A new book busts the Jinnah myths

Mahesh Rangarajan

Over seven decades after his demise, the architect and founder of Pakistan remains a figure elusive for scholars and lay persons alike. Churchill’s description of Russia — “an enigma wrapped inside a mystery in a riddle” — perhaps applies to him. To write an 800-page book on him backed with meticulous research on his writings, speeches and activities is itself an achievement.

But Ahmed has done much more than just that. Over the last few decades, two persistent legends have grown around the man who was to be referred to as Quaid-e-Azam or the great leader. One, that Pakistan was not more than a bargaining chip and that it was the obduracy of the Congress that pushed him to the edge. The other that he was out to lay the foundation of a liberal, democratic state.

The first is more myth that legend. While his early years were as a nationalist par excellence, earning him the title of harbinger of Hindu-Muslim unity, Jinnah was not just overshadowed but overtaken by the sweep of history. Ahmed tellingly explains how a crowd objected to his referring to the Mahatma and Maulana Mohammed Ali simply as “Mr Gandhi” and “Mr Ali”. There was more than etiquette at work here: Jinnah was of an older paternal breed unable to see the masses as equals.

His moment of opportunity came when the Congress ministries took office in 1937 and most so in North India, he launched a campaign to rally Muslims against it. The Muslim League won 47 of 61 bypolls in the provinces in just six years. The exit of the ministries was a heaven-sent opportunity, as he admitted later. Until then, the Viceroy had only thought of Gandhi, but now Jinnah was placed on par. Support for the war was even more opportune once Congress was taken off the streets after the Quit India Movement.

As for Pakistan being only a card, the author quotes chapter and verse from early 1940 on, where Jinnah was unambiguous. As he told Beverly Nichols, “The Muslims of India are a nation”, adding, “and if you grant that, and you are an honest man, then you grant the principle of Pakistan”.

But Jinnah was clear that the Muslims of UP or Bihar would be left out of the Promised Land. In turn, as confided in Baldev Singh, he hoped the Sikhs would be in support. An undivided Punjab (only 77 per cent Muslim) and all of Bengal, just over half being Muslim, were his stated goal. No one working for a unified India could possibly have given in to such a demand.

Between the Cripps Mission and Cabinet Mission Plan, one thing was evident: the British would not let go of Defence to the Congress. And once he broke the back of the Unionists of Punjab in 1946, the road to Jinnah’s new state lay wide open.

If anything, the mass transfer, the killings and the bloodshed — over 800,000 were to die in Punjab alone, as chronicled in Prof Ahmed’s earlier book — were a tragedy of epic scale. Yet Jinnah himself had spoken of population transfer long before. Far from being pushed to a plan of separation, it was his ambition.

Jinnah was at first sight a most unlikely ally. In 1939, he controlled not one Muslim majority state. British governors such as Wylie in Central India and Haig in UP confided in the Viceroy that the so-called atrocities by Congress were vastly exaggerated. But the key was that his campaign worked.

This courtship of landed elites, most so in Punjab and Sindh, as much as his assumption of office of Governor General weakened the social and political fabric of the new state from the very start. Even the support to the invasion of Kashmir in winter 1947, first by tribal raiders and then with open use of the army, was aimed to rally support mainly in Punjab and the Frontier.

The irony was that Pakistan chose Islam as a binding force and Urdu as the official language. Already in his Dhaka University address, advocacy of the latter aroused deep Bangla ire. The tragedy of Pakistan was not that Jinnah failed, but that his success was akin to a poisoned chalice.

The landed elites, a Punjabi-dominated army and a Mohajir-led civil service came to power not despite Jinnah, but because of him. By September 1948, when he died, precious little had been done to set out a clear constitutional blueprint for the new state. Its undemocratic roots with the Governor General, not the Prime Minister, being in charge did not portend well.

The two-nation theory was unlikely to have made it across the finishing line save for British support during World War II and in the early stages of the Cold War.

Even those who hesitate to go so far will be awed by the depth and quality of the author’s command over secondary literature and virtually all of Jinnah’s works and speeches. His success derived as much from contingency and the exigencies of changing imperial policy as much as his own abilities. This is a book that will be indispensable for a long time to come.

The author teaches History and Environmental Studies