Jinnah, My Hero

It is indeed very disturbing to see what has become of Pakistan, especially if one compares it to Jinnah`s dream. The problem is further compounded by the fact that most Pakistanis get their version of Jinnah from government sponsored history.

How many people know that he was an Ismaili? That he has a daughter, even? Or that certain people who later became successful politicians were anti-Jinnah before partition (even using phrases like kafir-e-azam but have since become known as patriots (a certain Maulvi comes to mind). Every Pakistani knows Jinnah`s portrait, very few know true legacy.

My point is that Pakistanis can never realize Jinnah`s dream (`` A secular state based on Muslim identity``) without knowing the man himself. And the present lack of objective history and education in Pakistan does not give one much hope for the future.

Good article though. The Simon & Garfunkel lyric should be ``Jotin` Joe`` instead of ``jumping``.

I dunno ..nobody knows for sure what he really meant by Pakistan ...but no one should ever deny his place in history ( despite your belief to the contrary ) cos he changed the map of the world and effected the lives of millions ...during his time and after .I think the most damning indictment , though , about how bad things have gotten ..is that if he was alive now he`d probably have been hung as an infidel and an Israeli agent :(

Well written Godot! One wonders how Jinnah would have been regarded by history had he been born in England or America? What if one of the three key players, Jinnah, Nehru and Gandhi had been missing, would history have been the same? What conspiracies would have unfolded earlier had people realized that his days were numbered?

Godot:

Good article. Would provoke and shock some!

Jinnah is dead, Long live Jinnah!

Standing over the edge of the precipice we continue to look in the rear view mirror. And when we don`t look back we look around, get dismayed at the present pathetic company. Missing is the concerted effort to look into the foggy future and salvage-- for ourseleves, for our future generations.

regards

Excellent article Godot !

Jinnah was a brillient constitutional lawyer and it was through his advocacy for his client, the Muslims of India, that he won for them a political settlement in the quise of Pakistan. His legal brillience in creating Pakistan, is admired and repected by the adversary who lost to his single minded tenacity for the cause of Pakistan - the British. The fact that his portrait hangs in the Great Hall of Lincoln`s Inn testifies to his acomplishment.

Another thing that we, Pakistanis, should be grateful to is Jinnah`s Hindu doctor. It was he who found out the TB that was eating Jinnah alive and it was he, as a promise to Jinnah, who kept quite about the whole thing and locked the x-rays in a private safe. Mountbatten, once he found out, is said to have remarked that had he known, he would have delayed Parititon till it was too late. If that doctor had spoken there would be no Pakistan.

Fifthy years later, we Pakistanis think that all Hindus were against the idea of Pakistan, but we should remember that one Hindu who, more than others, by his actions of decency, made the idea of Pakistan possible. It is time we lived up to our obligations and admit that we, as a nation, owe that gentleman a debt of honor.

Sincerely Feroz

Feroze:

I thought the physician you referred to, Dr J.A.L. Patel was parsee.

regards

Re: Temporal post # 6

According to Wolport, the doctor was a Hindu and had his practice in Bombay and I have heard the same from my grandmother, who was a parsi, who moved to Lahore from Bombay in the early 1940s and then decided to stay on after 1947.

Question: if he was a Parsi, why has not the Parsi population of Pakistan brought this up?

Ferozk:

Can you provide us with the name of the Doctor. I thought Quaid had two physicians during the coarse of his life and the one I am told knew about his disease was a British lawyer, who was also a colonel in the British Army.

Do enlighten me.

Kumar,

Please give us the reference of that quote. Preferably, the title and the author of the book, in this case.

Considering that he said what you are saying he did, I don`t think it was hypocritical in any way. Had he turned away the muslims who were migrating to Pakistan, then I may venture to agree with you but that was not the case, was it now.

When such references are made, the SCHOLARLY way of doing things is that you mention the exact quote with all the references and not just your inferences. Hope you take this as criticism of your method as I do not mean any personal disrespect.

Re: Rana

My reply was specifically directed towards Kumar`s reply. I agree that the article to which Kumar replied initially is not a scholarly work. But I have nothing to do with that. Once again, I was replying to Kumar`s question. That`s it.

Re: godot

Can`t make any sense of what you are trying to say. The article is poorly composed.

you say ``The more I understood the petty South Asians, the more I understood Jinnah. ``

does this mean that Jinnah is petty or what ?

you also say ``The more I understood the deep-seated religious enmity and bigotry between the two main religious groups, the more I understood Jinnah. ``

and elsewhere you also quote that Jinnah was the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity. Duh, does it make any sense within and without the context of the article.

God alone knows what you understood about Jinnah. Almost makes me wonder if you had written it as a satire.

and the footnote .... what is it there for ? and as if that mattered ?

note 1 :

And you have not answered the most important question. Why did a secular minded, anglophilic, pork eating, ismaili, non practising muslim change into an ardent supporter of a seperate homeland for the muslims of the subcontinent ? Can we write off this change as an egoistic streak faced by an immensely talented man when facing another intelligent adversary in Nehru ?

note 2 : seeing the title i thought there might be some good analyses of an important person in South Asian (nay World) history and i found only absolute bunkum.

iconoclast

Jinnah was all bunk.

Here are four different interpretations of the Pakistan movement:

1. A secular state where the Muslims could be in the majority.

2. An Islamic state

3. The statement that Muslims are a nation - tied to the concept of Ummah

4. The statement that there are two nations in India - the Hindus and the Muslims. Hence the two-nation theory.

Each of these statements have very different implications for politics, partition and most importantly the ability to gather minority support (specifically Hindu and Sikh support) in the would-be Pakistan.

Conversely, the Congress demand was simple, one-man one-vote with certain fundamental rights and let the chips fall where they may.

Without making sure that all his followers had the same interpretation of Pakistan, Jinnah became the leader of a hoax.

re: afrasiyab

You make a good point about SCHOLARLY works. But within the context of this article I am not sure why it even matters. This article itself is far from anything scholarly.
THe article is nothing but references to some supposed historical FACTS followed by some pretty far fetched inferences. The author assumes his audience knows about all the references he makes and assumes you agree with ALL of the inferences he draws from them.
I would love to read a real SCHOLARLY piece on Jinnah. Any suggestions ?
Whatever happened to the movie by Akbar S. Ahmed ?

There is a view among Pakistani secularists that the secular ideology was hijacked in the 1970s.

In fact, the secular Pakistani ideology was born dead.

There were far too many influential people who had views other than a secular state. And what of the rank and file of the average Muslim Leaguer or the poor Muslim refugees streaming into Pakistan? How many were making distinctions between Islamic States and pre-dominantly Muslim secular states. This was a subtlety lost to most - for the average man, Pakistan was a Muslim state and the rest was legal hair-splitting.

I know of no other state with as confused an identity as Pakistan and this started from day one.

India may be going through an identity crisis right now but for the better part of 50 years the vision (not the reality) has been clear: a secular state. Even the average man on the road in India knows that India is secular or dharam-nirpeksh (religion neutral). Some dont like it and they are busy intimidating minorities burning churches, demolishing mosques but even they know they live in a secular country.

Jinnah gets the credit for his country`s confusion and Nehru/Gandhi get the credit for their country`s relative clarity.

Re: Kumar`s post # 9

Yes; Jinnah said that, but you have to take that quote in the context it was meant.

The creation of Pakistan was basically one of a choice, because given the nationalistic rhetoric of the Congress, many Muslims were considering life, in a Hindu India, as untenable.

Pakistan was to be their choice in case they did not opt for India. Jinnah`s remark was meant for those Muslims who had, of their own free will, chosen India. Jinnah`s implication was that, having decided, they should not agiate against India, but should contribute to building a better India; their new home land. In other words, they made their choices and now they should live with it.

Hence, he was not being hypocritical.


Re: afrasiyab`s post #8

In the cricket parlance, I am stumped...

That reference was made out of Wolport`s ``Jinnah of Pakistan`` and presently I do not have that volume with me. Please bear in mind that this is all from memory. I believe that the doctor`s last name was Patel, as Temporal suggested, but I am not sure what his first name was. I know that he was a Hindu, because my father had said the same thing to me once. My only regret is that I did not ask this question to Admiral Ashan, who was Jinnah`s aide d`camp and a real close friend of my father, when he was still alive. If that doctor had been Parsi, being a half Parsi myself, I would have known about it.

As to Jinnah`s physicans; There was Dr. Patel in India and I know he was treated by a Col. Elihi Bux of Pakistan Army during his last year and the colonel was with Jinnah the night he died. We know this, because the colonel wrote a book about his times with Jinnah. As to the British doctor, I do not know. I have my doubts on that, but that means nothing. Jinnah did live in England during the 1930s and maybe he had an English doctor there.

This is that question that puzzles me. Why would a lawyer change professions in mid stream and become a doctor or vice versa. Most of the British army medical doctors came from the Royal Army Medical Corps. Hence that would imply a career in that field. Why would a doctor become a lawyer? Besides, if he was lawyer, he could not become a docter since medicine is highly specialized field.

I am sorry, but I am really confused on this question.

Sincerely

Ferozk,

This is an excellent point you have raised. Why is it so hard for the Indians to accept that Pakistan has survived against all odds. I think, as a nation, we have accepted that Bangladesh is a seperate nation although it was a part of Paksitan once.

There was a very interesting survey done by the India Times in 1997 at the culmination of half a century after independance where more students (I don`t know why they polled students only) blamed Nehru and Patel as opposed to Jinnah for the creation of Paksitan. You can find this poll in India Times, somewhere in the month of August 1997.