The Jinnah legacy

Mon, Aug 31 07:05 PM

Books on Mohammed Ali Jinnah, founding father of Pakistan, will fill many shelves of a library. We assume that all that could be known about him has been recorded and there is little new material to bring to light besides interpreting his role in Indian politics leading to the Partition of the country in August 1947. Evidently, that is not so. In his recently published book, BJP leader Jaswant Singh has uncovered new material from sources hitherto untapped and come to the conclusion that Jinnah was deliberately demonised by Indian politicians and writers. That is the theme of his book Jinnah: India-Partition Independence (Rupa). I do not agree with Jaswant Singh's reading of the events leading to the division of the country. I believe Partition was inevitable as its seeds had been sown many centuries earlier and nurtured by Indian politicians of British times. My analysis is as follows : Indians were never an integrated society. Besides caste and language divisions, the greatest was the Hindu-Muslim divide. They got along reasonably well but kept their distance from each other. There was never any real mixing of families visiting each other's homes or even contemplating matrimonial relationships. The British fostered the feeling of separateness between the two. As the time neared for the British to leave, Muslims began to feel uneasy at the prospect of living in a Hindu-dominated India. National divisions of India had been made before. Lala Lajpat Rai had made a rough map dividing India along communal lines. Later, Chaudhary Rehmat Ali coined the word Pakistan. Allama Iqbal, who at one time composed patriotic verses including Saarey Jahaan Se Achha, spoke of a Muslim state. Jinnah's contribution to separateness was evolving the two-nation theory that Hindus and Muslims were two separate nations which would not live together in one state. By August 15, 1947, the migration of Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan had become a bloody exodus. Sikhs and Hindus of east Punjab made sure that this was not going to be one-way traffic: they drove out Muslims from east Punjab with double the violence. It was the most catastrophic exchange of populations in the history of mankind, leaving a million dead and tens of millions homeless.

Pointing accusing fingers at Nehru or Patel or Jinnah serves no purpose. Not one of them, nor indeed all of them put together, could have stopped the process of Partition. They were helpless against the tidal wave of hatred generated by history. They were the real causes of the wars we have fought against Pakistan and the continuing conflict over the future of Kashmir.

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