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Friday March 29, 2024

A great statesman

By Dr M Yakub Mughul
September 11, 2021

Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah was one of the greatest leaders of the modern age, who not only led his people to independence but founded a separate homeland for them, where they could live honourably according to their faith and cultivate their culture and civilisation. This was a great achievement of the Quaid as compared to any other national liberation leaders. Other leaders struggled for independence within states already in existence, whereas the Quaid alone sought a separate homeland where none had existed. This he achieved almost single-handily and constitutionally, and in the teeth of opposition.

Stanley Wolpert, a great historian paying tribute to the Quaid in his book Jinnah of Pakistan, said: “Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all three.”

The only objective of the Pakistan movement was not to separate some provinces to save them from Hindu domination. Had it been so, the Muslims of the minority provinces knew that if Pakistan was created, they would stand to gain nothing rather might lose everything. In fact, the Muslims of South Asia believed that they were not fighting for a territory alone but the preservation of their culture, civilisation, language, literature and Islamic values.

In his presidential address at the special Pakistan session of the Punjab Muslim Students Federation, on March 02, 1941, the Quaid said:

“We are a nation: (cheers) And a nation must have a territory. What is the use of merely saying that we are a nation? Nation does not live in the air. It lives on the land, it must govern the land and must have territorial state and that is what you want to get (cheers).” (Jamil-ud-Din Ahmed, 1968:234)

Why Hindus and Muslims could not coalesce into one nation although they lived together for centuries? The answer to this question can be found in Quaid’s speech at Aligarh, in 1944, wherein he remarked:

“Pakistan started the moment the first non-Muslims was converted to Islam in India long before the Muslims established their rule. As soon as a Hindu embraced Islam he was outcast not only religiously but also socially, culturally and economically. As for the Muslim, it was a duty imposed on him by Islam not to merge his identity and individuality in any alien society. Throughout the ages, Hindus had remained Hindus and Muslims had remained Muslims, and they had not merged their entities - that was the basis of Pakistan.” (Jamil-ud-Din Ahmad, 1968: Vol II. 2467).

During his interview on December 18, 1943, the Quaid told Beverley Nicholas that, “Islam is not merely a religious doctrine but a realistic and practical code of conduct in terms of everything important in life, including our history, our heroes, our art, our architecture, our music, our laws and our jurisprudence. In all these things, our outlook is not only fundamentally different but often radically antagonistic to the Hindus. There is nothing which links us together. Our names, our clothes, they all are different; our economic life, our educational ideas, our treatment of women, our attitude towards animals -we contradict each other at every point of the compass. Take one example, the eternal question of the cow, we eat the cow, the Hindus worship it.”

The reason behind the establishment of Pakistan

Outlining the purpose of the creation of Pakistan the Quaid said in a speech to the officers of the Defence Services on October 11, 1947, that “the idea was that we should have a state in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.”

Moreover, in his Presidential Address delivered extempore at the thirtieth session of the All India Muslim League, Delhi, April 24, 1943, the Quaid declared, “I have no doubt in my mind that a large body of us visualises Pakistan as people’s government.... But I am sure that democracy is in our blood. It is in our marrows. Only centuries of adverse circumstances have made the circulation of that blood cold. It has got frozen and your arteries have not been functioning. But thank God, the blood is circulating again, thanks to the Muslim league’s efforts.” (Jamil-ud-Din Ahmad, 1968, 526-527.)

Rule of law

The Quaid strictly believed in the rule of law and was totally committed to democracy. When the members of the Pakistan Muslim League Council expressed the desire that he should accept its presidentship, the Quaid-i-Azam declined to do so for the reason that as Head of State, he had to look after the interests of all sections and could not associate with any political party.

Similarly, in October 1946, when the Working Committee resolved to send Muslim League representatives to the Interim Government, many members of the Committee were insistent that the Quaid-i-Azam should go in, but he declined to say that if he joined the Government, he could not continue as President of the League and in that event who would carry on the struggle for Pakistan and bring it to a successful conclusion.

Nawab Syed Mohammad Ismail of Patna, at a meeting of the Muslim League Council, proposed that the Quaid-i-Azam be elected life President of the League. In disapproving the proposal, the Quaid remarked that according to democratic practices he must come to the members of the Council every year to seek a renewal of confidence based on his work and services.

This proves that the Quaid always followed democratic methods and stood for democracy. On December 25, 1945, the birthday of the Quaid was celebrated in Bombay. At a place near the J J Hospital, a portrait of the Quaid in royal robes was put up by some of his admirers. On the corner of the portrait was written, “Shahen-Shah-i-Pakistan, Zindabad”. The Quaid, while passing by the road, noticed this portrait. He immediately alighted from the car and addressed the huge crowd that had by then gathered there. He said: “Pakistan is going to be a democracy and there was no room for a Shahenshah in Pakistan.”

The Quaid-i-Azam had fully realised that there will be no room for the capitalist economic system in Pakistan. In his speech at the Opening Ceremony of the State Bank of Pakistan on July 1, 1948, the Quaid announced:

“The economic system of the West has created almost insoluble problems for humanity and to many of us, it appears that only a miracle can save it from the disaster that is facing the world. It has failed to do justice between man and man, and to eradicate friction from the international field.”

In fact, the Quaid wanted that Pakistan should be an Islamic Welfare State, where no one would be exploited and the State must see that there is none without food and clothes and every individual is at least provided with basic necessities of life.

—The author is HEC Eminent Scholar and former Director, Quaid-i-Azam Academy, Karachi and can be reached at dr.mughul@hotmail.com