Quaid-e-Azam and the Sikhs

Quaid-e-Azam with Master Tara Singh & Khizar Hayat Tiwana

Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948) was undoubtedly a fascinating, striking and remarkable personality. Possessed of excellent qualities of pen and mind, he played a significant role in changing the course of history and destinies of men in South Asia. A born leader of men, an experienced politician, a dynamic parliamentarian and a far-sighted statesman, he valiantly fought against the British imperialism and Hindu chauvinism in India and single-handedly won the battle of Pakistan.

More strikingly, the Quaid was not only a great defender of the cause of Pakistan, he equally struggled to safeguard the interest of all minority communities in India, irrespective of race, religion and colour. A moderate leader, he stood for a just and honourable treatment of them. Belonging himself to a minority nation, the Indian Muslims, he well understood the minority peoples. At the same time, he fully realized the dominating behaviour and mentality of majority people, the Hindus. A far-sighted politician, he did comprehend the future designs of Hindu majority raj in India. Anyway, the Quaid always remained anxious about the future of minorities in undivided India. “To live and let live” was the basic principle of his political philosophy. To support the cause of any community was an article of faith with him. He often sympathized the grievances of scheduled castes and frequently advocated the cause of Sikhs.

Jinnah & Hindu - Muslim Unity

The founding of Pakistan by Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah so greatly dominates his political life and career that his other roles are bound to be ignored. One important role which Jinnah played in the politics of India was for the achievement of unity between the Hindus and Muslims by bringing about some understanding between the Indian National Congress and the All India Muslim League. In fact, for more than two decades Jinnah was known more for this role than for any other. It will be recalled that Gopal Krishna Gokhale expressed the view that Jinnah “has true stuff in him and that freedom from all sectarian prejudice which will make him the best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity.”1 Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, who compiled Jinnah’s speeches and writings in 1918 gave the volume the sub-title An Ambassador of Unity and wrote that Jinnah stood “approved and confirmed by his countrymen not merely as an ambassador, but as an embodied symbol of Hindu-Muslim unity.”2 Similarly, Jawahar Lal Nehru, who strongly differed from Jinnah on several political issues, wrote in 1936 that Jinnah had been “largely responsible in the past for bringing the Moslem League nearer to the Congress.”3 The fact is that Jinnah continued to work for unity between the Hindus and Muslims until he was convinced early in 1940 that the Hindu leaders were not at all prepared for any kind of understanding. The purpose of this paper is to discuss this aspect of Jinnah’s political life.

Mr Jinnah, as I knew him

By Sameen Khan

I saw Mr Jinnah for the first time when he came to speak on the invitation of the Muslim University Union in the famous Strachey Hall. My class fellow and close friend Fasihuddin Ahmed, who was also a nephew of Dr Ziauddln Ahmed, the Vice Chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University, asked me if I was going or wanted to go to hear Mr Jinnah speak. I said: “The hall will be full with students, how shall we get in?” But Fasih took me there and we entered the hall from the backside. We sat near the dice where students were piling up their autograph books to be signed by Jinnah. I think the Vice President of the University Union (the President was always a professor) was perhaps Shamsul Hoda/Haq from Bengal, who delivered an eloquent speech and prepared the audience for Jinnah’s speech. When his name was announced, there was complete silence in the hall. He delivered an eloquent speech and, perhaps, in this speech said: “Aligarh is the arsenal of Muslim India.” But the only sentence that I remember till now is “build your character”, and since then I have tried to do just that. That was my first encounter with Mr Jinnah.

The Partition Agreement is reached - 3rd June, 1947

Clockwise from left: Abdur Rab Nishtar, Baldev Singh, Acharya Kirpalani, Vallabhai Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru, Louis Mountbatten, Mohammed Ali jinnah, and Liaquat Ali Khan. The butcher of Gurdaspur Lord Ismay is seated at the back.

Interview with Saleena Karim, author of “Secular Jinnah and Pakistan, What the Nation Doesn’t Know”

Secular Jinnah and Pakistan, What the Nation Doesn’t Know

Interview by Talha Mujaddidi (Bridgehead Institute)

TM: What inspired you to write a book setting the record straight with respect to Justice Munir?

SK: My original research began with an accidental discovery that a certain speech of Jinnah (the Munir quote – http://www.secularjinnah.co.uk ) could not be traced to any of Mr. Jinnah’s speeches but could only be found in Munir’s From Jinnah to Zia (1979) – or so I thought at the time. I had simply intended to write an article explaining the issue with the quote. In fact I almost didn’t even write the article as I had not grasped the significance of what I had found. My research took me in unexpected directions and I began to see there was much more to the story of the quote than I had first realised, but I kept the book relatively short. Sometime after SJ1’s (Secular Jinnah, 2005) release I discovered that the Munir quote actually had its origins in the ‘Munir Report’ of 1954 – i.e. same author, but different publication. Interestingly, the Munir quote was first used to deadly effect in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly debates of 1954, shortly before Ghulam Muhammad dissolved the Assembly. I have reviewed this in detail in SJ2, but otherwise my book is not centred on Justice Munir’s quote.

TM: What are the differences between the two editions – the original SJ1 and the new SJ2?

SK: SJ1 was a shorter book and it emphasised the Munir quote. SJ2 has a similar title, but as such it is completely different in terms of both style and content, even though it contains everything from SJ1 with updates. In addition, SJ2 covers pre-partition history in detail, including the Round Table Conferences of the 1930s, Mr. Jinnah’s differences with Mr. Gandhi, the provincial elections of 1936-7, and the Pakistan movement. I have also looked in detail at the constitutional background to the Lahore Resolution; I have reviewed the Cabinet Mission Plan in more depth than in SJ1; I have reviewed the debate over the Objectives Resolution; and I have looked at Jinnah’s attempts to retain national unity in Pakistan in the eighteen months before his death.

Thank you Mr Jinnah

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By Dr Syed Mansoor Hussain

Unfortunately for the Palestinians, they had nobody like Jinnah leading them — someone who had the foresight and the courage to accept the partition of Palestine. Instead of accepting partition, the Palestinians and the Arabs attacked the newly formed Jewish state

Whenever a few Pakistanis or Pakistani expat ‘liberal’ types get together, after a couple of libations to lubricate ideas and speech, often the conversation comes to the question whether we in Pakistan would have been better off if there were no partition of India.

Now I am not a serious student of the history of partition and am aware only of the basic facts. These being that the Muslim League won most of the Muslim seats during the elections held in 1946 and as such also won the right to represent the Muslims of India. Jinnah, as the leader of the Muslims, decided to opt for Pakistan when the All India Congress led by Nehru and Patel rejected the Cabinet Mission Plan. And this Pakistan that came into being was not quite what Jinnah had expected.

Some historians have said that Jinnah referred to the country he got as a “moth-eaten” Pakistan. Whether that is true is not material since Jinnah accepted whatever he got and it laid the foundation of one and then two Muslim majority countries in the Indian subcontinent, something envisaged by the Lahore Resolution of 1940. It is also an undeniable fact that we in Pakistan could indeed have done a lot better for ourselves.

Quaid-e-Azam in a Refugee Camp

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Click on the image to enlarge

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The Softer Side of M.A. Jinnah

By Ali Farhad

More than 61 years have passed since the death of founder of Pakistan, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. But even today, nothing about Jinnah seems ordinary —not his legal career, politics, personal life, his legacy and even the property he left behind.

The great South Asian intellectual Eqbal Ahmed once described Jinnah as an enigma of modern history. His aristocratic English lifestyle, Victorian manners, and secular outlook rendered him a most unlikely leader of India’s Muslims. Yet, he led them to separate statehood, creating history, and in Saad R. Khairi’s apt phrase, “altering geography”.

Much has been written about Jinnah’s legal career, politics, his role as a founder of Pakistan and his vision, but even today, very little is known about Jinnah’s personal life. This was probably because Jinnah never had time to write a diary or an autobiography and whatever little he wrote was formal and matter of fact.

For most of his life, he remained reserved, taciturn and secretive. He wrote his will in May, 1939, but it was only after his death that Liaquat Ali Khan, his close associate and the first Prime Minister of Pakistan, came to know that he was its trustee and executor. His only child, Dina Wadia, has hardly ever spoken about her father in public. So furious was Jinnah with Dina that he disowned her after she married a Parsi man against his wishes, and yet he left two lacs for her in his will. Akbar Ahmed’s movie Jinnah had just ten to fifteen minutes on Jinnah’s personal life, which are nowhere near enough.

Quaid-e-Azam with Liaquat Ali Khan, Allama Mashraqi. Barrister Mian Ahmed Shah and Sir Ziauddin Ahmed

The above historic picture was taken when Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Founder of Pakistan) visited Allama Mashriqi (founder of Khaksar Tehrik) at a Khaksar Camp in Karol Bagh (Delhi) on October 16, 1939.

Mrs Naidu picture card to Mr. Jinnah

Mrs Sarojini Naidu was Governor of Uttar Pradesh after Partition. She was a great admirer of Mr Jinnah and once remarked: "He is a future Viceroy if this policy of Indianization continues". She was not far from the truth.

3 June 1947 ~ Broadcast Speech

Recording of the Quaid-e-Azam's Broadcast Speech from All India Radio, Dehli on 3rd june 1947.

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14 Aug 1947 ~ Reply to Mountbatten

Recording of the Quaid-e-Azam's reply to the Lord Mountbatten's address to the First Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on 14th August 1947.

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15 Aug 1947 ~ Address To The Nation

Recording of the Quaid-e-Azam's Address to the Pakistan Nation on 15th August 1947.

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30 Oct 1947 ~ Lahore

Recording of the Quaid-e-Azam's speech at a mammoth public meeting in Lahore on 30th October 1947.

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31 Oct 1947 ~ Lahore

Recording of the Quaid-e-Azam's Address to the people of Punjab through Pakistan Broadcasting Service (Lahore Station) on 31st October 1947.

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21 Mar 1948 ~ Dhaka

Recording of the Quaid-e-Azam's Address to the people of Dhaka in Dhaka on 21st March 1948.

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March 1948 Chittagong

Recording of the Quaid-e-Azam's Speech at a public meeting in Chittagong, in March 1948.

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March 1948 Dhakka

Recording of the Quaid-e-Azam's Address to the students of the Dhaka University at Dhaka, in March 1948.

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Message for People of America

Recording of the Message of the Quaid-e-Azam to the people of America.

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Message for People of Australia

Recording of the Message that the Quaid-e-Azam gave in Karachi on 19 Februrary 1948, to the people of Austrailia through a representative of Radio Austrailia.

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