The establishment of Pakistan was the outcome of the struggle of the Muslims of British India for nationhood and a territorial State in order to protect and promote their separate political identity, rights and interests.
Their transformation from a community to a nation was shaped by their cultural and civilizational heritage, derived mainly from Islam, Muslim rule in India, Islam's interaction with other religions and cultures in India and their political experience under the British rule.
This historical march towards nationhood and statehood was led by Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Though he began his active political career in the Congress Party and joined the Muslim League in 1913, he established his credentials very early as the leader who assigned a high priority to protection of the rights and interests of the Muslims in the peculiar political context of British India.
Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah's main goal was the protection and advancement of the Muslim identity, rights and interests.
He was firmly committed to this goal but he changed his strategies over time to achieve this goal. His overlapping strategies included an emphasis on Hindu-Muslim co-operation in the initial stages for political and constitutional changes; safeguards and constitutional guarantees for the Muslims; federalism with autonomy for the provinces; and a separate and independent homeland.
Jinnah faced tremendous challenges in pursuit of his goal. He had to articulate the concept of Muslim nationhood in British India and mobilise the Muslims in its favour in order to make this a credible notion.
In the 1940s, he had to demonstrate that the demand for a separate State enjoyed a widespread support among the Muslims. Without popular support and especially the success of the Muslim League in the 1946 provincial elections, the Pakistan demand would not have been taken seriously by the British and the Congress.
He had to mobilize support at three fronts. First, he had to convince the British that the Muslims were a nation with a distinct outlook on life and of life and that they must have a separate State for protecting themselves from being overwhelmed by an unsympathetic majority.
Second, the Congress Party was opposed to the two-nation theory. It opposed the grant of special constitutional safeguards to the Muslims and, when the Muslim League demanded the establishment of Pakistan, the Congress rejected this proposal.
The Congress opposed the Muslim League demand at all levels, including its negotiations with the British government. The Muslim League leadership had to plead its case time and again. Third, the Quaid had to counter the opposition of a number of Muslim groups that opposed the establishment of Pakistan.
Some of these Muslim groups were linked with the Congress Party while others were independent but they equally opposed the Muslim League demand for the establishment of Pakistan. The relatively established Islamic parties opposed the Muslim League's political movement for the making of Pakistan. However, the Muslim League leaders and activists under the able guidance of Jinnah were able to neutralise the opposition from the Congress and the Muslim groups.
JINNAH'S POLITICAL CAREER CAN BE DIVIDED INTO FOUR BROAD PHASES: 1906-1920, 1920-1934, 1934-1947, and 1947-48. The first three phases relate to the freedom struggle.
The fourth phase covers his role as the first Governor-General of independent Pakistan, when he attempted to set the tone of the political system. He did not live long to create the institutions and processes that reflected his vision of the Pakistani political system.
The first phase (1906-1920) covers the initial years of Jinnah's political career. His political orientation was shaped by British liberalism at the end of the 19 th century, his contacts with Indian liberal leaders and his British law background. He was also conscious of the cultural and civilisational role of Islam, including the Muslim rule in India, in shaping Muslim consciousness. He began his active political life in the Congress, attending its annual session in Bombay for the first time in December 1904.
Two years later, he joined the organisation. By that time he had established a flourishing legal career in Bombay, and within a couple of years he carved out an important space for himself in the political domain. He joined the Muslim League in 1913 but maintained his membership of the Congress until 1920.
He began his career as a parliamentarian in this phase. He entered India's Imperial Legislative Council in 1910 on a Muslim seat from Bombay under the Government of India Act, 1909.
The elections were indirect and the Legislative Council enjoyed nominal powers. However, he availed of the opportunity to make his mark as a parliamentarian. He made his first formal speech in the Legislative Council in February 1910 on a resolution recommending to the Indian government to prohibit recruitment of Indian labour for employment in South Africa.
In March 1911, Jinnah initiated his first legislative measure, the Wakf Bill, which was adopted by the Legislative Council. He was re-elected to the Legislative Council but he resigned its membership soon after the passage of the Rowlatt Bill in March 1919, despite the strong opposition by non-official Indian members.
This Bill gave a free hand to the British Indian government to suppress political agitation. In his letter of resignation to Viceroy Lord Chelmsford, Jinnah wrote: "In my opinion, the government that passes or sanctions such a law in times of peace forfeits its claim to be called a civilised Government."
During this phase he championed the cause of Hindu-Muslim unity and worked hard to bring the Muslim League and the Congress Party together on a shared political agenda.
The agreement between the Congress and the Muslim League on the constitutional and political reforms signed at Lucknow in 1916, popularly known as the Lucknow Pact, was the concrete manifestation of the efforts to bring the two communities on a shared political platform. For the first time the Congress agreed to the separate electorate and some other political safeguards for the Muslims. Jinnah was elected the President of the 1916 Muslim League session.
The second phase (1920-1934) began with his decision to delink himself from the Congress and Gandhi's agitational politics in 1920. He devoted himself completely to the protection and advancement of the rights of the Muslims. He stayed away from the Khilafat movement and returned to the Legislative Council in 1923 to avail of the opportunity to project the demands of the Indians in general and the Muslims in particular.
He advocated a speedier Indianization of the commissioned ranks of the Indian Army and served as a member of the committee set up in March1925 under the chairmanship of Lieutenant General Andrew Skeen, Chief of the General Staff, to explore the possibilities of setting up an Army training college in India on the pattern of the Military College,at Sandhurst.
Jinnah's famous fourteen points (1929) were a charter of the rights and interests of the Muslims of the Sub-continent. These were a rejoinder to the refusal of the Congress Party to revise the recommendations of the Nehru Report (1928) for accommodating the concerns of the Muslims. He initially pleaded for changes in the Nehru Report but the Congress leadership paid no heed to his pleadings.
He therefore articulated the rights and interests of the Muslims in his speech at the Muslim League session in March 1929 in Delhi, popularly known as Jinnah's Fourteen Points. Though he was disappointed at the rejection of the Muslim demands by the Nehru Report, he maintained a low-key interaction with the Congress for a political settlement with the Congress.
He favoured the boycott of the Simon Commission, and later participated in the first Roundtable Conference (RTC) in 1930. He was appointed to the RTC Federal Structure Committee and its Sub-committee. He decided to stay on in England but maintained interest in Muslim politics in India.
The third phase begins with his return to India in 1934 to resume the leadership of the Muslim League which suffered from internal discords. He spent the next couple of years in promoting internal harmony in the Muslim League and building its organisation. Though the Muslim League performed poorly in the 1937 provincial elections, he continued to work hard for turning it into the major Muslim political organisation.
The last ten years (1937-47) witnessed dramatic changes in the political orientations of the Muslim League and the Muslims. They were transformed into a mobilised community that viewed itself as a nation with a right to determine its political future.
The demand for a separate homeland for the Muslims, as presented in the Lahore session of the Muslim League in March 1940, was a turning point in their political disposition and aspirations. His address to Lahore session of the Muslim League offered a forceful exposition of the demand for a separate homeland. It was during these years that Jinnah was at his best in demonstration of his leadership skills and capacity.
Jinnah showed flexibility in his strategies when the Muslim League accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan (1946) which envisioned a loose federation with an option to the federating units to review their mutual relations, including an option to walk out of the federation, after ten years.
The Congress rejected the political structure offered by the Cabinet Mission, and continued with its non-flexible policy towards the Muslim League demand. This led the Muslim League to withdraw its offer of acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan.
The Muslim League credentials as the sole representative of the Muslims of the sub-continent were proved by its success in the 1946 elections. The Muslim League leadership refused in December 1946 to sit in the assembly that wanted to initiate the framing of a constitution for united India.
It demanded the setting up of a separate constituent assembly for making a constitution for Pakistan. The Muslim League could no longer be ignored, and its leader, Jinnah, symbolised the will and aspirations of the predominant majority of the Muslims of the Sub-continent.
The final phase comprised thirteen months of his Governor Generalship, ie August 15, 1947 to September 11, 1948. He was faced with the challenging task of setting up the administration of the new state while coping with the problems caused by the partition process, including the refugee problem, and Indian hostility. The outbreak of the first Kashmir war caused additional problems.
Jinnah attempted to give the broad outlines of Pakistan's political system by emphasising equal citizenship for all irrespective of religion, caste or creed; constitutionalism, the rule of law, civilian primacy and the making of a democratic constitution by the constituent assembly.
His address to the constituent assembly on August 11, 1947 offered a charter for political and cultural pluralism and emphasised non-assignment of preference to a particular religion by the State in its official dealings. He stood for a modern democratic state system that derived its ethical inspirations from the principles and teachings of Islam. He viewed Islam as a culture and civilisation, a basis of social order and one of the sources of law and constitution rather than a set of punitive, extractive and lative legal codes.