Father of the
Nation Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah's achievement
as the founder of Pakistan, dominates everything else he did in his
long and crowded public life spanning some 42 years. Yet, by
any standard, his was an eventful life, his personality
multidimensional and his achievements in other fields were many, if
not equally great. Indeed, several were the roles he had played with
distinction: at one time or another, he was one of the greatest legal
luminaries India had produced during the first half of the century, an
`ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, a great constitutionalist, a
distinguished parliamentarian, a top-notch politician, an
indefatigable freedom-fighter, a dynamic Muslim leader, a political
strategist and, above all one of the great nation-builders of modern
times. What, however, makes him so remarkable is the fact that while
similar other leaders assumed the leadership of traditionally
well-defined nations and espoused their cause, or led them to freedom,
he created a nation out of an inchoate and down-trodeen minority and
established a cultural and national home for it. And all that within a
decase. For over three decades before the successful culmination in 1947,
of the Muslim struggle for freedom in the South-Asian subcontinent,
Jinnah had provided political leadership to the Indian Muslims:
initially as one of the leaders, but later, since 1947, as the only
prominent leader- the Quaid-i-Azam. For over thirty years, he had
guided their affairs; he had given expression, coherence and direction
to their ligitimate aspirations and cherished dreams; he had
formulated these into concerete demands; and, above all, he had
striven all the while to get them conceded by both the ruling British
and the numerous Hindus the dominant segment of India's population.
And for over thirty years he had fought, relentlessly and inexorably,
for the inherent rights of the Muslims for an honourable existence in
the subcontinent. Indeed, his life story constitutes, as it were, the
story of the rebirth of the Muslims of the subcontinent and their
spectacular rise to nationhood, phoenixlike.
TOP
Early
Life
Born on December 25, 1876,
in a prominent mercantile family in Karachi and educated at the Sindh
Madrassat-ul-Islam and the Christian Mission School at his birth
place,Jinnah joined the Lincoln's Inn in 1893 to become the youngest
Indian to be called to the Bar, three years later. Starting out in the
legal profession withknothing to fall back upon except his native
ability and determination, young Jinnah rose to prominence and became
Bombay's most successful lawyer, as few did, within a few years. Once
he was firmly established in the legal profession, Jinnah formally
entered politics in 1905 from the platform of the Indian
National Congress. He went to England in that year alongwith Gopal
Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915), as a member of a Congress
delegation to plead the cause of Indian self-governemnt during the
British elections. A year later, he served as Secretary to Dadabhai
Noaroji (1825-1917), the then Indian National Congress
President, which was considered a great honour for a budding
politician. Here, at the Calcutta Congress session (December 1906),
he also made his first political speech in support of the resolution
on self-government.
TOP
Political
Career
Three years later, in
January 1910, Jinnah was elected to the newly-constituted Imperial
Legislative Council. All through his parliamentary career, which
spanned some four decades, he was probably the most powerful voice in
the cause of Indian freedom and Indian rights. Jinnah, who was also
the first Indian to pilot a private member's Bill through the Council,
soon became a leader of a group inside the legislature. Mr. Montagu (1879-1924),
Secretary of State for India, at the close of the First World War,
considered Jinnah "perfect mannered, impressive-looking, armed to
the teeth with dialecties..."Jinnah, he felt, "is a very
clever man, and it is, of course, an outrage that such a man should
have no chance of running the affairs of his own country."
For about three
decades since his entry into politics in 1906, Jinnah passionately
believed in and assiduously worked for Hindu-Muslim unity. Gokhale,
the foremost Hindu leader before Gandhi, had once said of him, "He
has the true stuff in him and that freedom from all sectarian
prejudice which will make him the best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim
Unity: And, to be sure, he did become the architect of Hindu-Muslim
Unity: he was responsible for the Congress-League Pact of 1916, known
popularly as Lucknow Pact- the only pact ever signed between the two
political organisations, the Congress and the All-India Muslim League,
representing, as they did, the two major communities in the
subcontinent."
The Congress-League
scheme embodied in this pact was to become the basis for the
Montagu-Chemlsford Reforms, also known as the Act of 1919. In
retrospect, the Lucknow Pact represented a milestone in the evolution
of Indian politics. For one thing, it conceded Muslims the right to
separate electorate, reservation of seats in the legislatures and
weightage in representation both at the Centre and the minority
provinces. Thus, their retention was ensured in the next phase of
reforms. For another, it represented a tacit recognition of the
All-India Muslim League as the representative organisation of the
Muslims, thus strengthening the trend towards Muslim individuality in
Indian politics. And to Jinnah goes the credit for all this. Thus, by 1917,
Jinnah came to be recognised among both Hindus and Muslims as one of
India's most outstanding political leaders. Not only was he prominent
in the Congress and the Imperial Legislative Council, he was also the
President of the All-India Muslim and that of lthe Bombay Branch of
the Home Rule League. More important, because of his key-role in the
Congress-League entente at Lucknow, he was hailed as the ambassador,
as well as the embodiment, of Hindu-Muslim unity.
TOP
Constitutional
Struggle
In subsequent years, however, he
felt dismayed at the injection of violence into politics. Since Jinnah
stood for "ordered progress", moderation, gradualism and
constitutionalism, he felt that political terrorism was not the
pathway to national liberation but, the dark alley to disaster and
destruction. Hence, the constitutionalist Jinnah could not possibly,
countenance Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's novel methods of Satyagrah
(civil disobedience) and the triple boycott of government-aided
schools and colleges, courts and councils and British textiles.
Earlier, in October 1920, when Gandhi, having been elected
President of the Home Rule League, sought to change its constitution
as well as its nomenclature, Jinnah had resigned from the Home Rule
League, saying: "Your extreme programme has for the moment struck
the imagination mostly of the inexperienced youth and the ignorant and
the illiterate. All this means disorganisation and choas". Jinnah
did not believe that ends justified the means.
In the ever-growing
frustration among the masses caused by colonial rule, there was ample
cause for extremism. But, Gandhi's doctrine of non-cooperation, Jinnah
felt, even as Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) did also feel,
was at best one of negation and despair: it might lead to the building
up of resentment, but nothing constructive. Hence, he opposed tooth
and nail the tactics adopted by Gandhi to exploit the Khilafat and
wrongful tactics in the Punjab in the early twenties. On the eve of
its adoption of the Gandhian programme, Jinnah warned the Nagpur
Congress Session (1920): "you are making a declaration
(of Swaraj within a year) and committing the Indian National Congress
to a programme, which you will not be able to carry out". He
felt that there was no short-cut to independence and that Gandhi's
extra-constitutional methods could only lead to political terrorism,
lawlessness and chaos, without bringing India nearer to the threshold
of freedom.
The future course of
events was not only to confirm Jinnah's worst fears, but also to prove
him right. Although Jinnah left the Congress soon thereafter, he
continued his efforts towards bringing about a Hindu-Muslim entente,
which he rightly considered "the most vital condition of
Swaraj". However, because of the deep distrust between the
two communities as evidenced by the country-wide communal riots, and
because the Hindus failed to meet the genuine demands of the Muslims,
his efforts came to naught. One such effort was the formulation of the
Delhi Muslim Proposals in March, 1927. In order to bridge
Hindu-Muslim differences on the constitutional plan, these proposals
even waived the Muslim right to separate electorate, the most basic
Muslim demand since 1906, which though recognised by the
congress in the Lucknow Pact, had again become a source of friction
between the two communities. surprisingly though, the Nehru Report (1928),
which represented the Congress-sponsored proposals for the future
constitution of India, negated the minimum Muslim demands embodied in
the Delhi Muslim Proposals.
In vain did Jinnah
argue at the National convention (1928): "What we want
is that Hindus and Mussalmans should march together until our object
is achieved...These two communities have got to be reconciled and
united and made to feel that their interests are common". The
Convention's blank refusal to accept Muslim demands represented the
most devastating setback to Jinnah's life-long efforts to bring about
Hindu-Muslim unity, it meant "the last straw" for the
Muslims, and "the parting of the ways" for him, as he
confessed to a Parsee friend at that time. Jinnah's disillusionment at
the course of politics in the subcontinent prompted him to migrate and
settle down in London in the early thirties. He was, however, to
return to India in 1934, at the pleadings of his
co-religionists, and assume their leadership. But, the Muslims
presented a sad spectacle at that time. They were a mass of
disgruntled and demoralised men and women, politically disorganised
and destitute of a clear-cut political programme.
TOP
Muslim
League Reorganized
Thus, the task that
awaited Jinnah was anything but easy. The Muslim League was dormant:
primary branches it had none; even its provincial organizations were,
for the most part, ineffective and only nominally under the control of
the central organization. Nor did the central body have any coherent
policy of its own till the Bombay session (1936), which Jinnah
organized. To make matters worse, the provincial scene presented a
sort of a jigsaw puzzle: in the Punjab, Bengal, Sindh, the North West
Frontier, Assam, Bihar and the United Provinces, various Muslim
leaders had set up their own provincial parties to serve their
personal ends. Extremely frustrating as the situation was, the only
consultation Jinnah had at this juncture was in Allama
Iqbal (1877-1938),
the poet-philosopher, who stood steadfast
by him and helped to charter the course of Indian politics from behind
the scene.
Undismayed by this
bleak situation, Jinnah devoted himself with singleness of purpose to
organizing the Muslims on one platform. He embarked upon country-wide
tours. He pleaded with provincial Muslim leaders to sink their
differences and make common cause with the League. He exhorted the
Muslim masses to organize themselves and join the League. He gave
coherence and direction to Muslim sentiments on the Government of
India Act, 1935. He advocated that the Federal Scheme should be
scrapped as it was subversive of India's cherished goal of complete
responsible Government, while the provincial scheme, which conceded
provincial autonomy for the first time, should be worked for what it
was worth, despite its certain objectionable features. He also
formulated a viable League manifesto for the election scheduled for
early 1937. He was, it seemed, struggling against time to make
Muslim India a power to be reckoned with.
Despite all the
manifold odds stacked against it, the Muslim League won some 108
(about 23 per cent) seats out of a total of 485 Muslim seats in the
various legislature. Though not very impressive in itself, the
League's partial success assumed added significance in view of the
fact that the League won the largest number of Muslim seats and that
it was the only all-India party of the Muslims in the country. Thus,
the elections represented the first milestone on the long road to
putting Muslim India on the map of the subcontinent. Congress in Power
With the year 1937 opened the most mementoes decade in modern
Indian history. In that year came into force the provincial part of
the Government of India Act, 1935, granting autonomy to Indians for
the first time, in the provinces.
The Congress, having
become the dominant party in Indian politics, came to power in seven
provinces exclusively, spurning the League's offer of cooperation,
turning its back finally on the coalition idea and excluding Muslims
as a political entity from the portals of power. In that year, also,
the Muslim League, under Jinnah's dynamic leadership, was reorganized
de novo, transformed into a mass organization, and made the spokesman
of Indian Muslims as never before. Above all, in that momentous year
were initiated certain trends in Indian politics, the crystallization
of which in subsequent years made the partition of the subcontinent
inevitable. The practical manifestation of the policy of the Congress
which took office in July, 1937, in seven out of eleven
provinces, convinced Muslims that, in the Congress scheme of things,
they could live only on sufferance of Hindus and as "second
class" citizens. The Congress provincial governments, it may
be remembered, had embarked upon a policy and launched a PROGRAMME in
which Muslims felt that their religion, language and culture were not
safe. This blatantly aggressive Congress policy was seized upon by
Jinnah to awaken the Muslims to a new consciousness, organize them on
all-India platform, and make them a power to be reckoned with. He also
gave coherence, direction and articulation to their innermost, yet
vague, urges and aspirations. Above all, the filled them with his
indomitable will, his own unflinching faith in their destiny.
TOP
The
New Awakening
As a result of Jinnah's
ceaseless efforts, the Muslims awakened from what Professor Baker
calls (their) "unreflective silence" (in which they
had so complacently basked for long decades), and to "the
spiritual essence of nationality" that had existed among them
for a pretty long time. Roused by the impact of successive Congress
hammerings, the Muslims, as Ambedkar (principal author of independent
India's Constitution) says, "searched their social
consciousness in a desperate attempt to find coherent and meaningful
articulation to their cherished yearnings. To their great relief, they
discovered that their sentiments of nationality had flamed into
nationalism". In addition, not only had they developed"
the will to live as a "nation", had also endowed them
with a territory which they could occupy and make a State as well as a
cultural home for the newly discovered nation. These two
pre-requisites, as laid down by Renan, provided the Muslims with the
intellectual justification for claiming a distinct nationalism (apart
from Indian or Hindu nationalism) for themselves. So that when, after
their long pause, the Muslims gave expression to their innermost
yearnings, these turned out to be in favor of a separate Muslim
nationhood and of a separate Muslim state.
TOP
Demand
for Pakistan
"We are a nation",
they claimed in the ever eloquent words of the Quaid-i-Azam- "We
are a nation with our own distinctive culture and civilization,
language and literature, art and architecture, names and nomenclature,
sense of values and proportion, legal laws and moral code, customs and
calendar, history and tradition, aptitudes and ambitions; in short, we
have our own distinctive outlook on life and of life. By all canons of
international law, we are a nation". The formulation of the
Muslim demand for Pakistan in 1940 had a tremendous impact on the
nature and course of Indian politics. On the one hand, it shattered
for ever the Hindu dreams of a pseudo-Indian, in fact, Hindu empire on
British exit from India: on the other, it heralded an era of Islamic
renaissance and creativity in which the Indian Muslims were to be
active participants. The Hindu reaction was quick, bitter, malicious.
Equally hostile were
the British to the Muslim demand, their hostility having stemmed from
their belief that the unity of India was their main achievement and
their foremost contribution. The irony was that both the Hindus and
the British had not anticipated the astonishingly tremendous response
that the Pakistan demand had elicited from the Muslim masses. Above
all, they failed to realize how a hundred million people had suddenly
become supremely conscious of their distinct nationhood and their high
destiny. In channelling the course of Muslim politics towards
Pakistan, no less than in directing it towards its consummation in the
establishment of Pakistan in 1947, non played a more decisive
role than did Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. It was his powerful
advocacy of the case of Pakistan and his remarkable strategy in the
delicate negotiations, that followed the formulation of the Pakistan
demand, particularly in the post-war period, that made Pakistan
inevitable.
TOP
Cripps
Scheme
While the British
reaction to the Pakistan demand came in the form of the Cripps offer
of April, 1942, which conceded the principle of
self-determination to provinces on a territorial basis, the Rajaji
Formula (called after the eminent Congress leader C.Rajagopalacharia,
which became the basis of prolonged Jinnah-Gandhi talks in September,
1944), represented the Congress alternative to Pakistan. The
Cripps offer was rejected because it did not concede the Muslim demand
the whole way, while the Rajaji Formula was found unacceptable since
it offered a "moth-eaten, mutilated" Pakistan and the too
appended with a plethora of pre-conditions which made its emergence in
any shape remote, if not altogether impossible. Cabinet Mission The
most delicate as well as the most tortuous negotiations, however, took
place during 1946-47, after the elections which showed that the
country was sharply and somewhat evenly divided between two parties-
the Congress and the League- and that the central issue in Indian
politics was Pakistan.
These negotiations
began with the arrival, in March 1946, of a three-member
British Cabinet Mission. The crucial task with which the Cabinet
Mission was entrusted was that of devising in consultation with the
various political parties, a constitution-making machinery, and of
setting up a popular interim government. But, because the
Congress-League gulf could not be bridged, despite the Mission's (and
the Viceroy's) prolonged efforts, the Mission had to make its own
proposals in May, 1946. Known as the Cabinet Mission Plan, these
proposals stipulated a limited centre, supreme only in foreign
affairs, defense and communications and three autonomous groups of
provinces. Two of these groups were to have Muslim majorities in the
north-west and the north-east of the subcontinent, while the third
one, comprising the Indian mainland, was to have a Hindu majority. A
consummate statesman that he was, Jinnah saw his chance. He
interpreted the clauses relating to a limited centre and the grouping
as "the foundation of Pakistan", and induced the Muslim
League Council to accept the Plan in June 1946; and this he did much
against the calculations of the Congress and to its utter dismay.
Tragically though,
the League's acceptance was put down to its supposed weakness and the
Congress put up a posture of defiance, designed to swamp the League
into submitting to its dictates and its interpretations of the plan.
Faced thus, what alternative had Jinnah and the League but to rescind
their earlier acceptance, reiterate and reaffirm their original
stance, and decide to launch direct action (if need be) to wrest
Pakistan. The way Jinnah maneuvered to turn the tide of events at a
time when all seemed lost indicated, above all, his masterly grasp of
the situation and his adeptness at making strategic and tactical
moves. Partition Plan By the close of 1946, the communal riots had
flared up to murderous heights, engulfing almost the entire
subcontinent. The two peoples, it seemed, were engaged in a fight to
the finish. The time for a peaceful transfer of power was fast running
out. Realizing the gravity of the situation. His Majesty's Government
sent down to India a new Viceroy- Lord Mountbatten. His protracted
negotiations with the various political leaders resulted in 3
June.(1947) Plan by which the British decided to partition the
subcontinent, and hand over power to two successor States on 15
August, 1947. The plan was duly accepted by the three Indian parties
to the dispute- the Congress the League and the Akali Dal
(representing the Sikhs).
TOP
Leader
of a Free Nation
In recognition of his singular
contribution, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah was nominated by the
Muslim League as the Governor-General of Pakistan, while the Congress
appointed Mountbatten as India's first Governor-General. Pakistan, it
has been truly said, was born in virtual chaos. Indeed, few nations in
the world have started on their career with less resources and in more
treacherous circumstances. The new nation did not inherit a central
government, a capital, an administrative core, or an organized defense
force. Its social and administrative resources were poor; there was
little equipment and still less statistics. The Punjab holocaust had
left vast areas in a shambles with communications disrupted. This,
along with the en masse migration of the Hindu and Sikh business and
managerial classes, left the economy almost shattered.
The treasury was
empty, India having denied Pakistan the major share of its cash
balances. On top of all this, the still unorganized nation was called
upon to feed some eight million refugees who had fled the insecurities
and barbarities of the north Indian plains that long, hot summer. If
all this was symptomatic of Pakistan's administrative and economic
weakness, the Indian annexation, through military action in November
1947, of Junagadh (which had originally acceded to Pakistan) and the
Kashmir war over the State's accession (October 1947-December 1948)
exposed her military weakness. In the circumstances, therefore, it was
nothing short of a miracle that Pakistan survived at all. That it
survived and forged ahead was mainly due to one man-Mohammad Ali
Jinnah. The nation desperately needed in the person of a charismatic
leader at that critical juncture in the nation's history, and he
fulfilled that need profoundly. After all, he was more than a mere
Governor-General: he was the Quaid-i-Azam who had brought the State
into being.
In the ultimate
analysis, his very presence at the helm of affairs was responsible for
enabling the newly born nation to overcome the terrible crisis on the
morrow of its cataclysmic birth. He mustered up the immense prestige
and the unquestioning loyalty he commanded among the people to
energize them, to raise their morale, land directed the profound
feelings of patriotism that the freedom had generated, along
constructive channels. Though tired and in poor health, Jinnah yet
carried the heaviest part of the burden in that first crucial year. He
laid down the policies of the new state, called attention to the
immediate problems confronting the nation and told the members of the
Constituent Assembly, the civil servants and the Armed Forces what to
do and what the nation expected of them. He saw to it that law and
order was maintained at all costs, despite the provocation that the
large-scale riots in north India had provided. He moved from Karachi
to Lahore for a while and supervised the immediate refugee problem in
the Punjab. In a time of fierce excitement, he remained sober, cool
and steady. He advised his excited audience in Lahore to concentrate
on helping the refugees, to avoid retaliation, exercise restraint and
protect the minorities. He assured the minorities of a fair deal,
assuaged their inured sentiments, and gave them hope and comfort. He
toured the various provinces, attended to their particular problems
and instilled in the people a sense of belonging. He reversed the
British policy in the North-West Frontier and ordered the withdrawal
of the troops from the tribal territory of Waziristan, thereby making
the Pathans feel themselves an integral part of Pakistan's
body-politics. He created a new Ministry of States and Frontier
Regions, and assumed responsibility for ushering in a new era in
Balochistan. He settled the controversial question of the states of
Karachi, secured the accession of States, especially of Kalat which
seemed problematical and carried on negotiations with Lord Mountbatten
for the settlement of the Kashmir Issue.
TOP
The
Quaid's last Message
It
was, therefore, with a sense of supreme satisfaction at the
fulfillment of his mission that Jinnah told the nation in his last
message on 14 August, 1948: "The foundations of your State
have been laid and it is now for you to build and build as quickly and
as well as you can". In accomplishing the task he had taken
upon himself on the morrow of Pakistan's birth, Jinnah had worked
himself to death, but he had, to quote richard Symons, "contributed
more than any other man to Pakistan's survivial". He died
on 11 September, 1948. How true was Lord Pethick Lawrence, the
former Secretary of State for India, when he said, "Gandhi
died by the hands of an assassin; Jinnah died by his devotion to
Pakistan".
A man such as Jinnah,
who had fought for the inherent rights of his people all through his
life and who had taken up the somewhat unconventional and the largely
misinterpreted cause of Pakistan, was bound to generate violent
opposition and excite implacable hostility and was likely to be
largely misunderstood. But what is most remarkable about Jinnah is
that he was the recipient of some of the greatest tributes paid to any
one in modern times, some of them even from those who held a
diametrically opposed viewpoint.
The Aga Khan
considered him "the greatest man he ever met", Beverley
Nichols, the author of `Verdict on India', called him "the
most important man in Asia", and Dr. Kailashnath Katju,
the West Bengal Governor in 1948, thought of him as "an
outstanding figure of this century not only in India, but in the whole
world". While Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the
Arab League, called him "one of the greatest leaders in the
Muslim world", the Grand Mufti of Palestine considered his death
as a "great loss" to the entire world of
Islam. It was, however, given to Surat Chandra Bose, leader of the
Forward Bloc wing of the Indian National Congress, to sum up
succinctly his personal and political achievements. "Mr
Jinnah", he said on his death in 1948, "was great as a
lawyer, once great as a Congressman, great as a leader of Muslims,
great as a world politician and diplomat, and greatest of all as a man
of action, By Mr. Jinnah's passing away, the world has lost one of the
greatest statesmen and Pakistan its life-giver, philosopher and guide".
Such was Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the man and his mission,
such the range of his accomplishments and achievements.
TOP