t is highly ironic that the country that Muhammad Ali Jinnah founded lacks national integration and that people invoking regional, ethnic and linguistic identities are at loggerheads, creating even more contradictions between the state and the society. The country’s majority wing and vanguard of Pakistan movement, East Bengal, was forced to secede only 24 years after independence from the British Raj.

What is left of the country is marred by nepotism, corruption, hypocrisy, discrimination against minorities and increasing highhandedness of the religious-rightist forces. Disappointed with the state of affairs, a large number of its citizens are leaving the country to begin new lives. Was this the country envisioned by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Quaid-i-Azam?

This looks like anything but the country that Jinnah had led a popular movement to create. It is important to find out how the country can be rescued from its ideological contradictions and substantive predicaments. There is no denying the fact that the demand for Pakistan was couched in the Two Nations Theory proposed by Jinnah. There is plenty of evidence in his statements, Muslim League documents and record of negotiations with other parties. However, it needs to be understood that this political device was used to secure rights of the Muslims in the context of a united India. “Jinnah was in fact employing the cultural identity of a minority for the construction of its political identity,” says Jaffar Ahmad.

As far as the question of sovereignty is concerned, Jinnah was very clear about it: it is embodied by the people of the country, the citizens of the state. He certainly used the phrases, Islamic system and Islamic state, but these were not meant to imply that the new state was to be a theocracy. He envisioned a modern, democratic nation state with a federal, parliamentary form of government. His concept of an Islamic state should be viewed in the light of his persona, his lifelong conduct, his ideological demeanour and his determined commitment to federalism and parliamentary democracy. Jinnah, time and again, referred to Pakistan as a modern social welfare state. Once, in his speech in Chittagong in 1948, Jinnah also used the phrase Islamic socialism, later picked up by ZA Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party.

While talking to a correspondent of the Reuters news agency, Jinnah declared in 1946 that “the new state would be a modern democratic state. The sovereignty would rest in the people. The members of the new nation would have equal citizenship rights regardless of the religion, caste and creed.” Jinnah did not believe in a divinely ordained abstract conception of sovereignty. Rather, he argued in favour of sovereignty resting in the people of the country and right of citizenship without any discrimination.

The rationale of Jinnah’s demand for Pakistan was protection of the rights of religious minorities. He highlighted the imperatives of the Pakistani nationhood in his famous August 11, 1947, speech in which he said in unequivocal words 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 an individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state.” He was, more than restoring the confidence of the minorities; he was dismissing the idea of permanent minorities in the new state. His statements and speeches suggest that he wanted to see the state to be neutral with respect to religious affiliations of its citizens.

Regarding the role of army, Jinnah expressed his mind very clearly on several occasions. While addressing Pakistan Army officers in Quetta on June 14, 1948, he read out the text of the oath verbatim, saying that it was binding for the military men to affirm allegiance to the constitution and the government of the day. He urged them to study the constitution and try to “understand its true constitutional and legal implications when you say that you will be faithful to the constitution of the Dominion.” The repeated declaration of martial law in the country was certainly not what he had wanted.

Jinnah was committed to prioritising the education of the masses, particularly the young, and promoting critical thinking in order to decolonise the mindsets. When, in November 1918, Parsi friends of Willingdon, the Bombay governor, arranged a farewell at Town Hall. Jinnah along with his around 300 youthful followers, staged a raucous protest and vitiated the ceremony.

That night a huge demonstration was held in Shantaram’s Chawl. Soon Rs 65,000 was donated by the people to build People’s Jinnah Memorial Hall. Referred to as PJ Hall, it still stands in the compound of Bombay’s INC building “commemorating the historic triumph of the citizens of Bombay under the brave and brilliant leadership of Mohammad Ali Jinnah.”

Sikandar Hayat argues in The Charismatic Leader that “Jinnah was not only a founder of a state like Ataturk or an architect of a political movement like Nkrumah or a proponent of change like Lenin, but he was also the maker of a nation, the Muslim nation of India (and Pakistan).” In around one year and one month he steered Pakistan out of many crises that the newborn country had to confront. However, although “he solved many problems his death created a novel one…no one else in Pakistan has been ever able to govern the country with such competence, capability,” writes Farooq A Dar in his book Jinnah’s Pakistan: Formation and Challenges of a State.

The writer heads the History Department at University of Sargodha. He has worked as a research fellow at Royal Holloway College, University of London. He can be reached at abrar.zahoor@hotmail.com His X handle: @AbrarZahoor1