Father of the Nation Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, whose death anniversary is being observed today (Saturday), was a dynamic Muslim leader, a great political strategist, constitutionalist, a distinguished parliamentarian and above all one of the great nation-builders of modern times, who fought relentlessly and inexorably for Muslims` inherent rights for an honourable existence in South Asia.
Jinnah, who followed a highly disciplined regime of life, was endowed with a character free from blemish and gifted with the ability to foresee and analyse the problems and offer solutions in the most effective manner. By any standard, his was an eventful life and his personality multi-dimensional. However, his achievement, which makes the Founder of Pakistan so remarkable is the fact that while similar other leaders assumed the leadership of traditionally well-defined nations and espoused their cause, or led them to freedom, he created a nation out of an inchoate and down-trodden minority and established a national home for it.
For about four decades before the successful culmination of the South Asian Muslims' struggle for freedom in 1947, M.A. Jinnah had provided political leadership to the Indian Muslims; guided their affairs; gave expression, coherence and direction to their legitimate aspirations and cherished dreams.
Quaid-i-Azam, who had to fight through bouts of illness from 1930s till his death on September 11, 1948, never let his state of health and periodic illness dampen his spirits or weaken his willpower, resolve and determination to achieve a separate homeland for the South Asian Muslims. The tragic news of his death had saddened and stunned the whole nation and an environment of deepest shock and grief prevailed all over the country. His death was rightly described as a staggering blow and irreparable loss not only to Pakistan, but to the whole of Muslim world as he not only led the Muslims of South Asia but also stood for freedom and independence of Muslim countries and strongly and eloquently advocated their causes.
The nation, currently in face of painful and heart-breaking multiple crises, including current worst natural disaster, caused by widespread and unprecedented rains and floods, discouraging role of the politicians in the national development, lawlessness and acts of terrorism, are justly and eagerly in search of such a leader, having sound principles of governance, traditions of selflessness, honesty and integrity that Quaid-i-Azam left behind.
The motto of "unity", "faith" and "discipline" as well as principles and guidelines left for the nation by M.A. Jinnah, who had gifted us complete Pakistan,have not been followed by the vested interests and self-seeking ruling elite to the detriment of the country. Our leadership has still not seriously realised that domestic political upheavals, corruption, wrong policies, actions and misrule of those who ruled the country resulted into its unfortunate disintegration and break-up of the two wings in 1971.
Unfortunately, because of current internal happenings our image abroad has come down to a highly disappointing point that credibility is being questioned regarding the utilisation of the internal and foreign aid coming to heal the sufferings of over 20 million affected persons of national disaster and their rehabilitation.
The Quaid wanted to build Pakistan through national self-discipline and regarded indiscipline as "more deadly than our external enemies", which would "spell ruin for us." He stood for "constructive efforts, selfless work and steadfast devotion to duty. Jinnah wanted the constitution of Pakistan to be of "a democratic type, embodying the principles of Islam, equality of man, justice and fairplay and envisioned a socio-political system based on egalitarianism and free from exploitation. He wanted every Pakistani to "be prepared to sacrifice his all, if necessary, in building up Pakistan as a bulwark of Islam and as one of the greatest nations".
Quaid-i-Azam had made it clear at a public meeting in Dacca (Dhaka) on 21 March, 1948, that the government's aim and objective should be how to serve the people and devise ways and means of their welfare and betterment. He said "it is in the hands of people to put the government in power or remove it from power. But you must not do it by mob methods. Constitutionally, it is in your hands to upset one government and put another government if you are dissatisfied to such an extent"
Quaid`s chronology: The Khoja Muslim, eldest son of among seven siblings of Jinnah Poonja, a skin and hide merchant, was born on 25th December, 1876, at Wazir Mansion, Karachi. The great Muslim leader, who died in Karachi at 10.25 pm on this day in 1948, was buried at the Old Exhibition Ground at 6.24 pm on 12th September amid scenes of acute grief and mourning.
Educated at Gokul Das Tej Primary School, Bombay (1885-1886), and then Sindh Madrassat-ul-Islam and Christian Mission High School, Karachi, he was sent to London in 1892 for training in business administration. However, he elected to study law instead and joined the Lincoln's Inn in 1993 to become the youngest Indian to be called to the Bar in 1896. On the basis of ability and determination, young Jinnah rose to prominence and became within a few years one of the greatest legal luminaries of India. On return from England in 1896, he set up law practice first in Karachi and in 1897 in Bombay, where he gradually built up a thriving practice. He had also worked as a Presidency Magistrate in Bombay (May 3-November 2, 1900).
Before proceeding abroad, he had been married to Emibai, a Khoja girl (May 1892), who died while Jinnah was still in England. In 1918, he married Ruttie Petit, a Parsi, who had embraced Islam. Only daughter of the fabulous, Sir Dinshaw Petit, she died in 1929, leaving behind a daughter (Dina), born on 15 August, 1919, who lives in New York.
M. A. Jinnah joined the Congress in 1906 and All India Muslim League in 1913. He was a member of Congress delegation to England in connection with proposed reforms of Indian Councils (1914); an active member of Imperial Legislative Council during 1910-19 and elected member of Indian Legislative Assembly from 1924 to 1947 .When Rowlatt Bill was passed into law in 1919 riding roughshod over all opposition, he resigned from Imperial Legislative Council in protest against that Black Act (1919).
M. A. Jinnah presided over the All India Muslim League (AIML) session at Lucknow in December 1916. Since his entry into politics in 1906, Jinnah passionately believed in and assiduously worked for Hindu-Muslim unity. He was chiefly instrumental in devising Lucknow Pact of 1916-the only pact ever signed between the two political organisations, the Congress and the All India Muslim League, representing the two major communities in South Asia. The pact conceded Muslims the right to separate electorate, reservation of seats in the legislatures and weightage in representation both at the Centre and the minority provinces. The Congress-League scheme embodied in this pact was to become the basis for the Montague-Chemlsford Reforms, also known as the Act of 1919.
In subsequent years, however, he felt dismayed at the injection of violence into politics. Since Jinnah stood for "ordered progress", moderation, gradualism and constitutionalism, he felt that political terrorism was not the pathway to national liberation but, the dark alley to disaster and destruction.
He walked out of the meeting of Home Rule League in Bombay on 4th October, 1920, in protest against 'unconstitutional' ruling by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who was presiding (October 4, 1920), and resigned his membership over the change by Gandhi in the name of the party and its constitution (25th October, 1920). The people of Bombay built People's Jinnah Memorial Hall in grateful recognition of his sterling services.
The future course of events was not only to confirm his worst fears, but also to prove him right. Although Jinnah left the Congress in 1920, he continued his efforts towards bringing about a Hindu-Muslim entente, which he rightly considered "the most vital condition of Swaraj". However, because of the deep distrust between the two communities as evidenced by the country-wide communal riots, and as the Hindus failed to meet the genuine demands of the Muslims, his efforts came to a naught. One such effort to bridge Hindu-Muslim differences on the constitutional plan was the formulation of the proposals at a conference of Muslim leaders in March, 1927, which waived the Muslim right to separate electorate, the most basic Muslim demand since 1906, and accepted joint electorate on certain conditions.
Boycotted the Simon Commission in1927 Finding the Nehru Report (1928) against Muslim interests and revoking some important concessions made to the Muslims by Lucknow Pact, Jinnah formulated his famous 14 points in 1929 as demand of the Muslims.
In 1928, the National Convention's blank refusal to accept Muslim demands represented the most devastating setback to Jinnah's efforts to bring about Hindu-Muslim unity. At the convention, he had pleaded that: "What we want is that Hindus and Musalmans should march together until our object is achieved." His disillusionment at the course of politics in the sub-continent prompted him to migrate and settle down in London in the early thirties.
M. A. Jinnah attended the first and second Round Table Conferences in London (1930-31) on Indian affairs. Disillusioned with what transpired at the two conferences, he chose to stay back in London and started law practice at the Privy Council (1931-34).
He was elected President of All India Muslim League on 4th March, 1934, and held this position until December, 1947 when the party was bifurcated in the aftermath of the partition of India.
He returned to India in April, 1934 on the strong pleadings of poet-philosopher Allama Muhammad Iqbal, Liaquat Ali Khan and his co-religionists to assume their leadership and organise and consolidate the League and launch a struggle for Muslim nationhood. He devoted himself with singleness of purpose to organising the Muslims on one platform. He embarked upon country-wide tours, exhorting the Muslim masses to organise themselves and join the Muslim League. The Muslim League, under Jinnah's dynamic leadership, was organised de novo, transformed into a mass organisation and made the spokesman of Indian Muslims.
The Quaid gave coherence and direction to Muslim sentiments on the Government of India Act, 1935, and protesting against the Act and describing the Federal Scheme as arbitrary and unfair to the Muslims, he advocated it should be scrapped as it was subversive of India's cherished goal of complete responsible Government.
Jinnah was deeply distressed at the Muslim sufferings under Congress rule in Hindu majority provinces in 1937-39. The Congress provincial governments had embarked upon a blatant aggressive policy in which Muslims felt that their religion, language and culture were not safe. The practical manifestation of the policy convinced Muslims that in the Congress scheme of things, they could live only on sufferance of Hindus and as 'second class' citizens. This policy was seized upon by Jinnah to awaken the Muslims to a new consciousness, organise them on all-India platform, and make them a power to be reckoned with. On the resignation of Congress ministries in 1939, the Muslims all over India observed Day of Deliverance on his call.
The demand for an independent homeland was adopted by the AIML at its 27th session in Lahore on 23rd march, 1940.In his presidential address to the session, the Quaid had declared that by any definition and all canons of international law, Musalmans are a nation." 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 code, customs and calendar, history and tradition, aptitudes and ambitions; and, therefore, the only course open to us is to allow the major nations separate homelands by dividing India into autonomous states.
It was Jinnah's powerful advocacy of the case of Pakistan and his remarkable strategy in the delicate negotiations that followed the formulation of the Pakistan demand that made Pakistan inevitable. The British reaction to the Pakistan demand came in the form of the Cripps offer of April, 1942, which conceded the principle of self-determination to provinces on a territorial basis, the Quaid turned down Cripps proposals, which did not concede the League's demand for Pakistan. Talks with Gandhi failed (1944); participated in Simla Conference (1945); presided Muslim League Legislators convention in April 1946, after League's landslide victory in the general elections.
The most delicate as well as the most tortuous negotiations, however, took place during 1946-47. Accepted three-member British Cabinet Mission's Plan in 1946, which stipulated a limited Centre, supreme only in foreign affairs, defence and communications and three autonomous groups of provinces. Two of these groups were to have Muslim majorities in the North-West and the North-East of the sub-continent while the third one, comprising the Indian mainland, was to have a Hindu majority. However, subsequently withdrew acceptance because of the failure of the Viceroy to invite the League to form the interim government only to appease the Congress. Called for observance of 16 August, 1946, as Direct Action Day; in October, 1946; joined Interim Government on Viceroy's persuasion and advice of colleagues, but refused to participate in Constituent Assembly under Cabinet Mission plan; accepted Partition Plan of 3 June 1947, as a compromise by which the British decided to partition the sub-continent, and hand over power to two successor states; elected President of Pakistan Constituent Assembly, August 11, 1947, and took office as Governor-General, August 15 of newly-born state.
The struggle, led by him with unwavering devotion and indomitable will, culminated in the emergence of Pakistan on 14 August, 1947, as an independent and sovereign state.
Quaid-i-Azam told the nation in his last message on 14 August 1948: "the foundations of your state have been laid and it is now for you to build and build as quickly and as well as you can." If the grand vision of the Quaid is to be realised, the nation will have to galvanise itself into action' for it is only with unremitting vigour, unity, renewed commitment and unwavering dynamism that we can make his dream come true.
(The writer is a senior journalist, broadcaster, ex-Editor, Quaid-i-Azam, Papers Project) ([email protected])
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