The Quaid-i-Azam was a great lawyer. He never appeared before a Court without full preparation of the case. This habit of doing a through homework extended to all his activities. Planning and homework always went together with him. The homework was in keeping with the magnitude of the task ahead. The idea of Pakistan was in the air some two decades before the Lahore Resolution of 1940; whereas a tentative idea of Pakistan had already been put forward by Allama Iqbal in his presidential address at Allahabad in 1930.
Jinnah too had given his most serious thought to the idea of freedom of India through the joint efforts of the Hindus and the Muslims. He made ceaseless efforts to bring Hindus and Muslims round on the point of Swaraj for India. He stuck to this idea for at least three decades when at last he said goodbye to it by calling the Calcutta Meeting as the parting of ways. He looked dejected for a time, but this was only a temporary phase; since new light had began to dawn upon him.
When the Quaid-i-Azam, returned to India from Britain's self-imposed exile, he cherished new hopes. Now he had decided to work as an advocate of the Indian Muslims alone and champion their cause single-handedly.
It took another half a dozen years to get the Lahore Resolution passed in 1940. He highly appreciated Allama Iqbal's poetic excellence as well as the political ideas that came to light during this period.
He took such a long time to decide the political issue of Pakistan partly to satisfy himself after a careful examination of the case he was expected to plead and partly to do a thorough homework before taking a start. In this connection he wrote two articles published in English Journals - One was an interview whereas the other was an article in Time and Tide of March 9, 1940. [Muhammad Ali Jinnah - (A Political Study) M.H. Saiyied PP 663-7].
These articles revealed all that was in his mind on this issue. At this juncture there was no confusion in his mind as to the aims of the Congress or the possible fate of the Muslims of India. He could clearly visualise and anticipate the fateful events of 1940 leading to the Lahore Resolution and the final struggle for freedom.
SPEAKING TO AN ENGLISH JOURNALIST JINNAH SAID: "It has been established beyond doubt - that the sole aim of the Congress is to annihilate every other organisation in the Country, and to set itself up as a Fascist and authoritarian organisation of the worst type". He further said: 'The thirty-five million voters, the bulk of whom are totally ignorant, illiterate and untutored, living in centuries-old superstitions are thoroughly antagonistic to each other, He also spoke of the impossibility of a successful working of a democratic parliamentary Government of India.
He opined: 'democracy can only mean Hindu Raj allover India'. He then challenged, This is a position to which the Muslims will never submit'. He further pointed out that in any British type of parliamentary systems not only the Muslims but all other communities such as the Untouchables, Christians, Parsis and the domiciled British would meet the same fate. He strongly suggested that the British should dismiss from their minds the examples of Federal Governments of Canada and Australia, where British democracy has planted natural and thriving roots.
In this interview he has given a picturesque account of the state of political situation in India. He has tried to dispel the false notion of their parliamentary system as being good and applicable to Indian political system as well. He also brought to the British home that in any scheme of a British parliamentary system, Muslims will not be the lonely victims it will rather include all the minorities.
He also made it clear that constitutional system based on the British pattern would not work since the 30 Million voters were totally ignorant, illiterate and untutored. He thus pleaded the case of all the minorities along with that of the Muslims.
Now a word about his article in Time and Tide. He wrote: what is the political future of India? The declared aim of the British Government is that India should enjoy dominion status in accordance with the status of Westminister in the shortest practicable time. In order that this should be brought about, the British Government very naturally, would like to see in India the form of democratic constitution it knows best and thinks best.
It further reads: Such, however, is the ignorance about Indian conditions among even the members of the British parliament that, in spite of all the experience of the past, it has yet not realised that this form of Government is totally unsuited to India. Democratic systems based on the concept of homogeneous nation such as England are not applicable to heterogeneous countries such as India, and this simple fact is the root cause of India's Constitutional ills. (Jinnah, Creator of Pakistan: Hector Bolitheo PP 125-126).
In these paragraphs of the article Jinnah vigorously stated that any constitutional proposal based on the British pattern of democracy was bound to fail; since it was detrimental to the interests of all the minorities and that it had not planted natural and thriving roots in the Indian soil. He argued that a British type of democracy could not work in a homogenous nation like England; whereas it could also not function in any heterogeneous country like India. He brushed aside all possibilities of successful and constitutional proposal based on the British model.
He also quoted extensively from the report of the Joint Select Committee on Indian constitutional reforms conducted by the British Parliament in 1933-34.
The report clearly mentions Hindus and the Muslims as two communities professing religions and cultures which are antithetical to each other. It also mentions the fact that the Hindus from two-thirds of all the in habitants of India which would give them an all-time majority in the parliament. It would certainly mean a permanent Hindu Raj in India even though all the minorities resist them together.
At the end of the article Jinnah spoke of two nations and said a constitution must be evolved that recognised that there were two nations both of whom should share the governance of their common motherland.
Here what is interesting to remember is that two weeks later, the Lahore resolution of 1940 was passed under his presidentship.
Jinnah who had been educated and trained in the British tradition used the current political thought to explain to the British the rationale of his new political creed in the most clear, reasoned logic and developed a thesis to work out his political idea and that homework proved a stepping-stone for the achievement of Pakistan.
Having been satisfied by the homework he had done to state his objective, he initiated the Lahore Resolution on March 23, 1940.
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