FOR Jinnah, while national freedom for both Hindus and Muslims continued to be the supreme goal, the means adopted to achieve it underwent a dramatic change. If it could not be achieved through Hindu Muslim unity, it must be done through Hindu-Muslim separation; if it could not be secured through a composite Hindu-Muslim nationalism, it must be done through separate Hindu and Muslim nationalisms; if not through a united India, it must be through partition. In either case, the ultimate objective was to ensure political power for Muslims. The period after 1937 marked a paradigmatic shift. Jinnah became identified in the Muslim mind with the concept of the charismatic community, the concept which answered their psychic need for endowing and sanctifying their sense of community with a sense of power.
Increasingly he became the embodiment of a Muslim national consensus, which explains why and how he had become their Quaid-i-Azam, even before the launching of the Pakistan demand in March 1940. This shift was squarely reflected in his thinking, his posture, his platform and in his political discourse. And of course his appearance — for his public rallies Jinnah replaced his finely creased English Saville Row suits with achkan, tight pyjamas and, to boot, a karakuli cap. He still believed in democracy, but now felt parliamentary democracy of the Westminster type was unsuitable for India because of the existence of a permanent majority and a permanent minority, which he defined in specific terms: Minorities means a combination of things. It may be that a minority has a different religion from the other citizens of a country. Their language may be different, their race may be different, their culture may be different and the combination of all these various elements – religion, culture, race, language, arts, music and so forth makes the minority a separate entity in the State, and that separate entity as an entity wants safeguards.
Extending this elucidation, he occasionally called Muslims ‘a nation’, stressing their distinct religion, culture, language and civilization, and calling on them to “live or die as a nation”. He even called the League flag ‘the flag of Islam’, arguing that you cannot separate the Muslim League from Islam. Jinnah also travelled across the other end of the political and ideological spectrum in other ways. Previously he had disdained mass politics, now he opted for mass politics. Previously he had objected to Gandhi’s injection of religion into politics, now he was not averse to couch his appeals in Islamic terms and galvanising the Muslim masses by appealing to them in a cultural matrix they were familiar with. Previously he had called himself an Indian first and last, now he opted for an Islamic identity. Previously he had strived long and hard for a national consensus; now all his efforts were directed towards a Muslim consensus. Jinnah, the erstwhile ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity” became the fiercest advocate of Hindu-Muslim separation.
Jinnah had a political basis for this paradigmatic shift, through which Muslims and Islam came to occupy the centre of his discourse. For one thing, how else could Muslims, scattered as they were unevenly throughout the subcontinent, sharing with their non-Muslim neighbours local customs, ethos, languages and problems and subjected to local conditions whether political, social or economic become a ‘nation’ except through their affiliation with Islam? For another, since Pakistan was to be established in the Muslim majority provinces, why else should the Muslims in the minority provinces struggle for Pakistan, except for their deep concern for the fate and future of Islam in India? Above all, what linked them irretrievably with their fellow Muslims in the majority areas except this concern?
In January 1938, Jinnah begun mapping out his new world view. He said: When we say ‘This flag is the flag of Islam’ they think we are introducing religion into politics – a fact of which we are proud. Islam gives us a complete code. It is not only religion but it contains laws, philosophy and politics, in fact, it contains everything that matters to a man from morning to night. When we talk of Islam we take it as an all embracing word. We do not mean any ill. The foundation of our Islamic code is that we stand for liberty, equality and fraternity.
Jinnah then used this to argue the case for Pakistan at two levels. First, he invoked the universally-recognized principle of self-determination. But it was invoked not on the familiar territorial basis, but for the Muslim nation alone. As he stipulated in his marathon talks with Gandhi in September 1944, the constituency for the plebiscite to decide upon the Pakistan demand would comprise only the Muslims, and not the entire population of the areas concerned. Second, he spelled out his reasons for reaching out towards the ‘Pakistan’ goal in his Lahore (1940) address in more or less ideological terms, arguing that Islam and Hinduism are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but are different and distinct social orders, that the Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, literature, to two different civilizations, that they derive their inspiration from different sources of history with different epics, different heroes and different episodes.
—The writer is author of several books based in Islamabad.
(naveedamankhan@hotmail.com)
