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Neither Gandhi nor Jinnah was secular in practice. It is time to re-examine history dispassionately.
Secularism as a gimmick
During his recent to Pakistan Sri L.K. Advani seems to have stirred a hornet’s nest by stating that Jinnah, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan was a secular figure who wanted Pakistan to be a secular country. The reaction in India, especially among Hindu organizations was prompt and vehement, with some Hindu leaders going so far as to denounce Sri Advani as a traitor for calling Jinnah secular. This is a bit puzzling see the same groups that denounce secularism as a fraud being upset that Jinnah was saddled with the same evil.
Beyond all the fire and smoke, one good thing that Sri Advani’s statement has done is to make us look beyond simplistic stereotypes and re-examine history. Modern Indian mythology holds Jinnah to be communal and Mahatma Gandhi to be secular, but Sri Advani now calls Jinnah secular. What is the reality?
These widely discordant views highlight two facts about modern India: the confused state of understanding of secularism, and the Indian intelligentsia’s inability to view history, or even look at personalities dispassionately. Secularism in India is a travesty. Something that self-styled Gandhians forget, or don’t want to be reminded of is that Gandhi did not advocate separation of religion from public life. Jinnah’s claim to being secular rests on the speech he made in the Pakistan Assembly after independence, which is what Sri Advani quoted. Here is the key section of the famous speech:
“You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan... You may belong to any religion or caste or creed- that has nothing to do with the business of the State.... We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State... Now I think we should keep in front of us 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...”
This is secularly unexceptionable. It is no different from what Nehru - though not Gandhi - might have said and did say at various times. But as always actions speak louder than words, and Jinnah was not true to his word, especially in the years leading to the Partition. To gain his end of a homeland for the Muslims, he invoked the Two Nation Theory propounded by Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. Gandhi and the Congress initially opposed it but capitulated when Jinnah and his followers let loose an orgy of violence against the Hindus in the name of Direct Action.
But Jinnah’s demand for Pakistan did not evolve in a vacuum. He had started his political career as a staunch nationalist, as an advocate of Hindu-Muslim unity. He and Gandhi were both followers of Gopala Krishna Gokhale. What soured him was Gandhi’s support for the Khilafat launched by the notorious Muslim fundamentalist brothers, the Maulanas Mohammed Ali and Shaukat Ali. Gandhi launched his Non-Cooperation Movement in support of the Khilafat. This was one of the most bizarre and tragic episodes in Indian history that is still misrepresented in history books.
We need not go into the details, but essentially it was for the restoration of the Sultan of Turkey as the Caliph following Turkey’s defeat in World War I. Gandhi launched the Khilafat Non-Cooperation movement on August 21, 1920, promising the Ali Brothers “Swaraj within the year.” What was this Swaraj to be? In Gandhi’s words:
“To the Mussalmans Swaraj means, as it must, India’s ability to deal effectively with the Khilafat question. .It is impossible not to sympathize with this attitude. .I would gladly ask for the postponement of the Swaraj activity if we could advance the interest of the Khilafat.”
The Ali Brothers saw this as a Jihad against the British. Gandhi had also provided the Ali Brothers funds from the Tilak Swaraj Fund. The results were catastrophic. The promised “Swaraj within the year” did not materialize, and the Jihad was now turned against the Hindus. It was particularly virulent in Kerala where it is known as the Moplah Rebellion, which took several months to bring under control. Because of massacres and forced conversions, it virtually changed the demography of Malabar.
Gandhi was stunned by the horrors of what he had helped unleash. Still he lamely defended the Jihad by calling the Jihadis “God fearing,” and they were “fighting for what they consider as religion, and in a manner they consider as religious.” To add insult to injury, Gandhi’s protégé Mohammed Ali publicly said: “However pure Mr. Gandhi’s character may be, he must appear to me from the point of view of religion inferior to any Mussalman, even though he be without any character.”
How did the Congressmen feel about it? Jinnah had warned Gandhi against joining hands with reactionaries like the Ali Brothers, and soon left the Congress in disgust. Achyut Patawardhan, a Congressman, wrote:
‘the Himalayan error’ of Gandhiji’s leadership was the support he extended on behalf of the Congress and the Indian people to Khilafat Movement. .Apart from the fact that Khilafat was an unworthy reactionary cause, Mahatma Gandhi had to align himself with a sectarian revivalist Muslim leadership of Mullahs and Maulvis. He was thus unwittingly responsible for jettisoning sane, secularist modern leadership among the Muslims of India, and foisting upon the Indian Muslims a theocratic orthodoxy of Maulvis.”
The fruits of this ‘Himalayan blunder’ are still with us in the form of the general backwardness of the Muslim masses. It was this group that Jinnah went to for support with his promise of Pakistan.
In summary, neither Jinnah nor Gandhi
was a secular politician. Jinnah might have been the architect of Pakistan,
but the foundation had been laid by others. Whether one agrees with him
or not, Sri Advani has done us a favor by forcing a re-examination of myths
presented as history.
__________
Dr. N.S. Rajaram is the author of
Gandhi, Khilafat and the National
Movement. It is available on the
Internet at:
http://members.tripod.com/nsrajaram
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