Jinnah’s
Theory of Nationhood
By Dr Ahmad Faruqui
Dansville, CA
In last week’s column,
I discussed Pakistan’s national identity
and said the early death of its founding fathers
contributed to a proliferation of visions. On
Jinnah’s death anniversary, it is appropriate
to revisit his assertion that Muslims and Hindus
were two separate nations that could only live
peacefully when separated by an international
border. After discussing the strengths and weaknesses
of this theory of nationhood, I argue in this
column that Jinnah never intended for his theory
to be applied after Partition, knowing it was
too divisive to form the basis of governance.
In March 1940, Jinnah famously theorized, “The
Hindus and the Muslims belong to two different
religions, philosophies, social customs, and literature.
They neither inter-marry, nor inter-dine together,
and indeed they belong to two different civilizations
which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and
conceptions. … [They] derive their inspirations
from different sources of history. They have different
epics… To yoke together two such nations
under a single state, one as a numerical minority
and the other as a majority, must lead to growing
discontent and the final destruction of any fabric
that may be so built for the government of such
a state.”
Before Partition, Muslims were spread throughout
the subcontinent of India, even though they were
concentrated in the northwestern and eastern regions.
Given the logistical problem in uprooting millions
of people, Partition was not expected to bring
about religious homogeneity in the new states.
What was more likely was that several million
Muslims would remain in India and several million
Hindus would remain in Pakistan. But for Partition
to create political stability, one had to presume
that Hindus who elected to stay in Pakistan would
become citizens of the new state with equal rights
as Muslims, not subject to the tyranny of the
Muslim majority. This is what Jinnah articulated.
A major tenet of his theory was that Muslims and
Hindus could live together amicably in a secular
Pakistan but not in undivided India, i.e., secularity
was possible in a Muslim-majority country but
not in a Hindu-majority country. This asymmetrical
conception of secularity was to engender distrust
between the two countries that persists to this
day.
Jinnah did not talk much about what would happen
to the Muslims who elected to stay in India. Perhaps
he presumed that they too would become equal citizens
with Hindus in India. But, since now they would
be in an even smaller minority, would they not
be subject even more to the tyranny of a Hindu
majority? This was perhaps the greatest weakness
in his theory.
As expected, most Hindu leaders rejected the two-nation
theory. But so did many Muslim leaders, who held
that the Muslim nation (‘ummah) was global
and could not be contained within the boundaries
of a country.
The theory also suggested that the benefits of
Partition would outweigh its costs. It presumed
that there was something intrinsically liberating
about Partition that would eliminate the centuries’
old differences of culture, history and politics
between Muslims and Hindus and radically change
how they viewed each other.
Jinnah could not have anticipated that one million
lives would be lost during Partition and countless
millions would be permanently scarred either physically
or emotionally. Maybe some of this blame can be
placed on Mountbatten for giving Jinnah the “moth
eaten” he did not want. But this was just
the immediate cost. More costs would come later
as the people who were lucky to cross the border
alive failed to find the promised land. And even
greater costs would be incurred in Kashmir.
Partition, which was supposed to heal the rift
between Muslims and Hindus, simply elevated a
communal conflict into an international one. Contrary
to the Quaid’s expectations, India became
a stable and secular democracy while Pakistan,
while almost entirely Muslim, became a state marred
by episodic religious violence requiring protracted
military rule.
The astute leader that he was, Jinnah had only
intended to use the two-nation theory to create
Pakistan, not to govern it. Only three days before
Pakistan became independent in 1947, Jinnah essentially
put the two-nation theory to bed. Speaking to
the Constituent Assembly, he said, “We are
starting with this fundamental principle that
we are all citizens of one state…in the
course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus
and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in
the religious sense, because that is the personal
faith of each individual, but in the political
sense as citizens of the state.”
Jinnah did not envision Pakistan as a religious
state. Otherwise, why would he have lauded the
“Great Ataturk” for revitalizing the
Turkish nation by his “great statesmanship,
courage and foresight.” Ataturk’s
performance had also made quite an impression
on that great Islamic scholar, Muhammad Iqbal,
who had observed, “Among the Muslim nations
of today, Turkey alone has shaken off its dogmatic
slumber, and attained to self-consciousness.”
This unrestrained praise for Ataturk should have
removed any doubts about the conception of Pakistan.
Not only had Ataturk separated state from religion
in Turkish politics, he had also begun to de-Islamize
Turkish culture. The Arabic alphabet was replaced
with the Latin alphabet. The fez and the headscarf
were shunned because of their Islamic symbolism
and he proceeded (without success) to change the
recitation of canonical prayers from Arabic into
Turkish. But even Ataturk did not espouse a theory
of nationhood based on the religion of its inhabitants.
Since Pakistan’s creation was based on the
Muslimness of its citizens, it was inevitable
that its national identity would be caught up
in religiosity, as leader after leader would position
national survival on a negation of Hinduism. Gradually,
Pakistanis forgot that even Iqbal had opposed
the creation of a religious state. In 1930, he
had assured the Hindus that the creation of autonomous
Muslim states would not “mean the introduction
of a kind of religious rule in such states.”
Iqbal had said that the Qur’an taught religious
toleration and made all places of worship inviolable.
Sadly, even Muslim places of worship are no longer
inviolable in Pakistan, having fallen victim to
sectarian conflict.
Today’s Pakistan, while roughly half of
what Jinnah got in 1947, is the world’s
second largest Muslim nation and a pivotal regional
state. Six years ago, Vajpayee embraced Jinnah’s
vision by visiting the Minar-i-Pakistan and Advani
did the same this year by visiting the Quaid’s
mausoleum. For Jinnah’s vision to triumph,
Pakistan has to move beyond Jinnah’s 1940
speech, in which he put forth the two-nation theory,
and adhere to his 1947 speech, in which he put
the theory to bed.
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