Jaswant isn’t Jinnah’s Sole Spokesman

Vinod,

Ayesha Jalal had presented similar analysis of Jinnah in her research. I’m sure Jaswant has relied heavily on Ayesha’s piece of work because there far few scholarly books published on Jinnah. This makes me wonder how much primary research Jaswant has done on this topic before publishing his controversial book.

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HERE IS WHAT DAILY HINDU HAD ON JINNAH’S DEATH IN 1948

August 24, 2009
By Mariana Baabar

ISLAMABAD: As free speech and thought is being strangled by the BJP, over the publication of a book by one of its senior party members Jaswant Singh, in which Mohammad Ali Jinnah is, for a change, not being demonized, a question arises whether the BJP will now take belated action against the leading English Daily The Hindu that ran an editorial on September 13, 1948, two days after the death of Jinnah.

The editorial said about Quaid-i-Azam: “At his bitterest he never forgot that firm friendship between India and Pakistan was indispensable. The news of the sudden death of Mr Jinnah will be received with widespread regret in this country. Till barely a twelve months ago he was, next to Gandhiji, the most powerful leader in undivided India. And not only among his fellow-Muslims but also among members of all the communities there was great admiration for his sterling personal qualities even while the goal, which he pursued with increasing fanaticism, was deplored. For more than half the period of nearly forty years in which he was a towering figure in our public life he identified himself so completely with the struggle that the Indian National Congress carried on for freedom that he came to be as nearly a popular idol as it was possible for a man so aristocratic and aloof by temperament to be. During the last years of his life, as the architect of Pakistan, he achieved a unique authority in his own community by virtue of the blind allegiance which the mass, dazzled by his political triumphs, gave him though the sane and sober elements of the community became more and more doubtful of the wisdom of his policies. In an age which saw centuries-old empires crumble, this Bombay lawyer began late in life to dream of founding a new empire; in an era of rampant secularism this Muslim, who had never been known to be very austere in his religion, began to dally with the notion that that empire should be an Islamic state. And the dream became a reality overnight, and perhaps no man was more surprised at his success than Mr Jinnah himself.

“Mr Jinnah was an astute lawyer. And his success was largely due to the fact that he was quick to seize the tactical implications of any development. His strength lay not in any firm body of general principle, any deeply cogitated philosophy of life, but in throwing all his tremendous powers of tenacity, strategy and dialectical skill into a cause which had been nursed by others and shaped in many of its most important phases by external factors. In this he offered a marked contrast to the Mahatma with whom rested the initiative during the thirty years he dominated Indian political life and who, however much he might adapt himself to the thrusts of circumstance, was able to maintain on a long range a remarkable consistency. Pakistan began with Iqbal as a poetic fancy. Rahmat Ali and his English allies at Cambridge provided it with ideology and dogma. Britain’s Divide and Rule diplomacy over a period of half a century was driving blindly towards this goal. What Mr Jinnah did was to build up a political organisation, out of the moribund Muslim League, which gave coherence to the inchoate longings of the mass by yoking it to the realisation of the doctrinaires’ dream. Two world wars within a generation, bringing in their train a vast proliferation of nation-states as well as the decay of established imperialisms and the rise of the totalitarian idea, were as much responsible for the emergence of Pakistan as the aggressive communalism to which Mr Jinnah gave point and direction.

“We must not forget that Mr Jinnah began his political life as a child of the enlightenment the seeds of which were planted in India by the statesmen of Victorian England. He stood for parliamentary democracy after the British pattern and with a conscientious care practised the art of debate in which he attained a formidable proficiency. At the time of the Minto-Morley Reforms, he set his face sternly against the British attempts to entice the Muslims away from their allegiance to the Congress. For long he kept aloof from the Muslim League. And when at last he joined it his aim was to utilise it for promoting amity between the two communities and not for widening the gulf. But Mr Jinnah was a man of ambition. He had a very high opinion of his own abilities and the success, professional and political, that had come to him early in life, seemed fully to justify it. It irked him to play second fiddle. The Congress in those early days was dominated by mighty personalities, Dadabhai Nowroji, Mehta and Gokhale, not to mention leaders of the left like Tilak. No doubt, it accounts for the fact that Mr Jinnah gradually withdrew from the Congress organisation and cast about for materials wherewith to build a separate platform for himself. At this time the First World War broke out and the idea of self-determination was in the air. It was not a mere accident that Mr Jinnah came to formulate the safeguards which he deemed necessary for the Muslim minority in his famous Fourteen Points so reminiscent of the Wilsonian formula.

“But in those days he would have pooh-poohed the idea of the Muslim community cutting itself off from the rest of India. He was so little in sympathy with the Ali Brothers’ Khilafat campaign because it seemed to him to play with fire. He was deeply suspicious of the unrestrained passions of the mob and he was too good a student of history to realise that once the dormant fires of fanaticism were stoked there was no knowing where it might end. He kept aloof from the Congress at the same time. Satyagraha with its jail-going and other hardships could not appeal to a hedonist like him; but the main reason for his avoiding the Gandhian Congress was the same nervousness about the consequences of rousing mass enthusiasm. The result was that he went into political hibernation for some years. But he remained keenly observant; and the dynamic energy generated by a successful policy of mass contact deeply impressed him. He came to see that a backward community like the Muslims could be roused to action only by an appeal, simplified almost to the point of crudeness, to what touched it most deeply, its religious faith. And a close study of the arts by which the European dictators, Mussolini, Hitler and a host of lesser men rose to power led him to perfect a technique of propaganda and mass instigation to which ‘atrocity’-mongering was central. But Mr Jinnah could not have been entirely happy over the Frankenstein monster that he had invoked, especially when the stark horrors of the Punjab issued with all the inevitability of Attic tragedy from the contention and strife that he had sown. He was a prudent man to whom by nature and training anarchy was repellant. At the first Round Table Conference he took a lone stand in favour of a unitary government for India because he felt that Federation in a country made up of such diverse elements would strengthen fissiparous tendencies. It was an irony that such a man should have become the instrument of a policy, which, by imposing an unnatural division on a country meant by nature to be one, had started a fatal course the end of which no man may foresee. Mr Jinnah was too weak to withstand the momentum of the forces that he had helped to unleash. And the megalomania, which unfortunately he came to develop, would hardly allow him to admit that he was wrong.

“Jinnah passed away at the peak of his career. He is sure of his place in history. But during the last months of his life he must have been visited by anxious thoughts about the future of the state, which he had carved.”

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Vinod Ji,
The title of this blog is amazingly apt. I can count various spokesman of Jinnah in present day India. Here is a selected list in no particular order –

Vinod Sharma, Pankaj Vohra, Vir Sanghvi, Rajdeep Sardesai, Sagarika Ghose, Prashant Bhushan ( the lawyer), Teesta Setalvad, Dilep Padgaonkar, Vinod Mehta, Malini Cahtterjee ( Telepgraph journo), Ramchandra Guha, N. Ram, etc etc

Just top of the hat I can count 12 people. All very educated, suave and respected ( in their own world, that is) personalities.

These days you are in Pakistan. Even if you go out with a searchlight, you will not find these many spokesaman in entire Pakistan.

Quite a sight, is it not? That Indians are batting for Jinnah while no Pakistani’s are left to baty for him as they are busy batting for Hafiz Sayed.

Thats the problem with Indians. We are always one step behind. By the time the “tribe” of great Indians, named above, gears up to bat for Hafiz sayed, the Pakistanis would have graduated one step further to maybe Obama. Always one step ahead of us.

And I can see that they is not far off, when the great Indian tribe will bat for Hafez Sayed and educate us all, as to how he is a much misunderstood person.

Carry on your good work Vinod ji.

What a pity. No matter how so much service you tender to their cause, for the faithful you will always remain a kafir !!

Regards,

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A bit too cynical, are we?

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I enjoyed your programme on HUM Tv with Mushahid Hussain a lot.It was a great debate with 2 great minds of India and Pakistan.I dont comment on book or other things but wish more people like you be in India with moderate and open views and wnt peace between the two countries.Wish you a very warm regards and its been always a pleasure to listen from you and pleasure to welcome you here in Pakistan

Regards

Sehar Tauqeer
Pakistan

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Adolf Hitler was “the Champion for the Cause of the Supremacy of the Aryan Race in Europe” in 1930’s and early 1940’s!Sangh Parivar adopted its later version-’Hindutva’- as its main plank!Modi cleverly made it his banner and availed Hitler’s “Volksgemeinschaft”strategy to develop his personality-cult
among the youth and women in Gujarat! BJP’s “hype”about his admirable administration and developmental achievements during his decade-long rule led him to float on the ninth cloud and let ambition grow sky-high!His eleventh year of rule saw ministers and politicians being sentenced to long terms of internment due to their roles in 2002 riots!In its wake came the assembly
elections in December!BJP was much worried hence it laid down the condition
that if he delivered Gujarat to it ,forthe third time,he will be made BJP’s “PM Candidate for 2014 elections”!Modi got victory,however, it was a”Pyrrhic Victory”only! Within hours after the results were made known, he started playing the role of a PM aspirant!Will he succeed is the million dollar question now!

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