Ayesha Jalal's Pakistani logic

American educated, American academic, Ayesha Jalal is by no means a typical Pakistani. Yet, her latest book, 'The struggle for Pakistan', clearly shows the impress of a certain essentially Pakistani type of logic despite her having left the country as a girl.

Early in her book she asks-

How did India’s Muslim minority get transformed into a nation and win territorial sovereignty within just seven years only to end up being divided into two hostile states?

Indians had been transformed into a nation, as opposed to an Empire, by the British. Why? How? Administration is most cost-effective when it cuts along the joints of Language and Culture. In order words, the optimal administrative arrangement corresponds to the human geography of a potential nation.  But, this was not the end of the story.

The Burmese broke away first, in 1937, because they shared a commitment to ethnically cleanse Indians. They thought they'd be better off by getting rid of immigrants. Now they are the poorest country in South East Asia. Why? They have repeatedly shown a determination to kill or expel anyone who threatens the domination of the Burman even if that creed or linguistic group predates Burman expansion. But this involves their Army fucking over the productive element of the population.

Then, the Muslims broke away wherever they were the majority- with the exception of the Kashmir Valley and Chittagong. They did a lot of ethnic cleansing. But they have fallen behind India in per capita Income just like Myanmar.

 Where Muslims were a minority, they didn't get 'transformed into a nation'. Hyderabad or Junagadh did not get 'territorial sovereignty'. 

The fact is India's Muslims have not turned into a 'nationality'. The Tamil Muslim is not welcome in Kashmir. The Bihari Muslim migrant worker gets killed or chased away.

Why does Jalal make such a foolish claim? Perhaps, she wants to paint Jinnah as a prophet who spoke sooth. But the Father of Pakistan's own biological descendants are Indian and non-Muslim. On the other hand, they are as rich as fuck. 

 It was during his presidential address at the Muslim League’s Lahore session in March 1940 that Jinnah first asserted that India’s 90 million Muslims were not a minority but a nation. He made the claim with no reference to any Islamic convention. Instead, Jinnah took his cues from the contemporary internationalist discourse on territorial nationalism and the doctrine of self-determination. Like any other group claiming nationhood, Muslims wanted their own separate national home in the shape of autonomous states in northwestern and northeastern India, where they were in a majority. Muslim minorities in the rest of India were to be considered nationals of this Muslim homeland and their rights and privileges safeguarded in the same way as those of non-Muslims living in the Muslim territories.

This is bat-shit crazy. Does Jalal really believe that 'contemporary internationalist discourse' featured extra-territoriality of this sort? The fact is, after 1918, nationality was based on birth and domicile though, no doubt, ethnic cleansing could occur. The Greeks and the Armenians had not stayed on in Turkey as nationals of Greece and a newly constituted Armenia. Instead, save where there was a bilateral agreement, they were ethnically cleansed. Once the War broke out, Britain interned any Germans living in the U.K just as had happened during the previous War. It was never the case that a citizen of one Nation had any of his rights safeguarded by anything save the laws of the other Nation in which he happened to reside. Jinnah was aware of this. He knew what happened in Turkey.
Yet he said in his famous 1940 speech- The problem in India is not of an inter-communal character, but manifestly of an international one, and it must be treated as such. 
In 1940, it was apparent that 'international problems' were solved by war.

So long as this basic and fundamental truth is not realised, any constitution that may be built will result in disaster and will prove destructive and harmful not only to the Mussalmans, but to the British and Hindus also. If the British Government are really in earnest and sincere to secure [the] peace and happiness of the people of this sub-continent, the only course open to us all is to allow the major nations separate homelands by dividing India into "autonomous national states."
Empires in Europe had been dissolved in 1918. 'Autonomous Nation States' had been created. What was the result? War.
 There is no reason why these states should be antagonistic to each other. On the other hand, the rivalry, and the natural desire and efforts on the part of one to dominate the social order and establish political supremacy over the other in the government of the country, will disappear.
Jinnah was saying this after the 'Sudeten' German minority had given Hitler the excuse to destroy Czechoslovakia. How is it that German Czech rivalry had not disappeared from that country? It seems Jinnah embraced Pakistani logic even before Pakistan was created.
 It will lead more towards natural goodwill by international pacts between them, and they can live in complete harmony with their neighbours. This will lead further to a friendly settlement all the more easily with regard to minorities, by reciprocal arrangements and adjustments between Muslim India and Hindu India, which will far more adequately and effectively safeguard the rights and interests of Muslim and various other minorities.
Which was why Europe was so peaceful!
[[23]] It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders; and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality; and this misconception of one Indian nation has gone far beyond the limits and is the cause of more of our troubles and will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in time. 
If Muslims are a separate Nation and if they show a taste for ethnic cleansing then Hindus should run away from Muslim majority areas. This is in fact what happened. As for Muslims clamoring to be a Nation where they were weak or a minority- they could be locked up for sedition or encouraged to emigrate.
The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literature[s]. They neither intermarry nor interdine together, and indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspects [=perspectives?] on life, and of life, are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Mussalmans derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, their heroes are different, and different episode[s]. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other, and likewise their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent, and final. destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a state.
[[24]] History has presented to us many examples, such as the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. 
Hitler certainly made this argument in 1938. It was unfair that German minorities had to suffer in Czechoslovakia and Poland. But, history solved that problem. After the war, millions of Germans were raped, killed and all of them were driven out of lands they had lived in for hundreds of years. The problem of German minorities was solved by getting rid of Germans and taking away German land.
History has also shown to us many geographical tracts, much smaller than the sub-continent of India, which otherwise might have been called one country, but which have been divided into as many states as there are nations inhabiting them. [The] Balkan Peninsula comprises as many as seven or eight sovereign states. Likewise, the Portuguese and the Spanish stand divided in the Iberian Peninsula. Whereas under the plea of unity of India and one nation which does not exist, it is sought to pursue here the line of one central government, when we know that the history of the last twelve hundred years has failed to achieve unity and has witnessed, during these ages, India always divided into Hindu India and Muslim India. The present artificial unity of India dates back only to the British conquest and is maintained by the British bayonet, but the termination of the British regime, which is implicit in the recent declaration of His Majesty's Government, will be the herald of the entire break-up, with worse disaster than has ever taken place during the last one thousand years under the Muslims. Surely that is not the legacy which Britain would bequeath to India after one hundred fifty years of her rule, nor would Hindu and Muslim India risk such a sure catastrophe.
The Germans, under Hitler, risked that catastrophe and the Indian Muslims, under Jinnah, made the same mistake.
[[25]] Muslim India cannot accept any constitution which must necessarily result in a Hindu majority government. Hindus and Muslims brought together under a democratic system forced upon the minorities can only mean Hindu Raj. Democracy of the kind with which the Congress High Command is enamoured would mean the complete destruction of what is most precious in Islam. We have had ample experience of the working of the provincial constitutions during the last two and a half years, and any repetItion of such a government must lead to civil war and [the] raising of private armies, as recommended by Mr. Gandhi to [the] Hindus of Sukkur when he said that they must defend themselves violently or non-violently, blow for blow, and if they could not they must emigrate.
[[26]] Mussalmans are not a minority as it is commonly known and understood. One has only got to look round. Even today, according to the British map of India, out of eleven provinces, four provinces where the Muslims dominate more or less, are functioning notwithstanding the decision of the Hindu Congress High Command to non-cooperate and prepare for civil disobedience. Mussalmans are a nation according to any defmition of a nation, and they must have their homelands, their territory, and their state. We wish to live in peace and harmony with our neighbours as a free and independent people. We wish our people to develop to the fullest our spiritual, cultural, economic, social, and political life, in a way that we think best and in consonance with our own ideals and according to the genius of our people. Honesty demands [that we find], and [the] vital interest[s] of millions of our people impose a sacred duty upon us to find, an honourable and peaceful solution, which would be just and fair to all. But at the same time we cannot be moved or diverted from our purpose and objective by threats or intimidations. We must be prepared to face all difficulties and consequences, make all the sacrifices that may be required of us, to achieve the goal we have set in front of us.

What is Jinnah saying? I think he is demanding power sharing at a rather weak center and more or less full provincial autonomy such as already obtained. Jalal thinks he is saying that Muslims in Hindu majority areas would be citizens of Pakistan. Her logic is more Pakistani- no question. But was it the logic of the founder of Pakistan?

What was unacceptable was a spurious notion of democracy that allowed the Indian National Congress to use the brute majority of the Hindu community to impose its will on the Muslims.

Jinnah does not say this notion of democracy is spurious. He said it was unacceptable to Muslims. Perhaps he meant there would be a jihad or a hijrat but the least marked reading is that he wanted power sharing at the the Federal level.

Jalal is reading Jinnah's speech in- to my mind- a very odd way.

The political problem in India was not of an intercommunal nature as was commonly believed.

Communities (qaums) are Nations if they are sovereign. Jinnah wasn't saying that India did not have inter-communal problems. It did. But, the Muslim qaum was also a Nation. That was his meaning.

It was of a distinctly international character. In accordance with international norms of self-determination, the only logical solution was to divide India into autonomous states so that no nation could try and dominate the other.

If this is what Jinnah meant, then he and his audience were extraordinarily stupid. Europe was at war. It was clear that 'autonomous states' did try to dominate each other. Jalal should at least mention the possibility that Jinnah was merely flexing his muscles. What he really wanted- and what his audience understood him to be asking for- was parity with Hindus at the Center while the existing provincial autonomy continued.

Jalal next remarks on Jinnah's speech-

 If it embodied a separatist demand, the resolution adopted by the Muslim League in Lahore was curiously ambiguous when it came to specifying the precise geographical boundaries of the Muslim states it wanted to set up in northwestern and northeastern India where Muslims were in a majority.

So why pretend it did embody a separatist demand? Why not say it was a tactical move which others have considered separatist? Jinnah may have been a fool, but anyone who tries to convict him of even greater folly will look a greater fool because, thanks to the internet, everybody can check Jinnah's actual words. What is the point of attributing bizarre views to him? Does Jalal feel her mastery of Pakistani logic is inauthentic? Is she being deliberately stupid so as to reverse any deracination she has suffered? Or is it rather the case that the academic discipline she has so diligently pursued has at last, as it always must do, utterly rotted away her brains?