Author: KR Phanda
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: December 6, 2005
Mr A Surya Prakash concludes his thought-provoking article, "Muslim clergy's contempt for courts" (November 22), with the following remarks: "Having successfully intimidated the country's politicians, and through them manipulated the executive and the legislature, Muslim community leaders have begun targetting the courts. This is the final assault.
Should the courts ever succumb to the pressure of Muslim communalists, the Constitution and India's integrity will be in peril." The sorry spectacle that we are witnessing today in India is entirely due to the kind of leadership that we have had during the freedom struggle and those who have ruled this country since independence. What distinguishes the leadership of this country from those of the others is its hatred to learn from the history of the world and its stubborn refusal to understand the Muslim mindset.
Although the freedom struggle was led by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, yet they made some great historical blunders. The duo agreed to the division of India on religious lines.
Till today, no religious minority has been given a separate homeland. The Congress leadership did not ask Muslims to leave for their homeland and instead provided superior rights to Muslims in the Constitution of India.
On the other hand, Jinnah was candid during his address to the League Session at Lahore in 1940 and in his subsequent 14 days' meetings with Gandhi at Bombay in 1944 that permanent solution to Hindu-Muslim conflicts lay in Hindustan for Hindus and Pakistan for Muslims. Muslims have ruled Hindus for 600 years and because of their religion, tradition and history could not peacefully coexist with Hindus, emphasised Jinnah.
He further suggested exchange of population because he had seen this happening in 1920 between Greece and Turkey as well as between Bulgaria and Turkey. This was the solution to the minority problem arrived at between Lord Curzon, then Foreign Secretary, UK, who represented the allied powers and Ismet Pasha, who represented the Turks.
In the context of India, Professor M Mujeeb, former Vice-Chancellor of Jamia Millia, writes: "At a party given during the General Assembly Session in 1949, I had the pleasure of being placed next to the Turkish representative. He looked at my name card, saw that I was a Muslim and at once asked: Are there still any Muslims in India?" (Islamic Influence on Indian Society, Meenakshi Prakashan, Meerut, 1972).
The impression of the Turkish representative was based on the facts of history and how this problem was tackled in Europe. We would not be seeing today the problems of erosion of sovereignty in India, had Gandhi's and Nehru's myopic vision not come in the way of the solution proposed by Quaid-e-Azam Jinnah.
Nehru's contempt for Jinnah is reflected in the following comments: "He was a mediocre lawyer with an obsession for Pakistan" (The Last Days of the British Raj by Leonard Mosley, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1961). Jinnah, for the work that he did for his community earned the title of Quaid-e-Azam in the 1930s.
Earlier, this title had been conferred by the ummah on Kemal Mustafa Pasha of Turkey. Jinnah will go down in history as having created a Muslim country with a new name, a unique achievement. Hindus too would remember Gandhi and Nehru for having destroyed the Hindu identity and for resowing the seeds of an Islamic state in India. At this stage, one is reminded of the Bard: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."