Jinnah once dismissed India’s potential Hindu domination as a bogey before Gandhi’s emergence, marginalising and transforming him from the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity into the ‘sole champion’ of Muslim rights
Academic Ayesha Jalal’s book The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (1985) broke new ground. It argued Pakistan’s founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, never wanted a separate state and that he was only using the demand for it as a bargaining chip to strengthen the Muslim voice post-independence. It showed that the 1947 partition of the subcontinent for Pakistan’s creation was an accident and a miscalculation.
Jalal provided new insights into India’s decolonisation, seven years after the Jinnah-led Muslim League in 1940 first demanded independent states in India’s northwest and north. She focused on Jinnah’s role and traced the evolution of his demand. She argued that the Pakistan demand was a play for a loose federation. Jalal relied on primary sources to probe how Jinnah proposed to reconcile the contradiction between his claim of being the sole spokesman for all Indian Muslims and geography, which meant there would always be as many Muslims outside Pakistan as inside it.
Over seven decades later, Jinnah’s legacy continues to cast a long shadow, particularly on the 200 million Muslims in India amid the rise of Hindu nationalism. It is used as a stick to beat Muslims, almost exonerating the British and their divide-and-rule policy. It was also no coincidence that the British not only divided the subcontinent but also the Middle East to serve their strategic ends.
Jinnah From Ambassador of Unity to Partition Architect
Jinnah opposed Indian national movement leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s mixing of religion and politics before metamorphosing into the ‘sole champion’ of Muslim rights. Once known as the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, Jinnah came to espouse the two-nation theory in the 1940s, advocating for the division of British India along religious lines.
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For a significant part of his public life, Jinnah embraced nationalist politics after being drawn into it while assisting Dadabhai Naoroji, who led the Indian National Congress three times between 1886 and 1907. Jinnah, who was educated at Karachi’s Christian Missionary Society High School before entering Lincoln’s Inn and becoming the youngest Indian to pass the bar, joined the Congress in 1906 after returning from London to practise law in Bombay. Seven years later, he became a Muslim League member and worked for cooperation between the two organisations.
Jinnah would dismiss the potential threat of Hindu domination of India as a bogey put before by enemies to frighten Indians from cooperation and unity needed for the establishment of self-government. In 1916, Jinnah played a key role in the Congress and the Muslim League’s presentation of common demands to the British, or the Lucknow Pact.
How Jinnah’s Break with Gandhi Shaped the Two-Nation Theory
Gandhi’s emergence marginalized Jinnah. In December 1920, Jinnah was booed at a Congress meeting when he insisted on referring to Gandhi as ‘Mr Gandhi’, rather than Mahatma (Great Soul). By the 1940s, their relationship soured to the extent that they found it difficult to engage.
Jinnah would soon become the leading Muslim League figure and call it the sole organization committed to Muslim concerns. He alleged betrayal of Muslim interests after the 1937 elections amid fears that the Constituent Assembly and independent India’s political life would be Hindu-dominated. In his presidential address to the 1940 Muslim League session in Lahore, he said it is difficult to appreciate why Hindus fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism.
He added that they are not religions in the strict sense of the word but distinct social orders. ‘…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.’ Jinnah argued that Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, and literature.
He referred to the experience of the working of the provincial constitutions since 1937 and added any repetition of such a government must lead to civil war and the raising of private armies ‘as recommended by Gandhi to the Hindus of Sukkur when he said that they must defend themselves violently or non-violently, blow for blow, and if they could not they must emigrate.’
Jinnah’s Muslim Homeland Demand and the Partition
Jinnah called Muslims a nation according to any definition of the term. He argued that they must have their homelands, their territory, and their state. ‘We wish to live in peace and harmony with our neighbours as a free and independent people. We wish our people to develop to the fullest our spiritual, cultural, economic, social, and political life, in a way that we think best and in consonance with our own ideals and according to the genius of our people.’
Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, who spearheaded the ‘Quit India Movement’ against the British during the Second World War, were imprisoned in the 1940s, allowing Jinnah to consolidate his position as the ‘sole protector’ of Muslim interests. Muslim League’s successes in the 1945-46 elections helped it to emerge as a major political force alongside Congress.
Rioting and civil disturbances continued to rise in the 1940s. The British used the worsening situation before Prime Minister Clement Attlee announced the end of British rule in India on a date not later than June 1948.’ The deadline was brought forward by a year. Jinnah favoured a federation as Muslims were scattered across India, but Nehru’s advocacy for a centralised state prevailed at the cost of the subcontinent’s division.
Moth-Eaten Pakistan
Jinnah did not exactly get what he wanted. He complained that the final settlement was ‘moth-eaten’ and incomplete, 14 years after Cambridge University student Choudhary Rahmat Ali first coined the acronym, ‘Pakistan’, in 1933. The ‘K’ in the acronym stood for Kashmir, ‘P’ stood for Punjab, ‘A’ for Afghan (the North-West Frontier Province now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), ‘I’ for Indus, ‘S’ for Sind, and ‘TAN’ for Baluchistan.
The idea was dismissed as ‘chimerical and impractical’ before Jinnah burst on the scene to turn the tide after a brief retirement from politics in 1930. He put his charisma and training as a barrister to good use in reviving a moribund Muslim League, and Pakistan became a reality in 1947. Jinnah died immediately after the first anniversary of Pakistan’s foundation. The death left a vacuum, which is blamed for much of Pakistan’s problems, including security costs due to conflict with India.
Jinnah’s Unfinished Dreams: The Mumbai Mansion, a Loose Federation
Had Jinnah lived longer, would his idea of a loose federation have been realised? Had he given up on the idea? Perhaps not. How else does one explain his plans to retire in Bombay (now Mumbai) or buy 500 Air India Ltd shares in March 1947, five months before Pakistan’s creation? Jinnah wanted to purchase the sea-facing Sandow Castle spread over 18 acres for Rs 5 lakh in Mumbai. It is believed that Jinnah even wanted to spend his vacations at his bungalow in Mumbai’s Malabar Hill after retiring from public life.
Jinnah hesitantly left the house a week before the Partition on August 7, 1947, hinting he would return from Pakistan soon on holiday. ‘Some day I may come back and live here,’ Jinnah is quoted to have said as he asked Bombay’s then-prime minister, BG Kher, to look after the property. The luxurious house remains locked and neglected. Pakistan has long pressed India to hand over Jinnah’s Mumbai house for sentimental reasons.
Jinnah’s relatives, the Indian and Pakistani governments, have been involved in a legal battle over the property. Jinnah sold another bungalow on Delhi’s Aurangzeb (now APJ Abdul Kalam) Road before going to Pakistan. His successor, Liaquat Ali Khan, could not do the same with his mansion on the nearby Tilak Marg, where he lived along with his wife, who taught English at Delhi University, until the Partition. The mansion was later handed over to the Pakistan government and now serves as its high commissioner’s residence in Delhi.
