Dec 25 , 2015
News
The Man of Vision: Jinnah
By Syeda Shehrbano Kazim
Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s political career began in 1906 when he attended the Calcutta session of the All India National Congress as Private Secretary to the President of the Congress. Convinced of the need for self-governance, Jinnah was elected to the Imperial Legislative Council in 1910, a body which largely lacked power, authority and will to bring about substantive change. Nevertheless, Jinnah was instrumental in the passing of the Child Marriages Restraint Act, the legitimisation of the Muslim Waqf (religious endowments) and was appointed to the Sandhurst Committee, which helped establish the Indian Military Academy.
March 1913, marked a transition in Jinnah’s politics when he applied for membership in the All India Muslim League. Interestingly, however, he did continued to remain a member of the Congress till December 1920 when a special session of the Congress at Nagpur permitted the use of unconstitutional means and decided to resort to non-violent non-co-operation for the attainment of self-government. Jinnah who was a constitutionalist was ethically and pragmatically opposed to the programme of non-cooperation.
Meanwhile, Jinnah became the President of the Muslim League at the 1916 session in Lucknow and shaped the 1916 Lucknow Pact between the Muslim League and the Indian National Congress, coming to be recognised as an outstanding political leader and proponent of Hindu-Muslim unity. In the same year, he was instrumental in the formation of the All India Home Rule League, where visionaries like Annie Besant, Tilak and Jinnah demanded the status of a self-governing dominion in the Empire, similar to Canada, Australia and New Zealand for India.
Jinnah also drafted the Delhi Muslim Proposals in 1927 and pleaded for the incorporation of the basic Muslim demands in the Nehru Report. He proposed a fourteen-point constitutional reform plan to safeguard the political rights of Muslims in a self-governing India. Eventually, however, he came to advocate the Two-Nation Theory with the Lahore Resolution.
Under the Government of India Act, 1935, provincial autonomy was introduced in the Sub-continent by 1937. The elections of 1937 provided the Congress with a majority in six provinces, where Congress governments were formed and resulted in the political, social, economic and cultural suppression of the Muslims in the Congress-ruled provinces. Jinnah’s most categorical vision, if not overt demand, was for equitable power and treatment for Muslims in the Subcontinent. When it became clear that the Subcontinent could not be a secure, multi-nation country, he devised instead a viable, permanent Muslim State – independent and apart.
Pakistan was not perhaps Jinnah’s first choice but it was the culmination of a struggle for self-governance, rights and political and ideological freedom. The greatest ambassador for Hindu-Muslim unity became the staunchest proponent for a separate nation. In a defining moment, Jinnah said, “We are a Nation of a hundred million and what is more, we are a Nation with our distinct culture and civilization, language and literature, art and architecture, legal laws and moral codes, customs and calendar, history and traditions, aptitudes and ambitions. In short, as Muslims we have our own distinctive outlook on life.”
His speeches and actions motivated millions, and the Muslims of India rallied to his call, “We must get Pakistan at any cost. For it we live and for it we will die. The Mussalmans have to struggle and struggle hard for their honourable existence, you must work and work hard. By doing so you will contribute substantially not only to the honour of ten crores of Muslims but to the crystallization of a free Muslim state of Pakistan where Muslims will be able to offer the ideology of Islamic rule”
In 1945, Jinnah proclaimed that only the Muslim League represented the Muslims of India, and in 1946 polls, the League won 100 percent of the reserved Muslim seats at the Centre, and 80 per cent in the provinces. With this political rout, Jinnah made clear that his vision of freedom struck a chord with all Muslims across the Subcontinent and he became the father of a nation, saying: “The establishment of Pakistan for which we have been striving is, by (the) grace of God, an established fact today, but the creation of a State of our own was the means to an end and not the end in itself. The idea was that we should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own rights and culture and where principle of Islamic social justice could find free play.”
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk