a secular state. His policies as a statesman tell us where he was going, not his decisions about a few people. Jinnah had no intentions to declare Pakistan a secular state. The work on Pak constitution started in his lifetime, did he ever tell the legislators that Pakistan should be a secular state. Did he propose any reforms that would have led to secularism? Did he even propose a clause in the constitution that would have guaranteed women’s right. Did he propose anything that had a semblance of desire on his part to gradually lead Pakistan into a secular State?
In the Lawyers body where discussing the constitutional matters is of importance to many statesmen, Jinnah explicitly declared that there will not be anything in the constitution in conflict of Sharia and the Islamic principles. His insistence there showed where his mind was and it certainly was not on secularism.
Hoss mian,
Pervez Hoodbhoy has already proved in his article “Jinnah and the Islamic state” why those references to “sharia” don’t mean anything.
” Did he propose any reforms that would have led to secularism? Did he even propose a clause in the constitution that would have guaranteed women’s right. Did he propose anything that had a semblance of desire on his part to gradually lead Pakistan into a secular State? ”
The 11th August speech is a direct absolute indication of a secular state. The Dominion of Pakistan was a perfectly secular state in so much that:
1. It had no state religion.
2. It’s formal head of state was an anglican Christian.
The issue in Pakistan was not the dismantling of a Caliphate but safeguarding the British legal system which guaranteed equality both gender and minorities.
Whether you like it or not, unless you can show that Jinnah passed any resolution or drafted any bill formalizing the role of Islam in society, my point stands.
So this positive assertion you seek is typical obfuscation and hogwash. It is like saying that Great Britain is not a secular democracy because no one ever made that assertion.
And only a Jamaatia at the end of his wit would argue that the appointment of a Hindu as the law minister is not an indication of secularism. Was there no other competent legal mind who deserved the position more than Mandal? Mandal wasn’t even a great legal mind per se. He need not have appointed Mandal at all (Mandal also symbolically presided over the inaugural session of the Constituent Assembly).
Ps in the lawyers’ body…
On Eid Milad un Nabi in the Lawyers’ body Jinnah said that the constitution would not be in conflict with Islam because Islam recognized Democracy, equality, fraternity and brotherhood of man.
It is more a comment on how Jinnah viewed Islam than on what kind of state Jinnah wanted. But Jamaatias only quote it those sections of it which they like forgetting the real message of the speech.
Yasser Pai,
Mandal wasn’t even a great legal mind per se.
Jogandhoonath didn’t even have a mind in the first place. He was an a-**** of gargantuan proportions.
Btw, I agree 100% with the title which is a commentary on not only Jinnah sahib but also on the Muslim world.
Regards
Bachay,
Gen. Zia had two minority ministers, does that prove that he was actually following or supported secularism?
A statesman’s policies are the true barometer of his intentions, not his personal choices. Jinnah never intended Pakistan to be a secular state.
Majumdar
And my position is that post 1937 Jinnah was limited by his constituency.
Infact dictates of the Muslim community allow only as much liberalism as say Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. That Jinnah went above and beyond is indicative of the great courage of the man.
A more appropriate title would be “Jinnah Was The Most Secular Statesman in the new state of Pakistan”
Jinnah indeed was “Andhon me Kanna Raja”.
Hoss,
That is a rather dumb comment even for a dunce like you.
Did Zia appoint a minority as the law minister of Pakistan?
Jinnah did not have to intend for Pakistan to be a secular state …as shown above, it was already a secular state when it came about. As for the future constitution Jinnah gave clear guidelines in his 11th August speech and through out his tenure refused to allow any resolution which committed Pakistan to an Islamic polity.
So unless you can prove these two assertions wrong …you don’t have a point.
Not certainly as dumb as you are! It is the most appropriate comparing apples to apples. Jinnah had one minority minister, Zia has two so by your silly logic Zia was more secular! Get some education.
HP saeen,
A statesman’s policies are the true barometer of his intentions
Unfortunately we will never find out. Mr Jinnah died barely a year after independence and for the last few months he was barely alive. And whatever time he had it was used up in Kashmir and just getting Pak started.
Sadly he died even before the constt formation got started (I presume it began with OR-49) so we will never know whether he planned to have an iota of Islam in the Constt.
I have to agree with YLH though that appointment of JNM as Law Minister and 8/11 speech are importnat barometer. While the commitment given to KBA lawyers is very problematic no doubt, we have to accept the possibility that he may have been merely accepting the pressures of the populace.
Regards
Hoss mian,
We are not concerned with how many minorities were ministers in Zia’s cabinet but that the law minister of Pakistan under Jinnah was a non-Muslim.
So unless you can show us that Zia had a non-Muslim law minister you don’t have a point.
Dumbo,
It is your claim that “Jinnah Was The Most Secular Statesman Produced By The Muslim World”, you need to prove not me. Have some sense. First you write a stupid article and then you are so dumb that you can’t even prove it.
Majumdar,
The KBA speech is not problematic. Hoss misquoted it like every Islamist and his mother in law (since Hoss is not an Islamist he must be an Islamist’s mother in law).
I have quoted the missing parts of the speech.
Hoss mian,
Refer to post no. 78. Read carefully. Have fun.
Ps to Majumdar
Constitution-making commenced 11th August 1947.
That not even a single resolution committing Pakistan to an Islamic state was passed is also an important barometer.
This is why when OR was passed in 1949 all Hindu legislators argued that had Jinnah been alive such a resolution would not see the light of day.
Btw Zia ul Haq’s law minister – if anyone is interested – was Sindh’s brightest mind second only to Hoss … Allah Bux K Brohi. He was the author of Federal Shariat Courts in Pakistan, the Hudood Ordinances and last but not the least articles 62 and 63 of the constitution.
Those who think the law minister is not indicative of any barometers should think again.
Another genius Sindhi – third in line from Hoss and Allah Bux Brohi – Hafeez Peerzada was the law minister in Bhutto’s government. He gave us our Islamic constitution and all the amendments including the second amendment.
Of Jinnah one can say: “Unhappy the people that needs such a hero!”
Those least thought about matter a lot too: the millions upon millions of his followers who were deeply religious and must have followed him in some vague but very strong hopes of an Islamic state.
They were decisive, in the end.
Leaders cannot turn their followers’ assumptions off and on like a tap. If you keep talking about Islam, that becomes your politics, eventually, despite your own inner reservations.
As for Nehru and company, they had their ideology too: they believed fervently in a strong, united India. hey had no doubts it was one country and meant to be one from the deep ages. So when they came up against those who had strong reservations in the matter, who kept asking for the unity to be diluted if it was ever to be accepted, at some point Nehru and his group said: No, we can’t. This is the India we believe in, strongly united. If it is too uncomfortable for you, fair enough. You will find your own state.
That’s how it ended.
The tragedy for Pakistan is that it is not only founded on a religion (the distinction Jinnah seems at times to make between a state of majority Muslims and an Islamic state being too fine for most people to grasp), but a religion so strictly defined and staking everything on an unchangeable text.
This lends itself to a very tense, autocratic style of politics. Very strong ideology does lead to autocratism. So, strong Islamic faith leads to autocracy.
It took Christianity – a far more flexible faith than Islam to begin with – centuries of bitter struggle to be marginalised and to open the way for liberalism.
Frankly, the mind boggles when it thinks how long it is going to take to make Islam a private affair – if (I fear) it ever does happen.
Until then, the Muslim world will the arena for very angry politics.
Nehru was right to take India out of all this.
India has too much on its plate to also take on the role of being the storm centre of the appalling struggle to make Islam a private faith.
Nehru was a distinguished historian, capable of great vision about the forces of history, why societies become what they do.
He was the one, at the height of Chinese Communist triumph, who calmly predicted that eventually the Chinese national tradition would absorb Communism.
We may take it that before he took the momentous decision to partition India Nehru will have given a lot of thought to its long range implications for India’s future.
Jinnah could have concealed his identity as a liberal as by doing so he could have rallied the support of the Mullah’s. But he deliberately choose not to do so, why perhaps he was never a hypocrite and moreover he wanted Pakistan to be liberal progressive democracy where the Muslims had the right of association and freedom to practice their religion as per their own beliefs, but more importantly he was concerned that in Pakistan the minorities would enjoy the same amount of freedom and opportunities.
The essence of Secularization is to separate Religion from State, and State from Religion. Secularization should not and does not encroach the limits of personal faith or the right to religious affiliation of a group of citizens. According to this principle, there should to begin with, be no State Religion. The functioning of the state should be such that the religious inclination of the citizen should be of no relevance to the state and its business. The religion of the majority of the the population should have nothing to do with the functioning of the state.
It was this form of Secularism that was envisioned and advocated by Jinnah.
And Jinnah was using religion to create a secular
state. How was that possible?
Now that I am not blocked, I have this question,
How come Jinnah never ever even once uttered
the world secular if his intent was to create a
secular state? Why always imply?
He has mentioned Islam or Islamic principles or
Islamic ethos etc. amply to demonstrate
his intent
@swapnavasavdutta
Jinnah did not use religion – religion per se – to create a state. He simply recognized the fact that the conglomerate of the Muslim-majority states, en bloc, faced an economic threat from the conglomerate of the better established Hindu-majority states, if the Muslim-majority states were to exist without political and economic autonomy.
Dear SV,
I have answered the question above. Had you bothered to read you’d know.
However Mr.Dutta you may do us all a favor by counting how many times the word secular appears in the US constitution and letting us know.
Similarly India added the word secular to its constitution 1976. Does that mean India was not secular till 1976?
And I have already shown how those references to Islam were to bolster the view that such a state ie without state religion and complete equality was perfectly in consonance with Islam. So Jinnah was arguing not that the state should be Islamic but that Islam envisaged a state which was pluralistic, democratic , egalitarian and non-discriminatory.
The point I have made above is quite clear. You can either accept my point of view or disagree with it …but when the issue is clearly one of conception, then why must people insist on imposing their point of view.
Jinnah was secular because he believed a responsible democratic government which was impartial to the personal faith of its citizens. The state that Jinnah envisioned did not have a state religion…nor any bars. This fulfills the test of secularism for a secular state in my view.
@swapnavasavdutta
Let’s consider both of your questions:
1. Why didn’t Jinnah use the word “secular”?
He didn’t have to. His entire concept of statecraft could be summed up into the word “secular”. The crux of his Presidential address to the first Consituent Assembly of Pakistan, dated 11th August 1947, was nothing but secularism and social justice.
2. Why did he mention Islamic Principles?
Jinnah said, “Islam and its idealism have taught Equality, Justice and Fairplay to EVERYBODY.” [Jinnah, 25 January 1948. Address to Bar Association Karachi ] He mentions 3 principles:
a. Equality
b. Justice
c. Fairplay
I’m sure you would appreciate the fact that these 3 principles are as much relevant to any state as to the state that Jinnah envisioned. These are truly universal principles. Incidentally, these principles are also equally endorsed by all other religions.
Nusrat …this is precisely why people quote only that part of KBA speech which suits them. I have quoted the whole thing …it shows what Jinnah was trying to say.
Ganpat
“the millions upon millions of his followers who were deeply religious and must have followed him in some vague but very strong hopes of an Islamic state.”
so these deeply religious multitudes wanted to have Islam by defying the custodians of Islam and voting for the party led by a man who these custodians called the biggest heretic, and his project a land fit for ‘creatures of the devil? so how did this simple-minded flock square this open defiance against all the leading ulema and darul ulooms?
Hoss
“Gandhi was murdered for standing up to the obscurantist.”
not that surprising. he was a reformer. he was even considered officially beyond the pale, as far as the orthodox hierarchy was concerned. and he also considered any politics devoid of religion to be capable only of doing harm and causing ruin.
Khaksars actually came close to killing Jinnah as well. I suppose it was J-man’s fault that he was quick on his feet and managed to kick the knife out of Rafiq Sabir’s hand.
He should have said Hey Ram and just allowed Rafiq Sabir to put it through his chest.
B. CIVILIAN;
Just because many of the ulemas opposed the movement does not make it non-religious.
Established priests, drawing their income and deriving their status from an established society, are never very revolutionary anywhere. They tend to support the status quo.
The Zionist movement had little backing among the Jewish priesthood. No-one therefore calls it “secular”. That label is gifted only to the Pakistan movement among the political movements based on religion, for some odd reason.
The Hindu movement in India today has little support from the established Hindu priestly class. It would be foolish to assume that therefore there was no religious belief in it.
That the masses expected an Islamic order is a matter of much eye-witness reporting. What else could they have expected anyway? Just read the literature.
Ganpat not that it has any relevance but Zionism is often referred to as a “secular national movement” … Karen Armstrong defines it as such in her book “The History of God”.
As for Hindu movement…whatever that is…is entirely supported by priestly class …you know orange people …
The Pakistan Movement was genuinely divorced from religion because it was led by Aligarh Westernists and Muslim bourgeoisie.
W Cantwell Smith – who was a major critic of Jinnah and Pakistan movement- described it as an irreligious movement of Muslim bourgeoisie.
So in that sense some parallels can be drawn with the zionist movement but that would be wrong …even the Zionist movement had a religious idea ie return to zion at the heart of it. Pakistan movement was entirely stated in political and cultural terms and there was no appeal to any theological millenialism.
“Established priests, drawing their income and deriving their status from an established society, are never very revolutionary anywhere.”
JUH silk letter movement, declaring india dar-ul-harb, joining hands with the INC, volunteering for and running an insurgency out of kabul and FATA against the brits was not revolutionary? how come madani ended up kalapaani-ed then? for playing it safe and comfortable?
“That the masses expected an Islamic order is a matter of much eye-witness reporting. What else could they have expected anyway? Just read the literature.”
who are these eye witnesses? what is this literature? what is it exactly that you are referring to?
Yasser:
Do you know of a single serious history of modern India which says the Pakistan movement had no religious basis?
I don’t.
I find it amazing that movement which calls upon Muslims as its sole constituency, uses the language of Islam, is not an Islamic movement. What else can it be?
Of course Jinnah had some inclinations toward a non-priest-led country. That I have conceded. That does not deprive the movement itself of its Islamic feeling. It was mainly a Muslim struggle against Hindus.
The comparision with Congress is telling. The Congress’ stated programme was an Indian state, not a Hindu one. Its constituency was INDIANS, not just Hindus. In other words, Congress could appeal to the national sentiment of an established nation, going beyond religion.
This the Muslims could not do, for they had no nation going beyond religion other than India, which they rejected as Hindu-dominated. (And I don’t blame them. They have every right to do so.)
Now, supposing there was Punjabi movement against India, based on linguistic loyalty even if majority Muslim – one could call it secular. But the Pakistan movement was defined by Islamic identity, not territorial or linguistic identity.
Gandhi and others often talked of Ramraj not to spite or exclude the Muslims but -get this clear once and for all – because it was the ONLY language the mass of Indians knew. Not to use it was to condemn the movement to nullity.
But then the Congress also appealed for MUSLIM support using Muslim language.
So it’s best to say the Pakistan movement was based on religious identity, but has sought to create a territorial one. That would be fair.
BTW, by “only language they knew” I meant political language.
As for the Hindu movement today – the most prominent priests have mostly kept away from it.
Ganpat mian…
I used the word “theological millenialism”. Ofcourse the identity was primarily a religio-cultural one.
But it was divorced from religion because had it been religious, it would have never united a people entirely divided in the interpretation of religion.
Can you give me any serious history that claims that it was theological? If it had been theological Mullahs would have supported enmasse.
Also the reason why Congress could afford to be emphasize Indianness was because India was Hindu majority. Indeed if it had claimed Hindu identity, it would be naked tyranny of the majority.
Today Punjabis always emphasize a Pakistani identity…but smaller provinces emphasize their ethnic identities. Punjabis do so because they are the majority and don’t see the Pakistani identity as a threat…smaller provinces do. In the politics of North India, ethnic identities had been subsumed by common fear of Hindu Majority. Then too a majority was comfortable with a more inclusive identity because it was the majority. Therein lies the rub- any majority claiming exclusivist nationalism is necessarily fascist…any minority trying to holds it own against imbibation is fighting for its survival. This is the principle upon which leftists etc support submerged nationalities …this is the reason federalism and consociationalism exists.
Muslim League started off as a party to represent the interests of the Muslim community. The great irony is that it was formed the one Congress Muslim that blasted its founders as divisive was Mahomed Ali Jinnah. How strange that this Aga Khani Muslim who looked and dressed English rather than Muslim and spoke Gujurati and Cutchie and English, not Urdu, Arabic or Persian …was ultimately alienated enough to take up that cause.
You answer this sir and you’ve understood partition.
Frankly the issue had to do with the different timelines for the development of bourgeoisie in Hindus and Muslims. This is the short and long of it.
“It was mainly a Muslim struggle against Hindus.”
it was the Muslim League’s ‘struggle’ against Congress. there was, after all, a mulsim league-hindu mahasabha coalition ministry in bengal.
the kks were with the congress with real votes and the nwfp ministry (not just the ulema with no tangible support to show in the form of election results).
muslims in punjab were voting unionists, in permanent coalition with the akalis. unionists had the ministry right up till partition. khizr only resigned in march 1947, when he knew partition was inevitable and this was the least he could do to conserve his power and live to fight another day, very soon.
“Its [congress’] constituency was INDIANS, not just Hindus.”
congress wanted india for congress and no one else. but other than indirect success through the KKs in nwfp, it failed to develop any consensus whatsoever amongst an identity group of 90m indians. you can of course blame the constituents instead of the politicians. i, for one, have little respect for politicians who blame the electorate. they have no idea what being a democratic leader is all about.
by the way, in the 1937 elections aiml had done poorly. only, inc had done even worse (less than 5% of the muslim vote).
“Gandhi and others often talked of Ramraj not to spite or exclude the Muslims but -get this clear once and for all – because it was the ONLY language the mass of Indians knew.”
add that to the fact that india was a hindu majority country and congress had never managed even 5% of the muslim vote.
“But then the Congress also appealed for MUSLIM support using Muslim language.”
and how successful was it? what did congress do by way of acknowledging and addressing this failure? other than partition, that is.
“religious identity, but has sought to create a territorial one.”
ylh has already tried to explain the difference between cultural and theological identity, each relating to religion. belief or conformity in relation to it is a component of only the latter.
don’t forget the regional dynamics at play.
@yasserlatifhamdani
Indeed Jinnah “was ultimately alienated”, but this alienation process was a long one. Back in 1920, the Home Rule League/Congress convention took place in Nagpur. This occasion was presided over by Gandhi. In his speech, Jinnah made mention of Gandhi, as “Mr. Gandhi”, only to receive interjecting shouts from Gandhi fans of “Mahatama, Mahatama..” At another point, on the same occasion, Jinnah mentioned M.A. Jauhar as Mr. Muhammad Ali Jauhar. The Congress supporters, this time too started shouted “Maulana, Maulana”. In any case Jinnah was not allowed to proceed uninterrupted by the pro-Gandhi crowd. The presiding “Mahatama” for some reason chose not to intervene to control the interrupting crowd.
This is just a tiny glimpse, and perhaps among the tinier ones, of how Gandhi contributed to allowing religious swings into politics – something that Jinnah despised all along.
On 7th February 1935, addressing the Central Legislative Assembly, Jinnah said, “….Religion should not be allowed to come into Politics …. Religion is merely a matter between man and God”.
B.CIVILIAN;
I don’t think anybody will define a religion-based politics as “secular” because it is not about about imposing theocratic rule.
What they mean by non-secular is an appeal to people in terms of religious identity for political purposes.
If I told you I am a Hindu nationalist, but “secular” because I don’t pay attention to Hindu theology, are you going to take me for a secular guy? No, you would say: “In politics you do give priority to religion.”
As for Congress and Muslims – it gave them plenty, but could not make them the kings of India. In the end they were but 25 per cent. What Muslim state would have taken a non-Muslim minority one-tenth as seriously as Congress did?
“If I told you I am a Hindu nationalist, but “secular” because I don’t pay attention to Hindu theology, are you going to take me for a secular guy?”
Yes, where hindus were a minority. after all, why do the terms ‘hindu nationalist’ and ‘muslim nationalist’ have entirely different meanings within india? indeed you could be a hindu nationalist, a member of the hindu minority, who himself happens to be a devout atheist. savarkar too was a hindu nationalist who was apparently an atheist, except he belonged to the majority community in terms of identity. otoh, azad, deeply religious, was a ‘muslim nationalist’ within the indian/congress nomenclature.
Ganpat,
Wrong again. There is and will always be a difference between a minoritarian cultural nationalism and a majoritarian cultural nationalism. The former is liberationist and an act of resistance …the latter is always oppressive and fascist.
So comparing Hindu nationalism and Muslim nationalism is like comparing white supremacists with Marcus Garvey. There is no moral equation.
A Hindu nationalist in Pakistan trying to unite the Hindu community under one banner for the safeguard of their rights or even political autonomy would not necessarily be non-secular in my view…just like a Baloch or a Pushtun or a Sindhi uniting on that basis would not necessarily ethnofascist (I know I use it for some of the more zealous ones but it is always to finger them) …
Hoss yaar, as a right wing Hindu and descendant of west Punjabi refugees, I want to agree with you. If anything, agreeing with you is entirely compatible with my world view. But whereas I agree that Jinnah was leading a communal movement, I have a hard time transitioning that fact into stating that Jinnah wanted an Islamic state with Sharia as it’s legal bedrock principle. I think if you differentiate between communal (specifically representing one community) versus secular ( absence of religion from state), one can be both at the same time.
BJP is a good example of a communal party entirely comfortable with a secular polity.
‘BJP is a good example of a majoritarian communal party entirely comfortable with a secular polity’, for reasons obvious from its politics.
YASSER, CIVILIAN:
All I can say is that your use of the term “secular” is not the one we in India use.
We have in India several Muslim parties which stand for Islamic causes. No-one (other than themselves, perhaps) describes them as “secular”. “Communalist” is the term used in India for parties pursuing political goals in the name of religion, with an element of aggression in it. No-one would call “communalist” some party like the Tibetan Buddhists who are merely speaking up for a minority.
As for “fascist”, people throw that adjective around so freely for anything they happen to dislike…. I can’t take your use of it seriously.
To me a fascist is first of all someone who despises democracy and believes in elitist domination. It is quite possible for a party to based on the majority religion and for it to be absurd to call it fascist, as long as it upholds the principles of democracy and the right of everyone of any community or race to an equal chance and say in politics. The issue of fascism does not even arise in such circumstances.
If Jinnah had stood for a Muslim party of that kind in Pakistan I for one would never have called him a fascist.
. It is quite possible for a party to based on the majority religion and for it to be absurd to call it fascist, as long as it upholds the principles of democracy and the right of everyone of any community or race to an equal chance and say in politics. The issue of fascism does not even arise in such circumstances.
If Jinnah had stood for a Muslim party of that kind in Pakistan I for one would never have called him a fascist.
so it would have been alright for jinnah to stand for muslims had they been a majority (eg in pak)but wrong when they were a minority (eg in india). ok.
CIVILIAN:
I did not say Jinnah had to stand for Muslims exclusively. He could well have led a Muslim League that recognised the primacy of Islam, but was otherwise open to any citizen of any religion or none. There would have been nothing “fascist” in that, any more than the Christian Democrat Parties of Europe are all fascists.
As for Jinnah’s stand in India, he did not accept the logic of one man one vote. He was demanding parity for a community of 25 per cent. That is the kind of thing that led people to call him a communalist – which may be defined as someone seeking a clearly unfair advantage for his or her community.
By the way, anyone in the UK government swears allegiance to the Queen, who is Head of State AND Head of the Anglican Church.
All very fascist, I suppose.
@Yaseer. BC & everyone else
Can you please comment on the following article which raises a few good points like
http://beta.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article18323.ece
”In his oft-quoted speech to Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly in the run-up to Partition, Jinnah offered the impression that a citizen’s faith would bear no relation to his or her status. But did he wonder whether it could indeed be so, given that Pakistan had been founded on an unequivocally communal basis? And would it not have made infinitely more sense to strive for such an undertaking in an undivided India?”
Muslim league in central India was a communal party like the BJP is today. What are the chances of a party based on religious communalism to supporting secularism? None whatsoever. Thats why BJP does not support secularism and Muslim league being a communal party never supported Secularism. Nor did its leaders Jinnah ever supported secularism.
I seriously doubt that Jinnah ever considered and envisioned Pakistan as a secular state. His politics from the 1930s onward was communal and he was seeped in that politics till the end.
He was practicing communal politics in Pakistan when he declared Urdu to be the only state or national language. That was part of the Muslim league communal agenda in India.
Only an idiot would have declared Urdu as a national language. Urdu was a non issue after the partition.
Dear broken record latest post.
Refer to post 78.
Stuka,
“as a right wing Hindu and descendant of west Punjabi refugees, I want to agree with you”
You could have addressed the issue w/o going deep in to your silly background. WTF cares where you are from who you are?
One thing for sure Jinnah never wanted Pakistan as a secular state. Now as for as his public statements on many occasions about Not in conflict with Sharia or Islamic principles or Islamic democracy or whatever else he said, he might be lying but I have to go by his words. His speech to the Bar was perhaps his last biggest speech on constitution and he made it clear that the constitution would not be in conflict with Sharia or Islamic principles. End of the story.
He in fact said people should not be nervous about that at all, the constitution would not be in conflict with Sharia. This was a big assurance from the GG of Pakistan, why should I doubt his words?
Stupid, The posts here don’t appear to have numbers. Why are you so stupid to not even notice that?
But atleast you know you are the broken record …
When you cut and pasted that Karachi Bar Eid milad un nabi quote from whereever, you or your jamaaatia friend deliberately left out this part which changes the meaning significantly:
Islam and its idealism have taught us democracy. Islam has taught Equality, Justice and fairplay to everybody. What reason is there for anyone to fear. Democracy, equality, freedom on the highest sense of integrity and on the basis of fairplay and justice for everyone. Let us make the constitution of Pakistan. We will make it and we will show it to the world [14]
I have given a primary source above ..no. 14 in the article.
Jinnah was using a religious occasion to drive home that Islam stood for democracy, Equality, Justice, Fairplay for everyone.
Not quite what you are trying to extract from it.
Islam and its idealism have taught us democracy. Islam has taught Equality, Justice and fairplay to everybody.
—
This is even worse. The dumboo was driving secularism from the womb of Islam, what a joke.
Which Islam has taught democracy or equality? Was he freaking selling Jamaat Islami products?
Well the Islam that Jinnah believed in anyway.
Hoss mian you know I just proved that you were misquoting the speech and now you are jumping up and down.
So tell me what do you think of this quote:
“Islam is the most rational religion and natural religion. There is nothing contrary to reason and progress in it. We should moque the center of all activity and not limit it to religious worship. Religious education should become part of the curriculum so that every man and woman knows the true meaning of Islam”
Would you the person who said this was a secularist?
This was Kemal Ataturk at Erzurum. It is ironic that Ataturk who made this statement and then instituted Islam as the state religion through an amendment that he drafted …and it remained so for five years. But Jinnah who said that Islam taught equality, justice and fair play in an effort to convince Muslims that an inclusive democracy was compatible with Islam and Jinnah who never introduced a state religion but infact opposed every resolution to commit Pakistan to an Islamic polity is not secular according to you.
One should not lose all balance in their hate.
I don’t need to deal with frigging riddles, it is not my fault that you are so stupid.
This might be mohammed’s quote what should I frigging care?
Islam has nothing to do with democracy or equality or what ever nonsense jinnah said his speech. I just should assume that lying came naturally to him and his followers are not far behind.
Islam and democracy what a frigging joke!
No no hoss mian…this is no riddle… A riddle would be too much for you..
What we have here is a clear case: you misquoted the speech and are now scrambling to justify after being caught with your pants down.
The corrected speech you quoted is even worse. But you are so stupid and dumb that you can’t even figure that out.
Anyone who says Islam taught democracy and equality must be the biggest frking imbecile in the whole world. What more can you say about his followers who quote his nonsense as a proof that he was going to turn Pakistan in to a secular state. Just accept the reality he was a communal politicians after 1930s remained that until his death.
Yaar hoss,
Abusing me is not going to change the fact that you misquoted the speech to mean something quite different. Why don’t you accept that you were wrong and be on your way.
You didn’t tell me about that other quote. Is it that you are lacking in courage. Are you a mouse?
Dumb, What more proof do you need that you are so dumb that you can’t even read and understand what you posted yourself?
I have seen some phenomenally stupid guys but you really take the cake! You are one of kind in stupidity! Completely seeped in your delusional fantasies and imaginary world of that dumb fake prophet jinnah!
On the contrary my friend the meaning it quite clear ie that since Pakistan’s constitution was based on equality, fraternity, justice, fairplay and democracy, it would not be in conflict with Islam.
One can question if this was giving too much credit to Islam but then I am told by many people that Islam is not what the Mullah preaches. It was Jinnah’s attempt to convince people that their faith was not in conflict with reason and progress.
Anyway… You didn’t tell us about that other quote. I suppose you don’t want to.
That is alright. Your rage is indicative of how you’ve realized the folly of your ways and are embarrassed. Go in peace my friend. It is not your fault that you cut and pasted from some Jamaatia website which deliberately misquoted the speech. How were you supposed to know.
witless crook,
“equality, fraternity, justice, fairplay and democracy, it would not be in conflict with Islam.”
All these things are already in conflict with Islam, don’t you get that? Islam has nothing to do with equality, fairplay, democracy, secularism and any other concepts that belong to human being and not to god of mecca.
I am just tired of showing how stupid you are but it just won’t get in your thick skull.
Now you are going to tell me Islam invented all those things…in your same stupid vain…
For the ignorants like us, which State or States
or eras are being refered to where democracy
was practised as envisioned and provisioned
in Islam?
The point is not what you feel is wrong with Islam but that Jinnah was trying to put a positive spin on it.
So I am guessing you don’t agree with Ataturk’s characterization of Islam as the most rational religion ever which was not in conflict with reason and progress?
And another question would be, who would
know more about Islam, Jinnah or a maulana
like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad?
swapnavasavdutta
Stay away from this debate you freak BJP clown.
Listen to me you dumboo…ataturk was also not some avatar of god. He was what he was…..
Wtf cares what Atatürk said?
Alright HP, have fun.
Sv,
Precisely.
And Azad’s point of view was that Islam was completely compatible with democracy, equality, fraternity etc hence partition should not happen …right?
Well partition happened for reasons quite different than what Azad publicly was willing to accept (he has given those reasons in his book very clearly..posthumously released).
So if Jinnah was arguing the same thing to ensure equality and democracy in Pakistan he couldn’t be wrong now could he?
The above article is a convincing accout of Jinnah’s secularism. But I think pervez hoodbhoy has a valid point when he says that Jinnah’s continued references to Islam have continued to confuse generations after him. Some of his use of ‘Islamic symbolism’ to appeal to masses even after partition was completely unnecessary. That was precisely the thing he criticised Gandhi for in the 1920s. For example, only three days after his great 11th august speech, during the transfer of power ceremony on August 14 when Mountbatten praised the Emperor Akbar’s policy of political and religious tolerance, Jinnah pointed out: ‘The tolerance and goodwill that the Emperor Akbar showed to all the non-Muslims is not of recent origin. It dates back to thirteen centuries ago when our Prophet not only by words but by deeds treated the Jews and Christians after he had conquered them with the utmost tolerance and regard and respect for their faith and beliefs’. So, he was basically recomending the generous treatment of non-muslims not as a commendable secular principle but as a mandatory Islamic injunction.
He said in the Karachi Bar speech that principles of democracy, equality and justice were in essence also Islamic principles and that the constitution will not be contradictory to shariah. Once you start deriving your principles from Islam, you basically open the door to other interpretations. Thats what exactly happened in case of Pakistan. Through his continuous references to islam, he basically seemed to have suggested that he looked upto Islam as an ideal. Again I know his interpretation of that ideal was very liberal.
Wolpert also quotes his address to the Muslim laywers afer partition where he narrated the incident as to why he joined Lincoln’s Inn because Muhammad’s (pbuh) name was written on the greatest law givers list. Later, wolpert mentions that according to his resources no such list ever existed at Lincoln’s Inn. So, in all probabilty Jinnah was trying to inspire muslim lawyers by using Islamic symbolism through a lie.
His two nation rhetoric, even if used as a bargaining chip, had profound effect on the muslim phsyche. You cant advocate, publicaly, that hindus and muslims are socially, culturaly and religiously so different that they cant be brought under one united democratic setup and yet expect everything to be perfect again after a single speech (11th august). Its simply too much for the masses to digest.
I know that a closer look at Jinnah’s life and politics clearly shows that he was deeply secular. But his constant references to Islam left the door open for Islamists after his death.
I have no disagreements with that view.
Jinnah was obviously trying to convince his followers of those commendable principles but yes the speeches are now subject to misquoting and confusion.
Hence the article.
Ganpat
“He could well have led a Muslim League that recognised the primacy of Islam, but was otherwise open to any citizen of any religion or none.”
have you not been reading about the SCF being with the aiml. who told you that aiml was in any way closed to non-muslims? google MAJ’s views on dalitstoo, where he states in emphatic terms that he would stand for their rights before any other indian including muslims.
“As for Jinnah’s stand in India, he did not accept the logic of one man one vote. He was demanding parity for a community of 25 per cent. “
poppycock. both congress and aiml had agreed the lucknow pact. jinnah had declared for separate electorates to be done away with in 1927. his only contribution to the 14 points was to soften them considerably from the decision of the delhi muslim conference that they were. maj’s aiml meeting in calcutta had been boycotted by the majority of indian muslims who attended the delhi conference instead. it was led by the pro-simon commission sir shafi and presided over by the agha khan. it included congress allies like the JUH and some other congress muslims. jinnah had boycotted the simon commission.
jinnah returned to india and politcs in 1934 and the first thing he did was agreed with ranjendra prasad for separate electorates to be done away with. in 1937, aiml and congress had an electoral understanding. they co-operated with each other, but congress backed out of its commitment from having any kind of coalition with aiml in the provinces where aiml had done well. there was never any talk of parity. unless you think an election alliance and a coalition is parity!
where was there any parity in the cmp? none. a federation has no more parity than a unitary state. the decentralisation a result of a regional, not necessarily communal, dynamic. group b had traditionally not voted aiml. group c was traditionally not unreservedly behind aiml. the areas where aiml had been traditionally successful were in the heart of group A.
as for post-partition, what is it in the 8/11 inaugural speech in the CA that you find in any way leaving any room for doubt?
B. CIVILIAN
I suggest this case is pretty much settled.
A Jinnah telling Congress it had no business canvassing for Muslim support is not a Jinnah even a chap as open to Muslim views as Nehru fancied dealing with.
Parity is not my imagination. For years the Muslim League talked of it. Ayesha Jalal mentions it as Jinnah’s main objective. His talk was slippery and changeable, but some themes were pretty constant.
No-one on the Hindu side was interested in treating a 25 per cent minority anything like as seriously as Jinnah demanded.
So you got your Pakistan.
Keep it.
We are well quit of Jinnah and Pakistan, frankly.
Hindus have better things to do than get trapped in the appalling struggle to make Islam a faith modern politics can live with. It took the Christians centuries of struggle and boundless bloodshed. I just hope the Muslims have an easier time of it.
Ganpat bhai,
It is fair enuff for an Indian Hindu to say that Partition was a good thing or that we are better off without Pak/BD. But we shud stop misrepresenting Mr Jinnah.
Regards
CIVILIAN:
This is what the wiki site on the CMP has to say on whether Jinnah sought parity or not:
“Plan of June 16
The plan of May 16, 1946 had envisaged a united India in line with Congress and Muslim League aspirations. But that was where the consensus between the two parties ended since Congress abhorred the idea of having groupings of Muslim majority provinces and that of Hindu majority provinces with the intention of ‘balancing’ each other at the Central Legislature. The Muslim League could not accept any changes to this plan since the same ‘balance’ or ‘parity’ that Congress was loathe to accept formed the basis of Muslim demands of ‘political safeguards’ built in to post-British Indian laws so as to prevent absolute rule of Hindus over Muslims.
Reaching an impasse, the British proposed a second, alternative plan on June 16, 1946. This plan sought to arrange for India to be divided into Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan, since Congress had vehemently rejected ‘parity’ at the Centre. A list of princely states of India that would be permitted to accede to either dominion or attain independence was also drawn up.”
So there you have it.
It was not just Ganpat’s imagination.
Wrong again Ganpat. Wiki is not a reliable source.
BC right. CMP did not give Muslims any parity at the center.
It gave Muslims 74 seats to 230 or 290 general.
Was there territorial parity. I don’t think so because the seats were divided according to population but I might be wrong on that. BC can answer that.
Do you really imagine wiki to be immune to similar incompetence as Ganpat’s imagination?
Ganpat
don’t quote me nothing more than a view of another ganpat writing on wiki. why not show me what this so-called parity was from within the cmp may 16 document itself?
“Jinnah was obviously trying to convince his followers of those commendable principles but yes the speeches are now subject to misquoting and confusion.”
The imbecile will just keep writing nonsense. What principle that guy was teaching? He had no principles.
Dada, who is misrepresenting Jinnah? I don’t think Ganpat is doing that. It is your stupid friend who is doing that.
Hoss mian is just upset he got caught misquoting the Karachi Bar speech.
Imbecile,
Whatever you posted was worst than what I quoted and I did not change a comma in that quote. That is what the communal leader said and that is what he wanted.
That is just a matter of opinion. It is clear that the entire sense changes from what you wanted it to mean.
Then when I asked you for your opinion about a substantially similar quote from Ataturk, you said “wtf cares what ataturk said…he is not avtar of god”
Now is it your position today that Ataturk was not secular either because he said Islam is the most rational religion in line with reason and progress and that mosques should become centers of all activity?
You are changing goal posts. Jinnah was secular because he never introduced a state religion and stood in the way of all attempts to commit Pakistan to one religion.
If he said Islam stands for democracy, equality, fairplay, social justice etc then that cannot be negation of secularism.
I shall trawl throgh Ayesha Jalal all over again on the parity matter. No time at present.
But the issue is clear enough: no-one on the Hindu side wanted to take Jinnah as seriously as he imagined he should be.
He was but the leader of 25 per cent. A country cannot allow itself to be held hostage by its 25 per cent.
They must either live by one-man-one vote, or form their own state.
Nehru least of all wanted to waste the rest of his life haggling with Muslims with the threat of violence alawys in the foreground.
No-one was willing to give Jinnah any more.
Nobody wanted him on the Hindu side. His goods had zero buyers.
So he went.
@Ganpat Ram
Please tell me that your scholastic endeavours are not entirely Wiki-based.
In my opinion, a secular state can be described along the following lines:
#1: Secularism does not at all mean an anti-God, anti-religion, Godless or religionless system.
#2: Secularism simply means that the state will not hold the religious affiliation of the citizen to the advantage or disadvantage of the citizen.
#3: There will be no State Religion in place.
#4: No particular religion or adherents of a particular religion will enjoy state-granted privileges, exclusive to that religion.
#5: Adherents of all religions, without exception will enjoy equal civil rights and have equal civil responsibilities.
Any country, whatever the religion of its majority, if governed along the above principles, should be categorized as secular. Jinnah wanted Pakistan to be run along these lines. Latter deviations, in all fairness, cannot be attributed to Jinnah. A deviation is a deviation.
YLH
the cmp did not alter the existing constituencies throughout the provinces of india in neither number nor geography. it gave the princely states 93 seats at the centre and 4 to the chief commissioners’ territories. it was no less quiet on the ultimate status of the princely states than the Independence of India Act itself.
what those who misquote it don’t realise is that:
– it was an agreed mechanism for constitution-making, not the constitution.
– it agreed a uniform Bill of Rights enforceable all over india.
– while it allowed provinces to change or opt out of groups, after the first general election, there was no provision for a province to leave the union.
Ganpat
They must either live by one-man-one vote,….
the cmp was precisely that – one-man-one-vote in a joint electorate with universal, adult franchise.
….or form their own state.
they did.
Ataturk was not secular either because he said Islam is the most rational religion in line with reason and progress and that mosques should become centers of all activity?
Well, such statements are heavily loaded, most avoidable and heavily prone to misinterpretation. I wud hate to see a Hindu leader claiming to be secular to be making such statements. Mercifully, no sensible Hindu leader wud claim Hinduism to be either a rational religion or one which promotes equality etc…..
Regards
majumdar
there were two ways for india to be rid of mr jinnah:
– for jinnah to claim he was an atheist who saw religion as irrational and backward and good only to cause trouble, or
– for congress to do a better job of feigning agreement to the cmp, so that it could have had all of india for itself 12 september 1948 onwards.
luckily for you, neither jinnah was that stupid/(politically) suicidal nor congress that clever. 🙂
CIVILIAN:
I appreciate the quiet, calm tone with which you are responding.
As long as we don’t fall into cheap mutual abuse, dialogue will be worth it.
Why did Nehru reject the CMP?
Because he had had tough times negotiating with Jinnah in the past. His diaries and letters contain many bitter references to this hard and futile struggle. Don’t ask me to cite them. I don’t have all these books I read over the years to hand. Look at his writings yourself.
Nehru was a bitter man, about this. He was nearing 60. He had few active years left. The overwhelming feeling he had was: Enough is enough. If in all these years the Muslims shoed so little liking for the idea of union with Hindus, let them go. The interview with Michael Brecher in 1956 stated this as plainly as Nehru could: We want a strong India. If others don’t want it, how can we and whuy should we keep them in?
The CMP was far too vague and full of possibilities for misinterpretation for any wise leader with India’s interests in mind to accept.
How to bring India together? It was an extremely divided polity. How to get the Princes to join without antagonising the Muslim League?
What happens if the League is thrown out in elections by a more extreme party?
It was all too dangerous for the Hindus.
They were being offered paper promises by people who had been saying for years that they did not want to associate with them. Why trust them?
If Muslims try to break away again, who can stop them? Are they worth stopping, even if they could be?
And why have a country based on such a fragile agreement, ever on the verge of chaos?
Even if the Muslims stayed, would they not just prevent India’s progress and freedom of speech?
Unity was not worth it for the Hindus.
Better have a smaller India based on the huge Hindu majority, people who actually WANTED to be together wholeheartedly.
So Nehru decided on Partition.
Ganpat
I am only interested in facts. you are welcome to your subjective analysis, views and predictions. i have no interest in them. repeating them won’t make them interesting.
for example, for you repeating
“The CMP was far too vague and full of possibilities for misinterpretation for any wise leader with India’s interests in mind to accept.”
i can only repeat that the issue of ‘dishonest acceptance’ a la noorani. you will now repeat that congress wanted to have the interim govt, and so on. no point going round in circles. better to stick to issues of fact and analyses based on facts alone.
regards
CIVILIAN:
Are not the reasons Nehru himself gave to Brecher in 1956 – which I have cited before on this website and can be found in the Brecher biography of Nehru – are not these reasons the clearest possible evidence we have for Nehru’s motives?
No paper agreement is foolproff if the parties to the agrreement don’t trust each other, based on many many years’ experience.
The Hindus simply did not TRUST Jinnah. Do you know any reason why they could take seriously the commitment to unity of a man who had been talking of division for so many years? Who, even when he so belatedly agreed to the CMP, called it “the first step to a sovereign Pakistan?”
You may say he was just saying that to appease fhis follwers. Maybe. But why should Nehru trust him?
Who would trust a man like that?
Would YOU, if you were a Hindu?
And Nehru also said an independent India such as that offered by the CMP would have been a paradise for disunity, for so many vested interests being protected, and making any serious social progress impossible.
That too was a crucial reason for his rejection.
CIVILIAN:
I have already explained why the Congress failed to be clear-cut in its rejection of the CMP. It was tactical, a histrorian like Patrick French thinks. They feared a simple refusal would give the British an excuse for favouring the Muslim League.
In any case the Congress DID reject the deal, in essence.
Jinnah knew it.
The British knew it.
You know it.
I know it.
Otherwise why are you and I sitting in separate countries and thanking Heaven for that?
CIVILIAN:
The mistake many who analyse the CMP like Noorani make is that they get lost in the paperwork (like the lawyer Noorani is) and forget the human atmosphere, the CONSEQUENCES, had the CMP been put into action.
For people like Nehru and Patel, all this was not about an agreement and its details. It was also the grim prospect that if the deal was accepted it was THEY who would be left with the terrifying responsibility of somehow or other keeping in India 100 million Muslims who had shown so much dislike for the idea of being in one country with Hindus over so many years.
It was Nehru and Patel who would have to sit up late into the night in umpteen tense and bitter negotiations with the haughty and proud Jinnah.
It was THEY who would have to find a way of keeping in princely states like Hyderabad that some British and Jinnah were encouraging to leave India.
It was THEY who would have to take actions to quell daily Hindu-Muslim riots without aggravating their very fragile relations with Jinnah.
It was THEY who would have to represent India to the foreign world which would ask in bewilderment: Does this country which is broken up into so many almost- independent authorities actually exist except on paper?
It is THEY who would have to speak for India only to be told Mr Jinnah has just said he does not accept that view and is very angry.
Why bother?
Nehru and Patel wanted a smaller India to run, with the promise of a quieter life. As Patel joked : “We cut off the head to get rid of the headache!”
The CMP meant:
Muslims get all of Bengal and Punjab and assam.
Hindus get ten or twenty partitions.
No thanks.
Ganpat
like i’ve already said, a few times, much of what you claim has no basis in the cmp document. you have clarified yourself that you believe the document itself means nothing. you are free to make your predictions. there can be many hypotheses but there is only one history. i am sure these hypotheses are very interesting to many. i’m only interested that the document itself is not misquoted. that’s all. there is no excuse for misrepresenting it as it is part of history.
CIVILIAN:
I have not said the document means nothing. At least I never meant to say that.
What I meant and mean is that there is no agreement that will work without evident goodwill and trust between the parties.
You surely cannot doubt that simple practical point.
Now, that good will and trust was most indisputably lacking between Jinnah and Congress.
The British were also playing some pretty devious games.
In that atmosphere, with the Hindu-Muslim riots breaking out everyday, the agreement, even if signed by all, was very unlikely to end the trouble.
This is not just speculation. We have Nehru’s word for it, in the interview he gave his biographer Michael Brecher in 1956. The negotiations were going nowhere. The ideas for agreements gave too much power to the provinces at the expense of the Centre. As Nehru put it: “There would have been constant disintegrative pulls. ” So he decided to have a smaller but strongly united India.
This is Nehru’s explanation, after years to think things over.
So it is not just my wild conjecture or imagination or make believe.
You can believe all you like the CMP was wonderful and the key to paradise.
Just grant me that Nehru, the man who mattered most on the Hindu side, certainly did not think so.
Ganpat
I don’t know what is it that you are after here. but it’s very difficult, if not pointless, having a discussion if you are not going to stick to the point and argue all over the place instead.
“The British were also playing some pretty devious games.
again, you can read cripps’ biographies to know what this role was. he did all that he could to allow congress to feign agreement.
“In that atmosphere, with the Hindu-Muslim riots breaking out everyday, the agreement, even if signed by all, was very unlikely to end the trouble.”
there you go bringing in something completely irrelevant. what riots broke out between the time cmp was introduced and the ‘agreement’ breaking down?
“You can believe all you like the CMP was wonderful and the key to paradise.”
you were the one galavanting in the land of predictions and what-would/could-have-been, not me. we can’t have a useful debate if you decide to imagine me to have said things i never said.
“The ideas for agreements gave too much power to the provinces at the expense of the Centre.”
cmp granted no more to the provinces than what congress itself had promised. read the congress resolution of 1942, passed in april and re-strengthened in september, that the party believed in an indian federation with maximum provincial autonomy with all residual powers resting with the provinces.
infact, congress’ objection against ‘grouping’ was precisely that it encroached on provincial autonomy!
“Just grant me that Nehru, the man who mattered most on the Hindu side, certainly did not think so.”
you do not need me to grant that to either you or nehru himself. you each think what you think. what nehru thought mattered far more than what you or i think. but just because nehru thought it so does not mean it was so.
CIVILIAN:
If Cripps as you say really did all he could to allow Congress to feign agreement – andI admit there is evidence for that – does it not prove my contention that the British were playing devious games? True, in this case it was in favour of Congress, but it was devious, and would certainly have increased the Muslim League’s distrust of both Congress and the British.
In many many other cases, it would have been the British playing devious games in favour of Jinnah, which cemented the Congress’ distrust of both.
We mustn’t take it that the Muslim League were saints, either.
Oh no !
In one crucial case the League played an amazingly devious game: Jinnah supposedly agreeing to the CMP and the principle of Indin unity and simultaneously saying it was a “first step toward a sovereign Pakistan”.
THAT was “feigning” agreement much more cynically than the Congress ever did. You forget all about Jinnah’s deviousnesss.
That instance of total cynicism by the Muslim League puts paid to your indignation about Congress perfidy.
Which only goes to show the chances of working the agreement was very poor, given such distrust and double-dealing.
Again, you dismiss Nehru’s final verdict. Well, he was the one who took the crucial decision, and his view counts. You have not refuted it in any way. Whatever previous history, Nehru believed the CMP gave too much power to the provinces.
Saying Congress had agreed to something similar in the past is pointless. Just because you agree to something once does not mean you always have to agree to it. You can improve in wisdom.
As a matter of fact, Congress on at least one occasion went far, far further in appeasing the Muslims than in the case you sight: Gandhi suggested it would be a great idea in the early 1920s to declare the Nizam of Hyderabad King of India !
Congress did many stupid things in its time, particularly under the erratic guidance of Gandhi.
But it is the CMP we are talking about, and Nehru’s reasons for rejecting it.
A slight amendment to the post above: Nehru actually said the CMP gave too much autonomy to “the federating units”, by which he no doubt meant the groupings of provinces rather than the provinces themselves.
Ganpat there is an interesting account by Woodrow Wyatt about that which may help you understand that “first step” business better.
Ganpat
provincial autonomy was not something congress ‘agreed’ to with some other party. it was a unilateral declaration.
congress’ objection to grouping was that it went against provincial autonomy. that is, the groups would be ‘too strong’ at the cost of the provinces.
congress did not accept a fundamental clause and others related to it. without agreement on each and every clause, there is no agreement at all.
that the parties would be free to renegotiate the cmp in 10 years time was a clause of the cmp itself. in other words, cmp had a shelf life of 10 years unless it was decided to carry on with it at that point. there was no legal way for a province to secede from the indian union while cmp was in force, ie a minimum of 10 years. jinnah never said that he wanted a sovereign pakistan in breach of the cmp. he accepted each and every clause.
YASSER:
Here is what Woodrow Wyatt says about Jinnah’s acceptace of the CMP:
Then I put to him that the Muslim League should say that, though the Statement ruled out Pakistan, it was the first step on the road to it and they should give it a trial. I spoke at length. When I finished his face lit up. He hit the table with his hand: `That’s it. You’ve got it.’ And that is exactly what he made the Muslim League do. ”
Notice: “first step on the road to Pakistan”.
Fine. Go there. But leave us Hindus behind, OK?
Nor am I impressed by nitpicking about wjether or not “sovereign” meant “sovereign” etc. Whether Pakistan really meant totally independent Pakistan etc. No-one in India cares. What Nehru said on this goes: we do NOT want a weak India. We want a strong, centralised one. Period.
B.CIVILIAN:
I am not in the least impressed by your points. They change nothing. Saying even the CMP was only valid for ten years and then the whole appalling business might have to be renegotiated only shows how utterly WISE Nehru was to chuck it out bag and baggge.
Do you seriously suppose Hindus have nothing else to do with their time?
HAHAH So the Moderators now can’t stand the heat….
How many IPs can you ban?
“The CMP was far too vague and full of possibilities for misinterpretation for any wise leader with India’s interests in mind to accept.”
And all of the following post.
Ganpat Ram March 30, 2010 at 8:43 pm
The CMP was vague on many issues and that has to be conceded. But the negotiations were precisely to remove the vagueness and possibilities of the misinterpretations. I think the right thing would have been to say that more negotiations are needed to resolve the issues instead of accepting and then walking away from it, thus leaving the other party to cry foul.
I think the consequences that you mentioned were real but I doubt they were expressed then. However, political decision makers have to think about both side of the coin. In this case, the major positive was maintaining the unity of India. Why do we assume now that two zones would have gone with the Muslim League in future? In NWFP, KK was well entrenched, Balochistan had no ML presence, Kashmir was still under Abdullah’s control and ML had no standing there. Punjab was a borderline case and it only flipped when the Unionist saw that Pakistan was going to happen. Otherwise, they would have given the ML a tough time in Punjab. Bengal was not a communal society and I think the Bengali Muslims would have been satisfied with a certain level of autonomy. Muslim league barely had roots in Sindh. In UP and other parts of central India ML would have been just another communal party.
So there were lots of possibilities to work within the framework given. Congress had a legitimate shot at continuing with the negotiations about the CMP, ruling out any deadline, citing the princely state issues and other anomalies in the CMP.
There is another aspect of this whole thing and that has to be looked at by separating the ML from all these issues.
At least Sindh and NWFP would have asked for separation from India in due course of time. Baluchistan too was not keen on staying with India. The ML took advantage of the situation but that situation would have arrived even without Muslim League. These separations would have happened, if not in 1947, perhaps in 1957. After the long colonial rule, I doubt that Indian would have remaine
Ganpat
for the umpteenth time: do not assume a position that i have never taken just because you find it easier to refute the position that exists only in your imagination.
when and where did i say anyone – hindu, muslim or shintoists – should or should not have accepted the cmp?
congress rejected a main clause of the plan and still claimed they had accepted the plan. when have i argued that congress had no right to object to the plan or reject it? my problem is only where the objections are post-acceptance and, more ridiculously, contradict each other. you cannot claim that grouping encroached on provincial autonomy and cry ‘weak centre’ at the same time!
no where have i commented on nehru’s subjective take on jinnah or the future of ‘living with muslims’.
in your case, my issue has been that your arguments have been even worse than just self-contradictory. you have tried to base them on total misrepresentation of facts as far as the actual contents of the cmp plan were concerned.
not once have you been able to answer my challenge in that respect. instead, often even after admitting you were wrong about your facts, you have still gone on to fight battles against entirely imaginary enemies.
all you have done every time has been no more than to repeat a bunch of what you think are great rebuttals having attributed a position to me that you cannot show me to have taken anywhere.
no point wasting time.
Let me make it clear to every one here. There is no way you can stop me from posting here. If you continued to be childish, I will send 100s of post from 100s of IPs in less than 30 minutes here so watch out.
I have just demonstrated that with three IPs in under three minutes….
CIVILIAN:
This is getting comical.
Of course you can complain the groupings encroach on provincial autonomy AND cry that the centre is weak at the same time: if you believe the provinces should be free to break up the groupings, ultimately strengthening the centre, AND that in the meanwhile the groupings are too powerful vis-a-vis the centre.
It is no more contradictory than Jinnah claiming his acceptance of the CMP did not contradict his aim of an independent Pakistan.
What it all shows is what I said from the first: none of the parties was sincere about this agreement. Each was pretending to accept it only on its own terms.
It’s no good Jinnah claiming his acceptance need not nullify his Pakistan stand; to the Congress it should have done. Otherwise why would they have opposed the Pakistan demand?
The thing was unworkable from the word go. No-one accepted it in anything like its spirit. And of course, even the semblance of agreement soon broke down.
You are stuck with the Jinnah-worship line according to which he was the ONE guy who did no wrong.
That’s your view.
In reality, he was an opportunist politician, nothing more.
In any case, India is the biggest gainer from all this. Imagine if Nehru had actually been foolish enough to accept this crazy fradulent “deal” !
Ganpat
there you go with your assumptions again.
you were wrong on parity and wrong on lack of one-man-one-vote. eventually you have come to the only issue cmp was about: unitary vs federal state.
either you want provinces to have the residual powers, or the centre. you can’t have both.
you didn’t have to rely on misrepresenting the plan in order to make your trust-deficit argument, did you now? trying to keep india united was the spirit of the plan. grouping was the letter.
it was the aiml that withdrew acceptance. so who are you trying to give all these justifications to?
see you next week.
regards
Ganpat,
Sometimes having the option of secede is enough.
Consider it like the right of divorce for women… Many enlightened Muslim men have bypassed religious law by exercising the option of passing on the right of divorce ie Talaaq e Tafweez to women under the Muslim Family Law Ordinance of Pakistan 1961.
I don’t think the Congress was too bothered by Jinnah’s acceptance of the CMP with a declaration “the first step to sovereign Pakistan”. They did as you know accept the CMP but raised the stink about groupings clause …ie before or after first elections. They were wrong legallly as BC has shown above.
Arun Gupta,
This is what happens when you read your sister as an authority.
The CMP as accepted by the League gave the provinces the right to opt out after the first elections.
Congress tried to interpret it as the right to opt out even before the making of the constitution. It was paragraph 15 I think which was under dispute.
Next time instead of accepting what someone says just because he or she is related to you check the primary source. Posting 30 letters to drown out the one basic foundational flaw in your argument will make your building crumble even faster.
The CMP as accepted by the League gave the provinces the right to opt out after the first elections.
Opt out of what? Grouping or the union itself?
Regards
Out of the grouping …the CMP was quite clear.
I don’t know why New Jersey Guptas insist on misrepresenting the facts.
This email is from chairman of the India’s center for secular studies, renowned Islamic scholar, historian and Nehruvian Asghar Ali Engineer which I am reproducing with his permission as it has relevance to the article in question:
Dear Yasser Hamadani,
Jinnah was indifferent to any religion like Nehru but as founder of Pakistan he could hardly avoid what he said about Islam and also certain fundamental elements in Islam have attracted even agnistics. Jinnah would have liked to hav3e only and only secular Pakistan but vested interests had their own plans and just waited for his death.
Dr. Asghar Ali Engineer
Chairman
Centre for Study of Society and Secularism
602 & 603, Silver Star, Behind BEST Bus Depo,
Santacruz (E), Mumbai:- 400 055.
E-mail: csss@mtnl.net.in
Website: http://www.csss-isla.com
Tel. 91-22-26149668, 26102089
Fax: 91-22- 26100712
—– Original Message —–
From: yasser.hamdani@gmail.com
To: Csss
Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2010 13:45
Subject: Re: My Article
Asghar sb,
Divorced from his role in india’s partition, can you as an Islamic scholar and a historian write something about what kind of Pakistan did Jinnah want to create given his own secularism and his positive references to Islam.
*** This Message Has Been Sent Using BlackBerry Internet Service from Mobilink ***
–
well if by deleting my posts you want to establish a secular democratic society, go take off your blinkers!
Jinnah should be crowned the most communal leader yet found!!!!
It is amazing that people claim they are being deleted when they are allowed to post to their heart’s content here.
go tell your stories to some more gullible fools. i think its your moral duty to abdicate the position of moderator. then some balance will be restored
You think wrong. That would be the case if someone was forcing you to attach yourself to this website like a leech.
But in any event …only rarely do we delete or moderate posts. Links automatically go to moderation and are restored when a moderator sees them.
Infact the most censored person- moderators here will tell you- is me.
Karun::
Be sensible. pl pass comments only when have any evidence to show Jinnah as communal. no point doing silly one liners. In any case maintain restraint pls
YLH ya need to get out more. You got a whipping in the Dailytimes, and have not replied as yet. Forget Jinnah, he aint gonna save your hindside, he is dead. Long buried. 60 years since then. WTF move on. No one in the current generation cares for this old long gone man. He is just a picture, framed if you will, at official functions. he is just someone they read about rest is meaningless.
Chachay,
I do not concur with your view. The points I raised vis a vis the Kashmir war in my article had demolished Ishtiaq Ahmed’s original article. Ishtiaq Ahmed responded with an intemperate piece where he did not even quote one single source which could prove what I said wrong. For all his “overwhelming evidence” he ended up admitting that Jinnah was not kept in the loop on the details.
Ofcourse to less discerning readers, anything written against anyone automatically becomes a “whipping”. So if you feel that way, good for you but as far I am concerned and in the opinion of many reasonable people, Ishtiaq has only made a fool of himself.
In any event, Ishtiaq Ahmed has had his say and I shall respond as and when I can.
You may consider however how many a national columnist has felt the need to use his weekly column to attack or abuse you? In this I think Ishtiaq sb has only done me a favor.
@Chacha
No one in the current generation cares for this old long gone man. He is just a picture, framed if you will, at official functions. he is just someone they read about rest is meaningless.
Your contribution is outstanding. You deserve to be idolised.
Let us hope earnestly that we may be able to say the same about you as you said about Jinnah before much longer.
YASSER, CIVILIAN
This argument has little now to do with defending the CMP or Indian unity.
It is really about your claim that Jinnah was the one chap involved who played a straight game.
This won’t wash.
A man who claims to support an agreement that supposedly upholds the principle of Indian unity and at the same time says this is the first step to Pakistan, which Congress understood to mean secession, is certainly not playing a straight game.
Patel, for instance, initially welcoming the agreement, declared that it laid the Pakistan claim to rest forever.
Jinnah may have had his reasons for his double-dealing – to placate his supporters.
But then Congress also had reasons for its devious feigning to accept the agreement, and so did the British for not calling out either the Congress or Jinnah on their double-dealing.
No one is devious for NOTHING.
Nope. I am afraid none of them were playing straight that time – least of all your supposed flawless hero.
There is the bigger historical point. The greatest fallacy in this whole Jinnah-centred argument is that it assumes he was all that mattered on the Muslim side.
This was far from the case.
The movement by the huge Muslim population to secede from India was a tremendous, extremely angry movement involving the rage and fury of millions. Jinnah certainly fomented the anger all he could, but he was riding a mass movement, not its creator.
Jinnah could not turn off the emotions, anti-Hindu anger and fervour of his supporters at will.
It betrays a very shallow understanding of historical causes for great events to assume that an agreement in a drawing room with Jinnah could settle the Muslim question.
Far from it.
The Congress, if they were at all responsible people, had to weigh the probable future trend of events, the movement of social forces.
For decades the 100 million Muslims had shown huge secessionist sentiment. It was not going to stop suddenly. The Hindus would, had they accepted the CMP, faced the prospect of trying to keep in India a huge Muslim population very susceptible to secessionism. Their whole history showed it, Jinnah or no Jinnah.
It would have been a suicidal gamble by the Hindus. The odds were so heavily against them. They certainly did not think the Muslims worth keeping by means of war.
Nehru later gave this as his reason for throwing out the CMP: why keep so many who don’t want a strong India?
It is understandable that at the time, in the thick of events, the reasons he gave were far more circumstantial. But even then he showed his huge distrust of the CMP time and again, his refusal to be committed to it. And when it failed he took the decision to accept Partition without hesitation.
So let us look at how big historical events happen – through social upsurges no man can control – and not just nitpick about personalities and documents.
“It is really about your claim that Jinnah was the one chap involved who played a straight game.”
Well we are not the only ones who have claimed this.
One H M Seervai of India also claimed this. So did S K Majumdar … and several other other historians.
Indeed in those very words… though we did not use those words.
The confusion is due to semantics. People generally fail to distinguish between the following four terms and interchange them with liberty:
1.Islam
2.Muslims
3.Muslim-majority states
4.Politico-economic wellbeing of Muslim-majority states
Out of these 4, the latter is what Jinnah actually strived for.
Jinnah saw the Indian states as comprising of 2 sub-categories:
1.Muslim-majority states
2.Hindu-majority states
Of these 2, the politico-economic condition of the former was evidently precarious. Jinnah stood to struggle for them. He was essentially a pro-minority activist. Muslims were not the only minority who caught his eye. His concern for the community of the Untouchables was even greater. He said, “in the name of Humanity, I care more for them [the Untouchables] than for Mussalmans. ” [address at the All India Muslim League session at Delhi, 1934]. One could argue that this was mere rhetoric, but then how much of rhetoric do we otherwise come across in the dispassionately practical speeches of Jinnah.
Moreover, Jinnah never envisioned Pakistan and India as rival neighbors, one representing Belief and the other Disbelief – certainly not. In November 1946, he said, “The two states [Pakistan and India] will be friends and will go to each other’s rescue in case of danger and will be able to say ‘hands off’ to other nations. We shall then have a Munroe Doctrine more solid than in America.”
In short, the concept of an “Islamic Republic” was nowhere to be seen at the time Pakistan came into being.
@prasad
shut up. i have been at this site long enough to qualify saying what i say.
Karun
suggest you stop jumping since you seem to be doing it for long. just go through the interesting discussions silently if you cannot add any value other than your rant.
YASSER:
I think it is time to close this argument. It has gone as far as it can.
For me, Pakistan is not Jinnah – it is the fruit of a very long-standing Muslim tendency to keep away from the Hindus (and vice-versa, let’s be fair). No deal with Jinnah could have nullified that great historical trend.
As for Jinnah’s deviousness, I can cite historians of good repute who view him as an opportunist and ruthless politician above all: Michael Brecher, M J Akbar, Mushirul Hasan, just to start with.
Even Patrick French, friendlier to him than others, apportions him huge blame for the appaling communal killings of Direct Action Day.
Ganpat no need to make stuff up as you go along. I haven’t read Brecher…but MJ Akbar and Mushirul Hasan have said no such thing.
And I have read Patrick French’s book…find your comment rather odd, if not an outright lie.
I consider your post an act of retreat of a man unable to argue on fact. So stop imputing the reputations of these fine men by putting your own words in their mouth.
Actually an outright lie is the right description of your claim Ganpat.
Patrick French on his book …and on Gandhi and Jinnah…
“Mahatma Gandhi was always one of my greatest heroes. It was, therefore, a profound personal disappointment to me when I began to research his life and activities in more detail, and to discover that the popular version of Gandhi is very far from the truth. If you believe that Gandhi was a blameless saint, try reading what he actually said and did at crucial points in the freedom movement—such as 1921, 1942 or 1946—and you will soon change your mind. He was an extremely wily politician, who failed to listen to the opinions of his opponents.
As for Jinnah, again I should say that my personal opinions on him changed significantly while researching Liberty or Death. Like most people in Britain and in India, I originally saw Jinnah as a bitter fanatic who had broken up the subcontinent. On closer study I came to see that he was a far more complex figure, who remained an Indian nationalist and secularist until his death. Jinnah and the Muslim League were pushed into an extreme political position during the 1930s and ’40s, largely through the intransigence of the Congress in meeting justifiable demands by Muslims and by the refusal of Nehru, Gandhi and Patel in particular to accept that Jinnah had the democratic support of a substantial minority of the Indian people. If my book is revisionist, that is as a direct result of my research in the archives—nothing else. “
YASSER:
As I have already said, this argument is not worth continuing.
If you are unable to accept that a man, Jinnah, is being devious who says he accepts an agreement standing for Indian unity, and at the same time calls is a step to Pakistan, no words of mine or anyone else will change that. It’s your belief. We have to leave it.
I could cite French on Jinnah and his guilt on Direct Action Day (I may do so once I get home and have the book to hand).
I won’t bother with any more trawling of historians like Akbar, Hasan, Brecher etc.
What’s the point?
When people have absolute beliefs, it is best to leave them be.
So I close by saying the Partition was the best piece of luck Hindus had in 1000 years. It gave them a unitary state with an overwhelming majority of them concentrated in it, and divided the Muslims into three more or less equal parts, in separate territories. Unity for Hindus, division for Muslims.
For that at least, a huge Thank You to Jinnah.
Ganpat I am not interested in your conjecturing.
The point I made was that you lied about MJ Akbar, Mushir and French.
Now if you wish we can end it and you can admit that in a moment of weakness you dropped names and now you are caught.
BC and I can go on arguing with you about this so its best to end it by admitting that you made a mistake.
YASSER:
Let’s get started with Mushirul Hasan, then. This is from an article in Outlook India, 31st August, 2009 (“Two Man Theory) :
“…historian Mushirul Hasan is also sceptical of a wholesale rehabilitation: “You can’t be responsible for the death of half a million people and the dislocation of five million and then say, ‘Thank you very much, now let’s live in peace and amity’. It would be like the Nazis wanting to create a moral, liberal society after killing the Jews.”
…….
Far from blaming a ‘triumphalist’ Congress, Hasan finds Jinnah more guilty: “Why should Jinnah have expected the Congress to be accommodating after the 1936-37 elections when they had a sweeping win? It’s not in the nature of political parties to be accommodating. He should have appeased Gandhi and Nehru more.”
But the real issue, as Hasan points out, is not who to blame, but how to accept: “It’s ridiculous in a mass movement to hold one person responsible—I would say it was a collective failure of the nationalist leadership.”
There is more.
Dear Ganpat,
That is not what you claimed. You claimed that Mushir ul hasan was one of the historians who described Jinnah as devious ruthless and opportunistic.
But he seems to be saying something quite different.
Just accept that you made a boo boo Ganpat.
YASSER:
Here is Mushirul Hasan, from an article in Outlook India, June 20th, 2005 (“JInnanus the Janus Faced”):
“..Till the mid-’30s, people heard the voice of ‘secular’ Jinnah loud and clear. Thereafter, he changed tack and, in the process, changed the course of modern India. He expounded the idea of a civilisational unity among Muslims, and counterpoised it against other religious/cultural heterodoxies. He also questioned the very idea of unitary nationalism being foisted on different nationalities. This he had not done before. In ’39, he was congratulating himself for removing the ‘unwholesome influence of the maulvis’. A few years later, he was courting Muslim divines. Earlier, he opposed the mixing of religion and politics; in February ’39 he concurred with a deputation that religion and politics could not be divorced in Islam.
In ’30, Jinnah opposed the complete independence resolution and blamed Gandhi ‘for this sudden outburst of political hysteria’. He derided the civil disobedience, saying it appealed mostly to callow youth and the illiterate, that their involvement would lead to anarchy. After ’40, he used the same groups to whip up passions. The National Guards, conceived on much the same lines as the RSS, were deployed to disseminate the ideas behind the creation of a Muslim nation. Their fury was unleashed on the Muslim nationalists.
To Wavell, the viceroy, Jinnah was ‘a vain, shallow, ambitious man who would probably think twice the present time inopportune for any rapprochement with the Hindus’. A harsh judgement, perhaps, but Jinnah did show great obstinacy in negotiating with Nehru, the secularist, and Gandhi, the champion of Hindu-Muslim unity. “The two mountains have met,” Wavell referred to the Gandhi-Jinnah talks in ’45, “and not even a ridiculous mouse has emerged.”
Of course, their views and lifestyles offered a stark contrast. Jinnah relished debating finer points of law and performed with characteristic elan in cosy chambers. He stayed clear of the dusty roads, the villages inhabited by millions of hungry, oppressed, physically emaciated peasants, and the British prison where so many of his countrymen were incarcerated for defying the government. Whenever he found the British government tilting slightly towards the Congress, he would conjure up the self-image of a wounded soul, and raise the spectre of a civil war.
Gandhi, by contrast, walked barefoot to break the Salt Law and to galvanise the masses by culturally resonant and action-oriented symbols. Around that time, the immaculately dressed Jinnah waited in his Hampstead house, for his turn to occupy the commanding heights of power in Lutyen’s DelhiAgain, while Gandhi trod the path fouled by religious zealots in Bihar and Bengal’s riot-stricken areas to provide the healing touch, Jinnah waited to be crowned as Pakistan’s governor-general.”
I think there is no more to say about Hasan and Jinnah.
As for French on Jinnah and his guilt for Direct Action, I will send the citation later today.
I got the title of the article wrong: It was “Jinnah the Janus Faced”.
Ganpat where does he describe Jinnah as a devious, opportunist and ruthless in this?
He didn’t and you are a liar Ganpat.
Ps: you proved yourself to be a liar on Mushirul ‘s count.
Also I am waiting for French’s citation because I would like to see how you are going to twist that one…
And let’s not forget MJ Akbar. You lied about him as well.
And given this record I am going to guess Brecher never made any such claim either.
Yeah right. The person (Jinnah) who presided over the state sponsored genocide of 25% hindu/sikh minority in pakistan, is secular. RIGHT!!!!!! I too want to do to his community in MY country what he did to my community in his country. I too am very very secular.
Note what Hssan says above about Jinnah:
“In ‘39, he was congratulating himself for removing the ‘unwholesome influence of the maulvis’. A few years later, he was courting Muslim divines. Earlier, he opposed the mixing of religion and politics; in February ‘39 he concurred with a deputation that religion and politics could not be divorced in Islam…..He derided the civil disobedience, saying it appealed mostly to callow youth and the illiterate, that their involvement would lead to anarchy. After ‘40, he used the same groups to whip up passions. The National Guards, conceived on much the same lines as the RSS, were deployed to disseminate the ideas behind the creation of a Muslim nation. Their fury was unleashed on the Muslim nationalists.”
If all that is not enough to indict a politician as devious, ruthless and opportunist, I have no idea what is.
And of course we have the example I have already given: accepting the CMP, which supposedly stood for a united India, while claiming it was the first step to Pakistan.
But if it had not been Jinnah, some other Muslim would have led a secessionist movement later, anyway. And that would have had far worse consequences.
How lucky Hindus were to have Partition in 1947! I marvel at our good fortune. Otherwise, arguments like this might be serious, instead of being no more than a hobby.
Ha …so Gandhi could do it and he was a Mahatma …but if Jinnah belatedly took to the same tactics, he is a ruthless opportunist.
I don’t think Mushir quite intended it like you are taking it but suffice to say it is your interpretation.
Read Patrick French’s quote about Gandhi and Jinnah.
And where is your claim about M J Akbar? Read his “under shade of swords” or something. I read it. M J Akbar seems to be a hesitant admirer of Jinnah… Hesitant to accept because of Hindu fascists like you.
Hindu Militant:
“Yeah right. The person (Jinnah) who presided over the state sponsored genocide of 25% hindu/sikh minority in pakistan, is secular. RIGHT!!!!!! I too want to do to his community in MY country what he did to my community in his country. I too am very very secular.”
You have no idea at all do you of how the massacres took place-or of how many Muslims were massacred by Sikhs and Hindus on this side of the Radcliffe line? By some accounts more Muslims were massacred by Sikhs and Hindus than Muslims by Hindus and Sikhs.
And would you say that Nehru and Gandhi presided over these killings of Muslims as you accuse Jinnah of presiding over the killings of Hindus and Sikhs?
You are a badly informed fellow. Don’t blame secularism for your deformed passions, blame your elders.
I have no particular animus against Jinnah.
He fought for his people, and used ruthless, bloody tactics, and yes, devious ones too.
In effect his career was an inestimable plus for Hindus because it took out of India a huge Muslim population which, had it continued to live side by side with Hindus, would have caused an unimaginable wreckage of the society. Jinnah should at least be praised for seeing clearly and early that these two huge incompatible communities were fated to clash if they remained side by side in such incredible numbers.
Hence his Partition solution. It was harsh and cruel, but if it had not happened then it would have happened later with far more horrific consequences.
It was a cruel situation all round. Muslim politics in any case are harsh and if one cannot stand that one had better get out of the way.
Jinnah was a politician in the Muslim mould, standing for tough and intransigent claims. His compromises were few, belated and extremely ambiguous so that his adversaries could not believe in their sincerity. A good example is the CMP.
He was ruthless, but Islamic leaders are by and large ruthless.
Hindus were extremely lucky that Jinnah led his movement for secession at a time when he could not claim more than he did. Had the secession broken out later, the whole of Punjab and Bengal and Assam would very likely have gone to the Muslims, and perhaps a lot more besides.
We got off lightly.
There even seems to be something providential, I sometimes think (not too seriously) in this grandson of a Hindu family inadvertently helping Hindus so crucially.
I always knew Hindu Fascists were crooks and liars but now you’ve irrevocably convinced me of this fact.
It has been educational.
I say it deliberately and after due thought:
Mohammed Ali Jinnah was by far the greatest, though unintentional, friend the Hindus had in 1000 years.
Not in spite of Partition – but BECAUSE of it.
Partition saved the Hindus.
I find it rather curious that the other Muslim figure who unintentionally helped Hindus so much by laying the ideological basis for Partition: Mohammed Iqbal – was also of recent Hindu descent.
@Ganpat Ram
You’ve repeated this point several times that the Hindus benefited greatly from Jinnah and owe gratitude to him. The Muslims already feel deeply indebted to him. Let us logically conclude this debate at this unifying point that Jinnah was the greatest common benefactor of both Muslims and Hindus of the Subcontinent.
Ganpat
I’m travelling so I won’t get to read many of your posts. but if one has read one, one has read them all.
the spirit of the plan was to give united india a chance for another 10 years, at least. that is what aiml had agreed to unreservedly. how was a federal india not a step closer to a sovereign pakistan or a USI than a unitary india? was a unitary india not a step away from a USI or soveriegn pakistan?
the debate here has not been whether the cmp should have been acceptable to congress or aiml or anyone else. but that any acceptance should have been recognisable as that, prima facie. i see that you agree that congress’ clearly wasn’t.
kindly note that no one has challenged you about muslims being blood thirsty, secessionist, seditious cut throats. but you are free to repeat your world view another 50 times, just to make sure.
@Bin Ismail
You have concluded this long drawn debate very logically and conclusively. Thank you.
Quaid-e-Azam Zindabad.
CIVILIAN:
It was not my intention to offend anyone.
Unfortunately, the Hindu-Muslim problem is a very tough one.
If Jinnah proved to be not the worst thing that ever happened to the Hindus, all one can say is “Unhappy the people that needs such a friend!”
Let us strive to look to the good of our own countries without getting angry with each other to no purpose.
I appreciate that on the whole people have been polite.
Let us strive to look to the good of our own countries without getting angry with each other to no purpose.
indeed.
in view of the tone of your post, i’d like to end this debate on this conciliatory note. except i cannot help but notice that your whole argument has been, and still is even in your latest post, entirely in the context and language of hindus vs muslims, not india vs pakistan. you believe that india is better off with less muslims. but you also think that most of them have little inclination to be loyal to the state of india; that, in fact, they will desert her, sooner or later.
but lets end this debate in the spirit of your line above. peace.
Excellent. Kudos to YLH and Ganpat for discussing with such exuberance, with as much collatable facts and figures!
As far as B.Civilian’s latest comment is concerned, he is right in the assessment. Probably desertion wont happen since there is more emphasis on education and Indian Citizens ( all religions incl) will realise religion is not everything in human society… religion is just one of the guiding principles and more and more to be limited only at home / close circles….what is more important is the whole societal cycle that humans have built around them over the years. Probably as years go by with integration across human spectres, this realisation is only going to sink more amongst us.
As regards YLH’s emotional outburst on ‘Hindu Fascist’ is concerned – Every fascist is a crook including those amongst muslims and Christians
Prasad
I was addressing only the individual concerned. I was hoping that other readers would see that and ignore the comment. i had deleted my original reply to him, but here it is to clear any misunderstanding (apparently stemming more from your own view of a section of your compatriots):
B. Civilian
2010/04/01 at 2:38am
ganpat
Unfortunately, the Hindu-Muslim problem is a very tough one.
If Jinnah proved to be not the worst thing that ever happened to the Hindus, all one can say is “Unhappy the people that needs such a friend!”
Let us strive to look to the good of our own countries without getting angry with each other to no purpose.
well, if jinnah was the best thing to happen to hindus, then azad could only have been the worst. mushir ul hassan, mj akbar etc. even more so, given your view of them and of the world you live in.
if jinnah was the worst thing, as was iqbal, then partition couldn’t have been the best thing.
with your black and white, binary world view, you cannot help but contradict yourself every step of the way. thinking exclusively in terms of pigeonholes, and allowing yourself strictly only two of them, you will always be struggling to stuff all kinds of contradicting things into the same pigeonhole.
but that is the only way you can make sense of your world, i wish you best of luck and peace.
It was not my intention to offend anyone
did you see any one disagreeing with you, or disbelieving you? of course not.
this indeed is not your only virtue. you have at least two more:
1. you are a minority.
2. and, by the looks of it, a dwindling one.
regards
The trouble is, if you use your eyes and try and see things as they are, some people get upset. They confuse the analysis with what the analyst WANTS things to be. They confuse the bad news with the messenger.
Muslims are a very ambitious people, with a strong sense that they ruled India and must rule again.
Unfortunately for them they were a minority. In modern times that means, in any democratic situation, fitting in with the majority on the basis of one man one vote on a common roll.
But Muslims in India wanted far more than that. They wanted quasi-independence in the areas they dominated. Very belatedly their leader suggested this was compatible at least for a few years with a very loose union of India.
Hindus did not want that. They felt such an India gave them too little and the Muslims too much.
Many also felt the Muslims were a community with a very intolerant outlook and were not desireable to have in such large numbers in India. No India with so many Muslims could be free and liberal as Hindu intellectuals wanted it to be.
So Partition happened. It is very easy to understand.
Some Muslims now regret it because it in the end gave Muslims less power in the Subcontinent than they might have had as a huge, threatening community within India.
Too late.
The deal is done.
Ganpat,
You may be right in your assessment of Jinnah and partition..it kind of made sense on how leaders must have thought all thanks to your documentation. However, you must appreciate Indian Muslims are a tolerant generation ( probably equivalent to Bangladeshis and muslims in Lanka) and want peaceful co-existance with other folks. Just because few traitors in the form of Indian Mujahideen end up doing what they do, it is incorrect to form a judgement on an entire population of 180MM
I am convinced, opportunities provided by the private sector in India will do more good to all communities and force all those ultra religious folks to shun their inherently dislikable ‘I am the religion’ practice. Economics can definitely change systems!
May India continue to grow at 9% y-0-y for a decade atleast
and certainly wished the same happened to Pakistani Economy as well. Economics can actually trounce even the most bitter jihadists I am sure!
PRASAD:
Please don’t be overconfident.
By the time India’s population levels off there could be 350 million Muslims in India.
That’s serious numbers.
M J Akbar, a well-known Muslim voice supposed to be conciliatory, has recently supported the idea
of a new Muslim state carved out of Uttar Pradesh.
In other wods, the Muslims STILL have demands, even AFTER Partition.
We are very likely heading into dark times.
PRASAD:
Hindus are very mild, timid people. Faced with tough situations, their reaction is to pretend nothing is happening.
But that won’t help.
Nothing to worry Ganpat. Things are well under control. India will absorb some flares here and there with elan. We have definitely grown to that size economically
Not only was Jinnah the most secular statesman produced by the Muslim world, he was also the most secular statesman produced by the Subcontinent. He was a puritanically secular statesman, surrounded on every side by Mahatamas, Pundits, Gurus and Maulanas.
Probably Pakistan… not the subcontinent
Mujib was equally secular. His daughter Sheikh Hasina is secular in her actions.
Subcontinent or Pakistan would be just another matter of opinion. I do however, agree about Mujib. Mujib’s political philosophy was indeed secular and so were the foundations of the Constitution of Bangla Desh. Indeed, Bangla Desh was founded on secular principles. Unfortunately, things got temporarily derailed. But with the recent measure, of annulling the 8th amendment, taken by their Supreme Court, I hope Bangla Desh will be able to eventually distance itself from the eventuality of theocratization. Well done Bangla Desh and good luck.
Pakistan too needs to retrace its steps back to the original vision of a Secular Pakistan.
Prasad … Hayyer wrote a very interesting post above which should have summed it up about 200 posts ago.
As for Mujeeb…he was not doubt very secular. I wish we had allowed him to become the Prime Minister back then.
YASSER:
West Pakistanis could not abide Mujib Ur Rahman becoming Prime Minister for the same reason that Muslims in pre-partition India could not abide the simple verdict of elections which would probably have left the leadership in Hindu hands……the West Pakistanis were a MINORITY in Pakistan and wanted impossible “safeguards” through unequal representation.
So, like the Hindus, the East Bengalis too broke away from this too-demanding minority.
The Jinnah principle was applied first to Nehru, and he chose partition. The Hindus broke away.
The Jinnah principle was applied a second time: to Mujib, and HE chose partition. Bangladesh broke away.
Who next, I wonder?
> Who next, I wonder?
How about you ?
Luq
Some Hindus, notably Girilal Jain, looking at how fantastically Jinnah’s actions saved the Hindus from Islam, have even suggested that Jinnah was really a Hindu agent planted in Muslim ranks.
With my cursed incapacity for fantasising, I don’t go that far. I just think his rescuing Hindus from the worst disaster ever to threaten them was inadvertent.
@Ganpat Ram
I’m afraid your syllogism does not appear to be working very well, with respect to the “Jinnah Principle”.
Pakistan was created by the power of the vote of the people. The people of the provinces that collectively became Pakistan, voted willfully in favour of Jinnah’s agenda and Pakistan came into being. Essentially the vote was honoured. In case of Bangla Desh, the vote of the joint electorate was not honoured. The majority of the people of Pakistan caste their vote in favour of Awami League. Most certainly, the reins of government should have been handed over to the Awami League. But the vote of the joint electorate was not honoured.
@Ganpat Ram
Let us for the moment ignore the delusions of Jirilal Jain, and proceed more rationally. I have said this earlier. Allow me repeat and further elucidate.Your point that Jinnah rescued Hindus is well-taken. Your oft-repeated confession that Hindus benefited greatly from Jinnah and owe gratitude to him, is all the more recognized. As for Muslims, they already feel deeply indebted to Jinnah. Now, let us logically conclude this debate on this pleasantly unifying note that Jinnah was the greatest common benefactor of both Muslims and Hindus of the Subcontinent.
As Gertrude Stein’ could have said in one line but didn’t. Bullshit is bullshit is bullshit is bullshit is bullshit, and forever more.
Some of you must have read the story of the village schoolboy taught only one English composition, ‘The Cow’, on the assurance that it was the only one going to be asked in the exam.
But the test paper asked for an essay on ‘My Teacher’ instead. After scratching his head awhile the budding essayist wrote thus:
“My teacher is a good man. He has a cow. The cow eats grass and gives us milk. It has four legs and a tail…..”and so on till the end of the cow composition.
A resourceful correspondent can thus participate in any discussion, even when his expertise is confined to the cow.
Ganpat
As with all of Hayyer’s posts, you better pay close attention … Maybe it will help you come out of your current state.
West Pakistanis could not abide Mujib Ur Rahman becoming Prime Minister for the same reason that Muslims in pre-partition India could not abide the simple verdict of elections which would probably have left the leadership in Hindu hands……the West Pakistanis were a MINORITY in Pakistan and wanted impossible “safeguards” through unequal representation.
—-
Ganpat
That is so accurate. I have posted something
similar just a few weeks back. The solution applied to East Pakistan was almost identical to the 1947 solution applied in India.
The minority in the west kicked the majority out by using force. The aim was to impose the minority solution on the majority in East Pak.
Hayyar’s post is totally uncalled for. It does not address the problem…
Hoss is the greatest flip-flopper I have ever come across.
On Chowk.com he abused the hell of the Hindu fanatics of Ganpat Ram’s ilk for suggesting precisely this. Now he is praising Ganpat here because well he can’t argue his case and has to fire from Ganpat Ram’s shoulder.
No two situations are indentical…
Through 6 points Mujeeb ur Rahman asked for an even more watered down federation than the Cabinet Mission Plan …. Bhutto- the centralist- wouldn’t agree with Mujeeb ur Rahman the con-federalist…. thus Mujeeb’s solution was quite clearly analogous to Jinnah’s solution.
That Mujeeb had 54% of Pakistan on his side only shows how much greater Jinnah’s achievement was given that he managed with only 25-30% of India.
If we were to take this ridiculous line of argument – that Hindu fascists on Chowk have for long forwarded and suddenly Hoss (otherwise the self styled champion of the smaller provinces) has adopted … then well … we would have to equate West Pakistan’s position with the combined position of Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa … and East Pakistan with Punjab.
But ofcourse that would be hogwash. The real issue is the lack of implementation of the Lahore Resolution… it was the problem in 1946-1947… it was the problem in 1970-1971…. and now we seem to be making some progress towards it.
Abuse starts again…
Btw, I think Hayyar’s post should really be called abusive.
When Hoss mian can’t argue logically, he starts whining about abuse- of which he is the most effective practitioner.
Pointing out your glaring inconsistencies as well as gaps in knowledge and logic… is not abuse my dear Hoss mian.
Abuse is abuse..especially from someone whose response to every disagreement is either calling people crook, ethno fascist or Hindu fascist… As soon as abuse starts you know the abusing party is out of argument.
This was posted after the author had no response when Ganpat posted Mushir’s comments.
“yasserlatifhamdani
March 31, 2010 at 9:54 pm
I always knew Hindu Fascists were crooks and liars but now you’ve irrevocably convinced me of this fact.
It has been educational.”
Dear Hoss,
Ha ha … You must think all readers are idiots and that they won’t see through your sudden umbrage with my alleged abuse against Ganpat Ram a day and a half ago. Anyone can see what Ganpat produced above and what he claimed earlier and why my comment was on the dot… not to mention those assertions about MJ Akbar, Patrick French and others have not been backed up even after two days.
Anyway that is Ganpat mian and his blooper.
How about you? Do you deny that you abused Hindu fascists of Ganpat’s ilk for suggesting the same thing about Mujeeb on Chowk?
And just so that we are clear on what your position is this morning…. is the combined position of Sindh, K-P and Balochistan against Punjab today analogous to that of West Pakistan against East Pakista pre-1971 as you implied ? Or are you reverting back to your original more logical inference (on chowk) that it is the non-implementation of Lahore Resolution that was the common thread between 1946 and 1971.
Hoss:
I don’t like abuse myself and I don’t do abuse. I am sorry that my post seemed abusive to you, but I wasn’t referring to anything you said. Bullshit as you know is synonymous with nonsense nowadays, and even in polite society is taken as such.
My point was that in pre-partition India Jinnah could not accept the Hindu majority would dominate and tried to reject this logic of democracy through various schemes for unequal representation. This forced the Hindu majority to break away, and hence Partition happened.
In pre-1971 Pakistan the West Pakistani minority could not accept that in a democratic order the Bengali majority would dominate. This forced the Bengali majority to break away, and hence Bangladesh happened.
Yes and this is the standard Hindu line about partitions of 47 and 71.
However my point was that the analogy drawn is a superficial one given that the Bengali demands mirror those of Muslim demands pre-1947 not the Congress demands. Read the 6 points.
In both cases a national identity was sought to be imposed on a section of population which gave an alternative idea of nationhood. Both Muslims pre-1947 and Bengalis pre-1971 would have settled for loose federations … Bengali demand was actually more confederal.
So your point is rather superficial …and your conclusions are rather off.
I’ll try to throw light on one aspect of Jinnah being a secular statesman, and that is his disapproval of theocracy in politics. He was always against those religious leaders, who wanted to come into politics. He always advised them to do what they are good at, and i.e. helping people to understand the true picture of Islam.
The point remains that in both cases a minority was trying to claim far more than a majority was willing to concede. The pushy minority had no use for the workings of normal democracy which would put power into the hands of the majority.
As for what they would “accept” – it’s absurd. When a large minority become as aggressive as this, the majority would be extremely foolish to think it can have a peaceful life with it, n0 matter what agreement is cooked up. Unless the majority is prepared to go to war, it had better think about two separate states.
It’s like a guy who kicks up an almighty row with you every day of the week, and then says: “If you accept this or that formula we can set up a joint business.” One would be extremely foolish to go ahead with such a partner, even if an agreement can be reached. Agreements require demonstrated goodwill, not just a piece of paper.
Other than equating 54 percent and 70 percent your point has no coherence but then that is to be expected.
The point remains – Mujeeb was not trying to impose a centralist state on West Pakistan…unlike Congress was on Muslim majority provinces pre-1947. Mujeeb wanted a sincere implementation of the Lahore Resolution which had been denied to them… On the contrary he was asking for a confederal solution much more so than Jinnah.
The issue of 54 70 or 30 is immaterial when you consider that we are talking about tens of millions of people.
On the contrary …an analogy may be drawn again that the Awami League won all of the seats in Bengal just like Muslim League won 87 percent of Muslim seats in India. The national conception of both became the democratic will of the majority of the constituents in those defined parameters.
So it isn’t as simple … Congress’ majority meant nothing when they didn’t win anything on Muslim seats … PPP and west Pakistan meant nothing when they didn’t score even a single seat in the East.
As for Jinnah and Direct Action Day, here are extracts from Michael Brecher’s biography of Nehru. I am only interested in stating what Brecher thought. No more.
Page 122:
“The “War of Succession” was ready to begin. Its spark was Jinnah’s proclamation of ‘Direct Action Day’. The initial result was the ‘Great Calcutta Killing’. There is no evidence that Jinnah himself planned or even desired the holocaust, though he had no compunction about resorting to violence. Whether orders were dispatched to the Muslim League Ministry in Bengal is unknown. In any event they were unnecessary.”
As for what Patrick French thought:
Page 253 of his book “Liberty or Death”:
“The Muslim leader cannot escape indirect responsibility for unleashing the forces of destruction, although there is no evidence that he personally foresaw or encouraged the massacres.”
Politicians who unleah massacres and then are not found to have given orders directly are nothing new. Hitler’s direct orders for the Holocaust have never been found.
In any case, the Hindus were lucky not to have had to find out what living with Mr jinnah and his Muslim League would have been like after 1947.
Getting Jinnah out of India was a tremendous blessing.
You say:
“Congress’ majority meant nothing when they didn’t win anything on Muslim seats … PPP and west Pakistan meant nothing when they didn’t score even a single seat in the East.”
I quite understand that Congress winning the majority means nothing to you. It certainly meant nothing to Jinnah. It’s what I call the Jinnah attitude.
I actually think winning majority votes is always important.
But then I am the Indian kind of guy who believes that in democracies, one must go with the majority.
Just curious to know what stopped Jinnah taking pot luck in the parliaments regional and central on a one-man-one-vote basis. If he won so many seats.
You say outright:
“The issue of 54 70 or 30 is immaterial when you consider that we are talking about tens of millions of people.”
That statement should be carved on the foreheads of every Pakistani.
It is an astoundingly frank rejection of the logic of democracy.
It’s the Jinnah Doctrine stated to perfection: being the majority doesn’t count when the minority is in tens of millions.
No democratic state has a hope in hell with such a blatantly blackmailing line.
Good riddance, Mr Jinnah.
Dear Ganpat,
You claimed that M J Akbar, Patrick French, Brecher placed direct blame on Jinnah….
This is from the evidence that you produced:
Brecher:
There is no evidence that Jinnah himself planned or even desired the holocaust,
and
Patrick French:
… there is no evidence that he personally foresaw or encouraged the massacres
And then you do some original research and claim that direct orders of Adolf Hitler were never found. That too is your little knowledge … but can you quote any serious historian who claims that Adolf Hitler did not forsee the holocaust especially after the Wannasee Conference soluions failed?
So you see… when I call you a crook and liar, I am only calling a spade a spade. All your claims lay exposed as lies that they are.
On the issue of “democracy”…. can you tell me how many Muslim seats did Congress win in 1946 elections? And yet Congress insisted on appointing Muslim members to the Cabinet. So much for your democracy.
And if Congress had an objection to the electorate, they should have boycotted the elections…. but when they accepted the electorate when they went into elections twice and claimed government on the basis of that electorate they should have had the decency to accept that by the same token they were rejected democratically by the Muslims of the Subcontinent…. After all it was the same principle they accepted in 1916, in 1932, 1937 and in 1947.
So you see you are a dishonest person who is trying to argue something that cannot be argued.
Even Hoss is supporting you out of spite for me … otherwise he has abused people of your ilk on Chowk for pretty much the same thing.
What I said was that Awami League was the democratic representative of Bengali people by winning 90% of the Bengal’s seats and Muslim League was the democratic representative of the Muslim people by winning 87 percent of the Muslim electorate.
Neither party claimed nor wanted to impose itself on other groups in the federation…. all both Leagues wanted was the acceptance of their democratic right and a measure of autonomy…. Awami League more than the Muslim League … for regions where they had won overwhelmingly.
It is immaterial… whether they formed 30 percent of the whole or 54 percent of the whole… the operative democratic part was that they- Muslim League and Awami League won more than 85 percent of the electorate that they claimed to represent.
Those who chose to ignore their claims … did so undemocratically… Hindus on the basis of permanent majoritarianism (not democracy) and West Pakistan on the basis of brute force.
The Hindu position would be akin to Punjab refusing ANP’s demand of Pakhtunkhwa (even though ANP has won less than 40 percent of the Pakhtun vote… unlike AIML which had won 87% of the Muslim vote).
Ganpat
it was mujib who was a muslim league worker, follower of jinnah and votary of pakistan in 1946/47, not ayub, bhutto or yahya.
it has all been explained for you by YLH. about the federal nature of the state, use of brute, executive force etc.
congress had always claimed it would not force any province to stay in the union. the muslim electorate did not force any hindu majority province to become part of pakistan. this democratic right of both the majority and minority is in fact what eventually resulted in the seaparation that you have been consistently praising so much. so what’s your problem?
hayyer is right, of course. you have nothing but the same two-page pamphplet to recite and repeat endlessly.
B. CIVILIAN:
I indeed have no problem with the creation of Pakistan.
Such huge Muslim numbers in India, following a doctrine that the majority vote doesn’t count when you have tens of millions on your side, making all kinds of claims for power on the basis of communal and not individual rights, with violence always going on or threatened…..it all spelt the direst trouble for any India that was not divided.
The dialogue with you and Yasser has further reinforced my long-standing view that Partition was the only answer in 1947. Jinnah served Hindu interests immeasurably by forcing it, as did Nehru in accepting it.
Partition if avoided by some desperate paper agreement in 1947 would only have happened later, and harmed the Hindus far more.
Gentlemen, let’s examine this issue of drawing similarities between the creation of Pakistan and the creation of Bangla Desh, and let’s do it more objectively and less sentimentally.
#1. The basic rule of democracy is that the choice of the people must be respected in political matters. The majority of the people of the Muslim-majority provinces gave their verdict in favour of Jinnah’s agenda, before partition and Pakistan came into being. The verdict of the people should be respected.
In ’70 the majority of the people of East Pakistan gave their verdict in favour of Mujib’s agenda. The AL should unquestionably have been asked to form a government in the Centre, regardless of whether they wanted it or not. The vote should in any case have been respected. Later on, if for whatever reason East Pakistan chose to reidentify itself as Bangla Desh, the verdict of the people deserves equal respect.
#2. What Mr. G. Ram terms as the “Jinnah Principle”, if applied to the creation of Pakistan, is inapplicable to the creation of Bangla Desh. Pakistan came into being because the vote of the majority of what became Pakistan was respected. Bangla Desh came into being because the vote of the majority of what became Bangla Desh was not respected. The Jinnah Principle was ignored.
#3. In the creation of Pakistan, the people inhabiting the Muslim-majority provinces, were an over-all minority in undivided India. In ’71 the inhabitants of East Pakistan were an over-all majority in undivided Pakistan. Hence, the parallel that Mr. Ram wishes to see is simply not there.
#5. In ’47 a minority of undivided India chose to separate itself from the majority. In ’71 a majority of undivided Pakistan chose to separate itself from the minority. Here again, the parallel is missing.
#6. The elections prior to ’47 were conducted on a separate-electorate basis. The elections of ’70 were conducted on a joint-electorate basis. The parallel again can not be drawn.
I beg your pardon for the typo errors. Please read #5 as #4 and #6 as #5.
The manner in which G. Ram and hoss have argued, somehow reminds me of a line from a poem by Alexander Pope:
“And e’enthough vanquished he could argue still”
I sincerely hope, these commentators would kindly refrain from showing further resilience in dragging this debate into the realm of irrationality.
A last word if the moderators permit-and it is a quote from a review of a book called ‘The Will of the People’ by Barry Friedman.
“In 1952, as the Supreme Court contemplated the set of cases that would eventually become known as Brown v. Board of Education, a law clerk named William H. Rehnquist wrote a memorandum modestly styled as “A Random Thought on the Segregation Cases.” Far from a tangential observation regarding the Fourteenth Amendment’s implications for racially segregated public schools, the two-page manifesto provided nothing less than a unified theory of American constitutional law. “One hundred and fifty years of attempts on the part of this Court to protect minority rights of any kind whether those of business, slaveholders, or Jehovah’s Witnesses have all met the same fate,” Rehnquist wrote. “One by one the cases establishing such rights have been sloughed off, and crept silently to rest.” The memo further suggested that the Supreme Court elevates constitutional principle above majority preference only at its own peril: “To the argument . . . that a majority may not deprive a minority of its constitutional right, the answer must be made that while this is sound in theory, in the long run it is the majority who will determine what the constitutional rights of the minority are.”
Barry Friedman writing in 2010 in the world’s pioneer republican democracy is not the only one to think that even the judiciary should bow before the majority. What was the level of trust between Hindus and Muslims in 1946? What is it even now?
Muslims in India have difficulty claiming recourse because they have landed themselves in this position, but how about the Muslims who did not? Congress failed to build enough confidence among Muslims in the areas now forming Pakistan and Bangladesh, except in NWFP and Kashmir. But of the two who lost more?
BIN IMAIL:
You say:
“In ‘47 a minority of undivided India chose to separate itself from the majority. In ‘71 a majority of undivided Pakistan chose to separate itself from the minority. Here again, the parallel is missing.”
You are wrong there. In truth, the final decision to have Partition was NEHRU’S, not Jinnah’s. Nehru was forced into this, true, because of the Jinnah Principle that the majority vote doesn’t matter if the minority numbers tens of millions and is ready to unleash violence. But it WAS Nehru’s decision. He did have the choice of plsaying Jinnsah’s game and – thnk Heaven from the Hindu viewpoint!- wisely said “No!”.
So in 1947, the MAJORITY seceded from the minority.
The same happened in 1971.
The parallel is very clear: an undemocratic minority makes union impossible for the majority.
HAYYER:
I agree with the points you make about the right of the majority.
HAYYER:
Re-reading what you wrote I see your point was different from what I took it to be.
Your parallel is totally wrong. We are not talking of individual civil rights, which of course no majority can abolish in a liberal state.
We are talking about whether the majority vote decides politics or not.
Decision by majority vote is the only one successful democracies know. Otherwise politics becomes a grim contest for dominance between communities, rather than a matter of individual rights. A state like Lebanon which collapsed into the most devastating civil war is a warning of the perils of that communalist model.
In India’s case things would have been far grimmer given Muslim dominance in certain key provinces, high Muslim numbers in the Army, the far deeper social gulf between the Hindus and the Muslims, and the repeated demonstration by the Muslims that if they did not get their way the only result would be devastating violence.
Independent India, in any case established on-man-one-vote on a common roll. It would have none of the Jinnah Principle.
Incredible as it seems, leaders of the Muslims remaining in India AFTER Partition actually had sheer cheek to claim a separate electoral roll for the Muslims even in Independent India, using the expected whining hypocrisy about the “elder brother” owing generosity to them, the “younger brother.” Thank Heaven, the man speaking for the Government was the tough blunt-spoken Vallabhbhai Patel, and he gave the Muslim spokesmen short shrift.
In a tough speech opposing separate Muslim seats, Sardar Vallabbhai Patel told the remaining Muslim League members of the Constituent Assembly on August 28, 1947 to ‘forget the past’: “You have got what you wanted. You have got a separate state and remember, you are the people who were responsible for it, and not those who remain in Pakistan…You got the Partition and now again you tell me and ask me to say for the purpose of securing the affection of the younger brother that I must agree to the same thing again, to divide the country again in the divided part. For God’s sake understand that we have also got some sense…”
KHULLAT
The line your are citing comes not from Alexander Pope but Oliver Goldsmith – “The Deserted Village”.
KHULLAT
The line you are citing comes not from Alexander Pope but Oliver Goldsmith – “The Deserted Village”.
@ Ganpat Ram
I stand corrected. Thank you for pointing out. Indeed, it’s from Oliver Goldsmith’s “The Deserted Village”.
But I was right about you, Sir, with all due respects, when I suggested:
“For even though vanquished he could argue still”.
Anyway thanks once again for correcting me.
Regards.
I think we can leave it to readers to decide who is vanquished.
Ganpat,
After countless posts you still haven’t told us how many Muslim seats Congress won in 1937 or 1946 elections.
Now don’t come up with the regular bankrupt argument because Congress – by entering into 1937 and 1946 elections accepted the basic principle upon which the electorate was formed.
So given that Congress lost badly on Muslim seats in both elections, Congress’ claim to represent Muslims was undemocratic. Claiming majority after having failed to score Muslim seats was wrong.
No need trying to compare Congress’ actions with Mujeeb. Mujeeb was not aiming to dominate West Pakistan and impose a centralist state on them. Quite the contrary by virtue of being as representative a party of Bengalis as Muslim League had been of Muslims, Mujeeb gave his 6 points which were an essential re-statement of the principle embodied in the Lahore Resolution.
@ Ganpat Ram
Finally, it is indeed a delight to realize that there are at least some points on which we agree. I wholeheartedly endorse the following points made by you:
#1: “…..So Nehru decided on Partition…..”
Agreed. Jinnah was the first to endorse the Cabinet Mission Plan. Nehru, prematurely denuded his plans to fiddle with the deal, later on. The CMP failed and its cause was Nehru. So, yes, in that respect, Nehru did have his role.
#2: “…..Mohammed Ali Jinnah was by far the greatest, though unintentional, friend the Hindus had in 1000 years…..”
From the Hindu point of view, Jinnah was the man of the millennium. Muslims already take Jinnah as the man of the millennium. That’s great. Hindus and Muslims, both, are prepared to recognize Jinnah as the man of the millennium.
#3: “…..Partition saved the Hindus…..”
Good. Pakistanis are well wishers of Indian Hindus. Partition saved Pakistan. Pakistan saved the Hindus. Aur kiya chaahiye? Tum khush, hum khush, sub khush.
#4: “…..a huge Thank You to Jinnah…..”
Our dear neighbours are finally grateful to Jinnah. We are already grateful to him. Finally, after six decades, we all have realized that, as I said earlier, Jinnah was the greatest common benefactor for both Muslims and Hindus.
#5: “…..the final decision to have Partition was NEHRU’S, not Jinnah’s……”
Finally, after 6 decades of blaming Jinnah for “Bharat Mata ka batwara”, our dear friends have confessed that “the final decision to have Partition [Bharat Mata ka batwara] was Nehru’s, not Jinnah’s. For the sake of courtesy, thank you for finally exonerating Jinnah – not that it counts – but still thank you.
BIN ISMAIL:
I could have gone on, but won’t. I’ll leave you with your happiness.
I am well wisher or Pakistan and Muslims, despite all I have said.
You guys should be grateful that I speak frankly, unlike many other Hindus who have much the same thoughts but in Pakistani company quote bad Urdu couplets and pretend to be extremely brotherly with the Pakistanis while stuffing their biriyani in immoderate quantities.
People like Gandhi and Nehru practised this cowardly deviousness toward Muslims and are to be condemned for it. For instance, Gandhi started out as a sincere friend of the Muslims, but there is clear evidence he was seriously disillusioned by them in later years. Yet he generally kept his misgivings about their intolerant character to his remarks to intimates.
Nehru was the same. The man who claimed in public to be a great warm admirer of Muslims and Islam was hardly that in reality. You can tell between the lines in his books and letters what a poor opinion he really had of them. “The Muslim is a simple man”, he once remarked patronisingly. That is a polite way of saying “stupid”.
Nirad Chaudhuri explained this pervasive Hindu reluctance to call Muslim intolerance by its real name by Hindu cowardice. They are all dead scared of Muslims, Nirad exclaimed.
Indira Gandhi for one was fearless but she was another Hindu practitioner of public opportunistic friendship with Muslims which she was far from feeling in private. Once she was listening to a Westerner who had visted Pakistan and telling he how wonderfully hospitable Pakistanis had been.
Indira said nothing for a while and then remarked: “They have an incredibly violent and bloody political culture.”
At least with me you know where you are.
@Ganpat Ram
The thoughts of Hindu leaders like Gandhi and Nehru, towards Muslims, that you have finally expressed, go a long way to further establish that not only was Jinnah the most secular statesman of the Muslim world, he was also the most secular statesman of the subcontinent.
Regards.
Ganpat Ram:
I do not know if you have grasped the point that I was trying to make. Only trying, because the idea is not fully expressed.
The issue was one of trust. Jinnah was 62 years old in 1937. He had spent his life trying to bring about some basis of trust between Hindus and Muslims; but Hindus even secular ones like Nehru were obtuse, probably willfully (if not willful it was crass) Gandhi upset the entire apple cart of Congress Politics upon his entry. Jinnah persisted, rather heroically I think for 20 years after Gandhi injected his poisoned religious discourse in Indian politics, but Congress under Gandhi was persistent in rejecting a secular constitutional approach in favour of faith based mass movements.
The will of the majority, and its prejudices seep into the judiciary as well unless we have strict constructionist constitutional judges, not bending to the majority sentiment, but hewing all the time to the letter of the constitution. Even in our Supreme Court one gets a whiff now and then of religious prejudice.
The rest of the review that I quoted from was about how the Courts can and should act even in advance of public opinion.
So if Pakistan was a good all round solution ( I am not disagreeing-no one has disagreed, and your posts reiterating this are superfluous) one can still question the outcomes, as well as the attitudes that led to them in Kashmir and the Frontier. The present position is not satisfactory in either; and it cannot be finally said that the country’s division was the best solution to the problem. As the only available solution however it has to be given a chance.
You say you bear Pakistanis and Muslims no ill will yet every second post mocks and expresses in black and white all the prejudices that you claim to be free of.
@yasserlatifhamdani
“…..Mujeeb gave his 6 points which were an essential re-statement of the principle embodied in the Lahore Resolution…..”
Agreed. If the original plan, as conceived in 1940, had been implemented in 1947, the 1971 scenario would not have emerged. In retrospect, one has to admit that there was greater wisdom in the ’40 formula enshrined in the Lahore Resolution, in the following words:
“…..territorial readjustments as may be necessary that the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority as in the North Western and Eastern Zones of (British) India should be grouped to constitute Independent States…..”
“States” not state was the original idea – one comprising of the provinces in the North Western region of the subcontinent and the other in the Eastern region of the subcontinent. This idea was a realistically good one. Anyway what’s done is done. We have to learn from history – and learn quickly. Pakistan, India and Bangla Desh have to learn to look forward and move ahead with mutual respect, on mutually equal footing, and keeping Religion out of state matters – or become the laughing stock of the world.
HAYYER:
Your way of analysing how and why Pakistan happened at least has one advantage: it makes a subject which involved the loss eventually of millions of lives almost seem comic.
You seem to think Partition could have been avoided if Indian politics were all in the hands of snobbish Savile Row suited lawyers spouting quotations from outdated nineteenth century British luminaries and chatting over tea and scones in the Bombay salons of wealthy Parsi millionaires, with never an Indian word spoken.
That was Jinnah’s original ideal of Indian politics, and you comically say this precious “applecart” was upset by the unfortunate intruder Gandhi…..One can imagine it.
Jinnah is sitting in his faultlessly creased Savile Row suit and spats, his elegant silver-headed cane across his knees, with his equally super-anglicised Parsis in the depths of some shiny salon.
Gandhi is announced.
The distinguished gentlemen fix astonished monocles on silk ribbons to their eyes to take in the waddling loin-cloth clad bania who has arrived, dripping quotations from the Gita and admonishing everyone to speak Hindustani.
Jinnah exclaims: “The applecart has been upset. I’m off ! Now we’ll have to have two sep[arate nations for Hindus and Muslims. See you in Pakistan!”
A “applecart” that can be upset by one new man appearing on the scene is not worth relying on, is it? Do you really want an India that would be so comically fragile?
The fact is, religion was ALWAYS crucial to Indian politics, even before Gandhi. Gandhi also spoke in Muslim terms, not just Hindu ones.
India was not divided when Jinnah claimed Pakistan. In Canada the French-speakers have often demanded their own sovereign state, yet Canada is still there. Why? Because the demand has always been a peaceful one, hardly ever causing violence. Canadians know it won’t kill people even if it happens.
India was divided NOT by Jinnah but by NEHRU, as I have pointed out. It was divided because NEHRU decided that unity with Jinnah was not worth it, and indeed would bring untold ruin on India.
The Muslims were not only making the claim that the majority vote does not matter when the minority is tens of millions – the Jinnah Principle- but threatening devastating violence if their demands were not conceded.
That was what made a united India unviable. Not Gandhi citing the Gita.
It may have made sense but the facts are as usual not in your favor Ganpi!
Jinnah left the Congress after Gandhi brought Mullahs into the Congress using Khilafat as the main motif of civil disobedience.
It was atleast 20 years later that he raised the Pakistan demand.
>I do not know if you have grasped the point
>that I was trying to make.
When so much care is taken to miss the point, what were you expecting?
Luq
YASSER:
Let me tell you how it was:
The scene:
Mid-morning, April 1919
The large elegant salon of the famous Parsi millionaire Sir Rustom Sohrab Sodawaterbottlewalla, in his mansion on Malabar Hill, Bombay. The windows afford a magnificent view of Bombay Harbour crowded with ships, and the far horizon of the silvery Arabian Sea. Immediately outside is a wide, sparkling green lawn set with huge beautiful Gulmohar trees. A dozen malis are busily watering the lawn.
The Sodawaterbottlewalla Mansion is known as the resort of the most select and refined social and intellectual celebrities of Bombay.
In the salon this bright morning, reclining on an opulent yellow sofa, is none other than Sodawaterbottlewalla himself. He is a late-middle-aged gentleman in a three piece suit of superb cut, his pudgy hands playing with a gold-rimmed monocle on a silk ribbon resting in his himalayan, beauteous, waist-coat-draped paunch.
Sodawaterbottlewalla turns his rubicund smiling face to his companion sitting on another sofa opposite him. He is a pencil-thin,very long figure, topped by a surprisingly small head and a severe face. He was attired in a Savile Row suit even more elegant, if this were possible, than Sodawaterbottlewalla’s. Every hair of the man’s head has been scrupulously plastered into its fore-ordained place. His feet are encased in two-coloured shoes of shining leather, beneath spotless white spats. An elegant silver-topped cane is resting carefully on his knees, so as to avoid any danger of its spoiling the crease of his astonishingly pristine trousers. Behind the man stands his turbanned Sikh bearer, gravely holding on a silver platter a large array of silk hankerchiefs. Every now and then, without looking, his master lifts his hand for one of the kerchiefs, wipes his long fastidious fingers feverishly and lets the kerchief drop languidly. The bearer catches it with a faultless, practised swoop. Years later the bearer’s son is to become a celebrated Indian test cricketer, famous for his amazing catches.
“So, Mr Jinnah”, says Sir Rustom Sohrab, “you are really convinced India can one day do without the oversight of the British?”
“Absolutely!”, smiles Mr Jinnah. His smile is extraordinarly surprising, like a rock’s. “When we decide unanimously to place all negotiations in the hands of the ONE man who cannot be purchased, and to keep politics to the select, Burke and Macaulay quoting classes who alone are fit to play it, the English, that great, lion-hearted nation reared on the pure milk of the ideals of liberalism, will gracefully vacate. Above all”, Jinnah went on gravely, shaking a long thin finger admonishingly, “we must be UTTERLY careful never to allow in our politcs even a single greasy, paisa-counting, Gita-chanting bania. That would be fatal. In politics, we must be as ruthlessly exclusivist as the Brahmins: the non-English knowing, non-Burke-quoting, non-English-style living classes must be treated as Untouchables, unfit to sully the sacred precincts of the temple of our English Club liberalism. I use these distasteful Hindu analogies purely for illustration, you understand.”
“Ye-e-s”, replies Sodawaterbottlewalla. He glances furtively at his companion with a repressed smirk. “Er, if you don’t mind my asking, I have heard you yourself are of bania origin?”
His remark, impelled by a suicidal curiosity, echoes thunderously as if he had been so obscene as to speak in an Indian language in that august company. Jinnah’s face darkens. Sir Rustom Sohrab prays desparingly to the Persian heroes he is named after to help him meet the inevitable punishment.
“I am NOT descended from greasy, whining, paisa-counting, higgling and haggling, cowardly, vegetarian HINDU banias!”, spits out Jinnah with a frenzied roar, so loudly that birds on the lawn flew away in alarm towards what later became Pakistan.
Fortunately, at this dangerous moment a red-liveried butler comes in and announces the arrival of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Scarcely had he spoken then there waddled into the room a most unexpected apparition: a lean little man, his upper body completely nude, his middle most inadequately covered by a skimply loin cloth such as the poorest peasants sported at that time. He was carrying a crooked wooden stick, a cloth bag, and a steel pot. He pranced onto the Persian carpet in crude country chappals.
Sodawaterbottlewalla and Jinnah stare at the newcomer in total bewilderment through their monocles.
“What the deuce!” exclaims Sir Rustom Sohrab to the butler, “why have you let this wretched beggar into my salon? Look how he is filthying my priceless persian carpet with his chappals…Where is Mr Gandhi?”
The beggar bursts into a loud, high-pitched giggle that petrified them all. “Hee hee hee!”, he chortles. “hee hee hee! I see that you have been totally flummoxed by my new mode of attire, in emulation of that salt of the earth, our worthy Indian peasants. I am none other than Gandhi…”
Sir Rustom Sohrab sits back and smiles wanly. “Yes, now I can see that”, he says, “You must excuse me. I had reason to be deceived. Would you sit down on that soafa?”
“I’ll sit on the floor, as I always do now”, announces Gandhi, squatting on one haunch and making an abundant display of the meagre charms of the other.
“Our peasants – the vast majority Hindu – do not have sofas”, he explains. “By the way, I heard English talk as I came in. Why do you talk in the language of our oppressor? Why not speak Gujarati, our mother tounge? So here you are Jinnahbhai. We all know you as a most eminent Mohammedan. Do you still know any Gujarati?”, he asks with an ill-disguised sneer.
Jinnah does not reply. He watches Gandhi through his monocle like a biologist examining a poisonous snake, his face a mask of cold contempt.
“Yes, ” Gandhi chatters on, “it’s very strange about our modern upper classes. They lose interest in our own culture – the culture of our vast Hindu majority and its much smaller, though still big, Muslim minority. The Muslim English-educated Guarati often does not know Gujarati, preferring Urdu which he claims is the proper Muslim language. Often, ” Gandhi added, glancing at Jinnah, “he does not know Urdu either. All he can do is speak English, or, as our peasants say, “git-mit”. With you nowadays it’s all just git-mitting, git-mitting, eh, Mr Jinnah?”, Gandhi ends with another satanic giggle.
“Er, will you not have some tea?”, Sir Rustom Sohrab intervenes hastily, fearing an explosion from Jinnah.
“No, no”, Gandhi replies, “I never take tea or coffee, nor even”, glancing meaningfully at Jinnah, ” so much as a wee DROP of whisky. Hee hee hee ! I don’t eat meat either, as you know. Certainly not pork.” Addressing Jinnah Gandhi intones piously, “pork is forbidden in Islam, as Jinnahbhai will confirm.”
“So what will you have?”, Sir Rustom Sohrab asks in embarrassment.
“My own refreshment!”, chuckles Gandhi. “I carry it with me everywhere.” He takes a crude wooden dish and wooden spoon out of the cloth bag and opens the steel pot. Involuntarily Sir Rustom Sohrab and Jinnah grimace at the stench emitted by the pot. Gandhi watches their reaction with infinite amusement.
“Hee hee hee ! It stinks most wonderfully, does it not, my goat curds? But it is thoroughly healthy, healthy. Would you like some?”
They both make hurried gestures of refusal.
Gandhi ladles a big portion of mucky malodorous yellow stuff onto his plate and eats it with enjoyment, slurping loudly.
The tremulous voices of laughing young women comes in through the window. The beautiful young daughters of Sodawaterbottlewalla and a friend are running decorously about the lawn like brigh-coloured birds. Jinnah fixes his eyes on one of them, Ruttie Petit, with whom he is known to be infatuated.
Gandhi stares at the young women greedily. He points to them with his spoon. “Delicious though these curds are, I am eating it for THEIR sake”, he says.
“Their sake?” both Jinnah and Sir Rustom Sohrab exclaim.
“Yes, theirs”, calmly explains Gandhi, scrapng his bowl gratingly and licking the spoon. ” You see, I adopted a goat curd diet to repress very powerful sexual urges. If it had not been for this yellow stuff, belive me,” he said grinning and pointing at the young women with the spoon, “none of those pure innocent girls would have been safe.”
“But don’t worry”, Gandhi continues reassuringly. “thanks to these curds, my thoughts are now only on God, Baghwanji. Onlycall when all of India is focused on Baghwan, whether the vast majority call Him Ram or the Muslim minority calls Him Allah, will India be able to secute freedom from the British. All must sing the song of God. ”
And he begins to sing in a loud, whining, highly unpleasant voice, beating time with the spoon on his wooden dish bottom, “Raghupati raghava Raja Ram, Padita pavana Sita Ram! Sita Ram O Sita Ram!”, yells Gandhi shaking the spoon at Jinnah and splattering his spotless suit with goat curd, “Sita Ram O Sita Ram! Sing, Jinnahbhai, sing!”
Jinnah abruptly get to his feet, mutters a hurried goodbye and stalks out, leaving Gandhi chanting “Sita Ram O Sita Ram!”
Sodawaterbottlewalla runs after Jinnah anxiously. “Where are you going?”, he asks.
“I’m off to see some friends. Look, Rustom, if people like that loathsome character Gandhi lead our independence movement, we’ll have to have a separate Muslim state. You could come live there.”
Sodawaterbottlewalla looks uncomfortable. “A Muslim state?” he asks dubiously.
“Yes, ” says Jinnah impatiently. “But a thoroughly secular one. You’ll see me hanging about with mullhs while I’m fighting that goat curd Gandhi. But I’ll give them short shrift once we have our state….. I am now going to meet a chap who knows all about how to do that. An exquisitely polite fellow called Yasser Latif Hamdani. He will be with a rather sycophantic Hindu called Vajra who can quote Burke beautifully.”
Off he stalks to make history, while from the elegant Sodawaterbottlwalla salon there comes the whine of Gandhi’s “Sita Ram O Sita Ram!”
Ganpat Ram:
Regarding your comment at 1:56 a.m., that was frankly, a terrible read. Do stick to your day job, which seems to be writing on PTH on a nonstop basis these days.
I am amused to see you stuck on the same rant where I left you three weeks back. Well, writing is your right, and we’ll leave you to tap out your keyboard incessantly.
For all other participants in this thread, I believe the discussion has worn itself out. For me, it was an illuminating discussion at times. I believe we all learnt something here and there about the unique personality of Pakistani founder. What is also clear that both sides are vehement in their beliefs, and nothing is to be gained from regurgitating the same arguments.
Hoss: you have worn out your welcome at PTH. It has been a quite a useless experience arguing with you, who has abused everyone who has disagreed with you here and been the loudest one to raise objections over your own slight. I would just say here that your comments will be deleted from now on. Don’t bother posting at PTH any more.
AZW:
I hope it made you smile.
By the way, writing these posts is child’s play for me. It does not take much of my time.
“see me hanging about with mullahs”
The only problem with that theory is that the Mullahs were by and large hanging out with Gandhi … not Jinnah.
But let us gloss over uncomfortable details that poke a million holes in our prejudices shall we not?
IGNORANT biographers have made much of the fact that at a reception in his honour on January 12, 1915, Gandhi asked Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who was presiding, to speak in Gujarati; implying that he was embarrassed because he knew only English. But Gujarati and Cutchi were the only two languages Jinnah spoke perfectly; “beautifully”, M.C. Chagla recalled
http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2217/stories/20050826003003400.htm
YASSER:
I was well aware of that citation about Jinnah’s linguistic background. Nonetheless, people mostly think he knew no language well except English.
I am just poking fun at them all.
Jinnah was not as important as he thought himself. He was only the instrument of Muslim separatism. Had he downplayed it, it would have discarded him.
The distinguished English historian A J P Taylor once said the trouble with the Germans was that there were too many of them.
Hindus and Muslims could not live together in a united independent India because the Muslims were too many and too quarrelsome and ambitious. Such an India would have exploded.
Compared with that simple, brute fact about pre-partition India, Jinnah and his tactics and how Gandhi did or did not snub him, becomes secondary.
@ Ganpat…
regarding your post of April 4th 01:56 Hrs…
as painful as it was to read….
it does establish without a doubt….that the world that you claim to inhabit exists only in your own mind…
DAN:
Glad you did some serious reading for once. Though it was painful, please keep doing it.
Yes….Poor Me…for once I set myself up for some serious reading….cigarette in hand……silence envelops me…
and to woe is me….I end up with this crap! you owe me one buddy
Ganpat Ram:
“Hindus and Muslims could not live together in a united independent India because the Muslims were too many and too quarrelsome and ambitious. Such an India would have exploded.
Compared with that simple, brute fact about pre-partition India, Jinnah and his tactics and how Gandhi did or did not snub him, becomes secondary”
You have finally confessed that all your arguments are from ‘a priori’ prejudice, and without regard to the facts.
Yes, I agree that you do fiction remarkably well. It is indeed child’s play.
Dear Mr. Ganpat Ram,
Without any desire of being discourteous to a good neighbour, I feel compelled to endorse the following views, with respect to your unique and inimitable style of argument, expressed earlier by two other participants of this discussion:
1. Khullat – who said: “For even though vanquished he could argue still”.
2. Hayyer – who said: “all your arguments are from ‘a priori’ prejudice, and without regard to the facts.
Regards
HAYYER:
It’s a matter of having a sense of proportion.
A country whose survival depends on whether or not a very touchy chap called Jinnah feels snubbed, is not going to last and is not worth having.
That was the simple, human reaction of Nehru; he did not want Jinnah and the Muslim League in his life.
When a very large minority makes such an all-mighty fuss about being in a country, the country had better decide whether it wants to live at the mercy of whatever demands they make, be prepared to use force, or set up two countries. Nehru chose the last option, and thank Heaven for him.
Arun,
If Hindus were in a minority yes it would be secular.
Btw you did not apologize for making up lies about CMP.
@ Ganpat Ram
“…..I speak frankly, unlike many other Hindus who have much the same thoughts but in Pakistani company quote bad Urdu couplets and pretend to be extremely brotherly with the Pakistanis…..”
With respectful reference to your words quoted above, and in perfect cognizance of the fact that you will not be quoting bad Urdu couplets, allow me to quote to you, instead, a good Urdu couplet:
Tujhay kyoon fikr hai aye gul dil-e sad chaak-e bulbul ki
Tu apnay pairhan kay chaak to pehlay rafu kar lay
Regards.
Ganpat Ram:
I keep hoping for at least one factually consistent post. Your biases were never hidden but you did claim to be objective. Here’s why you should not make such claims.
“It’s a matter of having a sense of proportion.
A country whose survival depends on whether or not a very touchy chap called Jinnah feels snubbed, is not going to last and is not worth having.”
There was no shortage of ‘touchy chaps’ in the Congress, starting with one J.L. Nehru. Gandhi of course was the least touchable of the lot. The sense of proportion you mention must apply both ways. If Jinnah was a prima donna Nehru was a ‘spoiled child’. You do know that he had taken on Gandhi himself early in his career, but quickly backed off when challenged by Gandhi. Jinnah stood his ground.
Your Nehru oriented world view then makes you say-
“That was the simple, human reaction of Nehru; he did not want Jinnah and the Muslim League in his life.”
He did not want him in his life because he could not compete with him, and so he preferred to split the country? That is indeed a human reaction. When Jawaharlal was wearing short pants and a school cap in Harrow Jinnah was prominent on the national scene in India, associating with greats like Dadabhai Naoroji and Gopal Kishan Gokhale. When Nehru had just begun to make a name for himself on the national scene, courtesy his father, Jinnah all by himself had already a quarter century of public service in the cause of India at his back.
But how was Nehru authorized to speak for other Indians, especially Indians in Punjab and Bengal where Congress carried little clout, if any. Nehru and Patel asked for the partition of two states where both were politically insignificant.
“When a very large minority makes such an all-mighty fuss about being in a country, the country had better decide whether it wants to live at the mercy of whatever demands they make, be prepared to use force, or set up two countries. Nehru chose the last option, and thank Heaven for him.”
Again, it bears remembering that the people who made the fuss are still with you, and still as a fairly sizable minority. Muslims were in a majority in the areas that now form Pakistan and Bangladesh. And for all your vituperation about Muslims against whom you say you bear no prejudice, you need to answer to the Muslims of Kashmir who did go against the grain of Indian Muslim sentiment, trusted Nehru, and ended up betrayed. Abdul Ghaffar Khan knew that feeling as early as 1947. Why did Nehru want Kashmir in his ‘last option’ despite Patel’s contrary views?
HAYYER:
There would have been devastating violence if Jinnah did not get his way in Independent India.
Nehru knew that; Patel knew that. Other Congress leaders realised that.
So they told Jinnah to go.
It was by far the wisest decision they ever took.
It is true plenty ofMuslims are left in India even today. But they are not in quite the same position to cause devastating violence. If they try it, they will suffer most. They know that.
As for the partitioning of Punjab and Bengal, that was a matter for Hindus and Sikhs. Not your business.
Kashmir ended up on the Hindu side. So what? A bigger territory than the Kashmir Valley, the Chittagong Hill Tracts – 97 per cent non-Muslim – ended up on the Pakistani side. This is the luck of the draw.
HAYYER:
Kashmir has usually been given full rights of political expression. It has not been enough for the Muslim Kashmiris.
It should, for their own sake, have become a state of India like all the rest.
In the case of Kashmir, Nehru and other Indian givernments bungled, undoubtedly. This was usually in the direction of buttering up ther local pals like Sheikh Abdullah and family.
Even so, if the Kashmiri Muslims care about democracy, they have better prospects on the Indian side than in Pakistan.
Kashmir has been too long in Indian hands and is too strategically important for India to give up, anyhow.
When Muslims are given exactly the same rights and duties as everyone else. and made to integrate on the same basis as everyone else. one is doing them an enormous favour.
This is hiow France is treating them nowadays, for instance. Unsentimental and tough.
Unfortunately, Nehru usually took the opposite route of buttering up Muslims amd giving them special consideration. This made them sullen enemies of India, inevitably.
The French attitude is great.
Islam is a religion, of course. But there are many, many, many religions. This is one of them.
And no, none are important in France.
If you wish to live there, religion is kept at home or in the church. Outside, you are a Frenchman or woman loyal above all to FRANCE or we will know the reason why.
Nehru’s decision was not about not wanting to compete in marbles with Jinnah, Hayyer.
It was not about two small boys in shorts and caps.
It was about thousands of innocent people lying slaughtered in the gutters of Calcutta and knowing this sort of thing would happen EVERY DAY in “united” Independent India if Jinnah did not get his way.
Bin Ismail:
Thank you for the Urdu couplet.
Please translate.
I appreciate your courtesy.
I am plain-spoken, but, I hope, polite. It is a thing I greatly value. Many people confuse toughness with having to be abusive. They are not the same thing.
Ganpat is that a veiled threat because most of the primary sources show that appreciably more number of Muslims were killed in Calcutta than Hindus.
Are you saying you would have continued to slaughter Muslims?
YASSER:
I don’t wish to bandy claim and counter claim about Calcutta with you.
An India of that sort where the two main communities had no basis for peaceful life was a non-starter. That is why Nehru wisely accepted Partition.
So long as you accept that it was Nehru’s doing.
@Ganpat Ram
Tujhay kyoon fikr hai aye gul dil-e sad chaak-e bulbul ki
Tu apnay pairhan kay chaak to pehlay rafu kar lay
Translation:
O flower! Why dost thou worry about the fragmented heart of the nightingale?
Repair thine own tattered apparel first.
Regards.
YASSER:
Of course I accept that it was Nehru’ s doing. He had every reason to be proud of that extremely wise and far-sighted decision.
It is the biggest reason for my respect for him, for on many other occasions he let India down badly.
But Hindus also owe an incalculable debt to Jinnah.
Pakistan was not, contrary to all the Jinnah-centred histories, Jinnah’s creation.
It was the result of very deep and powerful emotions in India’s large Muslim minority rejecting the idea of living in a Hindu majority India on a democratic basis.
They saw politics not as a matter of individual rights, but communal competition.
They thought the majority’s vote did not count if the minority numbered tens of millions ready to unleash devastating violence if it did not get its way.
Jinnah embodied all these attitudes by the 1940s. That was what made him so popular with the Muslims. Had he disowned those ideas, he would have become unimportant.
Even without Jinnah the claim for Pakistan would have broken out. If not in 1947, then later. And with far worse consequences, for all communities.
So, by forcing the issue so ruthlessly in 1946 and 1947, Jinnah inadvertently did everyone an inestimable favour.
Pakistan was the ONLY possible solution.
Bin Ismail:
Thank you for the translation.
It makes me regret not knowing Urdu. I tried learning it years ago but gave up when I saw it would take too much effort.
Ganpat Ram:
On a lighter note, once a Hindu friend inquired from Sir Zafrulla Khan: “Urdu aur Hindi mein kya farq hai?” [What is the difference between Urdu and Hindi?]. Sir Zafrulla replied: “Wohi jo Zafrulla aur Japphrulla mein hai.” [The same as between Zafrulla and Japphrulla].
Regards.
Bin Ismail:
I like jokes like that. I am actually a very light-hearted fellow, as I hope you will see from my short story above making fun of Jinnah and Gandhi.
One amusing story connected with Urdu I know has to do with a mushaira where Iqbal read one of his persianised Urdu poems.
Afterwards an old man came up to him and said, “Iqbal Sahib, that sounded wonderful. But please let me have the Urdu translation…..”
Bin Ismail:
I rather spoilt that joke. What the old man said was:
“Iqbal Sahib, that was a wonderful poem. It is sure to be a great hit if you translate it into Urdu….”
“Iqbal Sahib, what a great poem! But you will never be able to translate that into Urdu – the meaning would be lost….”
Ganpat Ram:
“As for the partitioning of Punjab and Bengal, that was a matter for Hindus and Sikhs. Not your business.”
Since you do not know who I am that statement is presumptuous, like most of your posts.
“I don’t wish to bandy claim and counter claim about Calcutta with you.”
Not surprising at all, because your posts are mostly your opinions not facts.
HAYYER:
I don’t see a great abundance in facts in your posts. Just a kind of feeble whining that Muslims did not get to grab Hindu and Sikh land.
If Punjab and Bengal had not been divided, Muslims would have pushed the Hindus and Sikhs out of them.
This is in fact what HAS been happening to Bangladeshi Hindus. They were as much as 25 per cent of the population. Now, after decades of ruthless pressure to flee to India by such tactics as the seizure of their lands and women, they are down to nine per cent.
Neither Indian Punjabis nor Indian Bengalis in all these decades have shown any desire to “unite” wih the Muslim parts of Punjab andBengal. They know better than anyone that that would be crazy, a prelude to their own extinction. And India is a free country where people can say what they like.
Neither Indian Punjabis nor Indian Bengalis in any numbers have called for the ending of partition in their provinces.
If you have FACTS to the contrary, produce them.
Hindus tend to be very meek and poor at presenting their case, even when they hsve a VERY strong one.
A tough arguer like Krishna Menon, who used to skewer Pakistani opponents in the UN, is a great rarity.
Look at Kashmir, for instance.
In all these decades Indians have allowed themselves to be boxed into the position that they, a majority Hindu nation have no right to rule a majority Muslim people like the Kashmiris, and that Pakistan has been cheated by the Indian rule of Kashmir.
Indian spokesmen as far as I know neglect to point out that Indian Kashmir is non-Muslim except for the tiny Kashmir Valley, about 1500 square miles.
The Indian spokesmen fail to point out that in the Partition shareout of land Pakistan got a much bigger non-Muslim area, the Chittaging Hill Tracts, more than 5,000 square miles, with as much as 98 per cent non-Muslim population. Of course the Muslimshave swamped the non-Muslims in the Tracts, and pushed a lot out into India. That was inevitable.
Whereas India has passed special laws to keep Muslim land in Kashmir in Muslim hands, and allowed MUSLIMS to drive the Kashmiri Hindu Pandits out of the Kashmir Valley into refugee camps around Delhi.
What a cruel farce ! Yet Hayyer and his like are out there whining !
Ganpat Ram:
Please stick to the point.
“Neither Indian Punjabis nor Indian Bengalis in any numbers have called for the ending of partition in their provinces……….Neither Indian Punjabis nor Indian Bengalis in all these decades have shown any desire to “unite” wih the Muslim parts of Punjab andBengal.”
I haven’t seen anyone arguing on PTH for undoing partition or for uniting Bengalis and Punjabis.
Hindus and Sikhs lived in Punjab for over 600 years without being pushed out by Muslims. I don’t know how you presume that things would have changed if the CMP had been accepted. Generally speaking, Punjabis can look after themselves.
“In all these decades Indians have allowed themselves to be boxed into the position that they, a majority Hindu nation have no right to rule a majority Muslim people like the Kashmiris, and that Pakistan has been cheated by the Indian rule of Kashmir.”
Three points here. One, I have not at all argued that Pakistan was cheated out of Kashmir. Don’t keep shifting ground.
Two, the rights of the Hindus, as distinct from the rights of Hindus to rule Muslims are two separate subjects; neither is under discussion.
Three, don’t keep confusing Indian with Hindu.
For the last time, get your facts right. India has not passed laws to allow Muslims to retain land in Kashmir. The state subject law was originally passed by the Dogra Maharaja Ranbir Singh in the 1860s or thereabouts. It was not intended to protect Muslims, but to save Jammu Hindu Dogras particularly Rajputs from a Punjabi influx.
That is another fact for you to counter along with the earlier ones that you’ve been avoiding.
Don’t run away now to snipe from some other fake perspective of your coloured canvas. Put up or shut up.
I would suggest to the moderators that if Mr. Ganpat Ram has no contribution to make other than a display of his bile the thread is best closed.
Hayyer:
As you say, neither Hindu Punjabis and Sikhs nor Hindu Bengalis want reunification of the provinces.
So that issue is closed. You were the one who brought it up.
As for the brave line that Punjabis have been living hundreds of years together, so had Bengalis. Yet the Hindu Bengalis have been steadily and ruthlessly pushed out of Bangladesh. Worse than that even, in 1971 the Pak Army slaughtered horric numbers of Hindu Bengalis, apparently up to 2 million.
No-one disputes that laws are in force in Indian Kashmir to prevent outsiders purchasing land at will.
India IS a Hindu-majority country, whether you like it or not.