Remembering the Quaid

In his biography of Jinnah titled "Jinnah of Pakistan", the historian, Stanley Wolpert, makes the following observation that succinctly describes the legacy of Jinnah and his footprint on history: Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Muhammad Ali Jinnah did all three.
However, it becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, to appropriately describe Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah: he was a great constitutionalist, a distinguished parliamentarian; a staunch advocate of human freedom, the foremost spokesman on the sanctity of civic rights, a top notch politician, an indefatigable freedom fighter; a dynamic leader of the masses. The Quaid led a country which found its birth in the midst of monumental crises: it started its career with a profound lack of resources and profoundly profound circumstances. It had no capital and had to make do with a serious shortage of administration machinery.
Neither did it inherit a central government, nor a properly organised defence force. While Punjab holocaust had come as a severe shock to this new-born country, the influx of as many as seven million people was another monumental challenge for it. The exodus of Hindu and Sikh businessmen and managerial class who constituted the backbone of this part of undivided India's economy, abysmal and traditional economic backwardness of the areas that constituted Pakistan and India's denial to give Pakistan its due share in terms of money and material only exacerbated this country's woes to a level that made many to express serious doubts about this country's survival.
But the Quaid was there to steer the ship. He had accepted all those challenges with courage and forbearance. As the first Governor-General of Pakistan, he led efforts to lay the foundations of the new state of Pakistan, frame national policies and rehabilitate millions of Muslim refugees who had migrated from India.
Much before Pakistan came into existence, Jinnah, as a rationalist of great intelligence and political ability, was driven to become the spokesman for the partition of India mainly by a flawed, communal and myopic vision of Congress leadership. While giving an interview to American press representatives in July 1942, when asked by one of the journalists whether the Muslims were a nation or not, Jinnah replied:
We are a nation with our own distinctive culture and civilisation, language and literature, art and architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of values and proportion, legal laws and moral codes, customs and calendar, history and traditions, aptitudes and ambitions, in short, we have our own distinctive outlook on life and of life. By all cannons of international law we are a nation.
Today, the nation is celebrating the 134th birth anniversary of this country's founder. Such occasions do provide us an opportunity to recall the achievements of this leader who did more than anyone else to bring to realisation the seemingly chimerical dream of founding a Muslim majority state in the Indian subcontinent. These occasions also provide us an opportunity to reflect on our own words and deeds in the Quaid's Pakistan.
Where are we? We are a nation of 180 million people notoriously divided into religious, sectarian and ethnic tribes. The country that the Quaid built and bequeathed to us presents a sorry picture: corruption, favouritism, abuse of human rights, absence of justice and hope, bad governance and terribly bad law and order abound. Without any iota of doubt, one can easily say that the Quaid had never envisioned his country to be in this shape.
This clearly shows that we as a nation have forgotten the fact that the Quaid was one of the few world leaders who combined in themselves many sublime traits such as statesmanship, courage, sense of responsibility, integrity, forwardness, and dedication for the cause. It's time that we go back to his motto - unity, faith and discipline - with a renewed commitment to upholding his lofty ideals that he espoused throughout his life.