January 14 , 2011

What Quaid Was Not

  

A Muslim visitor returning from India feels instinctively a sense of gratitude to Jinnah for founding Pakistan, which, with all its warts and imperfections, is a place free from the specter of Muslims at the receiving end of communal fury.

This is not to denigrate India, a country difficult to match in the range of its cultural diversity.  But no honest Indian would contend that India is a safe haven for Muslims.  Neither is Pakistan a bastion for minorities.  No lofty claims are made here for a secular order.  Yet some Pakistanis would still like to reassess the utility of the creation of Pakistan and the wisdom behind the founding.  The debate would be answered conclusively by asking a single question: are the Muslims of India better off than the Muslims of Pakistan?

By some accounts, India has more Muslims than Pakistan.  But that fact, apart from tokenism, is not reflected at the helm of affairs. Sikhs, for all the agitation, were (and still are) far better represented than Muslims despite their significantly smaller size.  Secularism is intellectually attractive but, in effect, fraudulent.  The obvious needs to be restated.  But for Pakistan, there would not have been too many generals, business moguls, sport super stars and bureaucrats of the Islamic faith.  Having said that, it does not necessarily follow that the experiment of a Muslim homeland has been an unqualified success.

Born under an August moon 63 years ago, the question naturally arises: are we closer to the dream envisioned by M.A. Jinnah?  A yes or no answer would be misleading as well as over-simplistic.

In 2010, the struggle for the soul of Pakistan continues.  Is it meant to be a religious state?  A socialist republic?  A liberal secular parliamentary democracy patterned after the Westminster model?  Or is it supposed to be a straight-forward dictatorship?  These questions are not susceptible to a clear-cut response.

Problems in Pakistan run the whole gamut of human experience: wars, autocracy, civil strife, poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, child marriages, traffic deaths, lack of commitment to excellence, terrorism and the vivisection of half of the country.  But problems are not unique to Pakistan and to some degree are present even in a technologically developed country like the United States, where reliable sources estimate at least 43 million functionally illiterate Americans.

The vision of M.A. Jinnah itself is subject to varying interpretations. It is a tiresome spectacle to see scholars and pseudo-scholars attempting to define and than tailor the alleged vision to fit current expediencies.  It is almost always asked what Jinnah was, what he saw, and what he really envisioned.  Old speeches are dug up and incomplete statements are taken out of context.  The approach in most cases is anecdotal, unaccompanied by supporting facts.  Or, if facts are given, they are uncorroborated by independent accounts. The result is a piecemeal view looking more at the individual trees than at the overall forest.

  Let us begin to ask what M.A. Jinnah was not: a question of fact rather than mere opinion.  The facts would agree that M.A. Jinnah was not a general.  He was certainly not a bureaucrat.  And he was most definitely not a man of the cloth.  The facts would also agree that he was a constitutionalist to the core, a superb parliamentarian who blended his considerable skills of advocacy with an uncanny sense of politics to plead and later to successfully win his biggest case.

The facts further would indicate that he was no demagogue, street-agitator, or mob inciter, but a lawyer who believed in the rule of law over the rule of men.

Be it in America or Russia, established institutions try to define the future goals of their society keeping in mind the intent of the founding fathers.  In India, too, secular noises consistent with Gandhi and Nehru’s publicly stated preferences are periodically made.  

The concept of Pakistan – a separate homeland for the Muslims – has been vindicated insofar as the Muslims of Pakistan and of the subsequently partitioned East Pakistan/Bangladesh go.  If they have a marked enthusiasm for reuniting with Mother India, it has to date been successfully concealed.

  True, Pakistan is miles away from realizing the dream of M.A. Jinnah. But there are enough believers of the frayed dream to give rise to optimism.  If the song of the people of Pakistan does not carry the resonance of old, the fault does not lie with the song but with the singer.