Jaswant and Jinnah

I usually stay clear of politics but this topic is too interesting. I am not a historian which is why I have given several citations. Pakistanis credit Jinnah as the creator of their nation and Indians also credit (may be blame) him for the same. A few days back Jaswant Singh, a respected figure in Indian politics, proclaimed that Jinnah was not to be solely blamed and that leaders of Indian National Congress were equally or even more responsible for splitting the nation. I spent a little bit of time googling this topic myself and this is what I found.

The British fanned the flames of communalism with their divide and rule policy but they didn't start the mess. The origins of the Hindu-Muslim schism seem to have been socio-economic. According to [1] [2] there was resentment among the Muslim elite who stood to loose influence with the advent of English as the official language and of modern education. It seems Hindus were faster to adapt to those conditions and Muslims began to loose prominence. The Muslim elite would have lost even more with the introduction of democratic processes and in 1906 they formed the All India Muslim League. They demanded and secured separate legislative councils for Muslims.

Jinnah [5] was member of INC who later drifted away and became the leader of AIML. Jinnah branded INC as a Hindu party despite the fact that several Hindu parties such as Hindu Mahasaba (they performed poorly in the elections) and organizations such as RSS already existed. Even in 1927 when he was the leader of AIML Jinnah opposed the idea of separate electorates for Muslims and put forth the 14 points [3] as a regulation of INCs idea of unified electorates. INC rejected the idea. I guess this is Jaswant Singh's cardinal point, but read the 14 points and compare that to the democratic ideals of INC. After a long hiatus from politics he returned to India from England to campaign for the 1937 elections. AIML fared poorly losing in most of the Muslim majority states but gaining votes in Muslim minority areas. INC won in Hindu majority areas [4] and parties such as Unionist Party won in Muslim majority areas. Jinnah then offered to ally with Congress if they accepted them as the sole representatives of Indian Muslims and shared power with them. INC of course did not accept the ridiculous offer.

Jinnah went on a virulent campaign to make all Muslims accept AIML as their sole representative and in 1940 began to demand a separate country for Muslims. He successfully campaigned in NFWP, Baluchistan and Punjab, where he impressed upon them that the Muslims in the other states (where they were a minority) would be mistreated by their congress governments and that AIML was the only party that could help them by representing all Muslims in British India. In the elections of 1946 AIML had made drastic improvements and won most of the Muslim majority electorates, but INC had won majority of the votes in the country. The British tried to avoid partition with a call for separate constitutions for separate regions which INC and AIML would jointly govern, but this idea was also rejected by AIML [6]. An interim government was formed by the majority party INC which infuriated Jinnah and led him to declare "We do not want war, if you want war we accept your offer unhesitatingly. We shall have India divided or we shall have India destroyed." The infamous direct action campaign [7] was launched and thousands of Hindus and Muslims were killed, raped or maimed in the concomitant violence. After that no one could hinder AIML. With the looming threat of civil war the creation of Pakistan was inevitable.

So there it is, born out of a socio-economic power struggle Pakistan is a caricature of what it was meant to be. Created to prevent mistreatment of Muslims, it got split due to bias against East Pakistan (Bangladesh) and has long been accused of bigotry against the people of Baluchistan by the power centre in Punjab province. To make matters worse NWFP is teeming with tribal warlords, Taliban etc. and is said to be one of most dangerous places in the world.

Coming back to Jaswant Singh, this is how I see it. INC wanted to represent whole of India. AIML wanted to be regarded as the sole representative of Indian Muslims. But in a democracy the majority party would rule and hence AIML could never govern the country. Even though some Muslim leaders such as those in Unionist Muslim League [8] wanted to collaborate with INC (in fact they had collaborated), Jinnah was opposed to this. I think its clear who is responsible for the creation of Pakistan. Blaming the INC is pointless. I don't think the way to handle dissent is to capitulate to the dissenting party. The INC's mistake seems to be that they ignored Jinnah and that they did not foresee the partition. As for calling Jinnah secular, how can anyone responsible for the reprehensible direct action day be called secular?

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pakistan_Movement

[2] - http://mrmulliner.sulekha.com/blog/post/2006/08/journey-of-communalism-in-modern-india.htm

[3] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Points_of_Jinnah

[4] - http://mrmulliner.sulekha.com/blog/post/2006/08/growth-of-communalism-in-india-ii-1937-1947.htm, also read this

[5] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali_Jinnah

[6] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1946_Cabinet_Mission_to_India

[7] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Action_Day

[8] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unionist_Muslim_League

Interesting side note [1]: The word 'Pakistan' referred to the five Northern units of India, Viz: Punjab, (Afghanistan Province), Kashmir, Sind and Baluchistan.

[2]: Khan Abdul Ghaffer Khan tried to emulate Gandhiji in NFWP. A sad story.

[3]: Great Bong has an interesting post about this topic