The Angst Of Failed Jinnahs

"There are many people who leave an irreversible stamp on history. But there are few who actually create history. Qaed-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah was one such rare individual. In his early years, leading luminary of freedom struggle Sarojini Naidu described Jinnah as an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity. His address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947 is really a classic and a forceful espousal of a secular state in which every citizen would be free to follow his own religion. The State shall make no distinction between the citizens on the grounds of faith. My respectful homage to this great man"

With that one speech Advani caused so much outrage within each and everysection of his Sangh Parivar, including his die-hard followers and lifelongadmirers that friends and foes joined together to oust him from his position.More importantly, he did not win a single friend even among those sections hewas aiming to win over with his novel strategy. All hues of "secularists" --Congressmen, socialists, communists, liberals as well as non-party intellectuals­- were upset at Advani bestowing secular credentials on the man who forced abloody and disastrous Partition on the Indian sub-continent. To annoy such alarge spectrum of people at one go, without winning over a single friend,demonstrates rare political genius. Yet, Advani remained unrepentant, preferringto surrender the presidentship of the party that he built through years of toil,rather than disown his characterisation of Jinnah during his recent visit toPakistan.

This major political upset clearly demonstrates that the ghost of Jinnahcontinues to haunt the entire spectrum of Indian politics. For most Indians,Jinnah’s legacy endures in the form of Pakistan and Bangladesh supportedIslamic terrorist attacks in Kashmir and other parts of India, as well as thefiercely authoritarian and jehad-minded military dominated regimes inboth Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The outrage in India against Advani calling Jinnah anemulation- worthy "secular" leader is born out of the mistaken belief that usingthe term "secular" for a public figure amounts to providing a foolproofguarantee that he is a responsible, democratic, and progressive politician. Itcomes from the naïve assumption that the worst thing a person can do is to mixreligion with politics.

We would do well to remember that most of the highly venerated politicalfigures of 20th century have been those who brought the best values of theirfaith traditions to uplift politics to new moral heights. By contrast, many ofthose who claimed to be "secular" and , therefore, treated religion withdisdain, caused massive genocides and human suffering.

For example, Mahatma Gandhi made it known that his politics and worldview wasrooted in the Hindu Sanatan Dharma and the bhakti-sufi tradition. Thatdid not prevent him from being a world historic role model of ethical politics.Abdul Ghaffar Khan derived strength from his unshakeable faith in Islam. Thatdid not prevent him from becoming the most valued colleague of Gandhi inpromoting the cause of communal harmony and freedom from colonial rule. AungSang Suu Kui and the Dalai Lama make no secret of the fact that they drawinspiration from their Buddhist worldview. Martin Luther King drew his strengthfrom Christianity. Yet, despite the inspiration they all took from theirreligious ideals, they remain outstanding examples of politics based oncompassion and humane values.

It is worth noting that even Marxists and socialists in India have had todeploy the wisdom of men like Kabir, Nanak, Bulleshah and Namdev whenever theydecide to spread the message of communal harmony and the "oneness" of allhumanity as a counter to Hindutvavadi agenda. All these bhakts andsufis derived their worldview from their deep connection with the Divine,rather than through "secular" education. This is in itself an acknowledgmentthat on these issues the wisdom of their secular gods such as Marx, Lenin, Maodo not have much impact on people.

This is not to deny that serious problems do arise when politicians decide to"use" select religious symbols and manipulate religious sentiments of people forpartisan or personal ends such as mobilizing a religio-ethnic vote bank in orderto acquire power.

History is witness to the fact that religion andpolitics do not make as lethal a mix as do politics and violence.The US is "secular" but that has not prevented it from polarizing globalpolitics on religious lines. It has become the main agent responsible forspreading a virulent version of Islam because of its own history of support tomany authoritarian and criminalized regimes and movements in the Islamic worldsuch as the Taliban, in pursuit of its own geo-political interests. Stalin didnot use a religious justification while carrying out his genocide among theSoviet Union’s peasantry. He did so in the garb of a "secular" cause, namely, "collectivisation"and the uprooting of those he called "kulaks." Nor did he confine his waves ofassassinations and purges to those with religious beliefs. He claimed that hekilled people in the name of building a "secular" and "socialist" republic. Yet,he caused far more death and destruction than many of those who make a cocktailof religion and politics.

Indira Gandhi inherited a Party that Mahatma Gandhi consciously built as ahistoric experiment to evolve inclusive and democratic politics in amulti-ethnic, multi-religious society. Yet from Mrs. Gandhi’s regime onwards,we witnessed numerous riots, pogroms and massacres involving Hindus, Muslims andSikhs -- many of them engineered or instigated at the behest of Congress partypoliticians. This is not because they were motivated by religious fervour. Itwas a product of their desperate search for a consolidated vote bank. The lawand order machinery of the secular Indian state willingly collaborated in suchcrimes through various acts of commission and omission. This enduring legacyowes its origin to the example of the British who supported the politics ofJinnah’s Muslim League. The "secularly" minded British lent Jinnah a bighelping hand in his encouragement of communal violence, not because theyfavoured Islam over Hinduism, but because a divided India suited theirgeo-political ends.

To those who are targeted for violence, it matters little whether those whohave come to murder them shout "Allah-o-Akbar" or "Lal Salaam", ortheir war cry is "Pakistan Zindabad", or "Bharat Mata ki Jai".Violence, whether justified in the name of Hindutva, or "Azadi" asin Kashmir, or glorified in the name of class struggle or Khalistan, destroysnot only human lives but even the very causes that are touted as justificationsfor their violence. It is significant that Gandhi chose "truth and non- violence"as his guiding principles, not any ideology or "ism". He drew his inspirationfrom the bhakti-sufi faith traditions rather than the ideology of modernday secularism, as defined by the West.

Jinnah’s legacy has similarities with the Hitlers,Stalins and Milosevics of world history not so much because he mixed religionwith politics but rather because his politics led to unprecedented genocides inthe Indian sub-continent, since he did not hesitate to use terror, crime andviolence to achieve his political ends.

It is well known that Jinnah was not religious minded. He merely usedcertain religious symbols and Islamic slogans to mobilize Muslims against theHindus as a political force. He sought to mould the political and economicaspirations and fears of his co-religionists into a virulent form of Muslimnationalism to counter Gandhi’s composite nationalism. Since many Muslims werenot ready to follow Jinnah, he sought the help of Islam in order to generate aphobic form of religious nationalism to "unite" all Muslims under his banner,and make them act like a homogeneous monolith that would follow hisinstructions. His aim was "secular" in so far he was only concerned withacquiring political power for himself as the unquestioned leader of the Muslimcommunity. He rejected democracy because a system of representation that gaveeach citizen one vote -- irrespective of religion, caste or gender -- wouldreduce Jinnah’s stature to that of one among many leaders of the Muslimcommunity. He wanted to be an authoritarian "sole spokesman" of the Muslimcommunity. Though claiming to speak on behalf of Muslims, Jinnah did not trusthis own people to make sensible choices and was fanatically hostile to all thoseMuslims who chose to work under the flag of the Indian National Congress, orthose who gravitated towards left, socialist politics.

It was primarily because he could not match Gandhi in mass appeal that Jinnah’sMuslim League resorted to "Direct Action" -- a euphemism for riots, massacres,murder and rape to browbeat the Congress party into accepting the Partition.Though claiming to defend the political and economic interests of Muslims of thesub-continent, he callously left behind many more millions of Muslims in Indiaas a mistrusted minority than could be accommodated within the absurdgeographical borders of the new ‘Islamic’ state he created for them. Had heabided by democratic, non-violent methods and abjured the use of murder andmayhem to actualise his political vision, the history of the sub-continent wouldhave been altogether different.

Even those few in India like A.G. Noorani who valiantlydefend aspects of Jinnah’s politics do not go beyond making excuses for hisadoption of the deadly "two-nation-theory," viewing his strategy as theconsequence of a failure of Gandhi, Nehru and other Congress leaders to give himdue weightage. They claim the Congress bruised his ego by trying to mobilise theMuslims over his head. They make a case that for him the demand for Pakistan wasonly a bargaining plank for greater clout for the Muslim community in India.Presumably, by refusing to take Jinnah’s assertions of discrimination againstMuslims seriously, by refusing to negotiate with Jinnah on his terms, theCongress leaders allegedly forced him to translate his bizarre idea of carvingout Pakistan from Muslim majority areas of the sub-continent into a reality sothat he alone could emerge as the sole spokesman of Muslims. To quote Noorani: 

"Jinnah was an Indian nationalist who did not believe that nationalism meant turning one’s back on the rights of one’s community… Jinnah lost his balance, abandoned Indian nationalism and inflicted on both his nation and his community harm of lasting consequences. He was of a heroic mould but fell prey to bitterness and the poison that bitterness breeds."

Even if we grant that some of the fault lay with Gandhi and other Congressleaders in failing to accommodate Jinnah’s political aspirations and style ofpolitics, just how far is a man justified in inciting mass murder because of abruised ego before he can be counted among the worst monsters of history? Themanner in which Jinnah forced a bloody Partition on India, that resulted in thekilling of millions, and uprooting many more from their own homes, caused greatanguish and anger among the leadership of the Congress. Yet, the entire partystood its ground by insisting that Muslims would continue staying in India asequal citizens whatever happened in Pakistan. And they stuck to their resolveeven after a near total ethnic cleansing of Hindus from the areas declared asPakistan. This legacy has remained intact despite Pakistan’s continuingattempts to break this resolve by carrying out a proxy war against India throughIslamic jehadis with the aim of provoking Hindus into attacking Muslimsin India as a retaliatory measure so that India is engulfed in a prolonged civilwar. However, barring localised outbreaks of hostility, as happened in Gujarat,the Indian people as a whole have refused to oblige. This steadfastness is whatgives Indian democracy a degree of integrity and versatility, despite itsnumerous flaws and occasional outbreaks of communal riots.

Few in India would have taken offence if Advani hadquoted any of the earlier speeches Jinnah made during the period when he wassincerely battling with Gandhi and others to oppose introducing religiousappeals in politics, as he did during the Khilafat movement. At that time,Jinnah was raising legitimate concerns and had good reason to challenge Gandhi’sjudgment. However, to quote Jinnah’s address to the Constituent Assembly onAugust 11, 1947, even if meant as a sincere bid to inspire Pakistanis to upholdthe values of secularism, shows a tragic lack of judgment on Advani’s part. By the time this speech was delivered, groundwork had already been prepared for millions of peopleto be brutally butchered, raped, uprooted from their homes and rendered destitute. Jinnah did not take responsibility for his contributions to this slaughter.

Instead, the new fantasy that Jinnah wanted to peddle in that historicpronouncement goes as follows:

"You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place 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 we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and you will find 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".

What moral sense does this pious rhetoric make when his newly created state of Pakistan would go on to carry out a near-total ethnic cleansing of Hindus in the territory his government controlled? Subsequent events haveproved how disastrous Jinnah’s vision was even with regard to the internalhealth of Muslim communities in Pakistan. The conflicts between Baluchis,Sindhis, Punjabis, Mohajirs and other ethnic groups in Pakistan are today farmore intense and deadly than they were in the 1940’s. Despite wiping outHindus, Sikhs, Christians and Parsis, the Muslims of Pakistan have become moresectarian and intolerant about their Islamic faith than they were 50 or 100years ago. Islam has assumed dangerously virulent forms today and Pakistan hascome to be associated with terror and tyranny, rather than democracy andsecularism. These developments are intrinsic to Jinnah’s ideology rather thanunintended, unexpected by-products.

During his days of glory, Jinnah came to represent thedeadly resolve that Hindus and Muslims are not just two communities but twodistinct nationalities with irreconcilable interests that cannot co-exist withinthe same nation state. His hysterical emphasis on "separateness" that providedthe justification for the two-nation theory was a gigantic lie. For example,most Indian Muslims are recent converts and share several common interests withnon-Muslims of the sub-continent based on language, culture and region. Jinnah’sown family had converted only a generation previously. Yet he behaved as ifMuslims belonged to a different species of humanity than Hindus. This ideologyhas become more pronounced after the creation of Pakistan because the entiremight of the Pakistani state works zealously to bolster this ideology.

Therefore, Jinnah’s pious hope that "In course of time, all theseangularities of the minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslimcommunity will vanish. And we will have a solid Pakistani nation"amounts to ballooning a cloud-cuckoo-land or a pathetic attempt atself-deception. It is clear from statements like these that Jinnah callouslydisregarded the scale of human suffering caused by his politics despite havingunleashed and authored one of the biggest and deadliest genocides in history.When one contrasts Jinnah’s smugness to the manner in which Gandhi respondedto the Partition related massacres, one is shocked to witness how Jinnah’sgargantuan ego rendered him so morally blind that he became incapable of remorseeven after causing epic scale suffering.

World history is replete with examples of how religiousgroups can co-exist in the same territory with mutual accommodation and evenrespect as long as they consider themselves as diverse communities with commoninterests and obligations to live in peace together in the same country. But themoment one or the other declares itself as a separate nationality whoseinterests are irreconcilable with the others, and adopts force and violence toattain its goals, ethnic cleansing and/or civil war become inevitable.

The kind of hate-soaked, Islamic nationalist movement Jinnah built to counterthe composite nationalism of the Congress party could not possibly lead to theemergence of a democratic minded leadership or system of governance in Pakistan.Therefore, it was naïve of Advani to suggest that Jinnah intended Pakistan tobe a secular democracy. Democracies flourish under the guidance of leaders whoare capable of cultivating and nurturing a culture of tolerance and mutualrespect among different groups of people within a political structure thatprotects the safety and human rights of both the majority and the minorities.Jinnah promoted a politics based on hatred, intolerance and the right ofmajorities to tyrannise and even wipe out minorities. Pakistan cannot rebuilditself into a healthy democracy without disowning the Jinnah legacy, just asAdvani cannot hope to position the BJP as a party of democratic governance aslong as dominant sections of the Sangh Parivar believe Hindus alone have theright to decide the form and shape of Indian nationhood.

Advani was following in Jinnah’s footsteps when helaunched his Ram Mandir campaign.