Jinnah: The True Story

 Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah claimed that he had not only created Pakistan.

But that he also freed the entire Indian subcontin

ent.

Whereas Gandhi, Nehru and some other leaders were striving to keep the subcontinent under the British rule.

This claim of Jinnah has been covered up, and not only by his adversaries.

It has also been ignored by those who claim to be devoted to him.

This need not surprise us, because the movement of Jinnah started on the stregth of the masses.

The intelligentsia joined later.

The intelligentsia, who joined later, do not include only the rulers and the bureaucracy.

They also include those on whom we have been relying for our information about Jinnah.

Whereas, the only shortcoming Jinnah saw in his nation happened to be in this very class.

Without having self-esteem and national consciousness, one cannot have the sbility to see reality.

Therefore, Jinnah would not be surprised at all, if he were to return today and see that we know nothing about him.

And that in his place, we have installed a fictitious character in our minds.

Today, instead of that fictitious character, you are going to know the real person.

Because today we are going to see Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah as he wanted to be seen.

The earliest existing document about M. A. Jinnah is his admission entry

in the register of Sind Madrasah-tul-Islam, Karachi.

To get any information about him or his family prior to that we have to rely almost entirely on oral sources

which differ from each other in some details.

The gist of the considerably more reliable of such traditions

is that his ancestors had migrated to Karachi from some village of Kathiawar

and belonged to the Ismaili Khoja sect of Islam.

The name of his father was Jinnahbhai Poonjah

which later became Jinnah Poonjah.

The mother's name is given as Shirin Bibi or its Gujarati equivalent, Meethi Bai.

According to one source, she was of Persian descent and her family had moved from Iran some time earlier.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the firstborn child of his parents.

His parents had four sons and four daughters in all

some of whom did not survive childhood.

Jinnah took admission in Sind Madrasah three times.

He also went to Bombay for a while, and studied in the Anjuman-i-Islam School there.

Both of these schools belonged to a network of Muslim educational institution

that was spreading across the Indian subcontinent.

Such educational institutions were usually influenced by the message of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan

according to which, the love for one's own nation and the lover for humanity were stages of the same journey.

Jinnah was in the sixteenth year of his life when he left Sind Madrassah for the last time

in order to visit a nearby state for his marriage.

It has been said that this was an arranged marriage.

The name of the wife appears in some sources as Amr

and in some others as Emi.

She was somewhat younger than Jinnah.

She stayed back when Jinnah left for London within a year

and died within the next few years.

The family of Jinnah was in the business of exports

and specialized in fish products.

Some of the legal documents of those days have led one scholar

that the business was expanding, so that Jinnah was being sent to London to open a branch there.

But the same documents have led another scholar to conclude

that the business was going down, and Jinnah was being sent to England to work for some other firm.

In any case, at the age of sixteen, Jinnah took admission in the Church Mission School, Karachi.

which was managed by British missionaries.

Jinnah's name also appears in some legal documents the same year.

In all likelihood, Jinnah started from the seaport of Karachi early next year

because, by February 1893, he was already in London.

This was the era of Queen Victoria

whom Jinnah always remembered as "a great and good Queen".

A patriotic Indian in those days usually believed

that the British nation genuinely wanted India to become self-governing and independent eventually.

The poster boy of Indian patriotism was Dadabhai Naoroji, a Parsi merchant and political leader

who was commonly known as "the Grand Old Man of India".

Seeking election to the House of Commons from Finsbury in London, he said to his white voters:

Possibly the best insight into Jinnah’s own perception of his relationship with the British

is found in a radio broadcast from the last year of his life.

Jinnah joined the Honourable Society of the Lincoln’s Inn a few months after arriving in London.

Although he had not finished his school education before coming to London

it seems that he fell in love with hard work and studies soon after arriving here.

In order to become a barrister, a candidate had to fulfil two requirements.

The paper of Roman Law could be taken anytime

but the final exam could only be taken after a candidate had been enrolled for two years.

In his very first year at the Inn, the young Jinnah started preparing for the paper of Roman Law

which was much ahead of time.

He failed on the first attempt.

But his hard work during the preparation left a mark on the barrister who was teaching him the subject.

Then the rules changed.

A candidate could now appear for the final examination anytime, without passing the Roman Law,

but had to clear all papers in the same attempt.

Jinnah appeared for all papers of the final exam as soon as this new rule was introduced

although he had been enrolled for just a little over a year.

He cleared many papers, including Roman Law, but could clear all the papers.

He tried again in the very next term.

Again, he cleared many papers but not all.

He tried again the next term.

In this third attempt he succeeded, when he had been enrolled with the Inn for even less than two years.

The result was announced on the birthday of his favourite poet and playwright, William Shakespeare.

By clearing his final examination much ahead of time, Jinnah got himself a full year and a quarter

when he had nothing to do except wait for his required period of enrolment to end

and attend a few mandatory dinners at the Inn.

In the span of free time, Jinnah read in a barrister's chambers.

Observed the working of the courts in England.

Followed the politics of the British Empire.

Studied books in the British Library.

And collected book for taking home with him.

Back home, his mother had died in the meanwhile.

According to one source, his wife had also passed away

while according to another source, she died a few years later.

His father had become bankrupt, and had moved along with his children to Bombay.

After being called to bar from the Lincoln’s Inn,

Jinnah sailed back to the Indian subcontinent and arrived in Bombay.

It has been suggested that within a year of his return from England, he had left the Ismaili sect of the Aga Khan.

Later, he not only claimed for himself that he did not belong to any sect and was only a Muslim,

but also advised all other Muslims of the Indian subcontinent to say the same.

Since his arrival in Bombay, he had been attending the meetings of Anjuman-e-Islam,

the leading organization of the Muslims of that city.

One of the speakers in some of these meetings was

the right-hand man of Sir Syed and his successor, Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk.

Within months of his return from England, he had won a civil suit

filed against him and his family by a merchant from Karachi in a court of that city.

He had also secured an out of court settlement to his benefit in another.

Less than two years after joining the Bombay High Court

he appeared in one of the most high profile cases of the day along with a team of lawyers.

The team was headed by the leading barrister and Parsi leader of Bombay, Sir Pherozeshah Mehta.

Around the same time, he and another senior Parsi lawyer won a case that became a reference case

and was reported in the law journal.

It was quite a big thing that the young Jinnah had made this achievement less than two years after joining the bar

and when he was just twenty-one year old.

In the first year of the 20th Century, Jinnah served as the third Presidency Magistrate in a police court of Bombay

for six months.

In the police court, he found himself in direct contact with the lowest of the low.

It was that underprivileged class, with whom he might never have had any close contact as a barrister.

The accused brought before him included boys and girls less than ten years old

who, while being raised up in extreme poverty, had committed some petty theft

and, helplessly, were pleading guilty and were begging for mercy

and were looking deep into a future that offered no hope of change for them.

believed that the judicial system, as transformed by the British,

was good enough to protect the rights and liberties of the people.

But this system was failing its purpose.

The reason, according to Jinnah, was bureaucracy.

He later said that he had noticed that the civil servants in Britain behaved as servants of the people

but here, they behaved as if they were the rulers of the country.

He said that civil service here had become a new caste

more pernicious than the existing caste system of India.

Queen Victoria died in 1901.

Her successor was coronated in London the next year.

Celebrations were also held in India on a grand scale

and the Indian National Congress offered homage through a special resolution.

Jinnah was in a committee formed by the citizens of Bombay for these celebrations.

The political career of Jinnah started in 1904, when he got elected to Bombay Municipal Corporation.

Over the next two years, he made several political speeches, also involving some criticism of the Viceroy.

He resigned from the Corporation two years later.

A few months later, he made his first speech in the Indian National Congress.

This session was held in Calcutta in December 1906.

He spoke in favour of Vakf ala-al-Aulad.

It was a law of Muslim shariah and had been suspended by the highest court of the British Empire, the Privy Council.

The opening of his speech was as follows.

This session of the Congress was presided over by Dadabhai Naoroji.

It was here that the Congress demanded for the first time that India should have self-government

just like some other colonies of the British Empire, such as Canada and Australia.

However, the Congress did not demand that self-government, or Swaraj, should be given immediately.

Instead, it proposed a number of steps that could gradually lead towards that destination.

A few days later, in Dacca, thousands of Muslim delegates from across the Indian subcontinent

formed their first country-wide political organization.

It was called the All-India Muslim League.

The founders of this organization claimed that it was a turning of a corner

in the course adopted by the late Sir Syed Ahmad Khan.

It was the organization Jinnah was destined to lead eventually.

In 1907, Jinnah appeared prominently in a team of lawyers

who accused that the elections of the Bombay Municipal Corporation had been rigged

by senior members of the bureaucracy.

The results of the elections got reversed.

By this time, Jinnah was rising in his profession rapidly

so that later he could have more time at his disposal for putting into political activities.

Although Jinnah was a member of the Congress, he supported the demands of the All-India Muslim League

in the press.

He wrote that although he personally did not agree with some of these demands

the majority opinion of the Muslim public must always be respected and implemented.

His own or anybody else's opinion carries no weight against it.

Jinnah got elected to the Imperial Legislative Council in January 1910.

In the council, he worked most closely with Gopal Krishna Gokhale.

Gokhale was a Hindu leader widely respected by the Muslims, whose demands he supported ardently.

Jinnah drafted a bill for validating the Muslim law of the Wakf ala-al-aulad.

He consulted leading Muslim experts like Justice Syed Ameer Ali

and also relied on his personal study of the Quran, hadith, and the standard works of Muslim fiqh.

He succeeded in getting the bill passed.

In 1913, Jinnah joined the All-India Muslim League

and, for the first time ever, got a common resolution adopted by both the League and the Congress.

The next year, he was in London trying to pursure the substance of the same resolution

with the British parliament

when the First World War started.

Jinnah returned a few months later.

By now, he was being described as someone who should be a role model for the Muslim youth.

In the press, he was being described not only as a political leader but also “a political thinker.”

With respect to the future he was foreseeing,

two things concerned him most.

The first issue was that the dominions, or the self-governing colonies of the British Empire,

had demanded a parliament consisting of their representatives

and the more important affairs of the Empire should be decided by this parliament and not by Britain.

Jinnah's position was as follows.

He wanted to get a clear declaration from Britain that India was also going to be made a dominion

so that it could be an equal member in any Imperial Parliament, or the Commonwealth.

This required unity between the Hindus and the Muslims in India itself.

Whereas the Congress had not even supported even some of the basic demands of the Muslims so far,

such as separate electorates – the right to chose their own representatives.

And this was the second problem which Jinnah deemed important at that time.

Jinnah succeeded in making the Congress accept some of the basic demands of the Muslims.

Subtitle

The most stunning aspect of this agreement was that from the Hindu side, it was pushed by Bal Gangadhar Tilak.

He had long been seen as an extremist who was not only anti-British but also anti-Muslim.

Endoresement from Tilak meant that nobody could doubt that this pact truly represented

the opinion of the Hindus as well as the Muslims.

Although, the Muslims were made to pay a heavy price for it.

They were made to agree that they might not have governments

even in those two provinces of the Subcontinent where they were in majority, i.e. Bengal and Punjab.

This meant that the Muslims would not be ruling any part of British India.

Jinnah was quite aware of this.

But Great Britain was soon going to introduce a new constitution for India.

It was feared that if the Muslim demands were not supported by the Congress,

they might be left out of the new constitution entirely.

Since those demands were related to the existence of the Muslims as a collective entity,

the Muslims might not have survived as a community if those demands were not included in the constitution.

In his address to the Muslim League, Jinnah said:

Through the Lucknow Pact, the Congress conceded that the Muslims were a separate political entity

and that the acceptance of this principle was prerequisite for the independence of India.

Jinnah was called the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity

but in fact he had not only united the Muslims and the Hindus.

He had also played a prominent role in uniting the various factions of the Hindus themselves.

Babu Surendranath Banerjee, who was one of the founders of the Congress, said on this occasion:

The next year, the British made the declaration Jinnah wanted from them at that time.

On 20 August 1917, the Secretary of State for India announced in the House of Commons of the British Parliament

that the goal of the British policies in India was that gradually, India could also have self-government

like other self-governing colonies of the British Empire.

The Congress and the League both said that this was just the kind of accouncement they had wanted from Britain

but the forthcoming constitution should also contain

a clear identification of the stages through which the goal of self-government was supposed to be achieved.

Jinnah said:

In 1918, Jinnah married Rattanbai Petit, also known by her nickname Ruttie.

She was the daughter of a leading Parsi industrialist of Bombay, Sir Dinshaw Petit.

She had embraced Islam before marriage.

At the time, Jinnah was 42 and Ruttie was 18.

This was a marriage of love.

Their only child was a girl.

Dina Jinnah was born on the night of 14 and 15 August the next year, in London.

In the meanwhile, the First World War had come to an end.

The new constitution given to India by the British parliament

included much of the Lucknow Pact and also conceded elections to the people of British India.

This caused a strong reaction from some of the European and British lobbies in India

and those British politicians who were against giving rights to the Indians.

But the constitution did not bestow dominion status on India.

Also, the elected representatives were made to share power

the bureaucracy - what was called “Diarchy”, or double-rule.

This caused a strong reaction from the Indians.

An additional cause of concern for the Muslims was that Turkey seemed to be losing its independence

and a Jewish state was being set up in territories taken away from the Turks in the Middle East.

In this atmosphere of general discontent, Gandhi stepped in.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had left India at the age of 23, and had spent most of the 22 years in South Africa.

After gaining international fame for his civil rights activism there, he returned to India during World War I.

He used to present himself as a spiritual personality, and was called “Mahatma”, or the Great Soul.

He said that the Government of India Act 1919 was totally unacceptable.

Therefore, India should be given independence at once.

He told the people that if they stopped cooperating with India, India would become free within a year.

The Non-Cooperation Movement lasted more than a year.

It caused much violence throughout its duration, but India did not become free.

Gandhi called off the movement after 17 months.

The Government of India Act remained in place for 16 years.

Many senior Hindu leaders had been in favour of trying out this Act.

They left the Congress and started their own separate party.

They included Surendranath Banerjee, one of the founding fathers of the Congress.

He said that Gandhi was playing into the hands of those British who wanted to delay the freedom of India.

Jinnah had resigned from the Imperial Council in 1919

in protest against some oppressive laws passed by the Government.

He pleaded the cause of the Khilafat Movement before a joint committee of the British parliament and on other forums

but he could not agree with the programme of non-cooperation, and resigned from the Congress.

Many countries in Europe were giving up on democracy and turning to dictatorship.

In the Indian subcontinent too, Gandhi had been given the title of "dictator".

In the place of conventional democracy and dictatorship

some thinkers were proposing new democracy and new state.

Instead of majority rule, it was based on the idea of consensus.

Instead of political party, they suggested a national organization, open to all schools of thought.

Jinnah was among those who believed that the concept now being called "new democracy"

had already been there in Islam

and that the All-India Muslim League was in fact

just the kind of organization that was not being dreamt of in the West.

He had left the Congress, but did not leave the Muslim League.

In 1920, he got elected the President of the League.

Under the new Act, general elections were held that year for the first time in the subcontinent.

But there were many followers of Gandhi in the League.

They stopped the organizatio from participating in the election.

The next election was held in 1923.

Jinnah stood as an independent candidate and got elected.

Many leaders of the Congress also contested the election, disregarding Gandhi.

Those leaders included one of the closest friends of Jinnah, Chittaranjan Das, also called C R Das.

Das had come up with an innovative programme for bringing freedom to India through its elected assemblies

The Congress rejected the programme, but Jinnah joined hands with Das.

Unfortunately, Das died just two years later.

Surendranath Banerjee also passed away the same year.

And Jinnah said:

Such Hindu leaers, who considered it a prerequisite for the progress of India,

were either dead or retired by the time the next elections were held.

The party which swept the election of 1926 on the general seats

i.e. the seats not reserved for the Muslims,

was the Hindu Mahasabha.

The Hindu Mahasabha had resulted from a movement called the Arya Samaj.

The Arya Samaj upheld the philosophy of the racial superiority of the Aryans.

It was the same idea which had given birth to Nazism in Germany.

The Nazis believed that the Aryan race existed in its purest form in Germany.

The Arya Samajis believed that the Hindus had the only pure civilization in the world.

They claimed the Hinduism to be the only religion revealed by God.

All other religions were declared by them to be false.

The Hindu Mahasabha was a political party formed in order to implement this programme

and it had already made it quite clear that it would not let the Muslims keep separate electorates and other rights

which the earlier Hindu leaders had conceded.

These elections happened at the time when the Imperial Conference was announcing in London

that the self-governing colonies, or the Dominions of the British Empire, were completely autonomous.

They were not forced to stay within the empire

but could stay in the British Commonwealth of their own free will

so that the Commonwealth may become a family of independent countries.

The goal of transforming an empire into a Commonwealth in this manner was described by Jinnah as a “great ideal”.

In March 1927, Jinnah invited some of the elected Muslim leaders, to a meeting in Delhi.

Jointly, they proposed that the Muslims would give up separate electorates

if those constitutional difficulties were removed which prevented the Muslims from forming governments even

in the provinces where they were in majority.

Most parties of the Hindus, including the Congress, welcomed these proposals.

The Congress even made the leaders of the Mahasabha agree to them.

A committee was formed for drafting a constitution for India on this basis.

In that constitution, India was to be a dominion of the Commonwealth.

The British parliament could then be asked to implement this constitution, and India would become free.

The draft constitution which came out was called the Nehru Report.

The Nehru Report did not include the proposals of the Muslim leaders, nor even separate electorates.

The Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha threatened the British that if this constitution was not implemented within a year

they would revolt.

When Jinnah reminded them of what they had agreed to, he was described as “a spoilt child”, and was refused.

A few months later, Jinnah’s wife Ruttie died.

Dina, their daughter, was nine years old at that time.

One of Jinnah’s younger sisters, Fatima, closed her dental clinic to live with her brother, and to take care of him.

In the years to come, Fatima Jinnah became the inseparable companion of her brother.

The All-India Muslim League assigned Jinnah the task of preparing a comprehensive document of the Muslim demands.

He submitted a resolution comprising of fourteen points, which later became famous by his name

At the time of submitting them to his organization, he explained:

By then, he had found a friend, philosopher and guide in Dr Sir Muhammad Iqbal, who was popularly known as Allama Iqbal.

Iqbal had been a member of the Muslim League since the early days of that organization.

His friendship with Jinnah had started in 1924

and Jinnah had asked him to preside over the session of the Muslim League the same year, but Iqbal had declined.

In 1930, Jinnah again asked Iqbal to preside over the annual session of the Muslim League, and Iqbal agreed to.

The session was delayed and took place after Jinnah and many other leaders had left for London

to attend the first of the three round table conferences that were held for framing the next constitution of India.

In his presidential address, Iqbal presented a solution that later became known as “Pakistan”.

He also predicted that this was going to happen, as a matter of destiny.

Jinnah stayed in England for a little more than three years.

His daughter Dina and sister Fatima were also with him.

The All-India Muslim League asked him to lead again.

He placed the condition that all the leaders of the Muslim League must elect him unanimously

and on these terms he returned.

The British Parliament had proposed a new constitution for India.

One of the earliest moves of Jinnah after returning to the Central Legislative Assembly was

to demand that the entire part of the constitution about forming a federation of India

and its central government should be suspended.

believed that the British parliament should not decide what India should be as a country.

Only the people of India could decide it. As he said in the assembly:

The resolution was passed by the majority in the assembly

and the elections announced some time later were for the formation of provincial governments only.

The part of the constitution about an Indian federation was never implemented.

It was quite an achievement for an individual to thus abrogate half of the constitution

that had been imposed by the largest empire of all times.

As preparations for the election started, Jinnah invited some of the leaders of the Muslim League

to Lahore for deciding the election manifesto.

They included Iqbal, Maulana Shaukat Ali and Liaquat Ali Khan.

An election manifesto was issued after consultation with all these leaders.

In this manifesto, the Muslim League declared war against two elements of society.

Those influential but selfish people, who had been growing stronger through elections since 1920

due to the flawed system of democracy the British had introduced here.

Those who were supporting these powerful elements in order to get jobs.

This included the bureaucracy.

In the election, the Congress secured only 26 out of the 482 seats reserved for the Muslims.

Of of those, 15 were from a single province.

There were 11 provinces in British India at that time.

So, the total number of the Muslim seats won by the Congress from the other 10 provinces was just 11.

As compared to these 11 or 26 Muslim seats of the Congress

the League secured 110 Muslim seats.

It was also the only Muslim party to have seats in several provinces.

However, since the Muslims were a minority, therefore the general seats were far more than the Muslim seats.

On those seats, the Congress gained majorty in eight provinces, and formed its governments.

Regarding the seats reserved for the Muslims in the cabinets of those provinces according to the Constitution

the President of the Congress, Jawaharal Nehru, announced that they would be given only to those Muslims

who left their own parties and joined the Congress.

From the very beginning of their political life in India

the Muslims had been struggling to get safeguards in the constitution.

Now, the Congress proved that safeguards written on paper had no value.

Safeguards were there in the constitution, and yet the Muslims were unable to have them.

The annual session of the All-India Muslim League in Lucknow was attended by a bigger crowd than usual

and Jinnah said to them:

Iqbal died in 1938.

The same year, Jinnah’s daughter Dina married a Parsi trader.

Although there has been much speculation about how Jinnah might have responded or felt

nothing can be said with certainty as he was a very cautious person and kept his thoughts to himself.

The Second World War started in 1939.

Great Britain declared war on behalf of India as well.

The Indian National Congress resigned from provincial governments in protest because it had not been consulted.

The Muslim League was opposed to the Nazis, who had started the war after coming to power in Germany.

It announced that it would not interfere with the war efforts of the British

if the British could assure that after the war

no constitution would be imposed on India without the consent of the Muslims.

This assurance was given. by the Viceroy.

A committee of the Muslim League considered those schemes

which had been presented by various Muslims for the future of India.

From them, it derived a few basic principles, which could be used by its leaders

for drafting a resolution when they meet for the next general session.

This session took place in Lahore in March 1940.

By then, Jinnah had become known by the popular title of the Quaid-i-Azam.

When the Quaid-i-Azam arrived at the Lahore Session, he was greeted by a large crowd.

A poem was recited on this occasion and has remained alive in the hearts of the nation ever since then.

The defender of the nation is Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

The nation is a body; the soul is Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

By the grace of God, our caravan is afoot again

and the leader of the caravan is Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

The nation has regained life from his call:

Muhammad Ali Jinnah is the call of the destiny itself.

The Muslim League adopted a resolution, which soon became known as the Lahore Resolution

and also the Pakistan Resolution.

It emphasized two main principles for the future of the Indian subcontinent.

The first principles was that the two zones where the Muslims were in majority

should be grouped to form “Independent States”.

Later, the provinces of these zones decided to become one state, instead of many.

The second principle was that in the Muslim state, all rights of the non-Muslim minorities would be

safeguarded in consultation with them.

Likewise, all the rights of the Muslim minority left behind in the Hindu zone

should be safeguarded in consultation with them.

Soon afterwards, the Quaid-e-Azam made it quite clear that the problem of India was not only foreign rule.

The problem was also that the current leaders of the majority community, the Hindus,

did not want the country to be free.

The Quaid-i-Azam said that the claims of the Hindu leaders of those days

that they wanted the independence of India were not true.

Their game was to make sure that the British rule continues

so that they could exploit the Muslims and other minorities with the help of the foreign rulers.

Therefore, it was now for the Muslims to free the Indian subcontinent from the foreign rule

in spite of being in minority.

And they were going to do it.

The Quaid-i-Azam continued to explain his vision as he travelled across the subcontinent.

He was greeted by large crowds of enthusiastic Muslims wherever he went.

The Quaid-i-Azam never doubted the intentions of the people of Great Britain.

On several occasions he said that the British people always wanted that India should eventally become independent.

Only some of their rulers and groups with vested interests had been tryng to delay the process

in order to prolong the British rule over India as much as possible.

To this end, the British rulers perpetuated the fallacy that India was or had been a single country.

The Quaid-i-Azam explained that this false idea was creating conflict between the Hindus and the Muslims

because they were two separate nations.

This conflict was in the interest of the British rulers

and hence the theory of One-India served as one of the two pillars of British imperialism.

The Quaid-i-Azam said that the second pillar of British imperialism was Western democracy.

By Western democracy he meant majority rule based on political parties.

He explained that this form of government had failed in the West itself.

He also quoted from some Western writers, such as H G Wells, who has said:

The Quaid-i-Azam said that this form of goverment, which had failed even in the West

was being imposed on India by the British rulers because

here it precipitated the conflict between the Hindu and the Muslims

to the advantage of the British rulers.

He said:

The Quaid-e-Azam believed that true democracy starts with the desire of seeking consensus.

Consensus may or may not be possible to achieve, but the desire must be there.

As Iqbal had said log ago:

Likewise, the Quaid-i-Azam said:

The Quaid-i-Azam said that the All-India Muslim League was the national organization of the Muslims

and was based on the same principle

that was the common fundamental principle of Islamic democracy and true democracy.

Even about himself he said he was important because of the Muslim League and not the other way round.

He asked the Muslims that instead of relying on him

they should learn to to give importance to their own consensus.

And this was possibe through faith, unity and discipline.

He said:

To him, the proof of the efficacy of the Muslim League was

that it had demolished both pillars of the British Raj by making the demand for Pakistan

and now it was going to get freedom for the Indian subcontinent.

He predicted that if the British accepted the demand for Pakistan, the Hindu leaders would agree within three months.

Because they were just blackmailing the British Empire

and would give in as soon as the British refused to be blackmailed anymore.

He said that no nation can be strong if a large number of its members live in extreme poverty.

The election manifesto of the Muslim League had emphasized the need for eradicating poverty

and the Quaid-i-Azam reiterated it in practically every general statement afterwards.

These were the arguments of the Quaid-i-Azam and he retained them throughout his dialogue with his opponents.

The Second World War ended in 1945.

Earlier that year, Jinnah had said to the people:

Instead of issuing a manifesto for the next general election

the Muslim League placed a one-point agenda before the people.

It was "Pakistan".

In the election for the central assembly, the Muslim League won all the seats reserved for the Muslims.

In the election for the provincial assemblies,the Muslim League won the majority of Muslim seats

in all provinces except one

and 100% of the Muslim seats in some provinces.

Of all the votes caste by the Muslims, the Muslim League received 75 percent and the Congress less than 5 percent.

Some 500 elected legislators of the Muslim League gathered in Delhi

and unanimously passed a resolution

in which the demand for Pakistan was finalized and it was declared

that there should be separate constituent assemblies for Pakistan and Hindustan.

All participants, including the Quaid-i-Azam,

took a pledge to abide by the resolution and to remain loyal to the Muslim League.

Afterwards, the Quaid-i-Azam got that pledge pubished in newspapers of various languages

Subtitle

The British government refused to set up a separate constituent assembly for Pakistan

and installed a single assembly for drafting a constitution for the United India.

The Muslim League asked its members to boycott the assembly.

By then, a kind of civil war had broken out across the subcontinent.

Until then, the British had always used such opportunities for justifying their presence in the subcontinent

as peacekeepers.

Even now, the Secretary of State speculated that the use of the same old methods

could mean an immediate extension of the British Raj at least for ten or fifteen years.

But one of the things that had changed was that the Muslim nation had

unanimously refused to join the assembly set up by the British.

This was the reason cited by the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee when he announced

that the British had been compelled to leave India by June 1948 under all circumstances

and to transfer power to more than one government if necessary

or in other words, to partition the Subcontinent.

On 16 January 1945, Jinnah had asked the Muslims to follow him for two years more, and they would be free.

The announcement of the British Prime Minister came just two years and one month after this – on 20 February 1947.

Jinnah had also said that if the British Government accepted the demand for Pakistan

the Congress and the Hindu leadership would accept it in three months.

The announcement of the British Prime Minister came on 20 February 1947

and precisely three and a half month later on 3 June 1947, the Hindu leadership accepted the Partition Plan.

His arrow hits straight on the mark:

such a well-strung bow is Muhammad Ali Jinnah!

The partition plan offered by the British Government

included the condition that the provinces of Punjab and Bengal would also be divided.

The Muslim League did not want that.

But the plan had to be accepted or rejected as a whole

and hence the Council of the Muslim League accepted it as a “compromise.”

The leaders of the Hindu Mahasabha protested and declared

that they were going to live in the partitioned India without accepting the partition.

It was stated in their resolution:

The All India Congress Committee accepted the partition, but also stated in the same resolution:

The Constituent Assembly of Pakistan was inaugurated in Karachi on 10 August 1947.

To supervise the election of the permanent president of the assembly

the Muslim League made Jogendranath Mandal, a scheduled caste Hindu, the caretaker president.

He said in the inaugural address of the assembly:

Muhammad Ali Jinnah was elected the permanent president the next day.

The title “Quaid-i-Azam”, which the people had been using for him for a long time,

was now given to him officially by the assembly.

On 13 August, in a dinner banquet given in the honour of the last British Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten,

who had arrived in Karaci to transfer power,

the Quaid-i-Azam said in a toast to King George VI:

On 14 August, the Viceroy transferred the power to Pakistan.

He also read a message from the King, in which it was said that in achieving independence by agreement

Pakistan had set an example for all the freedom-loving people of the world.

On the midnight of 14 and 15 August, two independent countries emerged on the map of the world.

One was Pakistan.

The other chose for itself the name of Bharat sometime later.

On 15 August, the Quaid-i-Azam took oath as the Governor-General of Pakistan

and Liaquat Ali Khan as the Prime Minister.

In his first broadcast after independence, the Quaid-i-Azam reminded his followers

that the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent still remained a single nation

although they were now living in two separate and sovereign states.

The Partition Plan offered by the British had set up a Boundary Commission for dividing the Punjab and Bengal.

It gave many Muslim majority areas of the Eastern Punjab to India.

Because these portions gave India a better access to Jammu and Kashmir,

a princely state where the Muslims were in an overwhelming majority,

the issue of Kashmir started soon afterwards and has remained unresolved to this date.

In the Eastern Punjab and Delhi, a wave of violence was started against the Muslims by the Sikhs and the Hindus

and unspeakable attrocities were committed.

The violence spread to other parts of India as well.

There were incidents of retaliation against the Sikhs and the Hindus in Pakistan as well.

The Quaid-i-Azam urged his followers to respect the law, and maintain peace.

The Quaid-i-Azam beieved it to be a well-organized conspiracy by those who did not want Pakistan to last long.

In an interview with an international news agency, he said:

A few months later, a member of one of the Hindu extremist organizations of India assassinated Gandhi.

In his condolence message, the Quaid-i-Azam said:

The Quaid-i-Azam delivered a convocation address at the Dacca University

and suggested six things for the students of Pakistan to always keep in mind.

The Quaid-i-Azam made his last public appearance on 1 July 1948.

It was to inaugurate the State Bank of Pakistan.

On this occasion, he said:

Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah died in Karachi on 11 September 1948.

A large number of people attended his funeral the next day.

He was then laid to rest.

But the story of his life had not finished. It was just about to begin.

In 1965, India invaded Pakistan by crossing the international border.

In the agreement signed between both states after the war, Bharat agreed to respect the sovereignty of Pakistan.

Regardless of whatever else one might say about this agreement, which is known as Tashkent Declaration,

one cannot deny that by recognizing the Pakistani border as international boundary

and conceding that the peace and prosperity of the entire region depended on respecting it,

India practically refuted the resolutions which had been passed

by the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha in June 1947.

And India was compelled to ratify in practice the resolution which had been passed by the All-India Muslim League

in April 1946, and to which the Muslims of the Subcontinent had pledged their loyalty.

By 1967, most schools of thought in West and East Pakistan

had come to agree that there should be equality and unity between both wings.

Although East Pakistan separated a few years later, and became Bangladesh

yet the same Bangladesh later implemented this vision at the level of the entire South Asia

when it brought together seven countries of the region to sign the charter of SAARC.

That charter did not descend from Heaven.

If it has arisen from the soil of this region

its roots have also to be traced in the history of this very region.

And those roots are nowhere to be found except in the political thought of Jinnah and his associates.

Because the charter says that for the peace, prosperity and economic progress in this region, there need to be:

After passing through a prolonged period of civil war, Afghanistan began to consolidate itself in 2006

and was accepted as a member of SAARC.

This membership was given on the basis of the same charter of SAARC

which we have seen to be reflecting the vision of Jinnah.

To what extent these countries succeed in implementing this vision is something Time will tell.

But what cannot be denied anymore is that the political philosophy of Jinnah has remained alive

and has been shaping the destiny of the entire South Asia.

Whenever a chance arises for growth in the South Asian countries

it can be traced back to the efforts and ideals of Jinnah's political mind.

If we look beyond, we may see that the world today is also being shaped by those forces

which Jinnah unleashed in history through his role in

the evolution of the Commonwealth and in the international affairs of his times.

His blood it is that courses through

all the paths of loyalty.

His picture it is that smiles

from every mirror in this gathering.

He who has moulded every dream

into the form of reality.

If only we could develop self-confidence and nataional consciousness,

we might find that the world is a dream

and we are its interpretation.

Then we might be able to understand that the Quaid-i-Azam did more than inspiring us.

He also gave us a method, which can enable us to continue that journey

some of the stages of which we covered under his leadership.

This is what Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan tried to make us realise

on the occasion of Jinnah's death.

He had said: