We are living in an age of paucity of honest leadership committed fully to the welfare of the common people. There are leaders of political parties, religious groups and ethnic entities. Their calls hardly cut across these societal entities. These leaders are focused on their immediate partisan interests. They lack long-term perspectives on issues and problems.
If we look back in our history, we can find leaders who inspired the educated Muslim elite as well as common Muslims of British India. Their appeals overcame ethnic, linguistic, regional, and religious-sectarian fault lines. The best example of this category of leadership is Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
The Muslims of British India trusted him and he enjoyed their full confidence. They were convinced that his political strategies would protect and advance their civilizational-cultural identity, rights and interests in the context of constitutional changes in British India, especially in the fast-changing political milieu of the last seven years of British rule in India.
Leaders are special people who exercise formidable moral influence in a society, affirm the hopes and aspirations of their followers, and inspire and guide them towards an articulated goal. It is a two-way communication relationship between the leader and the followers. Both trust each other. The leader identifies the goals and guides the people to achieve those goals.
In a way a leader transforms the community into a political force with well-defined identity that works for pursuing the shared goals and objectives. The other side of this relationship is a widely shared belief among the followers that the leader stands for them and their salvation lies in pursuing his advice. Such leaders do not make lofty promises. They achieve most of what they promise.
A leader of quality has a truthful and exemplary personal character which inspires his followers. He changes the direction of events and impacts the course of history by his well-thought-out strategies to achieve the identified goal. He is enthusiastic about his work and the cause that he advocates and has the capacity to convince the people about the genuineness of his cause.
He leads the people with confidence and moves forward along with them in an organized and purposeful manner. His mobilizational capacity depends on his impeccable ability to explain his point of view and win over the hearts and minds of people. He inspires the people to such an extent that they feel that their future would be safe by identifying with him.
Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah neither belonged to a feudal family nor had the background of big industry and business. He came from a modest commercial family that recognized the importance of modern education. Jinnah’s education and professional career as a brilliant lawyer and a prominent Muslim leader exemplifies the qualities of an outstanding leader as discussed above. He built his reputation first in law practice as an honest, truthful and highly professional lawyer in the competitive Bombay environment.
It was his hard intellectual and legal work that won him good reputation as a person who could present his arguments in a coherent and persuasive manner. No one ever complained that he neglected the legal matter that he undertook to pursue.
He was appointed magistrate in Bombay in 1900 but he left this assignment after few months and returned to law practice. His initial politics was shaped by his active interaction with Indian liberals and the cosmopolitan and achievement-oriented commercial environment of Bombay. His legal brilliance enabled him to make space for him in Bombay’s political and social life.
Jinnah started his political career as a leader with liberal orientations. He joined the Congress Party as an ordinary member in 1906 and got elected to the Imperial Legislative Council in 1909 from a Muslim constituency in Bombay. All India Muslim League was established by the Muslim elite in December 1906, Jinnah joined it in 1913, and maintained the membership of both parties until 1920, when he left the Congress Party for good, diverging from Gandhi’s politics.
By the time he joined the Muslim League, he established his credibility as a prominent legal expert and political leader who stood for the rights and interests of the Muslims and worked for political harmony between the Congress Party and the Muslim League.
He was instrumental to what is described as the Lucknow Pact, 1916, between the Muslim League and the Congress Party which provided a political framework for the protection and advancement of the political rights and interests of the Muslims in any future constitutional arrangements in India. This success proved short-lived as the Congress Party pulled away by neglecting the rights and interests of the Muslim in the Nehru Report of 1928 on constitutional proposals.
The refusal of the Congress to accommodate Muslim rights in the future constitutional arrangements of India convinced Jinnah that Muslims would have to stand on their own to secure their political future.
Jinnah’s rise to leadership was gradual. He built his reputation as the ardent advocate of Muslim civilizational and cultural identity, their rights and interests by his convincing advocacy of his perspective on these issues in the constitutional and political context of British India. His famous speech in 1929, popularly described as Jinnah’s Fourteen Points, was a concise statement on the securities and guarantees for the protection of the political future of the Muslims in British India.
This statement was a rejoinder to the Nehru Report that went back on the Congress Party’s commitments to the Muslim League in the Lucknow Pact of 1916 regarding definite guarantees for Muslim representation in the elected bodies, cabinets and government jobs.
By the end of the second decade of the 20th century, Jinnah established himself as the most articulate advocate of the political rights and interests of Muslims in British India.
Jinnah owed his leadership to his intellect, legalistic and constitutional approach and a realistic understanding of the Muslim history, especially their rise and decline in the Indian Sub-continent. He leant from his interaction with the Congress leadership that the Muslims of British India needed special guarantees and constitutional commitments for the protection of their civilizational and cultural identity, political and economic rights and interests.
He was not willing to leave these matters to the goodwill of the Congress leaders whom he did not trust when it came to Muslim identity, rights and interests was concerned.
There was a spectacular rise in his leadership in the last thirteen years before independence (1934-1947). This was the period of decisive changes in the demands articulated by Jinnah and his colleague in the backdrop of their political learning from their interaction with the majority community represented mainly by the Congress Party.
Initially, the Muslim League and Jinnah wanted constitutional guarantees and safeguards for the protection of Muslim civilizational and cultural identity, rights and interests. Jinnah was also in favour of a federal system with autonomy to the provinces. He hoped that this would enable Muslims in the Muslim majority provinces to set up the governments of their choice.
What changed the disposition of the Muslim League leaders was their bitter experience under provincial governments in non-Muslim majority provinces in 1937-39 under the Government of India Act, 1935.
The policies of these provincial governments concerning school education, cultural affairs and recruitment to government jobs alarmed the Muslim leadership who felt that it was not possible to work with a political leadership that was so callous towards the rights and concerns of Muslims.
Jinnah had already embarked on re-organization of the Muslim League in 1934-35 to turn it into the biggest political organization of Muslims. He emphasized the Islamic heritage and culture for Muslim identity formation and their political mobilization. His focus on the Muslim cultural identity and the demand for special constitutional arrangements for the protection of Muslim identity, rights and interests attracted much attention of the Muslim after their bitter political experience under the provincial governments in non-Muslim majority provinces.
The policies of these Congress Party provincial governments intensified insecurities of Muslims about their future as a distinct cultural and political identity rooted in history and Islam-based cultural ethos.
Jinnah’s articulation of Muslim nationhood in the post-1937 period, especially from 1940 onwards, caught the imagination of the Muslims all over India who were concerned about their political future. Jinnah’s notion of Muslims as a separate and distinct nation entitled to have its own “Homeland” made him the sole spokesman for the Muslims in India.
He acquired a charismatic appeal among Muslims who found him the most determined and clear-headed leader with full articulation of their aspiration and mobilized them in favor of a separate homeland for the Muslims of British India.
Jinnah gave the most comprehensive explanation of Muslim nationhood in British India in his letter to Mahatma M.K. Gandhi dated 17 September1944 in these words: “We maintain and hold that Muslims and Hindus are two major nations by any definition or test of a nation.
We are a nation of a hundred million, and what is more, we are a nation with our own distinctive culture and civilization, language and literature, art and architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of value and proportions, legal and moral codes, customs and calendar, history, and traditions, aptitudes, and ambitions - in short, we have our distinctive outlook on life and of life. By all canons of international law, we are a nation.”
Earlier in March 1940, while addressing the annual session of the Muslim League held at Lahore, Jinnah said, “The problem in India is not of an inter-communal character, but manifestly of an international one, and it must be treated as such…. If the British Government are really in earnest and sincere to secure peace and happiness of the people of this sub-continent, the only course open to us all is to allow the major nations separate homelands by dividing India into autonomous national states.”
As the leader with charismatic appeal, Jinnah joined other Muslim League leaders to mobilize Muslim populace for this separate homeland demand. This became the principal Muslim League demand for the 1946 provincial elections. The Muslims League won most seats reserved for the Muslims in different provincial assembly, which gave popular credibility to the demand for a separate homeland for the Muslims of British India.
It was Jinnah’s charismatic leadership and his self-confident and determined personality that transformed the Muslim community to a nation in British India. His political experience of the troubled interaction with the Congress Party and his long-term vision for securing the political future of the Muslims of British India led him to discard the notion of one Indian federation and put forward the demand for a separate homeland.
It was the confidence of the ordinary Muslims in his leadership that they took no time to come out in favour of the separate homeland demand. The leader’s vision was co-opted by the people, which strengthened the democratic credentials of the new state of Pakistan.
Another manifestation of Jinnah’s long-term political vision was his first address to the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, when he acknowledged the religious and geographic diversity in independent Pakistan and outlined the need of evolving a pluralist, accommodating, tolerant and democratic constitutional and political framework based on the rule of law and equal citizenship to all, irrespective of religious and cultural identity.
He also talked of setting up a corruption free political system. His speech at the inauguration of the State Bank of Pakistan on July 1, 1948, emphasized the need for working for socio-economic equity.
The political leaders that succeeded him, especially those who entered politics in 1985 or later, lacked the sound liberal intellectual traditions, truthful and honest disposition and professionalism. They have tended to focus more on making quick partisan gains and shown little regard for the advice given by Jinnah for socio-economic and political management. The stature of leadership and political discourse in Pakistan has declined since the days of Jinnah.
Hasan Askari Rizvi is an Independent Political Analyst. His latest book entitled “Pakistan: Political and Constitutional Engineering” published in 2024.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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