Tuesday 24 July 2012

Jinnah’s secular Pakistan

Jinnah’s secular Pakistan


Addressing the minorities in particular, Mr. Jinnah said: "If you work in a spirit of co-operation, forgetting the past and burying the hatchet, I will say that every one of you, no matter to what community you belong, no matter what colour, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges and obligations."
Source: The Hindu
He (Jinnah) has put the onus for equal citizenship right on the good behaviour of the minorities. Their plight later on is simply due to their bad behaviour. Full stop.
By the way, The Hindu also reports that Jinnah had indeed said those ringing words about Hindus ceasing to be Hindus (which in fact has happened incidentally) etc. The fact remains however that neither before that speech nor after that speech he had ever spoken of or done anything about minority rights and protection. So, August 11, 1947 speech was a one-off to hoodwink the powerful friends, probably done even at their prodding.
OTOH, Jinnah readily agreed with the ulema to impose Shariah in a free Pakistan to win their support. The letter that Jinnah wrote to the Pir of Manki Sharif, in Naushera of NWFP, in which he said that Shariah will be imposed in Pakistan to manage the affairs of the Muslim Community, was produced in the Constituent Assembly in 1949 to support the Objectives Resolution. It was this Pir's support, based on the promise of Shariah in Pakistan, that helped the Muslim League to turn the situation favourable to itself in NWFP which was otherwise under the Congress Rule. It was this Pir who let loose violence when Nehru visited that region. He also helped in procuring manpower for jihad in J&K in October 1947. As a result of Jinnah's promise, the Pir of Manki Sharif declared jihad to achieve Pakistan and ordered the members of his anjuman to support the League in the 1946 elections
While addressing the Karachi Bar Association on 25 January 1948 on the occasion of the Holy Prophet’s birthday, Jinnah said: “Some are misled by propaganda. Islamic principles are as applicable to life as they were 1,300 years ago. The Constitution of Pakistan will be made on the basis of the shariah”.
In the 14 August, 1947 speech in which, in answer to Mountbatten’s reference to Akbar the Great, as the model for the new Muslim state, he pointed to the greater example of the Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, thereby indicating where Pakistan's Constitution was headed to.
One of Pakistan’s renowned political scientists, Prof. (Late) Khalid bin Sayeed narrates in his book, ‘Pakistan: The Formative Phase 1957-1948’ Jinnah’s assurances to a group of visiting Islamists thus: “…Constituent Assembly…will be predominantly Muslim…and would be able to enact laws for the Muslims not inconsistence with Shariah Laws and the Muslims will no longer be obliged by un-Islamic laws…” While portraying himself as a secularist and a Constitutionalist, Jinnah nevertheless asked only an Islamic clergy, Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani who had apostatised Shias, to raise the flag of Pakistan on Aug. 14, 1947. Later, Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, who had apostatized Ahmedis and calling for them to be stoned to death, was made Sheikh-ul-Islam-i-Pakistan. It was Shabbir Usmani who later drafted the Objectives Resolution.
In passionate speeches that Jinnah delivered to masses of the new state of Pakistan, he addressed them as ‘Mussalmans’ instead of as ‘Pakistanis’ and used terms like ‘mujahid’, ‘tenets of the Holy Quran’, and referred to Pakistan as a ‘bulwark of Islam’.
Again, on Oct. 30, 1947, with the plan of his Kashmir invasion to grab it floundering badly, Jinnah resorted to appealing to Islamic fervour. He asked Pakistanis to make sacrifices for ‘the honour of Pakistan and Islam’. He exhorted his countrymen to ‘lay the foundations of democracy on the bases of truly Islamic ideals and principles’. His muddled thinking but his unequivocal support for an Islamic governance was amply demonstrated in his Feb. 1948 public address over Radio Pakistan when he said that Pakistan’s to-be-drafted Constitution should be based on Islam but he hoped that Pakistan would not be a theocratic state. Even as far back as c. 1941, Jinnah had assured a representative of the influential founder of Jama'at-e-Islami, Mawdudi that he saw no incompatibility between their two approaches. He said that as the events were unfolding yet, he was constrained from openly asserting the Islamist nature of Pakistan !! His further words to Mawdudi's representative really betrayed what he was up to. "I will continue to strive for the cause of a separate Muslim state, and you do your services in this regard; our efforts need not be mutually exclusive. I seek to secure the land for the mosque; once that land belongs to us, then we can decide on how to build the mosque.” The noted Pakistani analyst, Khaled Ahmed interprets this as follows: What this meant for the Jama‘at was that a continuum existed between the activities of the Muslim League and those of the Jama‘at; where one ended at partition the other began: the Jama‘at-i Islami was to inherit Pakistan. Thus Mawdudi reconciled with the Quaid-e-Azam whom he once referred to as Kafir-e-Azam (the Great Infidel).
It is a different matter though that in circa 2007, clerics belonging to the same Ulema community denounced the Quaid as not a hero of Pakistan because by that time Islam had become more distilled in the mosque for which the Quaid acquired land.
Above post copied from :LINK
Even that speech in which Jinnah  is supposed to have spoken about his vision of a secular Pakistan probably never happened as Pakistan doesn't have a single recording. They then contacted All India Radio (AIR) for a copy, which replied that it never had any. Source

So much for myth of a secular, liberal Jinnah.