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Father of the Nation Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah's achievement as the founder of Pakistan, dominates everything else he did in his long and crowded public life spanning some 42 years. Yet, by any standard, his was an eventful life, his personality multidimensional and his achievements in other fields were many, if not equally great. Indeed, several were the roles he had played with distinction: at one time or another, he was one of the greatest legal luminaries India had produced during the first half of the century, an `ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, a great constitutionalist, a distinguished parliamentarian, a great politician, an indefatigable freedom-fighter, a dynamic Muslim leader, a political strategist and, above all one of the great nation-builders of modern times. What, however, makes him so remarkable is the fact that while similar other leaders assumed the leadership of traditionally well-defined nations and espoused their cause, or led them to freedom, he created a nation out of an inchoate and down-trodeen minority and established a cultural and national home for it. And all that within a decease. For over three decades before the successful culmination in 1947, of the Muslim struggle for freedom in the South-Asian subcontinent, Jinnah had provided political leadership to the Indian Muslims: initially as one of the leaders, but later, since 1947, as the only prominent leader- the Quaid-e-Azam.
EARLY
LIFE
Jinnah born on December 25, 1876, in a prominent mercantile family in Karachi and educated
at the Sindh Madras-Ul-Islam and the Christian Mission School at his birth place,Jinnah
joined the Lincoln's Inn in 1893 to become the youngest Indian to be called to the Bar,
three years later. Starting out in the legal profession with nothing to fall back upon
except his native ability and determination, young Jinnah rose to prominence and became
Bombay's most successful lawyer, as few did, within a few years. Once he was firmly
established in the legal profession, Jinnah formally entered politics in 1905 from the
platform of the Indian National Congress. At the Calcutta Congress session (December
1906), he also made his first political speech in support of the resolution on
self-government.
Three years later, in January 1910, Jinnah was elected to the newly-constituted Imperial
Legislative Council. All through his parliamentary career, which spanned some four
decades, he was probably the most powerful voice in the cause of Indian freedom and Indian
rights. Jinnah, who was also the first Indian to pilot a private member's Bill through the
Council, soon became a leader of a group inside the legislature. Mr. Montagu (1879-1924),
Secretary of State for India, at the close of the First World War, considered Jinnah
"perfect mannered, impressive-looking, armed to the teeth with
dialects..."Jinnah, he felt, "is a very clever man, and it is, of course, an
outrage that such a man should have no chance of running the affairs of his own
country."
For about three decades since his entry into politics in 1906, Jinnah passionately believed in and assiduously worked for Hindu-Muslim unity. Gokhale, the foremost Hindu leader before Gandhi, had once said of him, "He has the true stuff in him and that freedom from all sectarian prejudice which will make him the best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity: And, to be sure, he did become the architect of Hindu-Muslim Unity: he was responsible for the Congress-League Pact of 1916, known popularly as Luckhnau Pact- the only pact ever signed between the two political organizations, the Congress and the All-India Muslim League, representing, as they did, the two major communities in the subcontinent.
The Congress-League scheme embodied in this pact was to become the basis for the Montagu-Chemlsford Reforms, also known as the Act of 1919. In retrospect, the Luckhnau Pact represented a milestone in the evolution of Indian politics. For one thing, it conceded Muslims the right to separate electorate, reservation of seats in the legislatures and weightage in representation both at the Center and the minority provinces. Thus, their retention was ensured in the next phase of reforms. For another, it represented a tacit recognition of the All-India Muslim League as the representative organisation of the Muslims, thus strengthening the trend towards Muslim individuality in Indian politics. And to Jinnah goes the credit for all this. Thus, by 1917, Jinnah came to be recognized among both Hindus and Muslims as one of India's most outstanding political leaders. Not only was he prominent in the Congress and the Imperial Legislative Council, he was also the President of the All-India Muslim and that of the Bombay Branch of the Home Rule League. More important, because of his key-role in the Congress-League entente at Luckhnau, he was hailed as the ambassador, as well as the embodiment, of Hindu-Muslim unity.
HIS
STRUGGLE
In subsequent years, however, he felt dismayed at the injection of violence into
politics. Since Jinnah stood for "ordered progress", moderation, gradualism and
constitutionalism, he felt that political terrorism was not the pathway to national
liberation but, the dark alley to disaster and destruction. Hence, the constitutionalist
Jinnah could not possibly, countenance Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's novel methods of
Satyagrah (civil disobedience) and the triple boycott of government-aided schools and
colleges, courts and councils and British textiles. Earlier, in October 1920, when Gandhi,
having been elected President of the Home Rule League, sought to change its constitution
as well as its nomenclature, Jinnah had resigned from the Home Rule League, saying:
"Your extreme program has for the moment struck the imagination mostly of the
inexperienced youth and the ignorant and the illiterate. All this means disorganization
and chaos". Jinnah did not believe that ends justified the means.
In the ever-growing frustration among the masses caused by colonial rule, there was ample cause for extremism. But, Gandhi's doctrine of non-cooperation, Jinnah felt, even as Rabindranath Tagore(1861-1941) did also feel, was at best one of negation and despair: it might lead to the building up of resentment, but nothing constructive. Hence, he opposed tooth and nail the tactics adopted by Gandhi to exploit the Khilafat and wrongful tactics in the Punjab in the early twenties. On the eve of its adoption of the Gandhi program, Jinnah warned the Nagpur Congress Session (1920) "you are making a declaration and committing the Indian National Congress to a program, which you will not be able to carry out".
. In order to bridge Hindu-Muslim differences on the constitutional plan, these proposals even waived the Muslim right to separate electorate, the most basic Muslim demand since 1906, which though recognized by the congress in the Luckhnau Pact, had again become a source of friction between the two communities. surprisingly though, the Nehru Report (1928), which represented the Congress-sponsored proposals for the future constitution of India, negated the minimum Muslim demands embodied in the Delhi Muslim Proposals.
In vain did Jinnah argue at the National convention (1928): "What we want is that Hindus and Mussalmans should march together until our object is achieved...These two communities have got to be reconciled and united and made to feel that their interests are common". The Convention's blank refusal to accept Muslim demands represented the most devastating setback to Jinnah's life-long efforts to bring about Hindu-Muslim unity, it meant "the last straw" for the Muslims, and "the parting of the ways" for him, as he confessed to a Parsee friend at that time.
JOIN
MUSLIM LEAGUE
Thus, the task that awaited Jinnah was anything but easy. The Muslim League was
dormant: primary branches it had none; even its provincial organizations were, for the
most part, ineffective and only nominally under the control of the central organization.
Nor did the central body have any coherent policy of its own till the Bombay session
(1936), which Jinnah organized. Extremely frustrating as the situation was, the only
consolation Jinnah had at this juncture was in Allama Iqbal(1877-1938), the
poet-philosopher, who stood steadfast by him and helped to charter the course of Indian
politics from behind the scene.
Undismayed by this bleak situation, Jinnah devoted himself with singleness of purpose to organizing the Muslims on one platform. He embarked upon country-wide tours. He pleaded with provincial Muslim leaders to sink their differences and make common cause with the League. He exhorted the Muslim masses to organize themselves and join the League. He gave coherence and direction to Muslim sentiments on the Government of India Act, 1935. . He also formulated a viable League manifesto for the election scheduled for early 1937.
Despite all the manifold odds stacked against it, the Muslim League won some 108 (about 23 per cent) seats out of a total of 485 Muslim seats in the various legislature. Though not very impressive in itself, the League's partial success assumed added significance in view of the fact that the League won the largest number of Muslim seats and that it was the only all-India party of the Muslims in the country. Thus, the elections represented the first milestone on the long road to putting Muslim India on the map of the subcontinent. Congress in Power With the year 1937 opened the most mementos decade in modern Indian history. In that year came into force the provincial part of the Government of India Act, 1935, granting autonomy to Indians for the first time, in the provinces.
The practical manifestation of the policy of the Congress which took office in July, 1937, in seven out of eleven provinces, convinced Muslims that, in the Congress scheme of things, they could live only on sufferance of Hindus and as "second class" citizens. The Congress provincial governments, it may be remembered, had embarked upon a policy and launched a program in which Muslims felt that their religion, language and culture were not safe. This blatantly aggressive Congress policy was seized upon by Jinnah to awaken the Muslims to a new consciousness, organize them on all-India platform, and make them a power to be reckoned with. He also gave coherence, direction and articulation to their innermost, yet vague, urges and aspirations. Above all, the filled them with his indomitable will, his own unflinching faith in their destiny.
THE
NEW SPIRIT
As a result of Jinnah's ceaseless efforts, the Muslims awakened from what
Professor Baker calls "unreflective silence" , and to "the spiritual
essence of nationality" that had existed among them for a pretty long time. Roused by
the impact of successive Congress hammerings, the Muslims, as Ambedkar (principal author
of independent India's Constitution) says, "searched their social consciousness in a
desperate attempt to find coherent and meaningful articulation to their cherished
yearnings. To their great relief, they discovered that their sentiments of nationality had
flamed into nationalism". In addition, not only had they developed" the will to
live as a "nation", had also endowed them with a territory which they could
occupy and make a State as well as a cultural home for the newly discovered nation.. So
that when, after their long pause, the Muslims gave expression to their innermost
yearnings, these turned out to be in favor of a separate Muslim nationhood and of a
separate Muslim state.
DEMAND
FOR PAKISTAN
"We are a nation", they claimed in the of the Quaid-e-Azam- "We are a
nation with our own distinctive culture and civilization, language and literature, art and
architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of values and proportion, legal laws and moral
code, customs and calendar, history and tradition, aptitudes and ambitions; in short, we
have our own distinctive outlook on life and of life. By all canons of international law,
we are a nation". The formulation of the Muslim demand for Pakistan in 1940 had a
tremendous impact on the nature and course of Indian politics. On the one hand, it
shattered for ever the Hindu dreams of a pseudo-Indian, in fact, Hindu empire on British
exit from India: on the other, it heralded an era of Islamic renaissance and creativity in
which the Indian Muslims were to be active participants.
Equally hostile were the British to the Muslim demand, their hostility having stemmed from their belief that the unity of India was their main achievement and their foremost contribution. The irony was that both the Hindus and the British had not anticipated the astonishingly tremendous response that the Pakistan demand had elicited from the Muslim masses. Above all, they failed to realize how a hundred million people had suddenly become supremely conscious of their distinct nationhood and their high destiny. In channeling the course of Muslim politics towards Pakistan, no less than in directing it towards its consummation in the establishment of Pakistan in 1947, non played a more decisive role than did Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah.
FIRST
LEADER OF NEWLY BORN STATE
In recognition of his singular contribution, Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah was
nominated by the Muslim League as the Governor-General of Pakistan, while the Congress
appointed Mountbatten as India's first Governor-General. Pakistan, it has been truly said,
was born in virtual chaos. Indeed, few nations in the world have started on their career
with less resourcesand in more treacherous circumstances. The new nation did not inherit a
central government, a capital, an administrative core,or an organized defense force. Its
social and administrative resources were poor;there was little equipment and still less
statistics. The Punjab holocaust had left vast areas in a shambles with communications
disrupted. This, alongwith the en masse migration of the Hindu and Sikh business and
managerial classes, left the economy almost shattered.
The treasury was empty, India having denied Pakistan the major share of its cash balances.On top of all this, the still unorganized nation was called upon to feed some eight million refugees who had fled the insecurities and barbarities of the north Indian plains that long, hot summer. If all this was symptomatic of Pakistan's administrative and economic weakness, the Indian annexation, through military action in November 1947, of Junagadh (which had originally acceded to Pakistan) and the Kashmir war over the State's accession (October 1947-December 1948) exposed her military weakness. In the circumstances, therefore, it was nothing short of a miracle that Pakistan survived at all. That it survived and forged ahead was mainly due to one man-Mohammed Ali Jinnah. The nation desperately needed in the person of a charismatic leader at that critical juncture in the nation's history, and he fulfilled that need profoundly. After all, he was more than a mere Governor-General: he was the Quaid-e-Azam who had brought the State into being.
In the ultimate analysis, his very presence at the helm of affairs was responsible for enabling the newly born nation to overcome the terrible crisis on the morrow of its cataclysmic birth. He mustered up the immense prestige and the unquestioning loyalty he commanded among the people to energize them, to raise their morale, land directed the profound feelings of patriotism that the freedom had generated, along constructive channels. Though tired and in poor health, Jinnah yet carried the heaviest part of the burden in that first crucial year. He laid down the policies of the new state, called attention to the immediate problems confronting the nation and told the members of the Constituent Assembly, the civil servants and the Armed Forces what to do and what the nation expected of them. He saw to it that law and order was maintained at all costs, despite the provocation that the large-scale riots in north India had provided. He moved from Karachi to Lahore for a while and supervised the immediate refugee problem in the Punjab. In a time of fierce excitement, he remained sober, cool and steady. He advised his excited audience in Lahore to concentrate on helping the refugees,to avoid retaliation, exercise restraint and protect the minorities. He assured the minorities of a fair deal, assuaged their inured sentiments, and gave them hope and comfort. He toured the various provinces, attended to their particular problems and instilled in the people a sense of belonging. He reversed the British policy in the North-West Frontier and ordered the withdrawal of the troops from the tribal territory of Waziristan, thereby making the Pathans feel themselves an integral part of Pakistan's body-politics. He created a new Ministry of States and Frontier Regions, and assumed responsibility for ushering in a new era in Balochistan. He settled the controversial question of the states of Karachi, secured the accession of States, especially of Kalat which seemed problematical and carried on negotiations with Lord Mountbatten for the settlement of the Kashmir Issue.
MESSAGE
OF THE JINNAH
It was, therefore, with a sense of supreme satisfaction at the fulfillment of his mission
that Jinnah told the nation in his last message on 14 August, 1948: "The foundations
of your State have been laid and it is now for you to build and build as quickly and as
well as you can". In accomplishing the task he had taken upon himself on the morrow
of Pakistan's birth, Jinnah had worked himself to death, but he had, to quote Richard
Simons, "contributed more than any other man to Pakistan's survival". He died on
11 September, 1948. How true was Lord Pethick Lawrence, the former Secretary of State for
India, when he said, "Gandhi died by the hands of an assassin; Jinnah died by his
devotion to Pakistan".
The Agha Khan considered him "the greatest man he ever met", Beverley Nichols, the author of `Verdict on India', called him "the most important man in Asia", and Dr. Kailashnath Katju, the West Bengal Governor in 1948, thought of him as "an outstanding figure of this century not only in India, but in the whole world". While Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, called him "one of the greatest leaders in the Muslim world", the Grand Mufti of Palestine considered his death as a "great loss" to the entire world of Islam. It was, however, given to Surat Chandra Bose, leader of the Forward Bloc wing of the Indian National Congress, to sum up succinctly his personal and political achievements. "Mr. Jinnah",he said on his death in 1948, "was great as a lawyer, once great as a Congressman, great as a leader of Muslims, great as a world politician and diplomat, and greatest of all as a man of action, By Mr. Jinnah's passing away, the world has lost one of the greatest statesmen and Pakistan its life-giver, philosopher and guide". Such was Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the man and his mission, such the range of his accomplishments and achievements.
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