Some Thoughts On Jinnah
A hot political story currently making the headlines in Indian newspapers is the expulsion of veteran BJP leader Jaswant Singh (who had been minister for foreign affairs, finance and defence at various times when the BJP was in power) from the party for his book on Jinnah. The Rashtriya Swayamasevak Sangh (RSS), the militant Hindu fundamentalist organization and the BJP's ideological gatekeeper, is reportedly furious over Singh's assertions in the book that Jinnah has been 'demonised' in official Indian historiography as the sole architect of the Partition, and that Nehru should be held accountable for the tragedy as well. Additional anger was reserved for Singh's denigration of Sardar Patel, the political strongman of Bombay during the pre- and post independence era and a Congressman whom the RSS has appropriated into its iconic line-up. Jinnah is turning out to be the nemesis of rightwing politicians of India - BJP's 'Jinnah Jinx' they're calling it. In 2005, L K Advani faced a similar situation, when on a visit to Pakistan he let loose a hornet's nest around his head by saying that Jinnah was a "great man" and a "secular person." Though that also had not been music to the RSS's saffron ears, Advani's remarks had not invited the kind of harsh retribution it did on Jaswant - Advani, after all, had worked hand in glove with the RSS for a long time and had led the rath jatra that down the line led to destruction of the Babri Masjid. Therefore, three days after handing in his resignation from the BJP president's post, Advani was allowed to limp back into the fold. Revisionist history is the basis of national recidivist and revivalist movements. The RSS is based on a certain reading of Indian history - itself the product of imperial historiography and the Calcutta Asiatic Society's unearthing of a golden, classical era of ancient India. In the RSS's version of the Independence narrative - the one point it is in complete agreement with the Congress - Jinnah's villainous role as Partition begetter is central. And yet, Jaswant and Advani are not entirely alone in their claims to the contrary - there are Indian writers and historians who do not automatically subscribe to the Jinnah as the villain-of-the-Partition view of the subcontinent's history. One such view is in SS Gill's well-researched and well-regarded biography of Gandhi (Gandhi, A Sublime Failure; New Delhi: Rupa; 2001). In the chapters titled 'Hindu-Muslim Amity' and 'Gandhi and Partition' Gill lays bare the dislike the two Gujratis - Gandhi and Jinnah - had for each other, and its impact on independence politics. Gandhi comes out the worse for wear, with the Mahatma not quite 'mahat' in his treatment of Jinnah. Jinnah was secular, and deeply Westernized. Had it not been for his bitter experience at the hands of Congress, Nehru and Gandhi, he perhaps would have remained irreversibly so. Until 1937, and afterwards, when he resolved otherwise for political gains, he never quoted publicly from the Quran, nor was enamoured with religion. Gandhi, on the other hand, was deeply and flamboyantly religious, somebody who "used Hindu symbols and legends in his public discourse" and relied greatly, with political consequences, "on prayer, tapas, fasts, asceticism…practices that were rooted in the Hindu religious tradition." Jinnah was personally fastidious in this regard, and the "wearing of khadi, spinning, fasts, vows, tapas, satyagraha... all smacked of medievalism and religiosity, and Jinnah felt most ill at ease with these 'fads' of Gandhi." Thus it was no surprise that the two from the beginning, in 1920, were at loggerheads about launching the Khilafat movement in the wake of the humiliations visited on the Ottoman caliphate by the Western powers after the First World War. Gandhi supported it, wanting to 'win' over Indian Muslims, and Jinnah opposed it, saying it would encourage Muslim obscurantists, mullahs and reactionary elements. But Gandhi won the tactical battle, with the Congress endorsing Gandhi, even though Jinnah complained, rightly, that he was the more senior Congress leader - by the time Gandhi had made his appearance in India from South Africa, Jinnah had already established close working and personal ties with the first generation of Congress leaders. Jinnah won the intellectual point, though, when Kemal Ataturk dismantled the Ottoman caliphate and founded the modern Turkish state. However, the pattern of continual snubbing and belittling of Jinnah by Nehru and Gandhi (who was also responsible for forcing out Subhas Bose from the presidency of the Congress), was laid, a pattern that is well outlined in Gill's book. It continued till the 1937 state assembly elections. Frustrated, he even left Congress and India for England in 1930, staying there for four years, and coming back only, as legend has it, when he heard that Nehru had opined that 'Jinnah is finished' in Indian politics. In the 1937 elections, Jinnah, Gill writes, "was still a liberal, and his Party pitched candidates against the Muslim landed gentry," but fared badly, in contrast to the Congress. It was in an Uttar Pradesh by-election in the aftermath of that debacle that Jinnah ditched the nationalist line for an exclusively Muslim line, and quoted from the Quran from the first time publicly in an election campaign. After that there was no holding him back and, according to Gill, it marked the beginning of his "ferociously communal line." And though others had formulated it before him - in 1867 Sir Syed Ahmed had said that Muslims and Hindus could not live as one nation - yet in the 1940 Lahore Resolution, by giving brilliant voice to the 'two-nation' theory, Jinnah single-handedly changed the terms of the political debate. What had been a 'minority-majority' argument was now elevated to a 'separate nations' debate. Seven years later, Jinnah had his own state. Of course, in a supremely ironic twist of history, East Pakistani Bengalis, in reaction to a different set of snubs and humiliations, shortly afterwards began applying their own two-nation theory to Jinnah's Pakistan - 'we Bengalis are a separate nation, with a separate calendar and language…' - to ultimately, and triumphantly, carve out their own independent state and history in 1971. But that is another story. What seems apparent is that at least until the mid-1930s, continually sidelined and ultimately with his back forced to the wall by a Nehru-and-Gandhi-dominated Congress, Advani and Jaswant seem right in proclaiming Jinnah as a secular figure, that he has been demonized by official Indian historians, and that perhaps a re-reading is in order. What Sunil Khilnani in his best-selling yet intellectually accomplished book The Idea of India wrote: "Secular and Hindu nationalisms have invariably assigned primary responsibility for Partition to Muslim 'communalism' and separatism. Yet recent historical research has complicated the conventions of this picture." Both Advani and Juswant, as BJP figures, of course have their own agendas in terms in wanting to further 'complicate the picture.' To want to knock Nehru and Congress off their central pedestals in the great narrative of India's Independence movement would work to the political advantage of the BJP. In the process, they may have found in Jinnah a vehicle for their purposes. Much to the visible discomfiture of the RSS. Which makes one wonder: Is Jinnah, for much of his life sartorially assembled in two-tone shoes and double-breasted suits, with a pronounced taste for fine whiskeys, bacon for breakfast and the English language, having a hearty laugh in his grave?
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