["Jinnah's fears" were far more than "fears" expressed in hushed tones, he
actually expressed these through his strident advocacy - advocacy of the
"two nation" theory.
Thereby the fears turned self-fulfilling.
<<It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to
understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religions in
the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct
social orders; and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever
evolve a common nationality; and this misconception of one Indian nation
has gone far beyond the limits and is the cause of more of our troubles and
will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in time.
The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies,
social customs, and literature[s]. They neither intermarry nor interdine
together, and indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are
based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspects
[=perspectives?] on life, and of life, are different. It is quite clear
that Hindus and Mussalmans derive their inspiration from different sources
of history. They have different epics, their heroes are different, and
different episode[s]. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other, and
likewise their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such
nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as
a majority, must lead to growing discontent, and final. destruction of any
fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a state.>>
('Presidential address (para 23) by Muhammad Ali Jinnah to the Muslim
League
Lahore, 1940': <
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_jinnah_lahore_1940.html
>.)
Of course, Savarkar had said all these things even earlier.
<<“There are two antagonistic nations living side by side in India”,
underlining, “India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and
homogenous nation. On the contrary, there are two nations in the main: the
Hindus and the Muslims, in India.”
Further quoting Savarkar as saying that “several infantile politicians
commit the serious mistake in supposing that India is already welded into a
harmonious nation, or that it could be welded thus for the mere wish to do
so”, the author of the article, Nirajan Takle, comments, he regularly
criticised Gandhi and his “obsession for Hindu-Muslim unity”.
The article says, “The theory of two nations, first proposed in ‘Essentials
of Hindutva’, was passed as a resolution of the Mahasabha in 1937. Three
years later, the All-India Muslim League, led by Jinnah, adopted the
concept in its Lahore session.”>>
(Source: 'Savarkar in Ahmedabad "declared support" to two-nation theory in
1937, followed by Jinnah three years later' at <
https://www.counterview.net/2016/01/savarkar-in-ahmedabad-declared-support.html
>.)
They were/are complementary forces.
And, the Pakistan created by Jinnah had/has no place for "minorities".
Not by accident, but by design.
Its name, its flag and its constitution, to be adopted after his death, all
bear the unmistakable and all too explicit and exclusive stamp of a
particular religion.
Consequently, is riven with bloodletting much more than even today's India
is.
What is most disturbing is that the Bharat Jalao Party, now at the helm, is
dead set, fully backed up by its rather formidable brigade of acolytes, to
emulate that ugly example and push this nation down that self-destructing
path, no matter what.
《India’s political history after independence, beginning with B.R.
Ambedkar’s discontents, Gandhi’s murder and the many communal riots that
followed, told us that the politics of hatred ran far from cold. India
confirmed Jinnah’s fears.》]
https://thewire.in/history/jinnah-pakistan-partition-amu-portrait
Debate: Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the Lost Minority
Jinnah’s initial demand for Muslims to be able to share power with Hindus
was a legitimate approach towards political equality, though he later took
it to the frustrating ends of communal politics.
Debate: Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the Lost Minority
Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee
COMMUNALISMHISTORY
13/MAY/2018
The spectre of Muhammad Ali Jinnah haunts India again – this time in the
form of a portrait that reminds of India’s pre-Partition history, and
memory.
The portrait, hung in Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), simply portrays the
lingering affinity to that history and memory. To imagine (and accuse)
historical affinities as conspiratorial, is to succumb to the nation’s
original sin: paranoia.
The attack on the students of AMU by a vigilante gang on a deliberate
pretext, over a portrait that has stood since 1938, is a political move to
rake up the monster of Partition. It is a move to tell the ‘minority’, ‘You
are a minority, and your history and memory are not part of the nation’.
That is a perfect Hindu majoritarian tribute to Jinnah’s fears. That the
police were reportedly harsher on the students than the gang that attacked
them, vacillating between sentiments and law, is a grave gesture against
the secularity of our institutions.
Apart from this, AMU is also dealing with the issue of its ‘minority’
status, which the current government stands opposed to. The idea of a
‘minority’ always makes any majoritarian political ideology uncomfortable,
as it means special constitutional rights and protection, as any fair
democracy would guarantee. It is easier to demonise people in the name of a
community (Muslim, Christian) than as a minority, as being minority is a
condition that demands political responsibility. It changes the terms of
discourse. Jinnah was aware of all this. But first let us sort out a bit of
history, for Jinnah’s sake.
In Thy Hand, Great Anarch! Nirad C. Chaudhuri – polemicist, provocateur,
the man the Hindu Right loved but could not impress – had this to say about
the Quaid-e-Azam:
“Jinnah is the only man who came out with success and honour from the
ignoble end of the British Empire in India. He never made a secret of what
he wanted, never prevaricated, never compromised, and yet succeeded in
inflicting an unmitigated defeat on both the British government and the
Indian National Congress. … But for this very thing he has been pursued
with mean malice by British politicians, Hindu politicians, and also by
writers on both sides which had to admit defeat by his hands. It was said
by them that all the misfortunes that came on the Indian people with the
withdrawal of the British were due to his unreasonable extremism. But what
is called his extremism was the minimum demand of the Muslims, and was
known to everybody for years. Why did anyone expect the leader of the
Muslims not to stand up for it? And if it was unreasonable why did both the
British authorities and the Congress comply with it instead of calling his
bluff?” [emphasis added]
>From Chaudhuri’s assessment, Jinnah’s demand was fair, it was the least
that Muslims as a ‘minority’ could have asked for, and its force (and
legitimacy) was confirmed by the demand being granted. As a leader of a
future ‘minority’, Jinnah had the right to “stand up” for the rights of his
community. This latter point adds weight to Chaudhuri’s initial remarks
that while Jinnah was clear about his politics, his opponents weren’t, and
they ended up with defeat and eternal rancour.
Chaudhuri found it astonishing how the Congress, having “rejected the
Cabinet Mission’s plan to retain the unity of India by giving the Muslims
the chance to be dominant in certain regions”, later agreed upon a terrible
disaster like Partition. It shows an alarming lack of political consistency
on the part of the Congress, despite Jinnah’s fault in aggravating a
complex issue. Jinnah’s demand for Muslims to be able to share power with
Hindus was a legitimate approach towards political equality. Betrayed by
the Congress’s change of stance on the Cabinet Mission Plan, Jinnah took
this demand to the frustrating ends of communal politics, and
irreconcilably moved towards the idea of Pakistan.
To seal another matter in history, about the Bengal side of Partition at
least, Chaudhuri, who was witness to the event, wrote in Thy Hand about how
Hindu leaders incited people to support Partition:
“In 1947, the Bengali Hindus were wanting it (Partition), and the Muslims
were opposed to it. … I had been taking note of this new turn in Bengali
Hindu political thinking for some two years from the end of the war. The
idea of a partition was being put forward by two Bengali politicians who
might have been called Hindu Ultras. At first I did not take that
seriously, but when after the killings of 1946 in Calcutta the idea of
partition gained ground even among the Hindus of East Bengal I became
alarmed.”
Jinnah and Gandhi. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Yes, Jinnah’s announcement of ‘Direct Action Day’ on August 16, 1946 paved
the way for communal clashes in Bengal, where initially every community was
equally fierce on the other. The killings precipitated into the Noakhali
riots of October 1946, where primarily Hindus were killed. Gandhi, who had
travelled across Noakhali and adjoining districts on foot, publicly
castigated the Muslim League’s interim chief minister of Bengal, Huseyn
Shaheed Suhrawardy, for his dubious role in engineering the riots.
But Chaudhuri, despite being a pragmatist, did not see these riots as a
cause for allowing fear to take over the future of the Hindu-Muslim
relationship. Why did the Bengali Hindus succumb to the political logic –
and calculation – of fear? And if they did, why blame it all on Jinnah and
the Muslims? Chaudhuri, as always, has a scathing answer: “Like all weak
people, they would not take the blame on themselves.” Ayesha Jalal, in her
book on Jinnah, The Sole Spokesman, wrote about Congress workers conniving
with the Hindu Right to foment pro-Partition sentiments among Hindus in
Bengal. Chaudhuri’s account corroborates her view from the Indian side.
In the 1930s, Jinnah was suspected by other Muslim leaders to be soft on
the Congress and Hindus. But the Congress repeatedly dilly-dallied with the
question of political representation. Jinnah grew increasingly convinced
that following independence, Muslims will have to play second fiddle in
India’s polity. In his 1940 presidential address to the Muslim League in
Lahore, Jinnah reiterated, “The Mussalmans are not a minority. The
Mussalmans are a nation by any definition.” He then tried to establish the
logic further: “To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one
as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing
discontent.”
Was political discontent merely about numbers or about politics? From the
possibility of being an assertive, power-sharing minority in a unified
India, Jinnah finally came to champion the other option, declaring the
Muslims as a nation. Facing the constraints of political negotiation with
Congress leaders, an exasperated Jinnah collapsed (religious) identity and
nation. This was, by all measure, his greatest disservice to the
subcontinent. His thin, secular legacy in Pakistan evaporated after his
death. Hindu-Muslim relations got engulfed in Partition’s accusatory
narratives, providing ammunition to the Hindu Right, whose ideology was
firmly established since 1925.
Yet, we must acknowledge that Jinnah deserved a generous response to his
initial political demands. His fears for the rights of the Muslim minority
in India, of course worsened by Partition which he had a tremendous hand
in, weren’t unfounded by any means. In the 1940 address, Jinnah mocked the
idea of what he sarcastically called “the privilege to disagree” regarding
the question of “safeguards of the rights and interests of minorities” to
be ensured by the constituent assembly, entrusted with writing the
constitution. He rejected the idea of the “judicial tribunal” Gandhi
promised, about what he considered was an issue of “social contract”.
Airing the utter lack of trust in the political atmosphere, Jinnah
wondered, once the British granted independence, whether the Hindu majority
will meet the Muslim demands “with the help of the British bayonet” or
Gandhi’s ahimsa. India’s political history after independence, beginning
with B.R. Ambedkar’s discontents, Gandhi’s murder and the many communal
riots that followed, told us that the politics of hatred ran far from cold.
India confirmed Jinnah’s fears.
In their famous rounds of talks in 1944, all that Jinnah wanted – letter
after letter and surely meeting after meeting – from Gandhi, was a clear
plan of how to manage the separation of the Hindu and Muslim provinces and
what share of power the Congress was willing to grant the Muslim League.
Gandhi stubbornly stuck to the ‘Rajaji formula’, which Jinnah rejected. Why
should a matter of justice be premised upon a ‘formula’? Jinnah couldn’t
risk it, and the talks failed. India lost its last chance to establish a
unique historical example, where the minority was given the rare honour to
negotiate its place in the republic.
The minority, as imagined by Jinnah, was based on the language of
communities, where secular principles will guide religious sentiments.
Indian secularism retained that double sensibility, but only after losing
its ties with the national minority that Jinnah had dreamt of.
Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee is a poet who teaches at Ambedkar University,
Delhi.
--
Peace Is Doable
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