Babar vs Jinnah

Babar-poet, autobiographer, loyal friend and devoted father—was perhaps too triumphalist for Mountbatten.

But Mountbatten had made a blunder. In suggesting Akbar, Mountbatten was clearly unaware of the impression he was conveying.

While his choice may have impressed some modernised Muslims, the majority would have thought it odd. Of the six great Mughal Emperors from Babar to Aurangzeb, Akbar is perhaps the one most self-avowedly neutral to Islam.

To propose Akbar as an ideal ruler to a newly formed and self-consciously post-colonial Muslim nation was rather like suggesting to a convention of Muslim writers meeting in Iran or Pakistan in the 1990s that their literary model should be Salman Rushdie.

Akbar was the litmus test for Jinnah; perhaps a decade before he would have accepted Akbar as a model, but now he rejected the suggestion.

In a rebuttal, which amounted to a public snub-Mountbatten was after all still the Viceroy of India—Jinnah presented an alternative model.

… Or the Prophet of Islam

Jinnah replied that Muslims had a more permanent and more inspiring model to follow than that of Akbar—the holy Prophet of Islam:

The tolerance and goodwill that great Emperor Akbar showed to all the non Muslims is not of recent origin.

It dates back thirteen centuries ago when our Prophet not only by words but by deeds treated the Jews and Christians, after he had conquered them, with the utmost tolerance and regard and respect for their faith and beliefs.

The whole history of Muslims, wherever they ruled, is replete with those humane and great principles which should be followed and practised.

Jinnah reverted to the themes he had raised only three days earlier.

The holy Prophet had not only created a new state but had also laid down the principles on which it could be organised and conducted. These principles were rooted in a compassionate understanding of society and the notions of justice and tolerance.

Jinnah emphasised the special treatment the Prophet accorded to the minorities. Morality, piety, human tolerance—a society where colour and race did not matter: the Prophet had laid down a charter for social behaviour 13 centuries before the United Nations.

It is interesting how even distinguished scholars have misread these speeches of Jinnah. Stanley Wolpert, an admirer of Jinnah, who analysed the first speech over several pages, concluded that what he termed the ‘disjointed ramblings’ suggested that Jinnah had lost his mind that he was wandering.

Was Jinnah aware, asked Wolpert, that he was abandoning his two-nation theory by talking of tolerance and so on?

In fact Jinnah’s remarks must be seen in the context of Islamic culture and history. Jinnah, conscious that this was one of the last times he would be addressing his people because he was seriously ill, would find himself echoing the holy Prophet’s own last message on Mount Arafat.

For him too this was the summing up of his life and his achievement.

Wolpert’s dismissal of the speech is interesting; he was aware of the comparison with the Arafat address but he did not follow it through.

The Last Testament

Jinnah did not want to create just another state. He wanted one of the greatest nations in the world.

Even today the idea of Pakistan is greater than the reality of the country.

Some say that Jinnah was cynical and that he exploited religion and custom.

But such people need to understand the one-year he had in Pakistan before he died.

He was by far the most popular and most powerful man in the country, the revered Quaid-i-Azam of Pakistan, respected by millions of people.

If he had decided to defy tradition and custom, he would have gotten away with it. He could have dressed, spoken or eaten in any way he wanted and still been venerated.

Kemal Atatiirk was the father of Turkey. He rejected Muslim culture and tradition.

Jinnah took the opposite route. He may have started life at one end of the spectrum in terms of culture and tradition, but by the finish he was at the other end of it.

A comparison of the two newly independent countries, India and Pakistan, reveals that by the time Mountbatten arrived in India Congress would be forming the government of an independent India, having worked towards this objective for almost half a century.

Congress already had its leaders, a committed cadre, an all-India structure and networks that reached down to the village.

It had struggled and sacrificed.

Most importantly, it had a philosophy of how to run an independent India.*

The Pakistan movement, just a few years old in the 1940s, suffered in comparison. Jinnah’s ideas about Pakistan remained vague. Vagueness was both the strength and weakness of the Pakistan movement.

It became all things to all men, drawing in a variety of people for different reasons; but it also meant that once Pakistan was achieved there would be no clear defining parameters. During the last year or two of his life, Jinnah had begun to sharpen his concept of Pakistan.

He travelled extensively and spoke tirelessly on radio and in public.

Vision of an Islamic Society

These speeches have the following themes:

1. The unequivocal Islamic nature of Pakistan, drawing its inspiration from the Qur’an and the holy Prophet.

This is the vision of an Islamic society which would be equitable, compassionate and tolerant, and from which the ‘poison’ of corruption, nepotism, mismanagement and inefficiency would be eradicated.

Pakistan itself would be based on the high principles laid down by the Prophet in Arabia in the seventh century. Although Jinnah had pointed out the flaws in Western-style democracy, it was still the best system of government available to Muslims.

Jinnah specifically did not want a theocratic state run by mullahs. In a broadcast to the people of the United States of America recorded in February 1948, Jinnah made his position clear:

Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic State to be ruled by priests with a divine mission. We have many non-Muslims-Hindus, Christians and Parsees-but they are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the same rights and privileges as any other citizens and will play their rightful part in the affairs of Pakistan.

When his enthusiastic admirers addressed him as ‘Maulana Jinnah’ (Our Master Jinnah) he put them down, saying: ‘I am not a maulana, just plain Mr Jinnah.’