Author: G Parthasarathy
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: September 3, 2009
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/199927/From-Jinnah-to-Hafiz-Saeed.html
Addressing a gathering of tens of thousands
of zealots at the headquarters of the Jamat-ud-Dawa'h (earlier calling itself
the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba) on November 3, 2000, the Amir of the Lashkar, Hafiz
Mohammad Saeed, thundered, "Jihad is not about Kashmir only. About 15
years ago people might have found it ridiculous if someone had told them about
the disintegration of the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).
Today, I announce the break-up of India, Inshallah! We will not rest till
the whole of India is dissolved into Pakistan." Saeed has been regularly
and publicly pronouncing a war that would encompass the whole of India. Till
the terrorist outrage of 26/11 no one took him seriously. Shortly after his
November 2000 speech Saeed sent his 'mujahideen' into the very heart of New
Delhi to attack the Red Fort on December 22, 2000. Addressing a gathering
of political leaders from Islamic parties shortly thereafter, Saeed proudly
proclaimed that he had unfurled the green flag of Islam atop the historic
fort.
Saeed was and is no ordinary person. He enjoyed
the patronage of former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who had sent
the Governor of Punjab, Mr Shahid Hamid, and his Information Minister, Mr
Mushahid Hussein Syed to personally call on and pay their respects to Saeed
in 1998. The Wahaabi/Salafi school of Islam propagated by Saeed was patronised
by Mr Nawaz Sharif's father, Mian Mohammed Sharif, through the Tablighi Jamaat.
Moreover, at the grassroots level the Lashkar is closely linked to the Pakistani
Army and the ISI, which provides weapons, training and logistical support
to the extremist group. But is Saeed's talk of "disintegration"
of India merely rhetoric of an isolated individual, or does it reflect a wider
strategic vision within Pakistan and particularly its armed forces?
While the 'idea' of Pakistan was first enunciated
by Chaudhuri Rehmat Ali in 1933 and given shape in the Lahore Resolution of
the Muslim League in 1940, the hope in Pakistan, even after it was born, was
that India would be a loose confederation, with units like the Nizam's domain
in Hyderabad and even a 'Dravidistan' going their own separate ways. Mohammed
Ali Jinnah spoke contemptuously of upper caste Hindus, while fostering separatism
by highlighting a separate linguistic and ethnic Dravidian identity, as characterising
the ethos of people in south India. While Mahatma Gandhi tried to address
centuries of exploitation and alienation of Dalits in India, together with
leaders like BR Ambedkar, Jinnah endeavoured to foment Dalit alienation. He
encouraged elements in princely states like Jodhpur and Travancore-Cochin
to declare independence. His aim was to Balkanise India and to ensure domination
of the sub-continent by a minority of its population. Jinnah's approach to
the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 was motivated by the belief that after 10
years, a united Punjab and Sindh in the west, together with Bengal and Assam
in the east, would break away from a fragile and fragmented India.
Jinnah shared a common interest with the British
in having a weak Central Government in India, incapable of firmly holding
the country together. His aims regarding India were thus not very different
from those of Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, though he was a virtually agnostic Ismaili,
who according to his biographer Stanley Wolpert, loved Scotch whisky and ham
sandwiches! Saeed, however, espouses rabid Wahaabi causes. He makes no secret
of his contempt for parliamentary democracy based on the principle of one-man-one-vote.
But was Jinnah's demand for a disproportionate share of parliamentary seats
for a minority, on the basis of Muslims having been the 'rulers' of India
before the British arrived, also not a negation of the concept of one-man-one-vote?
Moreover, can religion alone be a viable basis for enduring nationhood?
Jinnah's successors, from Liaquat Ali Khan
to Gen Pervez Musharraf, conducted relations with India in the belief that
its unity is fragile. Field Marshal Ayub Khan launched the 1965 conflict believing
that Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was a weak leader facing serious separatist
problems because of the Punjabi Suba movement in Punjab and anti-Hindi riots
combined with the rise of Dravidian parties in the south, apart from continuing
insurgencies in the North-East. Gen Zia-ul-Haq set up an elaborate network
to encourage separatism within India and laid special emphasis on creating
a Hindu-Sikh communal divide in Punjab. This effort, like Jinnah's to sow
mistrust in the mind of Master Tara Singh, failed because Hindus and Sikhs
alike saw through Pakistan's game-plan. The ISI effort to 'bleed' India in
Jammu & Kashmir is a continuation of the strategy that Pakistan has followed
since its birth. It is shocking when Indians who should know better extol
Jinnah's 'virtues'. His culpability in the communal holocaust he unleashed
by his call for 'Direct Action' cannot be condoned.
In his book, The Shadow of the Great Game
- The Untold Story of Partition, former diplomat Narendra Singh Sarila has
revealed that well before the Cabinet Mission arrived in India in May 1946,
two successive Viceroys, Lord Linlithgow and Lord Wavell, had decided to partition
India by creating a Muslim majority state in its north-west bordering Iran,
Afghanistan and Sinkiang in order to protect British interests in the oil
rich Persian Gulf. Jinnah was co-opted to further this British objective even
in 1939. Jinnah's efforts to impose Urdu as Pakistan's sole national language
sowed the seeds of Bangladeshi separatism and of Pakistan's disintegration
in 1971. His assumption of office as an unelected executive head of state
who presided over the Cabinet, led to his successors arbitrarily dismissing
Prime Ministers and to the take-over of Pakistan by a military-dominated feudal
elite - a malady the country suffers from even today.
The statesmanlike visit of former Prime Minister
Atal Bihari Vajpayee to the Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore symbolised that India
has no intention of reversing the partition of 1947 and that we wish the people
of Pakistan well. Challenges that Pakistan's establishment poses will be overcome
when values of secularism, pluralism and inclusive democratic development
are established as being more enduring than fantasies of nationhood based
exclusively on religion, which Jinnah propounded, or the hate and bigotry
of Saeed. Banning books, whose contents many may find objectionable, is not
the way deal with such challenges. Jihad
