Pakistan Historian

Why Nehru haters like Jinnah? Loving Jinnah in the land of Gandhi

As an ardent student of history we track and trends in the historical development of points of views. There is a subtle transformation that is happening in Bharat. From a historian’s point of view two seminal events have happened in Bharat in recent times:

Demonizing Mohammad Ali Jinnah is Bharat (aka) is a national past time at all levels of the government, media and academic institutions. The electoral and constitutional defeat of  the Indian National Congress (INC) towards the All India Muslim League got translated into the perpetual enmity towards Mohammad Ali Jinnah and for his creation “Pakistan“. By association, all those who believed in Jinnah’s dream were seen as enemies of Hindustan. For the past 60 years, the INC has been the vanguard of leading the charge against Jinnah. The INC made colossal mistakes by not accepting the Cabinet Mission Plan and not giving Separate Electorates to the Dalits. Both these actions were opposed by Mr. Gandhi and Mr. Nehru. These actions led to the alienation of the Muslims and the Dalits and continue to be the cracks in present day Bharat.  Was Pakistan inevitable? The INC made major mistakes before and after 1947

At the other end of the spectrum from the Indian National Congress is the RSS. It was an RSS man that killed the spiritual leader of the INC, Mr. Mohandas Gandhi. The RSS revered Mr. Sarawak and Mr. Rai and hated Mr. Nehru and Mr. Gandhi. When Mr. Gandhi was murdered, the INC used it an an excuse to ban the RSS. Under popular pressure a couple of decades ago the RSS was unbanned. The BJP rose to power and actually formed a government undr Mr. Vajpayee.

A strange phenomenon is emerging in Bharat, home of the right wing BJP and and Ultra right wing RSS. Internal politics in Bharat is now rethinking Jinnah. At least the right wing is. The denials of the official BJP not withstanding, the fact of the matter is that several BJP leaders have eulogized Jinnah in the recent past. This was unthinkable in the land of the Ganges where is almost universal consensus on hating Jinnah.

1) The leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Mr. L.K Advani  praised the founder of Pakistan during a visit to the country. For his “sins” he had to resign as the leader.

2) Now Mr. Jaswant Singh, a senior party leader of the BJP and a  former Finance and External affairs minister has been defending Jinnah and praising him. The BJP officially disassociates itself from his recent book  “Jinnah: India-Partition- Independence”. Mr. Singh’s book should be seen in the context of the Pakistani perspective on the creation of Pakistan. Why we created Pakistan? The Pakistan Ideology. ONT vs TNT

From an official point of view, the BJP is stuck in a position where it doesn’t want to be. Two of its major leaders have praised Mr. Mohammad Ali Jinnah–the bane of Indian politicians. BJP rethink on Jinnah: Federalism & Majoritarianism vs Muslim rights

Soutik Biswas in an prodigiously effulgent article published on the BBC (BBC. Why the Hindu right wing loves Mr Jinnah. Soutik Biswas | 08:35 UK time, Tuesday, 18 August 2009) tries to tackle the increasingly vocal question in Bharat ”Why the Hindu right wing loves Mr Jinnah“. Mr. Biswas gets it partially. However the question that he has raised is as pertinent today as it was in 1946.

Mr. Biaswas has made some good points in pointing out the “Liberal” credentials of Mr.  Jaswant Singh but the writing does not really get into the dynamics of why right wing Hndu parties love Jinnah. The following excerpts inform us about the charged atmosphere in South Asia.

I declare that the future of the Hindu race, of Hindustan and of the Punjab, rests on these four pillars: (1) Hindu Sangathan, (2) Hindu Raj, (3) Shuddhi of Moslems, and (4) Conquest and Shuddhi of Afghanistan and the Frontiers. So long as the Hindu nation does not accomplish these four things, the safely of our children and great-grandchildren will be ever in danger, and the safety of the Hindu race will be impossible. The Hindu race has but one history, and its institutions are homogeneous. But the Musalmans and Christians are far removed from the confines of Hindustan, for their religions are alien and they love Persian, Arab and European institutions. Thus, just as one removes foreign matter from the eye, Shuddhi must be made of these two religions. Lal Hardiyal. Excerpted from Dr. Ambedkar’s book “Pakistan”.

Soutik Biswas quotes the reactions of Mr. Mohammad Ali Jinnah but he he does not quote the writings of Mr. Savarkar. Dr. Ambedkar discusses Swaraj in his book “Pakistan” and quotes Mr. Savarkar. Firstly, the retention of the name Hindustan as the proper name for “lndia”. “The name “Hindustan” must continue to be the appellation of our country. Such other names as India, Hind, etc., being derived from the same original word Sindhumay be used but only to signify the same sense—the land of the Hindus, a country which is the abode of the Hindu Nation. Aryavarta, Bharat-Bhumiand such other names are of course the ancient and the most cherished epithets of our Mother Land and will continue to appeal to the cultured elite. In this insistence that the Mother Land of the Hindus must be called but “Hindustan,” no encroachment or humiliation is implied in connection with any of our non-Hindu countrymen.

Our Parsee and Christian countrymen are already too akin to us culturally and .arc too patriotic and the Anglo-indianstoo sensible to refuse to fall in line with us Hindus on so legitimate a ground.

So far as our Moslem countrymen are concerned it is useless to conceal the fact that some of them are already inclined to look upon this molehill also as an insuperable mountain in their way to Hindu-Moslem unity. But they should remember that the Moslems do not dwell only in India nor are the Indian Moslems the only heroic remnants of the Faithful in Islam. China has crores of Moslems. Greece, Palestine and even Hungary and Poland have thousands of Moslems amongst their nationals. But being there a minority, only a community, their existence in these countries has never been advanced as a ground to change the ancient names of these countries which indicate the abodes of those races whose overwhelming majority owns the land. The country of the Poles continues to be Poland and of the Grecians as Greece. The Moslems there did not or dared not to distort them but are quite content to distinguish themselves as Polish Moslems or Grecian Moslems or Chinese Moslems when occasion arises, so also our Moslem countrymen may distinguish themselves nationally or territorially whenever they want, as “Hindustance Moslems” without compromising in the least their separateness as Religious or Cultural entity. Nay, the Moslems have been calling themselves as “Hindustanis” ever since their advent in India, of their own accord. “But if in spite of it all some irascible Moslem sections amongst our countrymen object even to this name of our Country, that is no reason why we should play cowards to our own conscience. We Hindus must not betray or break up the continuity of our Nation from the Sindhus in Rigvedic days to the Hindus of our own generation which is implied in “Hindustan,” the accepted appellation of our Mother Land. Just as the land of the Germans is Germany, of the English England, of the Turks Turkistan, of the Afghans Afghanistan—even so we must have it indelibly impressed on the map of the earth for all times to come a “Hindustan”—the land of the “Hindus.”

Mr. Adhvani and Mr. Singh cannot be anomalies. They pretty much represent the thinking of the Right Wing Hindus. The reason for the “:Love Jinnah” phenomenon can be traced back to the origins or the RSSand its relationship with the likes of Mr. Gandhi. The RSS hated Gandhi for many reasons. One reason was that the RSS did not believe that the appeasement policies of Mr. Gandhi was value added activities. The RSS and others has originally propounded the Two Nation Theory (TNT)espousing a land for the Hindus. Iqbal and Jinnah were later converts to the TNT. When the INC opposed the Jinnah they opposed the TNT. The BJP and the RSS want to bring about Ram Rajha in Bharat so that it can be extended from Kabul to Raj Kalhani in the East. Opposing Jinnah, and fealty to a secular ideology runs against the very foundation of the BJP thinking.

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Mr. Singh discusses Federalism versus state rights. The discussion of Pakistani was exactly that, a discussion of majoritarianism and Muslim rights. It is very true that Mr. Jinnah’s primary concern was to secure the rights of the Muslims and the minorities of the Subcontinent.

The best evidence of this was the Cabinet Mission Plan. The Cabinet Mission Plan was the best hope for a multiethnic and multireligious  South Asian confederation which would have prevented the majoritariansim in Bharat, or in Pakistan for that matter. Today the same majoratarianism is an issue for Lanka, Bangladesh and even the Maldives. The British parliamentary system of government does not allow security for the minorities–as evidenced by the unicameral legislature of the United Kingdom. The impotent and selected House of Lords cannot be really considered as a house representing the people–it represents the aristocracy and the wealthy. The bi cameral system of government in Bharat would have railroaded the rights of the minorities—as evidenced in the past 60 years. Mr. Jinnah’s Cabinet Mission Plan (CBM) showed a way to the Hindus to avoid the alienation of the Muslims. Mr. Gandhi approved the Cabinet Mission Plan. Nehru accepted it briefly, but then he couldn’t go through with it. In this sense the Cabinet Mission Plan was the last hope of preventing Pakistan. Mr. Nehru by torpedoing the CBM in fact destroyed any chance of the Muslim Hindu reconciliation.

Why are some of India’s Hindu nationalist leaders in love with Mohammed Ali Jinnah? The founder of Pakistan is a much reviled man in India, treated as a minor conspiratorial figure, and considered to be the architect of the bloody partition of the country on religious lines in 1947. Even the secular Congress party abhors him.

So when leaders of the Hindu right sing praises for Mr Jinnah, they stir up a hornet’s nest. Four years ago, the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) LK Advani, who led a successful Hindu revivalist movement in the early 1990s, praised the founder of Pakistan during a visit to the country. This raised the hackles of Hindu fellow travellers and invited scorn from the Congress party. The BJP leader even offered to put in his papers after the kerfuffle.

Now Jaswant Singh, a doughty senior party leader and former finance and external affairs minister, who counts people like Strobe Talbott as his friends and chess, golf and polo as his pursuits, has praised Mr Jinnah as a “self made man” who “created something out of nothing and single-handedly stood up against the might of the Congress party and against the British who didn’t really like him.” He has expanded on his thesis in his new, unimaginatively titled 669-page book Jinnah: India-Partition- Independence, which released this week.

What is surprising is Mr Singh’s defence of Mr Jinnah in a TV interview in the run-up to the book release where he is even more effusive in his praise of the Quaid-e-Azam (Great Leader) as Mr Jinnah is remembered as in his homeland. He demolishes the popular Indian historiography of Mr Jinnah being a Hindu-basher and a born demagogue. “That certainly he was not,” says the BJPleader. “His principal disagreement was with the Congress party. Repeatedly he says and he says this even in his last statements to the press and to the constituent Assembly of Pakistan.”

Indian historiography has come full circle. The past six decades have been spent in demonizing the Ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity, Mr. Jinnah. By using Mr. Jinnah as an escape goat, the Indian National Congress (INC) has tried to hide the inadequacies and blunders of its leaders. By avoiding to identify the mistakes of the INC the Bharati historians have done a great disservice to world history and to the fabric of South Asia. By using Mr. Jinnah as as escape goat the Bharati intellectuals have been unable to identify the error of their ways. This paradigm continues to haunt the Delhi politicians and has led to the huge tensions and wars. Soutik Biswas does a good job or highlighting the points made by Mr. Singh about the ambassadorial credentilas of Mr. Jinnah

Then Mr Singh goes on to say that India misunderstood Mr Jinnah “because we needed to create a demon”. He insists the Congress party’s majoritarian instincts were responsible for the federalist Mr Jinnah turning away from the idea of India and asking for a separate nation for Muslims.

Yet Mr Jinnah began his political career with the Congress and until after World War I remained India’s best “ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity”. Biographer Stanley Wolpertsays he was as “as enigmatic as Gandhi, more powerful than Nehru, and one of the most charismatic leaders and least known personalities”. Historians like Patrick French believe that though Mr Jinnah “remained a secularist of sorts until his death, but also at times… willing to use communal antagonism in a strategic way.”(BBC. Why the Hindu right wing loves Mr Jinnah. Soutik Biswas | 08:35 UK time, Tuesday, 18 August 2009)

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Listen to Mr Jinnah before the formation of Pakistan, raising the spectre of Hindu majoritaranism: “We Muslims have got everything – brains, intelligence, capacity and courage- virtues that nations must possess. But two things are lacking, and I want you to concentrate your attention on these. One thing is that foreign domination from without and Hindu domination here, particularly on our economic life that has caused a certain degeneration of these virtues in us.”

Or listen to him after a meeting with Egyptian and Palestinian Arab leaders in 1946: “I told them of the danger that a Hindu empire would represent for the Middle-East … If a Hindu empire is achieved, it will mean the end of Islam in India, and even in other Muslim countries.”

At the same time, it is true that Mr Jinnah felt short changed by the Congress. On 26 July 1946, Jinnah and his working committee spoke about Muslim India having “exhausted, without success, all efforts to find a peaceful solution of the Indian problem by compromise and constitutional means; and whereas the Congress is bent upon setting up Caste-Hindu Raj in India with the connivance of the British…”

In Mr Singh’s book, JawaharlalNehru and the Congress emerge as some of the principal architects of the partition. He writes that the Congress “overestimated its strength, its influence, and its leaders were extremely reluctant to accept Jinnah as the leader of just not the Muslim League but eventually of most Muslims in India”.

There is some truth in all this. But in trying to say that Mr Nehru and Congress were largely responsible for partition, Mr Singhis possibly ignoring the larger political realities of the time. Mr Jinnah positioned himself as the “sole spokesman of Pakistan”, but his party Muslim League which led the Pakistan movement, won the last election in 1946 in British India with the number of Muslim voters at significantly no more than 10 to 12% of the total Muslim population in that year. As many historians say, the nation of Pakistan came into being “even before its mass base was established.” The fault lines have widened since.

But to return to the original question, why did Mr Singhwrite this book? Does it have to do withhis wider political ambitions? He is a self professed liberal in a party of hawks. In 1992, at the zenith of the BJP’s rathyatra (motorised chariot) movement to whip up support for a temple at Ayodhya, Mr Singh did not attend a single function on the road. His induction into the cabinet in the late 1990s was vetoed once by the party’s ideological fountainhead, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

With his mentor and BJP’s only pan-Indian leader and former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee fading out and Mr Advani himself weakened by political defeat and party infighting, is Mr Singh trying to position himself as a liberal party leader-paterfamilias that Mr Vajpayee once occupied? It is difficult to say.

In a sense, one could argue, Mr Singhkills two birds withone stone withhis revisionist take on the partition – as a senior leader of the main opposition party, he goes for the Congress’s jugular by holding it responsible for the partition along with Mr Jinnah; and by heaping encomiums on Mr Jinnah, he endears himself to Indian Muslims, who have been lukewarm to the BJP’s overtures. Is Mohammed Ali Jinnah a way for Mr Singh to reach out to Muslims and push his political ambitions in a party which appears to have lost its way in modern India? We will know in the days ahead. BBC. Why the Hindu right wing loves Mr Jinnah. Soutik Biswas | 08:35 UK time, Tuesday, 18 August 2009

Apparently the BJP-RSS hatred of Gandhi and dislike for Nehru has been converted to love for Jinnah. What implications does this have for Bharat and Pakistan now? A better understanding of Jinnah in Bharat will surely have a positive impact on the discourse of history. The BJPs love for Jinnah has not translated into a love for Muslims and it never will. But perhaps the books like the one written by Mr. Singh will improve the Bharati understanding of Pakistan and why it was created. Surely this may translate into better relations between the two countries.

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While another BJP leader has come out and praised Mohammad Ali Jinnah. The physical and spiritiual progeny of Mohammad ALiJinnah in Pakistan are discussion the legacy of Jinnah and what he believed in. One one side is the Paksitanipeople. One the other sideis the so called English speaking elite “the so called liberals” allied with the power brokers in Delhi usually led by the protagonists of the INC. Pakistan’s founder Quaid e Azam Mohmmad Ali Jinnah was not secular.

The late Chief Justice Muhammad Munir is perhaps best known for his highly controversial book, From Jinnah to Zia (1979), in which he openly stated that Mohammad Ali Jinnah was a secularist. To support this claim Munir used two quotes attributed to Jinnah. One of these quoteshas become the prime favourite of the pro-secularist writers because it provides seemingly indisputable proof that Jinnah was a secularist. However, the quote is a fake. The interview it is sourced from is real, but the words that Jinnah supposedly said are nowhere to be found.

In her new book, Secular Jinnah: Munir’sBig Hoax Exposed, a young British writer tells the story of how a point of curiosity – based on little more than an issue of grammar – led her to the startling truth. Saleena Karim shows us how much damage the ‘Munir quote’ has done over the last 26 years, not only in terms of twisting the facts of history, but now in exposing the intellectual dishonesty of Pakistani scholarship. The author names those who have cited the Munir quote, and discusses the various myths about the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, then sets the record straight. SaleenaKarim is a British Asian writer with a BSc (Hons) in Human Biology from Loughborough University. She has worked as a literary columnist and editor, and has also translated some Urdu Islamic works into English, including Economic System of the Holy Quran (2005) and Liberty as defined in the Quran (2004). She is the founder and Director of the recently launched Jinnah Archive.

Those allied with the elite in Bharat somehow see Jinnah through the same prisim. Ayesha Jala’s book “the Sole Spokesman” on the Pakisani sideand Mr. M.J. Akbar’s book about Jinnah on the Indian side portray the same demonized picture of Jinnah that Mr. Singh has tried to rebut. Justice Munir (who approved the illegal actions of Ayub Khan under the Doctrine of necessity) did more harm to the Pakistani psyche by defining Jinnah in his own image than he did when he approved the illegal actions of Ayub Khan. Between the protagonists and the antagonist, one of the best biographies of Mohammad Ali Jinnah remains the book written by Stanley Wolpert.

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WE REQUEST ALL OUR READERS TO WRITE TO webmaster@daily.pkto ask them to stop plagiarizing our original conent from Rupee News.

TO GET HITS AND GET REVENUE FROM ADVERTISERS THE DAILY HAS BEEN STEALING AND PUBLISHING OUR ARTICLES ONE DAY AFTER WE PUBLISH THEM. It has no original content. Almost all their articles are stolen from other sites.

. THE DAILY HAS BEEN STEALING OUR STORIES AND POSTING THEM ON THEIR SITE WITHOUT ANY LINK BACK OR CREDIT TO THE AUTHORS. To make the theft worse than it is, they have delete the names of our authors and added their own authors to the stories on the Dalits and on Mig 35 fighters. Accept no substitute, visit http://www.rupeenews.com. We update our stories after publishing them —to keep our original content safe from piracy and to ensure that our readers get the best content.

All material on these sites is copyrighted, Rupee News, Pakistan Historian, The Dawn, Pakistan Ledger, Military Strategy, Pakistan Punch, The Turth about Mohandas Gandhi, Strategic Thinking and Policy Institute, and American Joint Multifaith Association sites

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