Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah

Beverly Nichols: Dialogue with a Giant

Mr. Jinnah with members of Cabinet Mission to India

Beverly Nichols visited India in 1943, and wrote a book ‘Verdict on India’. The chapter in the book about Quaid-e-Azam was captioned ‘Dialogue with a Giant’. One of the questions asked by Mr. Nichols was about the economic viability of Pakistan. Quaid-e-Azam answered the question in the following terms:

"What conceivable reason is there to suppose that the gift of nationality is going to be an economic liability. How any European can get up and say that Pakistan is economically impossible after the treaty of Versailles is really beyond my comprehension. The great brains who cut Europe into a ridiculous patchwork of conflicting and artificial boundaries are hardly the people to talk economics to us."

Quaid-e-Azam’s Fight Against Death

Quaid-e-Azam M.A. Jinnah had known in 1946 that he didn’t have more than a year to live. This was not any kind of premonition. It was the considered opinion of his physician in Paris who had come to this conclusion on the basis of Quaid’s five X-ray reports,-- reports that were kept like a closely guarded secret, to safeguard its leakage to the British intelligence. According to the physician’s opinion the deadly disease from which the Quaid suffered would not allow him more than one year.

These revelations are made in a recently published book “The Story of Partition” written by two eminent French authors who traveled some 2.5 lakh meters to collect the material for the book. The research took them four years during which period they interviewed as many as 2,500 persons belonging to the pre-partition era.

The Quaid’s physician in Paris is reported to have told the authors that he had to keep a round the clock vigil to ensure that the x-ray films did not fall into the hands of the Britishers, who might use the Quaid’s disease to change the whole complexion of the political situation in the sub-continent.

The year 1946, it may be recalled, was the most eventful year engagement with the fast changing course of events, together with the brightening of the prospects of victory, exerted enormous physical and mental strains on the Quaid. It was he alone to whom the people looked for guidance and inspiration.

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Quaid-e-Azam M.A. Jinnah: A Guardian of Minorities

Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah with representatives of minorities

The role of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the annals of Indo-Pakistan has variously been interpreted implying a variety of perspectives which have earned him a good deal of prestigious titles like the Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, as a strategist, etc. A survey of literature, however, reveals that Jinnah’s vision regarding minority rights and his struggle and strategies to safeguard their interests perhaps is the most ignored perspective. Jinnah’s vision about minority’s place in the institutional frame of the Imperial Government in British India and later in the Sovereign State of Pakistan rather becomes more important in the context of growing discontent among religious minorities of Pakistan.¹ This situation has earned a scientific inquiry of Jinnah’s vision in this regard since his whole political career seems to be a struggle for minority rights, especially the Muslims.

The Muslim community in the Indian subcontinent during the colonial era constituted the largest minority. About 25% of the total population, the Muslim community, had spread throughout the country. However, their population was distributed as such that they formed majority in five provinces, whereas the Hindus commanded clear majority in seven out of twelve provinces.² The Muslims being a religious and political minority had distinct interests, which were not shared by the dominant community of the Hindus. Thus, it had necessitated additional constitutional and legal protection of the Muslims against the Hindus.

The first set of demands of the Muslim community for its constitutional and legal safeguards was manifested in the Simla Deputation of 1906. The address presented by them before the Governor General of India stated explicit terms: it cannot be denied that we Mohammadans are a distinct community with additional interests of our own which are not shared by other communities, and these have hitherto suffered from the fact that they have not been adequately represented…they have often been treated as though they were inappreciably small political factors…..³

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