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The whole truth about Quaid

The whole truth about Quaid

Author: Prafull Goradia
Publication: The Daily Pioneer
Date: June 13, 2005

Jinnah's brother Ahmed, who was a friend of my grandfather Dharamdas Vora of 401 Girgaum Road, Bombay-2, called him, in 1946, a "Quaid of the Muslims, by the Muslims". I doubt if he ever dreamt of himself as secular. To a barrister, the word 'secular' only meant the separation of the church from the state.

In the decades he lived and led, the word 'secular' was not current in India. Even after independence, Jawaharlal Nehru hardly ever used it. The Constitution of India did not contain the word 'secular' when it was framed. The term was slipped in with the help of an amendment during the Emergency. To call MA Jinnah secular is, therefore, a manifold mistake.

Hell bent on being always the numero uno, the Quaid often used the word 'badshah' at home. According to Ahmed, he presumably nurtured dreams of becoming the badshah of Hindustan one day. Since that was not possible, he had settled for becoming the sultan of a part of India. Study his policies and politics before he left for England in 1928. They were constitutional, promoted and pursued in the halls of assembly and seldom on the streets.

He did preside over the Muslim League although he was a member of the Congress. He did play a role in confirming separate electorates for the Muslims following the Lucknow Pact of 1916. But he did not support the Khilafat movement; perhaps this was because he was a Shia and, therefore, no follower of the Sunni Caliph based at Istanbul until 1924?

Mahatma Gandhi's mass politics of ahimsa and satyagraha bewildered Jinnah. To a non-vegetarian, who also ate pork, he could not understand non-violence. He was a Muslim at heart. So much so that he switched from his birth denomination of Ismaili Khoja to the more widespread Asna Ashari. The latter is a Muslim denomination beyond doubt. The former, however, was considered partly Hindu by the Bombay High Court vide a judgement of 1866. If he had remained an Ismaili, his Islamic credentials might have come under question.

Notwithstanding all these, the Qaid's political colour could be described as pale green when he left for England. The colour changed to deep and blazing green after his return in 1935 and his subsequent election as the Muslim League's president for life.

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan had talked about the Hindus and Muslims constituting two separate nations way back in 1887. Poet Mohammed Iqbal had asked for the creation of a Muslim India within India in 1930 at the Allahabad session of the League. But the idea of a vivisection had not caught on until Chaudhry Rahmat Ali at Cambridge wrote a paper in 1933 wherein the word Pakistan was mentioned. Jinnah sanctified the idea of a homeland for Muslims at the Lahore session of the League on March 23, 1940. There is no doubt that Jinnah was Partition and Partition was Jinnah.

The Muslim League's concept of Pakistan, however, was not confined to a territorial vivisection. All or most non-Muslims were to cross over to Hindustan and ideally all the Muslims were to gather in Pakistan. A massive cross migration was envisaged. In the Islamic tradition, hijrat was neither new nor novel. Prophet Mohammad had undertaken hijrat from Mecca to Medina while founding Islam. In 1920, some five lakh Muslims had migrated to Afghanistan in protest against the likely exile of the Caliph. And over 20,000 of them actually settled in that Dar-ul-Islam.

The Quaid-e-Azam while addressing a press conference at Karachi on November 25, 1946, said that the authorities, both central and provincial, should immediately take up the question of exchange of population, reported by the Dawn on November 26, 1946. Sir Feroze Khan Noon, who later became prime minister, had earlier on April 8, 1946, threatened to re-enact the murderous orgies of Changez Khan and Halaqu Khan if non-Muslims took up an obstructive attitude against population exchange.

Ismail Chundrigar, who also eventually rose to become Prime Minister of Pakistan, had said that the British had no right to hand over the Muslims to a subject people (Hindus) over whom they had ruled for 500 years.

Mohammad Ismail, a leader from Madras, had declared that the Muslims of India were in the midst of a jihad. Shaukat Hayat Khan, son of the prime minister of Punjab, Sir Sikander Hayat Khan, had threatened, while the British were still in India, of a rehearsal of what the Muslims would do to the Hindus eventually.

No wonder then that Khan Iftikhar Hussain of Mamdot had said that the exchange of population offered a very practical solution to the problem of the Muslims, reported by the Dawn, December 3, 1946.

Pir Ilahi Bux, the Sindhi leader, had said that he welcomed an exchange of population for the safety of the minorities, as it would put an end to all communal disturbances as reported by the Dawn on December 4, 1946. So also felt Raja Ghazanfar Ali, who later became Pakistn's envoy to New Delhi. The Dawn, dated December 19, 1946, reported his having asked for the alteration of the population map of India.

What the politicians said was confirmed by Professor M Mujeeb, Vice-Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, in his work Islamic Influence on Indian Society (Meenakshi Prakashan, Meerut, 1972).
 


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