In the scale of history, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah's achievement of Pakistan dominates everything else he did in his long and crowded public life (1904-48). Yet, by any standard, his was an eventful life, his personality multi-faced, his achievements, apart from causing the birth of Pakistan, were many, though not equally great.
Indeed, he had filled in several roles with distinction at various stages in his chequered career. At one time or another, he was one of the greatest legal luminaries during the first half of this century; he was an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity; he was a great constitutionalist, and a distinguished parliamentarian; he was a topnotch politician, and an indefatigable freedom fighter; he was a dynamic mass leader, and a political strategist of Bismarckian calibre.
Excelling these roles was, however, his comprehensive and composite role as a nation-builder. In this last-named role, he invites comparison with some of the greatest names in modern times - names such as Washington and Lenin, Bismarck and Cavour, Ataturk and Masaryk. Between them and him however, there was one monumental difference that make his achievement so remarkable. While others had assumed the leadership of traditionally well defined nations and led them to freedom, he had resuscitated the long dormant sense of nationhood in an otherwise disorganized and backward people which had long consigned it self, despite its numerical strength of a hundred million, to the intolerable status of a minority. Additionally, he endowed that newly discovered nation with a territorial existence by making the Pakistan demand as Muslim India's supreme objective. Above all, he led that nation to freedom, established a nation state for it, and, finally, secured that fledgling state's survival in the most treacherous circumstances.
Pakistan, it has been truly said, was born in chaos. Indeed, few nations in the world have started on their career with less resources and in more treacherous circumstances. The new nation did not inherit a central government, a capital, an administrative core, or an organized defence force. Her social and administrative resources were poor; there were little equipment and still less statistics. The Punjab holocaust, triggered by the formidable Sikh morcha had left vast areas in against partition, shambles, and communications disrupted. This long with the en masse migration of the Hindu and Sikh business and managerial classes left the economy almost shattered. The treasury was empty, India having denied Pakistan the major share of her cash balances. On top of all this, the still unorganized nation was called upon to feed some eight million refugees who had fled the insecurities and barbarities of the north Indian plains that long, hot summer. If all this was symptomatic of Pakistan's administrative and economic weakness, the Indian conquest, in November 1947, of Junagarh (which had acceded to Pakistan) and the Kashmir war over the state's accession (October 1947-December 1948) exposed her inherent military weakness. In the circumstances, therefore, it was nothing short of a miracle that Pakistan survived at all.
That it did was mainly the handiwork of one man - Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. The nation desperately needed a charismatic leader at that critical juncture in the nation's history, and he fulfilled that need profoundly. After all, he was, to quote The Times; "something more than Quaid-i-Azam, supreme head of the state; to the people who followed him, he was more even than the architect of the Islamic nation he personally called into being". In the ultimate analysis, his very presence at the helm of affairs was responsible for enabling the new-born nation to survive the terrible crisis on the marrow of its catadysmic birth. He deftly exploited the immense prestige and utmost loyalty he commanded among the people to energize them, to raise their morale, to canalize along constructive channels the profound feelings of patriotism that the coming of freedom had generated.
He was, of course, tired and in poor health, at least since the summer of 1946; he had become a skeleton, a walking shadow of yesteryears. Yet he bore the heaviest part of the burden in that first, crucial, year. He laid down the policies of the new state, identified the problems confronting the nation, and worked hard to get them resolved. He told the members of the Constituent Assembly, the civil servants and members of the armed forces what to do and what the nation expected of them. He devised an effective measure to enforce and maintain law and order at all costs, despite the provocation that the large-scale riots in north India had provided. He shifted himself to Lahore for a while in October 1947 to study the expoisive arising out of the huge refugees influx over there, and chart out plans to feed them, to house them, to get them rehabilitated and integrated - to give them a sense of belonging. In a time of fierce excitement, he did not lose his balance; he continued to remain sober, cool, steady, and forbearance to others. He advised his excited audience in Lahore to avoid retaliation, exercise restraint, and protect the minorities, and to concentrate all their mile in the rehabilitation of the refugees. He assured the minorities of a fair deal, assuaged their injured sentiments, attended to their particular needs, and get them oriented towards the requirements of the new dispensation. He reversed the Forward Policy of the British in the Frontier, and ordered the withdrawal of troops from Waziristan, thereby making the Pathans feel themselves an integral part of Pakistan's body-politic. He created a new Ministry of States and Frontier Regions, and assumed responsibility for ushering in a new era in Balochistan. He settled the controversial question of the status of Karachi; secured the accession of states, especially of Kalat which seemed problematical, carried on negotiations with Mountbatten for the settlement of the Kashmir issue. He carried on correspondence with the Commonwealth office, trying to induce it to take an active interest in ending the communal holocaust in East Punjab, in easing the situation between the two dominions, in bringing peace and normally to the subcontinent. He corresponded with the governors of the various provinces, met the ministers and political leaders, kept himself abreast of the situation on each of them, and gave counsel and advice wherever needed. He attended to all the details of his office: not to speak of cabinet meetings, he even presided over the meetings of the Committee for Quaid-i-Azam Relief Fund for Refugee Rehabilitation for hours on end. Even while stricken malady had sapped his energies beyond measure, he undertook the arduous trip from Quetta to Karachi to inaugurate the State Bank of Pakistan - the supreme symbol of Pakistan's fiscal independence. And all the while, he inspired and goaded the efficient team he had collected around himself, to grapple with the problems, build up an efficient system of administration, reorganize the armed forces, and lay the foundations of a progressive, welfare state. It was, therefore, with a sense of supreme satisfaction at the fulfillment of his mission that Jinnah 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".
In accomplishing the task he had taken upon himself on the marrow of Pakistan's birth, Jinnah had worked himself to death, but "had contributed more than any other man to Pakistan's survival". He died on 11 September 1948. How true was Lord Pethick-Lawrence, the last Secretary of state for India, when he said, "Gandhi died by the hands of an assassin; Jinnah died by his devotion to Pakistan".
(The writer is HEC distinguished National Professor, since 2005 and Founder-Director, Quaid-i-Azam Academy, (1976-89) has recently co-edited Unesco's History of Humanity, Vol. VI and the Jinnah Anthology (3rd edn. 2012), and edited In Quest of Jinnah (2007), the only oral history on Pakistan's founding father).