Mr. Jinnah’s life is logic”, a professor of Philosophy (Dr. M.M. Ahmed of the Muslim University, Aligharh, in the early 1940s) used to say. His statement puzzled, but did not bother, Jinnah’s devoted followers. Whether our Quaid-e-Azam was logically following the same course of politics he had initially adopted, or had taken a sharp turn, did not matter to us; it was enough that he was leading his people on the right road then, and there was no doubt in our young minds that we would achieve our goal under his supreme leadership. 

Jinnah indeed led us triumphantly to Pakistan; but his apparent transformation from a fire-brand Indian nationalist to the prophet of partition has never been fully explained. None of the several biographies written about him have thrown sufficient light on this aspect.  Jinnah was not as complex a character as it is made out. Although he insisted on the privacy of his personal life, his political life was an open book. From the moment he entered politics, all his actions were inspired by noble objectives and based on high moral principles. One has only to study his political career to realize the truth of the professor’s observation.  Jinnah was one of the greatest national leaders that ever lived, He created history, and, one is tempted to say, altered geography.

But neither the dimensions of that victory nor the extent of his greatness are generally realized. One reason for this ignorance is the mess that the corrupt and the self-seeking leaders of Pakistan made of the country he fathered. This raised doubts about the soundness of his political vision; and there were many who considered him a perversely obstinate politician who created an artificial country. The secession of East Pakistan not only confirmed this image of Pakistan in their mind, but also that of a medieval and reactionary State of robber barons, military juntas and religious fanatics.  The other reason is the lack of any dramatic impact that a historical figure makes on the minds of later generations. An average person is impressed by brilliant military victories, breath-taking adventures and story-book exploits, not by solid achievements.

Eisenhower and Montgomery fascinate him, however, he knows nothing about the self-effacing General Marshall and Field-Marshall Allen Brooke who were the real architects of the Allied victory in the last war. People in general, remember, not decades of peace and construction, but years of war and devastation; not building of dams, but floods and famines. They remember Mussolini and Garilbaldi, not Cavour. Even Einstein is known to them because of the atomic bomb and not for his general contribution to physics.  Jinnah led no army, fought no military battles and was not involved in any dramatic adventures that would thrill a reader. Nor did he propound any novel philosophy such as that of non-violence and non-cooperation; nor did he adopt a Mahatama-like lifestyle - living on goat’s milk, dressed in a dhoti, spinning a wheel, and responding to his inner voice - that would invite curiosity.

He led a straight life, followed a straight path, talked and acted straight. Such a character arouses no interest. Simple truths are dull, facts are boring; fiction and make- believe are colourful and catching.  Jinnah fought his battle with legal and political weapons. They necessarily involved lengthy negotiations, evolution of constitutional formulae and drawing up of constructive proposals on such matters as distribution of power between a federal centre and constituting states, and the share of various communities in parliamentary seats - all matters of prosaic detail, which even a citizen of modern India finds tiresome.  Naturally then a study of Jinnah’s life is far from interesting to an average person, who very easily swallows the anti-Jinnah propaganda that has been going on systematically for decades.

This has come from two sources; the Bharti and the British.  The Bharti propaganda started in real earnest in 1937 after the All India Muslim League was re-vitalized by Jinnah. The Indian Congress at first tried to ignore and then ridicule him, and finally started a full-fledged campaign of hate in which falsehood, fact-twisting, half-truths and baseless allegations were all mixed up to malign him and disfigure his image.  The British, on their part, never liked him. His independence of character, and their failure to either bully or buy him, made him a persona non grata from Minto to Mountbatten. In the last days of the Raj, this allergy became an obsession, especially because of the active hostility of Sir Stafford Cripps sitting in the inner cabinet in London, and Lord Mountbatten in New Delhi feeling jilted at Jinnah’s refusal to accept him as Governor-General of Pakistan in common with Bharat.  Partition of India was anathema to Britain, and it was without grace that she accepted it.

British leaders had no love for the new dominion which came into existence in the teeth of their opposition. The British Press was openly hostile and it was from the British that the rest of the world, especially America, took its cue about the new state, regarding which it knew next to nothing.  While the world at large may be excused for its lack of knowledge, there is nothing to justify the ignorance of the Pakistanis about their founding father. The tragedy of Pakistan is that while surviving all those problems of Himalayan dimensions that Bharat and Britain had created for it from its very birth, it was then hijacked by a gang which neither represented the people nor shared the spirit of the Pakistan Movement. Ghulam Mohammad, Iskandar Mirza, Choudhri Muhammad Ali and Ayub Khan (or Ghulam Ishaq Khan, for that matter), who would have normally retired as government pensioners of the British, captured power and ruled the country as a colony the way the British did (with lower standards of efficiency and integrity).

They had never fought even a single municipal election and lived in their own world, totally cut off from the common man. They neither understood nor cared for popular sentiments. They had no idea of, and had no sympathy with, the factor that had made the Pakistan demand a mass movement. And they mentioned Jinnah’s name merely as a cover for their destructive policies, to trample under foot every principle he held so dear.  Jinnah has been as much misrepresented in Pakistan as in Bharat. The classic example of this is his speech before the Constituent Assembly, of which he was the first president, on 11th August 1947. In this speech he said;  If you will work in cooperation, forgetting the past, burying the hatchet, you are bound to succeed. If you change your past and work together in a spirit that everyone 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;  And;  You are free, you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of 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 .... 

We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State ...  Now, I think if we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find that in the course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State!”  The very day the speech was made, the Press Department of Pakistan’s Information Ministry tried to suppress it. Although it failed - because some journalists stubbornly refused to accept the Department’s instructions and because Jinnah was still alive - it was a shadow of the coming events.  The 11 August speech is now never referred to in Pakistan either by the Government or the Opposition. Attempts were actually made to remove it from the record. This was, however, impossible as it had been published not only in Pakistan, but also abroad. Failing here, various explanations were then offered. But the lawyer in Jinnah was always extremely careful in choosing his words and never in his political life, spread over a period of half a century, did he ever have to retract a single word; and this speech he had prepared with extra care.

He was laying down the guiding principle of the State he had created, and the man who used to speak for four or five hours extempore had delivered it with the help of his notes.  Recourse was then taken to interpreting its “spirit”. But Jinnah’s word was plain and explicit. So the final judgment was delivered by the Quaid-e-Azam Academy. This academy was founded in 1976, the year of Jinnah’s centenary, to “undertake, organize and promote research on Quaid-e Azam”, and one of its first publication was a book by its own Director, interpreting Jinnah’s policies and politics. The verdict of the Director on this speech is that “it represents a serious lapse on his part”.  When facts about Jinnah are suppressed and even his recorded speeches are mischievously edited and misinterpreted, it is futile to hope that the truth about Jinnah, his life, his politics and policies will emerge from Pakistan.  For the truth is that Mohammed Ali Jinnah was, from the beginning to the end, an uncompromising patriot and nationalist to the core.

He was an enemy of foreign rule in India, and strove, through constitutional means, for the attainment of freedom; yet he was also an admirer of British parliamentary and judicial systems. He believed that the fruits of liberty should be shared by all communities equally. He had no communal bias in his politics; but he realized that the communal problem in India existed and had to be solved. He was unyielding in his opposition to the idea of bringing religion into politics, and his views in this regard never changed. He resisted for a long time the proposal to partition the subcontinent, and when he finally agreed, he desired Pakistan and Bharat to be close allies, not just friends. He honestly came to the conclusion that partition was the only possible solution of the communal question, and was in the interest of the Muslims as well as the Hindus, whose welfare he equally sought.  The Pakistan Movement was the culmination of the Muslim national effort which started in the first decade of the century. In the second decade, Jinnah achieved a signal success with the signing of the Lucknow Pact, and earned for himself the title of “Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity”.

The Lucknow Pact was subverted, as were other later efforts for Hindu-Muslim unity, by Gandhi and his band. But undaunted, Jinnah continued on the path he had chosen. His scheme of partition was the most practical solution which, while creating two States, could establish lasting goodwill between Hindus and Muslims, who would then proclaim to the world. “Hands off (free) India”.  Jinnah had kept on the same course that he had charted in Lucknow in 1916. He had not turned either left or right, much less taken a u-turn. Pakistan was inherent in the Indian situation and Jinnah only tried to convert the situation to the best advantage for the Indian people. He had not changed. He might have changed his tactics according to the need of the hour, as any general would do during a battle, but he never changed his strategy or his fundamental belief or his ultimate goal. His life was logic indeed.
Courtesy: Jinnah Society, http://www.majinnah.com.pk/