The Quaid’s
Legacy
By Ras H. Siddiqu
Last December
this writer was in Karachi, Pakistan, and had the
opportunity to visit two great men who are admired
by Pakistanis a great deal but the world knows little
of. The first of the two was the founder of Pakistan,
Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the “Great Leader”
or Quaid-i-Azam as he is known; whose burial place
or “Mazar” is mandatory place to visit
for anyone going to Karachi and interested in Pakistan.
The second person was the (thankfully very alive)
social worker Maulana Sattar Edhi, whose Nobel Prize
is long overdue. One man created a country based
on hope and the other is keeping parts of it functioning
that many have hopelessly abandoned. But for this
writing let us concentrate on Mr. Jinnah. My reason
for including Edhi here was that in the greatness
that they have in common, neither fits the religious
role that is often assigned to him.
The birth of M.A. Jinnah is celebrated every December
25th with a holiday in Pakistan. The often embattled
Christian minority in that country benefits from
this coincidence of birthdays and gets to celebrate
its own Christmas holiday there too. In another
coincidence Jinnah died on 9/11/ 1948 long before
9/11/2001 became significant to the entire world.
For Pakistanis both 9/11’s have proven tragic.
Jinnah’s death in 1948 left a new country
leaderless or orphaned and the 2001 WTC attacks
in America left Pakistan with a bad reputation,
one that many others helped create but today refuse
to acknowledge.
The mutilation of the truth is not just a Western
phenomenon. People in the East are just as happy
playing with it. Pakistanis are no exceptions as
they go on and on about Jinnah’s “Jihadic”
efforts to win their country for them from the exiting
British Empire in India. Many myths about Jinnah
have been created for the people of the Islamic
Republic of Pakistan by local spin doctors. These
myths have converted a secular liberal who hardly
ever emphasized religion in his personal life into
a Muslim Pope. Nothing could have been farther from
the truth.
Honesty, integrity, determination and professionalism
are the words that come to mind to associate with
the life of the founder of Pakistan. In various
roles that great people have played in history,
these qualities are essential. But in politics they
may not always be helpful. One example that comes
to mind was in the choice of a national language
for Pakistan, a land where numerous languages were
and are spoken. Jinnah himself was most comfortable
in English. He spoke other languages (Gujrati) but
the choice of Urdu as the national language of Pakistan
was borne more out of necessity than anything else.
Pakistanis needed to quickly choose a common vehicle
of communication. In hindsight if that language
had been either English or Arabic, the initial hue
and cry especially from people in former East Pakistan
(Bangladesh today) could have been avoided. But
the decision on promoting Urdu was a logical one.
Hardly anyone spoke it in the rural areas of the
new country in 1947. And no local language in present-day
Pakistan has since been erased because of the choice
of Urdu. Jinnah’s critics have charged him
with laying the seeds of secession in East Pakistan
due to the choosing of one language (Urdu) for the
country; a decision which was a clearly logical
but politically risky.
Next, let us revisit the vision behind the idea
of Pakistan. Three main personalities formed a substantial
part of that vision, namely M.A. Jinnah himself,
the poet Dr. Allama Iqbal and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan,
the reformist educator. There is a lot of confusion
that has been generated about “The Two-Nation
Theory,” both from within its followers and
its antagonists. Its followers have added to the
confusion by seeking a country (Pakistan) of Islamic
exclusivity. Its mainly Indian and secular antagonists
have labeled it as the great divider of a singular
entity. But neither is correct. Two major nations
exist and continue to exist in South Asia because
the religious practices of Hindus and Muslims separate
them even within a common cultural crucible. What
the minority Indian Muslims were asking for prior
to 1947 was guarantees of civil rights and liberties.
Why the Indian National Congress leadership at the
time refused to acknowledge or accommodate the minimal
demands of the Muslim League leadership is anyone’s
guess?
It is indeed surprising since these demands were
coming from a very secular leadership of “cultural
Muslims” and groups that were very non-traditional
in their religious practices. In other words the
vision of the three main individuals mentioned above
and their followers had more in common with their
Congress opponents than the fascists that make up
groups like Al Qaeda today. And if the agreed upon
accommodation between them was the birth of Pakistan,
then it is both the Indians and the Pakistanis since
then who have failed to live up to that agreement.
A lack of progress in resolving Kashmir is one major
part of that failure, a failure that is now close
to reaching its sixth decade.
Compared to the vision of Pakistan’s founders
the Islamic religious exclusivity that today pits
the Sunni militants against the Shia militants in
the country, the almost criminal neglect of ethnic
and religious minority rights and an attempt to
impose a form of State religion which is alien to
the local Sufi culture do not bode well for Pakistan’s
future. What will help today is a return to the
vision presented by M.A. Jinnah which helped to
make Pakistan a reality.
Jinnah’s vision consisted of a Muslim majority
country where Muslims would feel comfortable in
practicing their faith but he did not appear to
have an exclusively Muslim country in mind. This
writer firmly believes today that Jinnah never wanted
or envisioned the mass exodus of the minority Hindu
and Sikh communities from present-day Pakistan.
He would also have wanted a long lasting relationship
between Pakistan and India, one which was based
on mutual respect, shared cultural traditions and
not perpetual animosity.
Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s Quaid-i-Azam
or Great Leader was a remarkable individual who
practiced and believed in the rule of law and set
very high standards for himself. He was a Western
educated secular minded Muslim who married a minority
Parsi and he would certainly not have appreciated
a projection of himself or his vision that was not
honest. Today we seem to have drifted away from
what he had in mind as both Pakistan and Bangladesh
try to come to terms with intolerance and extremists
in their midst.
To recap, at this time last year this writer was
happy to witness hundreds of Pakistanis visiting
M.A. Jinnah’s final resting place. Several
families of Baluchis, Pathans, Punjabis and Sindhis
and others visited this Pakistani landmark during
the two hours that we spent there. Somehow one could
not help but wonder if they were all searching for
something. Maybe some answers or a sense of belonging?
These were not the elite of Pakistan, just ordinary
people visiting Karachi from various places. And
their presence certainly made one hopeful. Hopeful,
that a tolerant Islam and Pakistan are destined
to be together as long as the ideal that M. A. Jinnah
had in mind and left in legacy is not changed or
forgotten.
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