Prof Ishtiaq Ahmed of Stockholm University has published an 800 page political biography of Jinnah who he says was determined to dismember India. The Fair Observer states that he
analyzes everything Jinnah wrote and said from 1906 onward, the year Pakistan’s founder entered into public life.
The problem here is that politicians don't necessarily say or write what they mean or want.
Ahmed identifies four stages in Jinnah’s career. In the first, Jinnah began as an Indian nationalist.
Or a guy whose career would benefit by appearing to be a nationalist. Jinnah rose in Congress as an anti-Muslim Leaguer. But this meant he could join the League on his own terms and gain a leadership position at a time when Muslims wanted to make a mutually beneficial deal with Congress. Was he sincere when he told the Joint Select Committee, in 1919, that he thought the Muslims would give up separate electorates quite soon? He identified himself as a nationalist at that time. Was that the whole truth?
Perhaps. He himself could be a plausible Prime Minister of a united India. He had merit. He had experience. He had brokered the deal with Congress which resulted in the Lucknow Pact three years previously. The Brits could see he was a sensible man who stuck to his guns but with whom they could do business.
Then Gandhi and Khilafat turned Indian politics into a madhouse. Khilafat eclipsed the League. Gandhi turned Congress into a personality cult propagating a religion of Ahimsa which repulsed the Muslims. Had Gandhi not unilaterally surrendered in 1922, Jinnah would have been relegated to some second tier post- Advocate General, Ambassador to the League of Nations- but the country would have gone in a direction he personally would have found repugnant.
Jinnah's problem was that the Muslim masses were backward and divided and thus his own role as spokesman and negotiator could disappear overnight. Sooner or later power would pass to the religious leaders and rural notables. Urbane lawyers would be dispensed with. Jinnah as an Ismaili convert to the Twelver Shia sect was in a weak position. However, once Khilafat (which was Hanafi) was in the back window, he could make a comeback. The crux of the matter was the 1927, 'Delhi proposals' or 'Mussalman proposals' to Congress which it accepted. This conceded joint electorates in return for separation for Sindh, Provincial status for NWFP & Balochistan, majority seats in Bengal and Punjab (in accordance with population) and one third seats at the Center (in excess of population). Jinnah's contribution was to dilute the share of Punjab and Bengal which thus made him appear the champion of the minority Muslim. However, this caused a split within the League. The lesson for Jinnah was that the Muslim majority areas might ditch the Muslim minority and do a deal with the Hindu majority states thus leaving the great mass of Muslims out in the cold though it was their numbers which had enabled the majority states to get a bigger share of power.
In the second, he turned into a Muslim communitarian.
Only after Gandhi & Khilafat revived medievalism. Leftists, like Hasrat Mohani and Swami Kumaranand could play footsie with Gandhi and Khilafat and any other nonsense that might crop up because they needed a bridge to the masses. Other upper crust lawyers might patronize leftist students or get radical journalists to run their newspapers or even organize Trade Unions so as to rise politically. But Jinnah had already been President of the League and the moderate wing of Congress's rising star. He felt he was above that sort of thing.
What were Jinnah's choices? He couldn't be accepted as a Sindhi or Punjabi or Bengali leader. His strength lay with the minority Muslims. But the Brits could easily have cut that ground from under him by taking separate electorates off the table and finding an alternative way to do 'minority protection'.
Indeed, this was the wider problem the Muslims faced. The Parsis and Hindu banias had a head start. What if they had found a way to bribe the Brits? As it was, the Muslim Provinces viewed the franchise which the Brits settled on for the 1937 election with grave suspicion. The fact that the Brits were supposed to be favoring them convinced Muslims they were being led down the garden path. After all, even Gandhi had managed to fool them. Motilal and C.R Das kept appeasing them by granting them disproportionate representation even though they said their stated purpose was to frustrate the workings of the elected councils. If Hindus do such obviously stupid things, the reason must be for some very smart reason. What could that be? The only possible explanation was that the Brits would ditch the Muslims at the last minute for some reason no one had begun to suspect.
After the Khilafat fiasco, Jinnah's career revived. He was considered a good negotiator who could get more reservations, etc., from Congress- at least so long as Motilal Nehru was his opposite number. After Motilal's death, Jinnah's star faded once again as the Mahacrackpot once again launched a doomed mass movement.
I should mention that the Nehrus had initially gained salience because they were closer to the North Indian Muslims. However, Jawaharlal was able to reposition himself as a Socialist and thus could take an independent line. This meant Jinnah had a narrowing window of relevance. The abject failure of Nehru's 'Mass contact' program for rural Muslims as well as other grievances- e.g. Wardha education scheme promoting 'Ahimsa', flying of the national flag, use of Hindustani etc- meant that the League became the party of choice wherever Muslims were in the minority. In any case, both Hindus and Muslims realized that it was no fun being the minority under elected Governments. Thus, by 1938, the Muslim League could get money from wealthy Muslims in Hindu majority areas. They were winning byelections. Moreover, since Muslims were only a quarter of the population, they didn't want a Federal Government to function. Muslim majority provinces might do a deal with the Hindu provinces while leaving the minority Muslim in the lurch.
In 1940, the Lahore Resolution won widespread support and laid the foundation for the Muslim League monopolizing the Muslim vote in 1946. Jinnah got both the praise and the blame for what subsequently happened. A lawyer's career attains apotheosis not when he defeats his opponent- Justice or injustice may prevail in any case- but when he ruins his own client.
In the third, Jinnah transformed himself into a Muslim nationalist.
Unfortunately his own nation turned out to be on the wrong side of the border. Jinnah transformed his own people into second class citizens. True Pakistan and Bangladesh got to ethnically cleanse Hindus and Sikhs but even the Kashmir Valley could do so. In other words, ethnic cleansing would have happened wherever Muslims were in the majority or were better organized. What they lost because of Jinnah was reserved seats in India and a disproportionate share in power. But for Jinnah, Muslims would held the balance of power in Parliament. On the other hand, Jinnah- whose family were fairly recent converts- may have been correct about one thing. Islam could not co-exist with Hinduism. It required 'hijrat' or 'jihad' of its adherents.
In the fourth and final stage, he emerged as the founder of Pakistan where he is revered as Quaid-i-Azam, the great leader, and Baba-i-Qaum, the father of the nation.
The majority of Pakistanis- who spoke Bengali- soon came to hold a very different view of him. Interestingly, Jinnah's own descendants are Indian and non-Muslim. Whatever it was he was the father of, his progeny wanted nothing to do with it.
Ahmed is a political scientist by training. Hence, his analysis of each stage of Jinnah’s life is informed both by historical context and political theory. Jinnah’s rise in Indian politics occurred
at a time when Tilak and Gokhale were the most important figures in Mumbai politics. Jinnah was with the 'naram dal' and got into the Imperial Legislative Council in 1909. He initially opposed the League whose setbacks- e.g. reversal of partition of Bengal- meant they had to make terms with him so as to get an effective negotiator. He brokered the 1916 deal with Congress which gave Motilal salience as a Hindu who was liked by Muslims.
at a time when leaders like Motilal Nehru,
had not yet emerged on the national scene.
Mahatma Gandhi,
was still in South Africa
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel,
whose elder brother entered politics as part of the Bombay Provincial Council while the Sardar concentrated on earning money for the family. Later he rose much higher than his brother who died in 1933. But, Jinnah was President of Muslim League and an All India politician in 1915 when Gandhi and Motilal and Patel were insignificant provincials.
Jawaharlal Nehru,
who rose as his father's political secretary
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
Azad started of as a revolutionary; the British jailed him in 1916
and Subhas Chandra Bose
who returned to India only in 1921. He rose as C.R Das's deputy but Das was a late bloomer. My point is that Jinnah was senior to all these figures from 1916 itself. Furthermore, he had defended Tilak on sedition charges at about the same time as C.R Das gained national fame thanks to the Alipore case. In other words, Jinnah was the coming man in Indian politics. Sadly he was from the wrong religion and the wrong part of India. He had to himself create a country so as to get to head it. Otherwise, there was nothing stopping Jinnah being head of both the Muslim League and Congress.
were also major players in India’s political life and struggle for freedom. Jinnah’s role in the tortured machinations toward dominion status and then full independence makes for fascinating reading.
Sadly all those 'tortured machinations' were otiose. The Brits would have transferred power in any case- probably sooner rather than later because India was taking up too much of Westminster's time.
Ahmed also captures the many ideas that impinged on the Indian imagination in those days from Gandhi’s nonviolence, Jinnah’s religious nationalism
Jinnah was a British style lawyer-politician. He discovered that there was only one way for him to get to the top and some other Muslim politicians in a similar position agreed and decided to cling to his coat tails. Was this 'religious nationalism'? No, because the orthodoxy- proclaimed by Iqbal as much as Azad- was that you could either be 'wattaniya' (nationalist) or you could be islam-pasand (Islamist) but not both. On the other hand, there had been confessional states in Islam- e.g. the Hanafi Ottomans vs the Safavi Shias.
and Nehru’s Fabian socialism.
Which wasn't really Fabian- i.e. focused on building up from municipal socialism to the regional and state level. The British had no objection to the Indian's taking this gradualist approach. Indeed, Olivier, as Secretary for India, expressed the Fabian view- the Indians were refusing to build from the bottom up towards representative Government. It is here that Jawaharlal and his dynasty failed. They talked as though their peons had already down the spadework. There were plenty of peons but what they had built was merely whatever they could build- which was not much but which gained them a rent. The truth is you can't have Socialism unless you have a Society. India didn't. It had people who might get along with each other well enough but who had grave doubts they could achieve anything desirable by working together.
The problem was two-fold
1) Indians didn't want to pay taxes for 'municipal services' or anything else. Why dispose of faeces? Let shit pile up in the streets. Who wants proper schools with teachers who get paid? Let children 'earn while they learn' how to spin cotton or milk cows.
2) Indian politicians liked making stupid speeches. They didn't want to actually do anything sensible. After all, you don't have to be a Mahatma or a Qaid to do smart stuff. It is only by doing really stupid shit that you get your name in the history books- provided you come from a shithole and your dynasty pays those who write history books.
Jawaharlal's Socialist credentials were strongest in the late Thirties when he was espousing a 'United Front' politics. This was bound to fail because the sort of Imperialism he was against was Democratic and on the side of the angels. Hitler and Tojo had to weaken the British enough for Nehru to get his way. Still, it was only Bose who was foolish enough to join hands with the Japs. Gandhi seems to have thought they would win. He truly had a genius for always backing the worst possible horse.
Jinnah’s Tortured Journey
As an Indian nationalist, Jinnah argued that religion had no role in politics.
The problem was that Indian politics had no role in India's politics. Westminster made all the important decisions. True, they did occasionally think that consulting Indians might help. But the Indians turned out to be stupider and more factionalized than even the diehard Tories painted them as. Ultimately, Netaji Bose, like Aung San in Burma, convinced the Brits that they couldn't trust native armies. They had better leave rather than get suckered into Palestine type 'peace-keeping' roles. Let the natives ethnically cleanse each other to their hearts' content. They'll soon pay us more for guns than they ever yielded us in revenue.
His crowning achievement during these days was the 1916 Lucknow Pact. Together with Congress leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Jinnah forged a Hindu-Muslim agreement that “postulated complete self-government as India’s goal.” That year, Jinnah declared that India was “not to be governed by Hindus, and … it [was] not to be governed by the Muslims either, or certainly not by the English. It must be governed by the people and the sons of this country.” Jinnah advocated constitutionalism, not mass mobilization, as a way to achieve this ideal.
In other words, either Indian politicians would make India easier and more profitable to administer- in which case they were welcome to take their place with other Dominion Premiers- or else they would fuck up and get dismissed and Governor's rule would be imposed till a more sensible bunch of people got elected. This may have been good for India but it was little fun for Indian politicians. Capable Dewans or engineers or businessmen might displace vaunted Mahatmas and Netas and Qaids.
When the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, Indian Muslims launched a mass movement to save this empire.
They had already been protesting Turkish territorial losses in Libya etc. Amba Prasad Sufi and Ajith Singh and others had been trying to get Indian soldiers in Iraq etc to rebel. Maulana Azad and the Ali brothers had been jailed in this cause during the War itself.
Among them was Jinnah who sailed to England as part of the Muslim League delegation in 1919 to plead that the Ottoman Empire not be dismembered and famously described the dismemberment of the empire as an attack on Islam.
Kidwai and others pretended that Jinnah and the Aga Khan had betrayed the cause because they were Shias. Khilafat soon collapsed with various people being accused of embezzlement. Jinnah was well out of that dog's breakfast. It must be said, Jinnah's marriage had damaged him. His wife was too westernized and, worse still, she had a soft spot for Gandhi. Still, he could have had a career as a junior partner to Motilial's Swaraj party. Under, Jawaharlal who- like some other younger men, e.g Chaghla- thought Indian politics had to be about land reform and other economic issues- Jinnah ceased to be an attractive partner for Congress. After 1937, Muslims in non-Muslim majority provinces were running scared. They slit their own throats by backing Jinnah though some could migrate and make good in Pakistan.
Did Jinnah have a 'threat point' which he failed to use in a sensible manner? Not really. India could not have had a strong federal center save as a place which could drive Hindu reform and forge a more progressive 'Hindutva' identity which could defeat the fossilized caste system and the stupid 'status competition' involving being more-vegan-than-thou it engendered.
Sadly, India refused to tackle the primary reason it was conquered in the first place- viz. it had a shit navy and wouldn't make lots of nice guns for its soldiers. If you can't defend yourself, you may as well also neglect feeding yourself. Nehru's 'nanga bhooka Hindustan' was such a shithole that neither the Commies nor the Capitalists wanted it. West Pakistan did build up its Army but it didn't really follow a sensible economic policy either.
To support the caliph, Indian Muslim leaders launched the Khilafat Movement. Soon, this turned into a mass movement, which Gandhi joined with much enthusiasm. Indian leaders were blissfully unaware that their movement ran contrary to the nationalistic aspirations of Turks and Arabs themselves.
The thing was hilarious. The Caliph ordered the killing of Ataturk. An Indian Khilafati turned up promising loads of money but he was an assassin in British pay. Ataturk killed him and abolished the Caliphate.
Incidentally, around the time Gandhi unilaterally surrendered, the Muslims discovered that the Viceroy had gone to bat for them. In other words, the Viceroy was a better friend than the bania crackpot. By 1924, Delhi Muslims were openly saying that British rule was better than Hindu rule. They were right. Most had to flee in 1947 and Nehru & Co. changed the law barring them from returning to reclaim Indian citizenship.
Later, Islam would emerge as the basis of a rallying cry in Indian politics.
It had been that since the time of the Sultanate.
The nationalist Jinnah started singing a different tune: He argued that Muslims were a distinct community from Hindus and sought constitutional safeguards to prevent Hindu majoritarianism from dominating.
Sri Lanka got that as the price for universal suffrage in 1931. Gandhi's genius was to unite all the minorities- even non-Brahmin Hindus in Madras against the INC at the second Round Table Conference.
In the 1928 All Parties Conference that decided upon India’s future constitution, Jinnah argued that residuary powers should be vested in the provinces, not the center, in order to prevent Hindu domination of the entire country.
The problem was the army. Either the non Muslim 75 percent of the country controlled the Army- in which case 'residuary powers' for the provinces would be meaningless legalese- or else the Brits had to stay on indefinitely at the Center. The trouble is that the Brits wanted to transfer power at the Federal level as the next step to responsible self-government. This raised the mirage of a Pakistani army powerful enough to protect Muslims in India.
Ahmed meticulously documents how the British used a strategy of divide and rule, ensuring that the chasm between the Congress and the Muslim League would become unbridgeable.
The Brits wanted to keep control over Defense and External Affairs. The Indians did not want to admit their dependence on the British Navy which, after all, was what had created the Empire in the first place. They thought of the Army as a purely internal tool. The truth is the Indians weren't ready for independence. Indeed, the Indians had a British admiral for their Navy for the first decade after independence. Even now, it is obvious that if India wants to stand against China it can only do so as part of Quad. Defense procurement, of course, because of a post-Independence decision to keep the Army weak- remains a shit-show.
As India turned to mass politics under Gandhi, Jinnah retreated to England. After a few quiet years there, he returned to India in 1934 and was elected to the Central Legislative Assembly, the precursor to the parliaments of both India and Pakistan. Jinnah argued that there were four parties in India: the British, the Indian princes, the Hindus and the Muslims. He took the view that the Congress represented the Hindus while the Muslim League spoke for the Muslims.
In 1939, Gandhi said that Congress was a High Caste Hindu party. Since Hindus are all wedded to Ahimsa, if the Brits left the Muslims and the Punjabis would overrun the country. That is why the Brits must hand over control of the Army to Congress.
Ultimately, Jinnah got his Pakistan- however 'moth-eaten'- because his 'mass-contact' program was better than Nehru's or Gandhi's.
Importantly, Jinnah now claimed that no one except the Muslim League spoke for the Muslims.
While Gandhi had always claimed that the INC spoke for the entire nation. That's why he wanted the Brits to transfer all power to the INC.
This severely undercut Muslim leaders in the Congress.
But not other Muslim leaders who had their own parties- e.g. Unionist Party in Punjab or Krishak Praja party in Bengal.
Jinnah had a visceral hatred for the erudite Congress leader Azad, who was half Arab
and half Afghan.
and a classically-trained Islamic scholar with an encyclopedic knowledge of the Quran, the hadith and the various schools of Islamic thought.
But he became a journalist and then a revolutionary agitator. Had India not been partitioned, Azad may have had an important role. But, it turned out that he had merely been a 'show-boy'. He declined into insignificance and is said to have become fond of the bottle.
Furthermore, Azad’s mastery of the Urdu language stood unrivaled. He wrote voluminously in this pan-national Muslim lingua franca. In contrast, Jinnah was an anglicized lawyer who wrote in English and spoke poor Urdu.
Yet, Jinnah prevailed. In 1946 the League got about 87 percent of the Muslim seats.
Jinnah’s argument that the Muslim League was the only party that could represent Muslims was not only conceptually flawed, but also empirically inaccurate. Muslims in Bengal, Punjab, Sindh and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) supported and voted for regional political parties, not the Muslim League.
But the Premiers of the provinces supported the Lahore Resolution. The hold out was NWFP but Badshah Khan's Gandhian tactics proved useless against the cry 'Islam in danger!'
In fact, voters gave the Muslim League a drubbing in 1937.
Thus, it was only experience of Congress rule which drove Muslims into the hands of the League.
This hardened Jinnah’s attitude, as did the mass contact program with Muslims that the Congress launched under Nehru.
Which failed utterly. Nehru wasn't good at that sort of thing.
When the Congress broke its gentleman’s agreement
Previously 'dual membership' was usual. To understand why Nehru was intransigent on this we should remember that, like his father, the fool had wanted to sabotage the 1935 Act. The Brits cunningly increased the franchise (or else they simply did what was sensible and feasible- which amounts to 'cunning' due to they had white skins) and so the Congress won more seats than it expected. I believe, Zetland thought Congress would do badly as 'local notables' would sway the vote towards Loyalist candidates.
Congress's success in the elections sharpened its hungered for office. Nehru started thinking of Congress as being like the Kuomintang- a truly National party which could make rapid progress towards Socialism and Secularism sans sexy shenanigans.
with the Muslim League to form a coalition government in United Provinces (UP) after winning an absolute majority, Jinnah turned incandescent.
He did more. He greatly expanded League membership by dropping the fees. However, Congress incapacity, corruption, and discriminatory behavior soon delivered the Muslim vote into his hands- in non-Muslim majority Provinces.
In retrospect, the decision of the Congress to go it alone in UP was a major blunder.
Not really. It would have been blamed either way because its administration would still have been shitty. The difference is that the Mahasabha would have mobilized against 'Muslim appeasement' and this would have put an end to Nehru's dream of taking Congress to the Left.
After taking office, the Congress started hoisting its flag instead of the Union Jack and disallowed governors from attending cabinet meetings. Many leaders of the Muslim League joined the Congress, infuriating Jinnah. He drew up a list of Congress actions that he deemed threatening to Islam. These included the Muslim mass contact campaign, the singing of Vande Mataram, Gandhi’s Wardha Scheme of Basic Education and restrictions on cow slaughter. Jinnah came to the fateful decision that he could no longer truck with the Congress and the die was cast for a dark era in Indian history.
It wasn't dark for Hindus in Hindu majority areas- i.e. the vast majority of Hindus.
The Two-Nation Champion
In March 1940, Jinnah threw down the gauntlet to the Congress. At a speech in Lahore, he argued that India’s unity was artificial, it dated “back only to the British conquest” and was “maintained by the British bayonet.” He asserted that “Hindus and Muslims brought together under a democratic system forced upon the minorities can only mean Hindu Raj.”
It could have meant sensible Raj. But Hindus aren't sensible- Jinnah was right about that. But the same was true of Muslims.
In this speech, Jinnah argued that Hindus and Muslims belonged “to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions.” He claimed that Muslims were “a nation according to any definition of a nation, and they must have their homelands, their territory, and their state.” Ahmed rightly points out that this speech was Jinnah’s open declaration of his politics of polarization. From now on, Jinnah had set the stage for the division of India.
Which is the only way he could have a political career if the Brits left.
Ahmed also goes into the claims of Chaudhry Sir Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, popularly known as Sir Zafarullah, an Ahmadi leader who was Pakistan’s first foreign minister.
Brilliant man. Sadly, the Ahmadis were declared non-Muslim by Bhutto's government some thirty years later. The Ahmadis had slit their own throat.
Khan and his admirers have claimed credit for the Muslim League’s Lahore resolution for Pakistan, following Jinnah’s historic speech. It turns out that Khan was implicitly supported by British Viceroy Lord Linlithgow who cultivated Khan and extended his tenure as a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council. This indicates that Jinnah’s bid for Pakistan had the support of a canny Scot who wanted Indian participation in World War II, something the Congress was opposed to without the promise of postwar independence.
This was a 'no-brainer'. Congress was crazy. The Commies were on Hitler's side because of his pact with Stalin. Anyway, Muslims are good soldiers and won't suddenly start babbling about Ahimsa. Meanwhile Gandhi, in 1939, had said Congress, being high caste Hindu, wouldn't lift a finger to protect itself let alone anybody else.
While Jalal might trumpet Jinnah as the sole spokesman of the Muslims, the historical record reveals a very different picture. Within a month of Jinnah’s Lahore speech, the All India Azad Muslim Conference met in Delhi.
Its convener was assassinated a couple of years later.
Its attendance was five times that of the Muslim League’s Lahore session. This conference opposed partition, repudiated Jinnah’s two-nation theory and made a strong case for a united India.
But they turned out to have no power alter to the outcome.
Others argued for a united India too. Ahmed tells us that Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the towering Dalit social reformer who drafted India’s constitution, reversed his position on partition and on Pakistan. After the Lahore resolution, Ambedkar wrote a 400-page piece titled “Thoughts on Pakistan” that advised Hindus to concede Pakistan to the Muslims.
Ambedkar hoped to create an anti High Caste Hindu coalition. His pal JN Mandal made the mistake of choosing Pakistan where he was Law minister. Then the poor fellow had to run away to India. Sad.
By 1945, Ambedkar had come to the view that “there was already a Pakistan” in the Muslim-majority states.
What Ambedkar and Ambedkarites never acknowledged was that the Muslims had no interest in helping Dalits. During Partition, scavengers in Pakistan were forbidden from emigrating (unless they were Sikh- because Sikhs are good fighters). Ambedkar got his own back by taking away any type of affirmative action from Dalit Muslims. (Christians had already been barred by the 1935 Act)
As a Dalit, he also turned against the hierarchy in the Muslim community where the high-born Ashrafs lorded it over the low-born Ajlafs and women had very limited rights.
As a Dalit, he also married a Brahmin Doctor and then converted to Buddhism which exported untouchability all the way to Japan- which has no Brahmins. Bali has Brahmins but no untouchables. Incidentally, Ambedkar banned images of Ganesa- which are popular in Japan. What can I say? The man was a politician. Politicians do stupid shit. Churchill destroyed the Empire he so loved by taking a shilling of Income Tax rather than give it to the Navy when he was Chancellor.
Jinnah took the haughty view that Muslims were not a large minority but a political nation entitled to self-determination. In 1941, he claimed that Muslims “took India and ruled for 700 years.”
Under non-Indian dynasties- sure. All that the previous thousand years of Indian history had shown was that Indians are shit at running things on their own.
So, they were not asking the Hindus for anything. He was making the demand to the British, the rulers of India. Jinnah might have been arrogant but he had a genius for propaganda. He constantly fed the press with stories about impending dangers to Muslims once the Congress took over, fueling insecurities, distrust and division.
But Congress was clearly useless. It didn't get that asking the Brits to 'Quit India' when the Japs were at the door was incredibly stupid. Netaji Bose went a step further by allying with those criminals. Congress had a genius for always doing what was worst for the country.
While Jinnah was ratcheting up the pressure, the Congress made a series of political blunders. It vacated the political space when World War II broke out in 1939. Gandhi idealistically opposed the British while Jinnah collaborated with them, extracting valuable concessions from his colonial masters. When Field Marshal Archibald Wavell took over from Lord Linlithgow as the Viceroy, Jinnah wormed himself into Wavell’s confidence. It helped that Wavell despised the anti-colonial Congress. Ahmed observes that this British general “wanted to ensure that Britain’s military interest in the form of bases and manpower was secured.”
How strange! Why did this 'British general' not want to offer up his own arse to the Japanese for the kind favor of punitive sodomy?
Jinnah offered him that option while Gandhi did not.
Gandhi offered very good advise to the British in 1940- You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these but neither your souls, nor your minds. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself man, woman and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them.
American friends of India published an edition of Nehru's 'Discovery of India' in which Jawaharlal made it clear that Gandhi was a harmless lunatic. The Congress Party was business-like and backed by big business. Its 'Socialism' was of the Chiang Kai Shek sort. Reading this, the Americans were reassured. They thought Nehru was a man they could do business with. Sadly, Nehru preferred to buy British crap and employ a British admiral. He truly was the last Englishman- a stupid one- to rule India.
Jinnah was bloody-minded and shrewd but he was also plain lucky. Many of those who could have contested his leadership simply passed away. Sir Mian Muhammad Shafi, an aristocrat from the historic city of Lahore and a founder of the Muslim League, died in 1932. Sir Mian Fazl-i-Husain, a founding member of Punjab’s Unionist Party who served as counselor to the British Viceroy, died in 1936. Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, the towering premier of Punjab, died in December 1942. Allah Baksh Soomro, the premier of Sindh, was assassinated in 1943. Sir Chhotu Ram, the co-founder of the National Unionist Party that dominated Punjab, died in 1945. With such giants of Punjab and Sindh dying, the Gujarati Jinnah gained an opportunity to dominate two Muslim-majority provinces where the Muslim League had struggled to put down roots.
If they hadn't died, they'd have been assassinated. Jinnah had no difficulty getting rid of the even more towering Badshah Khan.
Last-Ditch Efforts to Preserve the Indian Union
It was not all smooth sailing for Jinnah, though. In 1945, the Conservatives led by Winston Churchill lost the general election. Clement Attlee formed a Labour government committed to India’s independence. By this time, Jinnah was in full-fledged confrontation mode. When Wavell convened the 1945 Simla Conference, Jinnah had insisted that the Congress could not appoint any Muslim representatives. As a result, the conference failed and the last chance for a united independent India went up in smoke.
It was the 1946 election which was decisive.
Ironically, Jinnah wanted the partition of India but opposed the partition of Punjab and Bengal.
Equally ironically, Congress supported the partition of Bengal- which it had vehemently opposed in 1905- while pretending it didn't want to get shot of Jinnah and his Muslims.
In December 1945, Wavell observed that if Muslims could have their right to self-determination, then non-Muslim minorities in Muslim areas could not be compelled to remain in Pakistan against their will. Therefore, the partition of Punjab and Bengal was inevitable. Jinnah would only get his moth-eaten version of Pakistan.
East Bengal made a mistake by throwing in with this monstrosity.
By now, the British wanted to leave. The 1946 Naval Uprising shook British rule to the core.
It showed them that India was indefensible because soldiers and sailors could no longer be trusted to follow orders. Let the place fall apart on its own.
There was another angle to this. The Royal Navy and Merchant Navy needed the natives of ports in the Indian ocean to remain friendly to Jolly Jack Tar. There was a danger than the Ratings Mutiny would spread along the Gulf and Swahili court. Even Singapore was in danger. Mountbatten did a good job in conciliating the Indians who kept on a British Admiral till about 1958.
Weary after World War II, a revolt by naval ratings, soldiers, police personnel and civilians made the British realize that the loyalty of even the armed forces could not be taken for granted. During World War II, large numbers had joined Bose’s Indian National Army and fought against the British.
If the Japanese would let them. By contrast, Indians who joined the Waffen SS on Bose's urgings wouldn't fight anybody. They preferred to get drunk and sleep with prostitutes. Sadly the Free French took to slaughtering them and so they ran hither and tither looking for British soldiers to surrender to.
After the 1946 uprising, the writing was on the wall.
America would not pay to keep a British Lord in the Viceroy's Palace. Sad.
Soon, the Cabinet Mission arrived to discuss the transfer of power from the British government to Indian political leaders. It proposed provinces, groups of provinces and a federal union. The union was to deal only with foreign affairs, defense and communications, and the power to raise finances for these three areas of government activity. The remaining powers were to be vested in the provinces.
Provinces like Bengal where millions had starved while a few got rich.
Everyone rejected the Cabinet Mission Plan. Jinnah did not get his beloved Pakistan. The Congress was unwilling to accept such a weak federal government. The Sikhs bridled at the prospect of being “subjected to a perpetual Muslim domination.” Needless to say, the plan was dead on arrival.
Azad liked it. Thus it must have been shit.
Even as deliberations about the transfer of power were going on, members to the Constituent Assembly were elected during July-August. Of a total of 296 seats for the British provinces, the Congress won 208, the Muslim League 73 and independents 15. British India also had 584 princely states that had a quota of 93 seats in the Constituent Assembly. These states decided to stay away from the assembly until their relationship with independent India became clearer. This turned out to be a historic blunder.
Or simply a recognition that the Princes were a historical anomaly.
By now, the British had decided to leave. On August 24, 1946, Wavell made a radio announcement that his government was committed to Indian independence and that an interim government would be formed under the leadership of Nehru and that the Muslim League would be invited to join it. Initially, no member of the Muslim League was in the first interim government formed on September 2, but five members joined this government on October 26 that remained in power until India and Pakistan emerged as two independent states.
So, nothing was Mountbatten's fault.
The Run-up to Partition
Before the two main parties joined the same coalition government, riots broke out across the country. Jinnah called for Direct Action Day on August 16, 1946. Calcutta, now known as Kolkata, experienced the worst violence. SciencesPo estimates that 5,000 to 10,000 died, and some 15,000 were wounded, between August 16 and 19.
Shurawardy thought the Muslims would win. Calcutta would go to Pakistan.
At the time, Bengal was the only province with a Muslim League government, whose chief minister was the controversial and colorful Hussain Suhrawardy. During the “Great Calcutta Killing,” his response was less than even-handed, deepening divisions between Hindus and Muslims.
He gambled and lost. Still he got to be Premier of Pakistan- for a bit. Then, there was a coup and he went to jail. Jinnah too was not secure. Had he not died, he'd have been assassinated like Liaquat or unceremoniously turned out of office once elections were held. Cancer saved him from ignominy.
Right from the outset, India and Pakistan embarked on different trajectories. Mountbatten remained as governor-general of India, an interim position instituted in 1947 and abolished in 1959 to facilitate the transition to full-fledged Indian rule. In contrast, Jinnah took over as governor-general of Pakistan. This move weakened both Parliament and the prime minister. As the all-powerful head of a Muslim state, Jinnah left no oxygen for the new parliamentary democracy of Pakistan.
Parliamentary democracy was impossible in the West Wing and, because the East had the majority and, though poorer, was more developed politically, it was obviously impossible at the Federal level.
Pakistan initially pursued even stupider economic policies than India. However, precisely because it was politically so undeveloped, its people could rise a little more rapidly by their own efforts- at least in the West wing.
Nawabzada Liaquat Ali Khan, an Oxford-educated aristocrat from UP, took charge as prime minister. Yet it was an open secret that Khan had little authority and Jinnah called all the shots. In India, Rajendra Prasad took charge as the president of the Constituent Assembly of India and the Dalit scholar Ambedkar became the chair of the drafting committee. In contrast, Jinnah was elected unanimously as the president of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan that failed to draft a constitution and was acrimoniously dissolved in 1954.
Constitutions don't matter. The fact is elections couldn't be held in Pakistan for obvious reasons- the 'tilyars' would have been expropriated. The locals would have taken power.
This assembly might not have amounted to much, but a speech by Jinnah lives on in history books and is a subject of much debate. On August 11, 1947, Jinnah declared: “If you change your past and work together in a spirit that every one of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his colour, caste, or creed, is first, second, and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges, and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make.”
nor any beginning to it either.
Jinnah summoned his 1916 self that championed Hindu-Muslim unity and blamed the colonization of 400 million souls on internal division. His rhetoric took flight and he claimed that “in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim community — because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on, and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnavas, Khatris, also Bengalees, Madrasis and so on — will vanish.”
Poor chap, he'd turned senile. There were no 'Madrasis' in Pakistan.
Jinnah also made a grand promise to Pakistan’s citizens: “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or 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.” Toward the end of his speech, Jinnah’s rhetoric soared. He envisioned 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.”
Nehru was making equally shite speeches. These guys fucked up. They should have worked with the Brits to learn the ropes of bottom up representative democracy in the Twenties. In the Thirties they should have learned about Military strength and Industrial policy to furnish the sinews of war. Only after India had become truly independent- i.e. able to defend and feed itself- should it have started talking about anti-Imperialism and non-violence and so forth. Nehru & Jinnah put the cart before the horse. Gandhi was a nutter who believed in reincarnation. He went off happily to some planet where nobody would have sex or say anything interesting or eat anything tasty. But Nehru & Jinnah were Edwardian atheists who died knowing they had lived in a make-believe world.
No scholar has analyzed this speech better than Ahmed. This professor emeritus at Stockholm University points out that Jinnah neither mentions Islam nor secularism as a foundational principle of the state. Instead, Jinnah refers to the clash between Roman Catholics and Protestants in England. It seems this London-trained barrister is looking at the constitutionalism of Merry England as the way forward for Pakistan.
England has an established Church. The head of State must be an Anglican.
Ahmed makes another astute observation. Jinnah’s speech might have been addressed less to his audience in a rubber stamp assembly and more to his counterparts in the Indian government.
Fuck they'd care about that cretin?
Jinnah did not want another 30 to 40 million Muslims from Delhi and UP immigrating to Pakistan, adding even more pressure on an already financially stretched state.
They were welcome to die where they found themselves.
If these Muslims were driven out in retaliation for what was going on to Sikhs and Hindus in West Punjab and East Pakistan (Bangladesh since 1971), then Pakistan could well have collapsed.
Nope. Watching refugees die can be great fun. Ask the Shurawardy. He didn't lose any sleep, as Minister Civil Supply, during the Bengal Famine.
Ahmed’s Evaluation of Jinnah
Jinnah excites much emotion in the Indian subcontinent.
One Gujju crackpot responded to another Gujju crackpot. A plaque on both their houses!
For some, he is the devil incarnate. For others, he is a wise prophet. Ahmed evaluates Jinnah in the cold light of the day with reason, judgment and, above all, fairness.
Jinnah and Gandhi were narcissists who fucked up. Let them both be Fathers of Nations from which sensible people run away as far as Stockholm.
Jinnah was indubitably an impressive character with wit, will and vision. He forged a disparate nation of Balochs, Pashtuns, Sindhis, Punjabis and Muhajirs, the Urdu term for refugees in the name of Islam, including those coming from India in the west and Bengalis in the east.
No he didn't. What Jinnah put together only the Army could keep from flying asunder- unless the Indian Army intervened.
However, Jinnah never attained a status worthy of Thomas Carlyle’s heroes.
The Pakistanis made a film about him but Christopher Lee was cast in the leading role. Needless to say, the film was never released.
Unlike Gandhi, Jinnah did not come up with a new way to deal with the existing political situation.
He was less stupid.
Gandhi insisted on ahimsa and satyagraha, non-violence and adherence to truth.
Which kept the Brits in business. Jinnah, for some reason, was in a hurry to get rid of them.
He put means before ends. He was a mass leader
but not an elected leader.
but was only the first among equals in the Congress Party, which had many towering leaders.
who did stupid shit coz Gandhi told them to do stupid shit
Gandhi was outvoted many times and accepted such decisions, strengthening his party’s democratic tradition.
till those cretins turned back to Gandhi and did stupid shit because, truth be told, they were all as stupid as shit.
On the other hand, Jinnah was determined to be the sole spokesman who put ends before means and did not hesitate to spill blood to achieve his political ambitions.
We only say that because he did achieve his ambition. The truth is he was sane enough till Khilafat & Gandhian craziness derailed Indian politics. Then he organized one wing of the resistance to it. But Buddhist Burma had already broken away in 1937. The 'Madrasis' too were tempted to go their own way because of the stupidity of Gandhi, Rajaji &c. The Chinese Invasion put paid to that because au fond Madrasis are Hindus. They just hate Brahmins- more especially Gandhian virtue signalling Brahmins.
It is true that Gandhi erred in calling Jinnah a Gujarati Muslim in 1915 when Jinnah would have been preferred to be known as an Indian nationalist. Yet Gandhi genuinely believed that everyone living in India was an Indian and had equal rights as citizens.
Unless they were cows, in which case they had superior rights.
Jinnah championed the two-nation theory and argued that Muslims in India were a separate nation.
He proved his point.
For him, religious identity trumped linguistic, ethnic or national identity.
It turned out that Hindus wanted democracy and constitutionalism and needed to unite to defend both against Muslims, Maoists and- more recently- a dynasty dying nasty.
Ahmed’s magnum opus might focus on Jinnah but Gandhi emerges as a true hero in his book.
Though Gandhi caused the mischief which took Jinnah down a separatist path.
In the short run, Jinnah succeeded. Pakistan was born.
He also succeeded in the long run. Nobody wants to interfere in that shithole. Even America has learnt its lesson. The Chinese will soon follow suit.
Yet Jinnah also left Pakistan with many of its current problems. He centralized all power, reduced states to the level of municipalities and postponed the drafting of a constitution.
If these things could have been done, they would have been done. Why blame an elderly man already mortally ill?
Even though Jinnah himself neither spoke his native Gujarati or urbane Urdu fluently, he made Urdu the official language of Pakistan.
Instead of what? French?
This infuriated East Pakistan, which eventually achieved independence in 1971. As Atul Singh, Vikram Sood and Manu Sharma point out in an article on Fair Observer, the rise of ethnic nationalism threatens the further disintegration of Pakistan for which Jinnah must take some blame.
Why? How is it his fault if the place is a tribal belt or an Army with a country rather than a country with an Army?
Ahmed’s book also brings into the spotlight the role of facts, factlets and factoids. His facts are based on sources that are empirically verifiable. Factlets are interesting asides, which have value in themselves but may or may not have a bearing on the meta narrative. Factoids are just plain lies that are repeated so many times that many people start believing in them. The biggest factoid in the Indian subcontinent about the partition is the assertion that a majority of Muslims in British India wanted Pakistan.
The League won 87 percent of Muslim seats. True, many Indian Muslims thought they themselves would be in a Pakistani enclave. Had Gandhi lived perhaps they would have got something of the sort. It is perfectly rational to want special treatment.
Another factoid is the belief that the Congress Party was as keen on Partition as the Muslim League.
Getting shot of the NWFP was a good thing. East Bengal too didn't look too appetizing.
Ahmed’s book is strong on facts, keeps the readers interested by providing riveting factlets and demolishes several factoids.
Three Takeaways for Today
Ahmed’s masterpiece offers us three important lessons.
First and foremost, facts matter. For a while, myth may obscure facts, narratives might cloud truth, but eventually a scrupulous scholar will ferret out facts. As the English adage goes, “the truth will out sooner or later.”
The same can be said of feces.
Second, religion and politics may make a heady cocktail but leave a terrible hangover.
Nonsense! Theistic Religion is about how we all get to go to Heaven where we will discover that all the distinctions we made on earth were mischievous and delusive. Thus, while on earth, we should arrange matters such that we all have a good time and then each take the Heavenly elevator assigned to our own sect and then discover everybody we loved but were divided from by some trivial circumstance there to greet us.
Don't get drunk if you don't want a hangover. You can still party hearty and eat lots of tasty tidbits and sample some delicious beverages.
At some point, things spin out of control, riots break out on the streets, fanaticism takes over, jihadists go berserk and a garrison state emerges with a logic of its own.
This is nonsense. If there are no Muslims there are no jehadis. Religion played a big role in the rise of the Labor party of the various Christian Socialist parties. But this had no untoward consequences.
Such a state can be deep, oppressive and even somewhat effective but is largely disconnected from the needs and aspirations of civil society.
But 'civil society' can be utterly shit. Look at the Weimar Republic.
Such a state is also unable to create a dynamic economy and most people remain trapped in poverty.
Like Saudi Arabia- right?
Last but not the least, the zeal of new converts becomes doubly dangerous when religion and politics mix. These new converts can turn into fanatics who outdo their co-religionists. As the adage goes, they seek to be more Catholic than the pope. The noted Punjabi Hindu leader Lala Lajpat Rai’s father returned to Hinduism after converting to Islam.
And Kripalani's elder brother converted to Islam. So what?
Master Tara Singh, the champion of an independent Sikh nation, was born a Hindu but converted to Sikhism in his youth.
There was little distinction between Khattri Sikhs and Hindus at that time.
Jinnah’s grandfather, Premjibhai Meghji Thakkar, was a Bhatia Rajput who converted to Islam after orthodox Hindus excommunicated Thakkar for entering the fishing business.
And his descendants embraced the religion of their maternal ancestors. That Pakistan business was more stinky than the fishing business. They were well out of it.
Similarly, Pakistan’s national poet Muhammad Iqbal, who studied at Trinity College, Cambridge and the University of Munich, came from a Kashmiri Brahmin family. Iqbal’s father, Rattan Lal, was a Sapru who reportedly embraced Islam to save his life and was consequently disowned by his family. Pakistan was not created by a Pashtun like Abdul Ghaffar Khan or a half-Arab, blue-blooded sayyid like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad but by a Rajput and a Brahmin who were recent converts.
Who led people who had converted for similar reasons some generations previously. We may also mention a Hungarian Jewish convert who helped Pakistan's new masters learn a little about Islam.
Ironically, this nation now names its ballistic missiles after Turkish invaders, makes it compulsory for its children to learn Arabic and pretends its roots lie in the Middle East instead of the Indian subcontinent.
Nothing wrong with that. Learn Chinese or English or any other language. Claim that your roots lie in California or some other desirable place of domicile. But do ensure Jinnahs can crawl into a bottle in between raking in cash at the bar, rather than uncork the evil genie of yet more partitions and fratricide.
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