Women's Voices in the Pakistan Movement
Yasser Latif Hamdani March 4, 2006
#158 Posted by MantoLives on April 12, 2006 12:24:08 am
Jinnah and women’s emancipation
By Sharif al Mujahid
Jinnah himself had always taken his sister, Fatima Jinnah, to Muslim Leaque sessions, and wherever she went with him, she walked beside him and not behind him — heralding a message loud and clear, for everyone within reach: the elevating message of gender equality, writes Sharif al Mujahid
All said and done, Quaid-i- Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah was a liberal, par excellence. To quote Hector Bolitho who had interviewed some two hundred persons who knew Jinnah personally, during 1952-54, “Jinnah told Dr K. M. Ashraf that during the last two years (1894-96) in London his time was ‘utilized for further independent studies for the political career’ he had already ‘had in mind’.”
Jinnah also said, “Fortune smiled on me, and I happened to meet several important English liberals with whose help I came to understand the doctrine of liberalism. The liberalism of Lord Morley was then in full sway. I grasped that liberalism, which became part of my life and thrilled me very much.”
It is obvious that his fascination for liberalism led Jinnah to subscribe to democratic ethos, and these, in turn, inexorably led him to become, perhaps, the foremost spokesman for civic freedoms and human rights in the Central Indian Legislature, of which he was a member for some thirty years. Even when his opponents were involved, he consistently espoused the cause of the aggrieved and pled for conceding or restoring them their basic, inalienable rights.
And as a corollary to his liberal ethos and this consuming concern with human rights was his passion for reversing the “wretched” condition of women, who stood marginalized not only in the pre-modern East but also in the modern West, in the decades before and after the advent of the twentieth century.
Thus, to quote Miss Agatha Harrison, one of the speakers at a memorial meeting for Jinnah at Coxton Hall, London, on September 14, 1948, “When Jinnah was a student in London, (1892-96), the Suffragette Movement was gathering momentum; but we had very few sympathizers and supporters. He always came to our meetings and spoke in defence of vote for women. Even then he was not afraid of championing an unpopular cause.”
Jinnah’s belief that women should be extended the opportunities available to men at various stages in their lives was amply reflected in his careful handling of the schooling and career orientation of Fatima Jinnah; his youngest sister and ward.
Much against the family and the community traditions, she had been sent to the Bandhara Convent School (1902), and then to the St. Patrick School (1906), both in Bombay, where she did her Senior Cambridge (1913), and, still later, to Dr Ahmad Dental College, Calcutta (1919-22), to study dentistry. There she stayed at a hostel, although her sister, Maryam, along with her family, was living in Calcutta.
Upon graduation, Fatima opened a dental clinic on Abdur Rahman Street in Bombay, in 1923, and simultaneously worked at the nearby Dhobi Talau Municipal Clinic on a voluntary basis. All this was, of course, something of a rare phenomenon even for cosmopolitan and modernized Bombay. But it was made possible; only because Jinnah believed that the women have an inalienable right to carve out for themselves a career.
During his long parliamentary career (1910-47), Jinnah stood against every sort of discrimination against women and other unprivileged classes. Thus, he stoutly supported Bhupendranath Basu’s Special Marriage Amendment Bill (1912), which provided for legal cover to marriages falling outside the Hindu and Muslim laws, although it caused consternation among Muslims — to a point that he felt that he could no more claim to represent them in the Imperial Council and, hence, decided to sit out in the 1913 elections. Likewise he had materially helped in the passage of the Sarda Act (1935), prohibiting child marriage.
However, Jinnah’s major role in the emancipation of Muslim women came in the mid-1930s when he began to reorganize and revitalize the moribund All India Muslim League (AIML), the most authoritative Muslim political organization since its inception in 1906.
Till then, the Muslim women were mere shrouded, silent creatures, confined to the four walls of their homes, steeped in dogma and superstition and denied the fruits of modern education, health care and a career. Mohammad Ali Jinnah was the foremost Muslim to raise his authoritative voice against the pathetic conditions to which the Muslim women had been consigned for a long time, and against discrimination of all sorts.
He boldly and consistently espoused the women’s cause and wished to see them as equal partners often in all walks of life. No wonder, he declared in Aligarh on March 10, 1940: “No nation can rise to the height of glory unless your women are side by side with you. We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime against humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls of the houses as prisoners. I do not mean that we should imitate the evils of western life. But let us try to raise the status of our women according to our own Islamic ideas and standards. There is no sanction anywhere for the deplorable conditions in which our women have to live. You should take your women along with you as comrades in every sphere of life...”
When Begum Shah Nawaz told the AIML Council at Lucknow in October 1937 that she had set up a Punjab Muslim Women’s League, Jinnah stood up and said that he did not believe in separate men and women’s organizations, but in their working together from the primary League upwards. He instructed the provincial Leagues to include two women members in their respective quotas of membership in the AIML Council.
Thus, adequate women representation came to be secured and ensured. Jinnah also nominated Begum Mohammad Ali to the AIML apex body, the Working Committee, which position she held till her death in 1944.
In December 1938, at the AIML session at Patna, Jinnah appointed a Central Women’s Committee with Fatima Jinnah as convener, for the specific purpose of drafting a programme for the social, economic and cultural uplift of women.
When the question of purdah (veil) was raised by a section at Patna, Jinnah intervened to emphasize that “It is absolutely essential for us to give every opportunity to our women to participate in our struggle for life and death. Women can do a good deal within their homes, even in purdah.” On another occasion, Jinnah asserted, “No nation can make any progress without the co-operation of women. If women support their men as they did in the days of the prophet of Islam (PBUH) we should soon realize our goal.”
Besides political mobilization, the Central Women’s Committee addressed itself to social problems encountered by the community, and organized social work. Thus, it passed several resolutions concerning housewives’ problems and food shortages, as well as on more fundamental issues such as women’s inheritance. In subsequent years, the committee would hold separate sessions after the AIML annual sessions.
Separate arrangements were also made for women participants in the AIML sessions, while the more prominent among them sat on the dais. And with the years, their participation increased to a point that some 5,000 women attended the AIML session at Karachi, in December 1943.
Jinnah himself had always taken his sister, Fatima, to these sessions, and wherever she went with him, she walked beside him and not behind him — heralding a message loud and clear, for everyone within reach: the ennobling message of gender equality. And although it was politically risky to take her along to traditional and tribal areas such as the NWFP and Balochistan, especially when he was striving to gather them on the AIML platform, he did it with impunity since he would not compromise on a principle he had believed in so passionately since his student days.
Absent in the brief historical mention of his wife and daughter is Jinnah’s unobtrusive and non-interfering self as a husband and a father. We fail to notice how a fiercely arrogant and unbending politician was an unimposing man. He did not confine his sister to his home to become his domestic appendage nor did he ever force his wife and daughter to stay with him to gain political mileage
To quote Salma Tasadduque Hussain, a former member of the Punjab Assembly (1946-58) and a social worker, “It gave great encouragement to women to see that they could find a place of honour with men like Quaid-i-Azam....”
In the meantime, at Jinnah’s instance, the Muslim Women Students Federation (1941) and the Women National Guards (1942) were launched, in a concerted attempt to mobilize the womenfolk alongside the menfolk in the struggle for Pakistan. All this signified the acceptance of an entirely new role for women, and the breaking down of the male-female segregation and stratification syndrome and, more important, of the male domination in vogue till then because of the patriarchal mindset and ethos, which had ruled the subcontinental Muslim societal structure for centuries.
During the general elections (1945-46), the Muslim women
played a pivotal role. Women comprised almost one-third of the audiences in the election meetings in the Punjab, to quote Mian Mumtaz Daultana, the most dynamic Muslim League leader in the 1940s’. According to him, their role in getting the men voters to the polling booths was crucial, especially in the Punjab where the Unionist Ministry had put up all sorts of obstacles in the way of a favourable verdict on Pakistan.
More significant was the women’s role in the burgeoning civil disobedience movement in the Punjab (January-February 1947) and in the NWFP (February-June 1947). Women took out processions in Lahore day after day for a whole month, undergoing all sorts of hazards, bravely facing teargas, lathi-charge, beatings, arrests, and imprisonment.
One of the prisoners, the intrepid Mumtaz Shah Nawaz, made a green flag out of her own dupatta, surreptitiously climbed up the jail building and hoisted it on top, shouting “Allah-o-Akbar” (God is great) and “Pakistan Zindabad”.
Two weeks later, when a mammoth women’s procession finally reached the imposing Punjab Secretariat building, the seat of Punjab bureaucracy, at the fag end of the Mall in Lahore, a 13-year-old girl, Fatima Sughra, suddenly climbed up the massive iron gate, pulled down the fluttering Union Jack, the living symbol of imperial power, and replaced it with the burgeoning green Muslim League flag, which she, too, had made out of her own dupatta. And all this in the presence of a strong police contingent.
No less striking was the women’s performance in the NWFP, traditionally one of the subcontinent’s most conservative areas. During the civil disobedience movement, the usually timid and traditionally home-bound Pakhtoon women plucked up courage to a point that they cast off their veil and organized public processions and demonstrations, in defiance of Section 144.
Like their compatriots in the Punjab, they also faced teargas, lathi charges, beatings, and even gunfire; they also scaled ladders and climbed up buildings to hoist the League flag at various public places. And on April 3, 1947, some 1,500 women resorted to picketing, for the first time in the NWFP history. More daring: they launched a secret organization called a “War Council”, and ingeniously set up an underground radio station called Pakistan Broadcasting Radio Station, which continued to be on the air till Pakistan’s emergence on August 14-15, 1947.
Thus, within a brief spell of ten years (1937-47), the apathetic and timid, homebound, purdah-clad, and superstition-prone Muslim women had been able to transform themselves radically into a pro-active, vocal, highly motivated and mobilized group, supremely conscious of their latent potentialities for political and social action. Indeed, the Pakistan movement had enabled them to prove their ability to organize, demonstrate, mobilize, court arrest, face persecution, lathi-charges, and teargas, as well as to raise funds and organize relief work in time of crises.
Thus, they had raised sizeable funds during the Bengal famine (1943-44) and the 1945-46 general elections, and for the victims of the communal holocausts in Calcutta and Bihar (1946). They had also organized extensive relief work over there, as well as for the seven million refugees that had poured into West Pakistan during the partition riots in 1947.
It’s always crisis that catalytically helps to actualize the latent potential in a community no less than in an individual, and the Muslim crisis in 1937, when Muslim India had reached its nadir in their chequered history since 1857, had helped to cause this gigantic transformation in the mindset, ethos and behavioural patterns of both men and women.
It is an important fact that men gallantly went along with women in this emancipatory exercise — for the simple reason that the women could not have possibly donned this role without their full support. Thus Jinnah utilized the political mobilization route to put the male-female relationship on an even keel, and get women emancipated and empowered — to a point that it became routinized in Pakistan’s national life.
Simultaneously, if only because of their role alongside their menfolk, they had won the right to vote, to receive education, and to own property. In their emergence as a vocal, pro-active group during the momentous 1937-47 decade, Jinnah had helped them the most. He also acknowledged their notable contribution in the freedom struggle.
Upon Pakistan’s birth, therefore, he obviously felt that “In the great task of building the nation and maintaining its solidarity, the women have a valuable part to play -–– not only in their homes but by helping their less fortunate sisters outside.”
And he saw to it that women were represented in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly, that they were included in the delegations to the UN and other international moots, and in the executive bodies of almost every organizational set up after Pakistan’s birth. Again, it was he who had inspired his own sister, Fatima Jinnah, and Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan, wife of Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, to found several institutions and organizations for the educational uplift, economic amelioration and professional training of women in Pakistan’s formative years.
Thus, a new matrix of socially acceptable behaviour on women’s part was firmly laid, which, with the years, enabled women to work their way up into the upper echelons of the government, the professions, and the educational and political fields.
It was, again, Jinnah’s benign influence that had emboldened Fatima Jinnah to contest against Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan in the 1965 presidential election. Inter alia, her candidature had settled, once and for all, the thorny question whether or not a woman can be the head of an avowedly Muslim state, thus paving the way for Benazir Bhutto to become the first woman prime minister of a Muslim country, in 1988. Equally important, Fatima Jinnah was probably the first woman in the world to contest for the office of the president of a country.
In contesting the election in the most difficult circumstances, compounded by advanced and failing health, Fatima Jinnah had, in a sense, dramatized Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan.
When asked, in 1942, by Geti Ara Bashir Ahmad, sister of Begum Shah Nawaz and daughter of Mian Mohammad Shafi, whether the “Foundations of our new State (would) be laid on conservatism or whether it would assume the shape of a progressive country”, Jinnah had categorically said, “Tell your young girls, I am a progressive Muslim leader. I, therefore, take my sister along with me to backward areas like Balochistan and NWFP and she also attends the sessions of the All India Muslim League and other public meetings. Pakistan will be a progressive country in the building of which women will be seen working shoulder to shoulder with men in every department of life.”
The author was Founder-Director of the Quaid-i-Azam Academy (1976-89), and authored “Jinnah: Studies in Interpretation” (1981), the only work to qualify for the President’s Award for Best Books on Quaid-i-Azam.
A niece remembers
Gulshan Chandio, the grand niece of Quaid-i-Azam, remembers him fondly. The granddaughter of his sister Marium who was very close to him, Ms Chandio’s memories of Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Fatima Jinnah remain vivid to this day.
“A day before Pakistan came into being we arrived at Karachi from Bombay and stayed at Central Hotel, now long demolished. My mother rang the Governor House and Jinnah’s ADC informed them that they were invited to tea by the Quaid. He was extremely busy as they were preparing for Independence Day but he made time for us. Invited again on August 14 at the Governor House he came towards my mother to greet her. Such was his regard for his family.”
While residing in Bombay she and her family were regular visitors of Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Gulshan remembers wearing a western dress to lunch with her mother to the Quaid’s house. He asked her to wear a gharara and she happily agreed to it, wearing one when she next went to his house for lunch. Once she bought some jewellery and showed it to him and he advised her to buy one big thing rather than little sets, so she returned it the next day. A connoisseur of furniture he pointed out a shop where her parents could buy good furniture for her elder sister who was getting married.
Gulshan remembers the honesty, integrity and caring for each other in Jinnah’s family. He didn’t like his relatives using his name to achieve their ends. Gulshan’s father firmly believed that Jinnah would be able to achieve the goal of creating Pakistan because of his honesty and principles. “Nehru and other leaders would come to visit him at his Bombay residence, he never went to them. People have misunderstood him saying he was distant, cold and arrogant but actually he was strong and principled,” she says.
Gulshan recalls that Quaid-i-Azam encouraged women to step into different fields of life and he always encouraged Fatima Jinnah to take part in politics. She once accompanied Fatima Jinnah to a meeting arranged by the Muslim league in Bombay.
When Gulshan heard that Quaid-i-Azam had died she was very sad and wanted to come to Pakistan right away but her father did not allow it as he felt that it would have created problems for the family in India. She did, however, visit Pakistan a few weeks later and stayed with Fatima Jinnah. Flagstaff House, she said, was like a home to her.
After her marriage she came to Pakistan permanently in 1952, and grew very close to Fatima Jinnah who had moved to Mohatta Palace.—Khursheed Hyder
The Quaid’s family life
Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s first marriage was with Emibai in 1892. He was 16 and she was 14. Only nikah was solemnized and the rukhsati was to take place later on. Shortly after the marriage, Jinnah left for England. When he returned, his child bride had died. Struck by the tragedy, Jinnah didn’t marry for a long time. Years later in 1918, he married Ruttenbai Petit, daughter of Sir Dinshaw Petit.
Ruttie Jinnah, as she came to be known after her marriage, was a firebrand a revolutionary like her husband. She was at his side during his struggle, braving police brutality when Jinnah led a demonstration against Lord Willingdon (the Bombay Governor). At a reception she greeted the viceroy in the native manner, the Viceroy told her: “In Rome, you must do as the Romans do”, to which she retorted: “That is exactly what I did your excellency, in India, I have greeted you the Indian way”.
Jinnah did not keep his wife under his shadow and in May 1919, she made her own speech protesting against the deportation of B.G. Horniman, Editor of the Bombay Chronicle. However, their marriage ran into difficulties. Why? We can perhaps gather a glimpse from her own words. She wrote to a mutual friend that “he has a habit of habitually overworking himself, and now that I am not there to bother and tease him, he will be worse than ever”.
Jinnah could not give her the time she wanted. When she died, he opened his heart out to Kanji Dwarkadas, who wrote that Jinnah never recovered from this shock and lost his cheerful disposition forever.
Their only daughter, Dina Wadia, was born on August 14, 1919. She married a non-Muslim against her father’s will; and for sometime there was estrangement. She phoned her father when he was attacked by an assassin in 1943. Later, she wrote to congratulate him on the achievement of Pakistan. She came to Pakistan on her father’s funeral and then, in 2004, after many years.–– Dr Mohammad Reza Kazimi
A connoisseur with rich aesthetics
While political aspects of the life of Mohammad Ali Jinnah have been well researched and documented, his personal life is still largely shrouded in mystery. Even less is known about his tastes and personal interests. For instance, most people are unaware of the fact that he was a collector of the most exquisite and classical carpets.
Azhar Samdani, a foreign trained economist who developed rare expertise for restoring damaged period carpets, described him as a ‘connoisseur’ with rich aesthetics and an eye for quality. His opinion is to be taken seriously because all the carpets of Quaid-e-Azam displayed in Mohatta Palace were restored by him.
Samdani’s expertise led him to the Quaid’s carpets that the Lahore-based economist inspected during a visit to Karachi. They were faded and frayed. He decided to undertake their restoration.
He spent over two years trying to convince concerned officials that the carpets could be revived but no one was interested. However, the then federal secretary culture awarded him the assignment.
Jinnah, according to Samdani, owned about 120 carpets; each of them expensive Bokhara or Iranian piece of the finest quality, every carpet numbered and signed M. A. Jinnah; however, only 17 pieces were left by then. The other over 100 carpets had apparently been either stolen or plundered by officials, or so callously neglected that there was just no trace of them. He selected 11 carpets for restoration; the others had reached a stage where nothing could be done about them.
It took him more than three years to complete the job. It was a challenging assignment because many carpets had ‘only borders or corners intact that provided an idea of the carpet’s design’. The carpets are now on display in Mohatta Palace. — Z. S.
We`ve come a not-so-long way
It’s become a common practise, when analyzing the state of the country’s affairs, to say how disappointed the founders of this nation would be with the country’s degeneration. Every year comes Jinnah’s birth or death anniversary, every commentator writes how he would have bemoaned the collapse of virtually every state institution or public sector had he been alive. The same is true for the status of Pakistani women on whom Jinnah placed a great deal of hope when he envisioned a progressive nation, where men and women would equally share the burden of building a strong and secure future for their country. While women have made great strides in various fields, on a socio-political front, their situation is deplorable —- and the onus of the blame lies with successive governments who did little to alleviate their lot.
It is particularly disappointing given that women made many contributions in the freedom movement and had remarkable female role models like Fatima Jinnah and Rana Liaquat Ali Khan who inspired younger women to achieve the impossible. Then there was the women’s movement, born as a reaction to draconian laws created by General Ziaul Haq that relegated them to second-class citizens, which dared to challenge the system. Women’s groups in the 80s’ galvanized support across the country to rise together against such discriminatory laws, and while they may not have met success in overturning these laws they were able to raise awareness and make their voices heard. The two Benazir Bhutto-led governments heralded new eras of promise but sadly did not translate into the necessary action that could have alleviated their plight.
While the two democratically elected governments of Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif had women in its assemblies, politics preceded women’s issues which were always relegated to drawing room discussions. When it came to crimes against women, for example, the right speeches were always made but when it came to changing discriminatory laws, nothing was done.
Oddly enough, it was a military dictator’s government which introduced the 33 per cent representation of women at local, provincial and federal governments that is bound to pave way for future generations of women. While this move, too, has not created any ripples as far as qualitative change is concerned, the mere fact that there are more women in parliament than ever before means that ultimately women’s issues will be forced into the foreground —- provided women parliamentarians are able to convince their male colleagues that their issues merit substantial consideration. As such, there is no powerful women’s pressure group or lobby that can challenge the status quo. Nonetheless, one lives on hope.
Changing laws is only part of the solution, for according to the Constitution and Islam, women and men are accorded equal rights but rarely are those instances implemented. For real change to occur, society has to be integrated into a debate whereby men are taught on the ills that customs like honour-related crimes bring upon communities. It is a woman like Mukhtaran Mai who has initiated that debate by challenging the system. She symbolizes the very woman that Jinnah would have been proud of. She represents the perennial hope that can brighten the country’s future.–– M. Khan
A man of principles
Till today, we have not tired of making M. A. Jinnah’s personality elusive, creating a singular facet to introduce him only as a politician whose vision for this country has become a victim of self-interpretation. Historians have written about Jinnah’s politics, his statesmanship, often condescending mention is made of how Anglicized the country’s founder was. Not much is known, neither has the trouble been taken through academic research, to delayer and depoliticize the man who gave us an independent country on the world atlas.
Talk on Jinnah mostly revolves around the kind of republic he envisioned, Islamic or secular running high on debate is a deliberate attempt to diffuse his perspective on what his position was on women and their role in Pakistan’s progress. The three most important women in his life, his sister, Fatima Jinnah, wife Ruttie and daughter Dina Jinnah are usually mentioned in stereotypes to under-emphasize their importance. Fatima Jinnah is forced to a somewhat higher level than the other two because she was his official companion, consort and confidante till the very end of life. The other two have become a series of disjointed historical anecdotes, not to be analyzed for fear of drawing out Jinnah’s human side as a distressed father and an estranged husband.
Absent in the brief historical mention of his wife and daughter is Jinnah’s unobtrusive and non-interfering self as a husband and a father. We fail to notice how a fiercely arrogant and unbending politician was an unimposing man. He did not confine his sister to become his domestic appendage nor did he ever force his wife and daughter to stay with him to gain political mileage.
A man whose goal was to get an independent state believed first and foremost in independence of mind and action. His wife Rattie left for Paris when his objective became bigger than familial considerations and his daughter went to stay with her maternal grandparents. Jinnah did not summon legal or moral prohibition to prove a patriarchal point. Jinnah’s firm non-distinction between a man and a woman was obvious on many occasions.
Sarojini Naidu, the first woman president of the Indian National Congress and a nationalist poet, saw Jinnah “as a symbol of everything attractive about modern India”, (Mohammad Ali Jinnah —- ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity by J. Ahmed 1966). If Jinnah were an inflexible, dogmatic man given in to confer specific roles to women, a political force of Naidu’s stature would not have put down her praise in writing for him.
Sharing her views on Jinnah’s liberalism, Tahira Mazhar Ali, daughter of Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, leader of the Unionist Party and prime minister of the Punjab in 1937, now in her early 80s remembers the founder of Pakistan not only as a fastidious and extremely well-dressed man but also as an articulate person. “He used to come to visit my father quite often in Lahore. He wanted women to participate actively in politics just as the men. He drew no boundaries, restricting women to their houses. He encouraged women’s movement for Pakistan and their role as equal partners,” recalls Mrs Tahira Mazhar Ali.
As a 14-year-old Tahira Mazhar Ali bicycled her way to the Mamdot Palace in Lahore where he was staying to show him the pamphlet she was carrying for the Communist Party in which it had declared its support for an independent Pakistan. “I told the chowkidar at the Mamdot Villa to inform Jinnah that Tahira was there. He immediately asked me in and was amused to see a young girl carrying the Communist Party’s pamphlet. Not once did he make me feel inadequate or try to patronize me because of my age. He was very civil and nice and when I asked him if I was going to be able to meet my friends in India after partition his reply was very comforting. He said that I need not worry because I’ll be able to see my friends just as he was going to regularly visit his home in Bombay. That’s what he said! I remember it only too well! He was an upright, honest and fair person and not a conservative man against the progress of women as some would like us to believe,” asserted Mrs Mazhar Ali.
Support of Mrs Tahira Mazhar Ali’s claim of how balanced Jinnah was can be found in Professor Akbar S. Ahmed’s Jinnah, Pakistan, and Islamic Identity, (1997). In the book, Professor Ahmed wrote about an incident related by Yahya Bakhtiar, a senator from Balochistan and a former Attorney General of Pakistan, which showed Jinnah’s non-compromising stance on the freedom of women. “….. in those days not even British male politicians encouraged their womenfolk to take a public role as Jinnah did. After Pakistan had been created he asked Fatima Jinnah to sit beside him on the stage at the Sibi Darbar, the grand annual gathering of Baloch and Pukhtun chiefs and leaders at Sibi. He was making a point: Muslim women must take their place in history. The Sibi Darbar broke all precedents……”
After giving up dentistry to help her brother in creating a homeland for the Muslims, Ms Jinnah attended the League session in 1937 and all the annual sessions from 1940 onwards. “Her life was centred around her brother and she was all the time concerned about his health,” comments Mrs Sarwat Ahsan, daughter of Syed Muratib Ali. “My father was close to Jinnah and he would often come to Nashaiman, our house on the Davis Road in Lahore,” says the 81-year-old Begum Sarwat who was a good friend of Fatima Jinnah.
Fortunate enough to have met Jinnah at the age of 17, Begum Sarwat makes an effort to invoke her first impression of the great leader. “He had invited my father and my brothers over for dinner at his house on Malabar Hill in Bombay. I also went because Fatima Jinnah was my friend. I can’t really remember what he and my father talked about, but I do remember Fatima by her brother’s side all the time. He treated her like a friend, somebody he could talk to and with whom he could discuss important issues,” recollects Begum Sarwar. “Fatima and I never discussed his wife and daughter, but she always spoke about how he encouraged her to be with him.”
Merging Jinnah’s politics with his person, the matter of his slant towards women cannot be left to mere speculation. In a country built to protect an individual’s freedoms and beliefs, his reaction to the existence of discriminatory laws against women despite his categorical statements favouring their equal status would have been shocking. He would have been clear on that score because Jinnah did not separate practice from preaching.— Shehar Bano Khan
By Sharif al Mujahid
Jinnah himself had always taken his sister, Fatima Jinnah, to Muslim Leaque sessions, and wherever she went with him, she walked beside him and not behind him — heralding a message loud and clear, for everyone within reach: the elevating message of gender equality, writes Sharif al Mujahid
All said and done, Quaid-i- Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah was a liberal, par excellence. To quote Hector Bolitho who had interviewed some two hundred persons who knew Jinnah personally, during 1952-54, “Jinnah told Dr K. M. Ashraf that during the last two years (1894-96) in London his time was ‘utilized for further independent studies for the political career’ he had already ‘had in mind’.”
Jinnah also said, “Fortune smiled on me, and I happened to meet several important English liberals with whose help I came to understand the doctrine of liberalism. The liberalism of Lord Morley was then in full sway. I grasped that liberalism, which became part of my life and thrilled me very much.”
It is obvious that his fascination for liberalism led Jinnah to subscribe to democratic ethos, and these, in turn, inexorably led him to become, perhaps, the foremost spokesman for civic freedoms and human rights in the Central Indian Legislature, of which he was a member for some thirty years. Even when his opponents were involved, he consistently espoused the cause of the aggrieved and pled for conceding or restoring them their basic, inalienable rights.
And as a corollary to his liberal ethos and this consuming concern with human rights was his passion for reversing the “wretched” condition of women, who stood marginalized not only in the pre-modern East but also in the modern West, in the decades before and after the advent of the twentieth century.
Thus, to quote Miss Agatha Harrison, one of the speakers at a memorial meeting for Jinnah at Coxton Hall, London, on September 14, 1948, “When Jinnah was a student in London, (1892-96), the Suffragette Movement was gathering momentum; but we had very few sympathizers and supporters. He always came to our meetings and spoke in defence of vote for women. Even then he was not afraid of championing an unpopular cause.”
Jinnah’s belief that women should be extended the opportunities available to men at various stages in their lives was amply reflected in his careful handling of the schooling and career orientation of Fatima Jinnah; his youngest sister and ward.
Much against the family and the community traditions, she had been sent to the Bandhara Convent School (1902), and then to the St. Patrick School (1906), both in Bombay, where she did her Senior Cambridge (1913), and, still later, to Dr Ahmad Dental College, Calcutta (1919-22), to study dentistry. There she stayed at a hostel, although her sister, Maryam, along with her family, was living in Calcutta.
Upon graduation, Fatima opened a dental clinic on Abdur Rahman Street in Bombay, in 1923, and simultaneously worked at the nearby Dhobi Talau Municipal Clinic on a voluntary basis. All this was, of course, something of a rare phenomenon even for cosmopolitan and modernized Bombay. But it was made possible; only because Jinnah believed that the women have an inalienable right to carve out for themselves a career.
During his long parliamentary career (1910-47), Jinnah stood against every sort of discrimination against women and other unprivileged classes. Thus, he stoutly supported Bhupendranath Basu’s Special Marriage Amendment Bill (1912), which provided for legal cover to marriages falling outside the Hindu and Muslim laws, although it caused consternation among Muslims — to a point that he felt that he could no more claim to represent them in the Imperial Council and, hence, decided to sit out in the 1913 elections. Likewise he had materially helped in the passage of the Sarda Act (1935), prohibiting child marriage.
However, Jinnah’s major role in the emancipation of Muslim women came in the mid-1930s when he began to reorganize and revitalize the moribund All India Muslim League (AIML), the most authoritative Muslim political organization since its inception in 1906.
Till then, the Muslim women were mere shrouded, silent creatures, confined to the four walls of their homes, steeped in dogma and superstition and denied the fruits of modern education, health care and a career. Mohammad Ali Jinnah was the foremost Muslim to raise his authoritative voice against the pathetic conditions to which the Muslim women had been consigned for a long time, and against discrimination of all sorts.
He boldly and consistently espoused the women’s cause and wished to see them as equal partners often in all walks of life. No wonder, he declared in Aligarh on March 10, 1940: “No nation can rise to the height of glory unless your women are side by side with you. We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime against humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls of the houses as prisoners. I do not mean that we should imitate the evils of western life. But let us try to raise the status of our women according to our own Islamic ideas and standards. There is no sanction anywhere for the deplorable conditions in which our women have to live. You should take your women along with you as comrades in every sphere of life...”
When Begum Shah Nawaz told the AIML Council at Lucknow in October 1937 that she had set up a Punjab Muslim Women’s League, Jinnah stood up and said that he did not believe in separate men and women’s organizations, but in their working together from the primary League upwards. He instructed the provincial Leagues to include two women members in their respective quotas of membership in the AIML Council.
Thus, adequate women representation came to be secured and ensured. Jinnah also nominated Begum Mohammad Ali to the AIML apex body, the Working Committee, which position she held till her death in 1944.
In December 1938, at the AIML session at Patna, Jinnah appointed a Central Women’s Committee with Fatima Jinnah as convener, for the specific purpose of drafting a programme for the social, economic and cultural uplift of women.
When the question of purdah (veil) was raised by a section at Patna, Jinnah intervened to emphasize that “It is absolutely essential for us to give every opportunity to our women to participate in our struggle for life and death. Women can do a good deal within their homes, even in purdah.” On another occasion, Jinnah asserted, “No nation can make any progress without the co-operation of women. If women support their men as they did in the days of the prophet of Islam (PBUH) we should soon realize our goal.”
Besides political mobilization, the Central Women’s Committee addressed itself to social problems encountered by the community, and organized social work. Thus, it passed several resolutions concerning housewives’ problems and food shortages, as well as on more fundamental issues such as women’s inheritance. In subsequent years, the committee would hold separate sessions after the AIML annual sessions.
Separate arrangements were also made for women participants in the AIML sessions, while the more prominent among them sat on the dais. And with the years, their participation increased to a point that some 5,000 women attended the AIML session at Karachi, in December 1943.
Jinnah himself had always taken his sister, Fatima, to these sessions, and wherever she went with him, she walked beside him and not behind him — heralding a message loud and clear, for everyone within reach: the ennobling message of gender equality. And although it was politically risky to take her along to traditional and tribal areas such as the NWFP and Balochistan, especially when he was striving to gather them on the AIML platform, he did it with impunity since he would not compromise on a principle he had believed in so passionately since his student days.
Absent in the brief historical mention of his wife and daughter is Jinnah’s unobtrusive and non-interfering self as a husband and a father. We fail to notice how a fiercely arrogant and unbending politician was an unimposing man. He did not confine his sister to his home to become his domestic appendage nor did he ever force his wife and daughter to stay with him to gain political mileage
To quote Salma Tasadduque Hussain, a former member of the Punjab Assembly (1946-58) and a social worker, “It gave great encouragement to women to see that they could find a place of honour with men like Quaid-i-Azam....”
In the meantime, at Jinnah’s instance, the Muslim Women Students Federation (1941) and the Women National Guards (1942) were launched, in a concerted attempt to mobilize the womenfolk alongside the menfolk in the struggle for Pakistan. All this signified the acceptance of an entirely new role for women, and the breaking down of the male-female segregation and stratification syndrome and, more important, of the male domination in vogue till then because of the patriarchal mindset and ethos, which had ruled the subcontinental Muslim societal structure for centuries.
During the general elections (1945-46), the Muslim women
played a pivotal role. Women comprised almost one-third of the audiences in the election meetings in the Punjab, to quote Mian Mumtaz Daultana, the most dynamic Muslim League leader in the 1940s’. According to him, their role in getting the men voters to the polling booths was crucial, especially in the Punjab where the Unionist Ministry had put up all sorts of obstacles in the way of a favourable verdict on Pakistan.
More significant was the women’s role in the burgeoning civil disobedience movement in the Punjab (January-February 1947) and in the NWFP (February-June 1947). Women took out processions in Lahore day after day for a whole month, undergoing all sorts of hazards, bravely facing teargas, lathi-charge, beatings, arrests, and imprisonment.
One of the prisoners, the intrepid Mumtaz Shah Nawaz, made a green flag out of her own dupatta, surreptitiously climbed up the jail building and hoisted it on top, shouting “Allah-o-Akbar” (God is great) and “Pakistan Zindabad”.
Two weeks later, when a mammoth women’s procession finally reached the imposing Punjab Secretariat building, the seat of Punjab bureaucracy, at the fag end of the Mall in Lahore, a 13-year-old girl, Fatima Sughra, suddenly climbed up the massive iron gate, pulled down the fluttering Union Jack, the living symbol of imperial power, and replaced it with the burgeoning green Muslim League flag, which she, too, had made out of her own dupatta. And all this in the presence of a strong police contingent.
No less striking was the women’s performance in the NWFP, traditionally one of the subcontinent’s most conservative areas. During the civil disobedience movement, the usually timid and traditionally home-bound Pakhtoon women plucked up courage to a point that they cast off their veil and organized public processions and demonstrations, in defiance of Section 144.
Like their compatriots in the Punjab, they also faced teargas, lathi charges, beatings, and even gunfire; they also scaled ladders and climbed up buildings to hoist the League flag at various public places. And on April 3, 1947, some 1,500 women resorted to picketing, for the first time in the NWFP history. More daring: they launched a secret organization called a “War Council”, and ingeniously set up an underground radio station called Pakistan Broadcasting Radio Station, which continued to be on the air till Pakistan’s emergence on August 14-15, 1947.
Thus, within a brief spell of ten years (1937-47), the apathetic and timid, homebound, purdah-clad, and superstition-prone Muslim women had been able to transform themselves radically into a pro-active, vocal, highly motivated and mobilized group, supremely conscious of their latent potentialities for political and social action. Indeed, the Pakistan movement had enabled them to prove their ability to organize, demonstrate, mobilize, court arrest, face persecution, lathi-charges, and teargas, as well as to raise funds and organize relief work in time of crises.
Thus, they had raised sizeable funds during the Bengal famine (1943-44) and the 1945-46 general elections, and for the victims of the communal holocausts in Calcutta and Bihar (1946). They had also organized extensive relief work over there, as well as for the seven million refugees that had poured into West Pakistan during the partition riots in 1947.
It’s always crisis that catalytically helps to actualize the latent potential in a community no less than in an individual, and the Muslim crisis in 1937, when Muslim India had reached its nadir in their chequered history since 1857, had helped to cause this gigantic transformation in the mindset, ethos and behavioural patterns of both men and women.
It is an important fact that men gallantly went along with women in this emancipatory exercise — for the simple reason that the women could not have possibly donned this role without their full support. Thus Jinnah utilized the political mobilization route to put the male-female relationship on an even keel, and get women emancipated and empowered — to a point that it became routinized in Pakistan’s national life.
Simultaneously, if only because of their role alongside their menfolk, they had won the right to vote, to receive education, and to own property. In their emergence as a vocal, pro-active group during the momentous 1937-47 decade, Jinnah had helped them the most. He also acknowledged their notable contribution in the freedom struggle.
Upon Pakistan’s birth, therefore, he obviously felt that “In the great task of building the nation and maintaining its solidarity, the women have a valuable part to play -–– not only in their homes but by helping their less fortunate sisters outside.”
And he saw to it that women were represented in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly, that they were included in the delegations to the UN and other international moots, and in the executive bodies of almost every organizational set up after Pakistan’s birth. Again, it was he who had inspired his own sister, Fatima Jinnah, and Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan, wife of Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, to found several institutions and organizations for the educational uplift, economic amelioration and professional training of women in Pakistan’s formative years.
Thus, a new matrix of socially acceptable behaviour on women’s part was firmly laid, which, with the years, enabled women to work their way up into the upper echelons of the government, the professions, and the educational and political fields.
It was, again, Jinnah’s benign influence that had emboldened Fatima Jinnah to contest against Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan in the 1965 presidential election. Inter alia, her candidature had settled, once and for all, the thorny question whether or not a woman can be the head of an avowedly Muslim state, thus paving the way for Benazir Bhutto to become the first woman prime minister of a Muslim country, in 1988. Equally important, Fatima Jinnah was probably the first woman in the world to contest for the office of the president of a country.
In contesting the election in the most difficult circumstances, compounded by advanced and failing health, Fatima Jinnah had, in a sense, dramatized Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan.
When asked, in 1942, by Geti Ara Bashir Ahmad, sister of Begum Shah Nawaz and daughter of Mian Mohammad Shafi, whether the “Foundations of our new State (would) be laid on conservatism or whether it would assume the shape of a progressive country”, Jinnah had categorically said, “Tell your young girls, I am a progressive Muslim leader. I, therefore, take my sister along with me to backward areas like Balochistan and NWFP and she also attends the sessions of the All India Muslim League and other public meetings. Pakistan will be a progressive country in the building of which women will be seen working shoulder to shoulder with men in every department of life.”
The author was Founder-Director of the Quaid-i-Azam Academy (1976-89), and authored “Jinnah: Studies in Interpretation” (1981), the only work to qualify for the President’s Award for Best Books on Quaid-i-Azam.
A niece remembers
Gulshan Chandio, the grand niece of Quaid-i-Azam, remembers him fondly. The granddaughter of his sister Marium who was very close to him, Ms Chandio’s memories of Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Fatima Jinnah remain vivid to this day.
“A day before Pakistan came into being we arrived at Karachi from Bombay and stayed at Central Hotel, now long demolished. My mother rang the Governor House and Jinnah’s ADC informed them that they were invited to tea by the Quaid. He was extremely busy as they were preparing for Independence Day but he made time for us. Invited again on August 14 at the Governor House he came towards my mother to greet her. Such was his regard for his family.”
While residing in Bombay she and her family were regular visitors of Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Gulshan remembers wearing a western dress to lunch with her mother to the Quaid’s house. He asked her to wear a gharara and she happily agreed to it, wearing one when she next went to his house for lunch. Once she bought some jewellery and showed it to him and he advised her to buy one big thing rather than little sets, so she returned it the next day. A connoisseur of furniture he pointed out a shop where her parents could buy good furniture for her elder sister who was getting married.
Gulshan remembers the honesty, integrity and caring for each other in Jinnah’s family. He didn’t like his relatives using his name to achieve their ends. Gulshan’s father firmly believed that Jinnah would be able to achieve the goal of creating Pakistan because of his honesty and principles. “Nehru and other leaders would come to visit him at his Bombay residence, he never went to them. People have misunderstood him saying he was distant, cold and arrogant but actually he was strong and principled,” she says.
Gulshan recalls that Quaid-i-Azam encouraged women to step into different fields of life and he always encouraged Fatima Jinnah to take part in politics. She once accompanied Fatima Jinnah to a meeting arranged by the Muslim league in Bombay.
When Gulshan heard that Quaid-i-Azam had died she was very sad and wanted to come to Pakistan right away but her father did not allow it as he felt that it would have created problems for the family in India. She did, however, visit Pakistan a few weeks later and stayed with Fatima Jinnah. Flagstaff House, she said, was like a home to her.
After her marriage she came to Pakistan permanently in 1952, and grew very close to Fatima Jinnah who had moved to Mohatta Palace.—Khursheed Hyder
The Quaid’s family life
Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s first marriage was with Emibai in 1892. He was 16 and she was 14. Only nikah was solemnized and the rukhsati was to take place later on. Shortly after the marriage, Jinnah left for England. When he returned, his child bride had died. Struck by the tragedy, Jinnah didn’t marry for a long time. Years later in 1918, he married Ruttenbai Petit, daughter of Sir Dinshaw Petit.
Ruttie Jinnah, as she came to be known after her marriage, was a firebrand a revolutionary like her husband. She was at his side during his struggle, braving police brutality when Jinnah led a demonstration against Lord Willingdon (the Bombay Governor). At a reception she greeted the viceroy in the native manner, the Viceroy told her: “In Rome, you must do as the Romans do”, to which she retorted: “That is exactly what I did your excellency, in India, I have greeted you the Indian way”.
Jinnah did not keep his wife under his shadow and in May 1919, she made her own speech protesting against the deportation of B.G. Horniman, Editor of the Bombay Chronicle. However, their marriage ran into difficulties. Why? We can perhaps gather a glimpse from her own words. She wrote to a mutual friend that “he has a habit of habitually overworking himself, and now that I am not there to bother and tease him, he will be worse than ever”.
Jinnah could not give her the time she wanted. When she died, he opened his heart out to Kanji Dwarkadas, who wrote that Jinnah never recovered from this shock and lost his cheerful disposition forever.
Their only daughter, Dina Wadia, was born on August 14, 1919. She married a non-Muslim against her father’s will; and for sometime there was estrangement. She phoned her father when he was attacked by an assassin in 1943. Later, she wrote to congratulate him on the achievement of Pakistan. She came to Pakistan on her father’s funeral and then, in 2004, after many years.–– Dr Mohammad Reza Kazimi
A connoisseur with rich aesthetics
While political aspects of the life of Mohammad Ali Jinnah have been well researched and documented, his personal life is still largely shrouded in mystery. Even less is known about his tastes and personal interests. For instance, most people are unaware of the fact that he was a collector of the most exquisite and classical carpets.
Azhar Samdani, a foreign trained economist who developed rare expertise for restoring damaged period carpets, described him as a ‘connoisseur’ with rich aesthetics and an eye for quality. His opinion is to be taken seriously because all the carpets of Quaid-e-Azam displayed in Mohatta Palace were restored by him.
Samdani’s expertise led him to the Quaid’s carpets that the Lahore-based economist inspected during a visit to Karachi. They were faded and frayed. He decided to undertake their restoration.
He spent over two years trying to convince concerned officials that the carpets could be revived but no one was interested. However, the then federal secretary culture awarded him the assignment.
Jinnah, according to Samdani, owned about 120 carpets; each of them expensive Bokhara or Iranian piece of the finest quality, every carpet numbered and signed M. A. Jinnah; however, only 17 pieces were left by then. The other over 100 carpets had apparently been either stolen or plundered by officials, or so callously neglected that there was just no trace of them. He selected 11 carpets for restoration; the others had reached a stage where nothing could be done about them.
It took him more than three years to complete the job. It was a challenging assignment because many carpets had ‘only borders or corners intact that provided an idea of the carpet’s design’. The carpets are now on display in Mohatta Palace. — Z. S.
We`ve come a not-so-long way
It’s become a common practise, when analyzing the state of the country’s affairs, to say how disappointed the founders of this nation would be with the country’s degeneration. Every year comes Jinnah’s birth or death anniversary, every commentator writes how he would have bemoaned the collapse of virtually every state institution or public sector had he been alive. The same is true for the status of Pakistani women on whom Jinnah placed a great deal of hope when he envisioned a progressive nation, where men and women would equally share the burden of building a strong and secure future for their country. While women have made great strides in various fields, on a socio-political front, their situation is deplorable —- and the onus of the blame lies with successive governments who did little to alleviate their lot.
It is particularly disappointing given that women made many contributions in the freedom movement and had remarkable female role models like Fatima Jinnah and Rana Liaquat Ali Khan who inspired younger women to achieve the impossible. Then there was the women’s movement, born as a reaction to draconian laws created by General Ziaul Haq that relegated them to second-class citizens, which dared to challenge the system. Women’s groups in the 80s’ galvanized support across the country to rise together against such discriminatory laws, and while they may not have met success in overturning these laws they were able to raise awareness and make their voices heard. The two Benazir Bhutto-led governments heralded new eras of promise but sadly did not translate into the necessary action that could have alleviated their plight.
While the two democratically elected governments of Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif had women in its assemblies, politics preceded women’s issues which were always relegated to drawing room discussions. When it came to crimes against women, for example, the right speeches were always made but when it came to changing discriminatory laws, nothing was done.
Oddly enough, it was a military dictator’s government which introduced the 33 per cent representation of women at local, provincial and federal governments that is bound to pave way for future generations of women. While this move, too, has not created any ripples as far as qualitative change is concerned, the mere fact that there are more women in parliament than ever before means that ultimately women’s issues will be forced into the foreground —- provided women parliamentarians are able to convince their male colleagues that their issues merit substantial consideration. As such, there is no powerful women’s pressure group or lobby that can challenge the status quo. Nonetheless, one lives on hope.
Changing laws is only part of the solution, for according to the Constitution and Islam, women and men are accorded equal rights but rarely are those instances implemented. For real change to occur, society has to be integrated into a debate whereby men are taught on the ills that customs like honour-related crimes bring upon communities. It is a woman like Mukhtaran Mai who has initiated that debate by challenging the system. She symbolizes the very woman that Jinnah would have been proud of. She represents the perennial hope that can brighten the country’s future.–– M. Khan
A man of principles
Till today, we have not tired of making M. A. Jinnah’s personality elusive, creating a singular facet to introduce him only as a politician whose vision for this country has become a victim of self-interpretation. Historians have written about Jinnah’s politics, his statesmanship, often condescending mention is made of how Anglicized the country’s founder was. Not much is known, neither has the trouble been taken through academic research, to delayer and depoliticize the man who gave us an independent country on the world atlas.
Talk on Jinnah mostly revolves around the kind of republic he envisioned, Islamic or secular running high on debate is a deliberate attempt to diffuse his perspective on what his position was on women and their role in Pakistan’s progress. The three most important women in his life, his sister, Fatima Jinnah, wife Ruttie and daughter Dina Jinnah are usually mentioned in stereotypes to under-emphasize their importance. Fatima Jinnah is forced to a somewhat higher level than the other two because she was his official companion, consort and confidante till the very end of life. The other two have become a series of disjointed historical anecdotes, not to be analyzed for fear of drawing out Jinnah’s human side as a distressed father and an estranged husband.
Absent in the brief historical mention of his wife and daughter is Jinnah’s unobtrusive and non-interfering self as a husband and a father. We fail to notice how a fiercely arrogant and unbending politician was an unimposing man. He did not confine his sister to become his domestic appendage nor did he ever force his wife and daughter to stay with him to gain political mileage.
A man whose goal was to get an independent state believed first and foremost in independence of mind and action. His wife Rattie left for Paris when his objective became bigger than familial considerations and his daughter went to stay with her maternal grandparents. Jinnah did not summon legal or moral prohibition to prove a patriarchal point. Jinnah’s firm non-distinction between a man and a woman was obvious on many occasions.
Sarojini Naidu, the first woman president of the Indian National Congress and a nationalist poet, saw Jinnah “as a symbol of everything attractive about modern India”, (Mohammad Ali Jinnah —- ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity by J. Ahmed 1966). If Jinnah were an inflexible, dogmatic man given in to confer specific roles to women, a political force of Naidu’s stature would not have put down her praise in writing for him.
Sharing her views on Jinnah’s liberalism, Tahira Mazhar Ali, daughter of Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, leader of the Unionist Party and prime minister of the Punjab in 1937, now in her early 80s remembers the founder of Pakistan not only as a fastidious and extremely well-dressed man but also as an articulate person. “He used to come to visit my father quite often in Lahore. He wanted women to participate actively in politics just as the men. He drew no boundaries, restricting women to their houses. He encouraged women’s movement for Pakistan and their role as equal partners,” recalls Mrs Tahira Mazhar Ali.
As a 14-year-old Tahira Mazhar Ali bicycled her way to the Mamdot Palace in Lahore where he was staying to show him the pamphlet she was carrying for the Communist Party in which it had declared its support for an independent Pakistan. “I told the chowkidar at the Mamdot Villa to inform Jinnah that Tahira was there. He immediately asked me in and was amused to see a young girl carrying the Communist Party’s pamphlet. Not once did he make me feel inadequate or try to patronize me because of my age. He was very civil and nice and when I asked him if I was going to be able to meet my friends in India after partition his reply was very comforting. He said that I need not worry because I’ll be able to see my friends just as he was going to regularly visit his home in Bombay. That’s what he said! I remember it only too well! He was an upright, honest and fair person and not a conservative man against the progress of women as some would like us to believe,” asserted Mrs Mazhar Ali.
Support of Mrs Tahira Mazhar Ali’s claim of how balanced Jinnah was can be found in Professor Akbar S. Ahmed’s Jinnah, Pakistan, and Islamic Identity, (1997). In the book, Professor Ahmed wrote about an incident related by Yahya Bakhtiar, a senator from Balochistan and a former Attorney General of Pakistan, which showed Jinnah’s non-compromising stance on the freedom of women. “….. in those days not even British male politicians encouraged their womenfolk to take a public role as Jinnah did. After Pakistan had been created he asked Fatima Jinnah to sit beside him on the stage at the Sibi Darbar, the grand annual gathering of Baloch and Pukhtun chiefs and leaders at Sibi. He was making a point: Muslim women must take their place in history. The Sibi Darbar broke all precedents……”
After giving up dentistry to help her brother in creating a homeland for the Muslims, Ms Jinnah attended the League session in 1937 and all the annual sessions from 1940 onwards. “Her life was centred around her brother and she was all the time concerned about his health,” comments Mrs Sarwat Ahsan, daughter of Syed Muratib Ali. “My father was close to Jinnah and he would often come to Nashaiman, our house on the Davis Road in Lahore,” says the 81-year-old Begum Sarwat who was a good friend of Fatima Jinnah.
Fortunate enough to have met Jinnah at the age of 17, Begum Sarwat makes an effort to invoke her first impression of the great leader. “He had invited my father and my brothers over for dinner at his house on Malabar Hill in Bombay. I also went because Fatima Jinnah was my friend. I can’t really remember what he and my father talked about, but I do remember Fatima by her brother’s side all the time. He treated her like a friend, somebody he could talk to and with whom he could discuss important issues,” recollects Begum Sarwar. “Fatima and I never discussed his wife and daughter, but she always spoke about how he encouraged her to be with him.”
Merging Jinnah’s politics with his person, the matter of his slant towards women cannot be left to mere speculation. In a country built to protect an individual’s freedoms and beliefs, his reaction to the existence of discriminatory laws against women despite his categorical statements favouring their equal status would have been shocking. He would have been clear on that score because Jinnah did not separate practice from preaching.— Shehar Bano Khan
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#157 Posted by MantoLives on March 9, 2006 8:58:12 am
Dear Inquirer...
The point is that we solving our issue... slowly but surely... what are you doing about the violence against women and the killing of female fetuses which is a way of life for many Indians.. how are you going to blame us for that? ... Are you going to keep trying to dig up stuff on Pakistan? Physician heal thyself...
To quote International Herald Tribune
India`s lost daughters: Abortion toll in millions
By Amelia Gentleman International Herald Tribune
TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2006
NEW DELHI As many as 10 million female fetuses may have been aborted in India over the last 20 years as families try to secure a male heir, according to a study published Monday in The Lancet, the British medical journal.
In the two decades since ultrasound equipment, which allows prenatal determination of sex, became widely available, the number of girls born in India has declined steeply, despite a law banning doctors from disclosing the sex of a fetus to parents.
Although the routine aborting of female fetuses has been well documented, the study puts new light on the scale of the practice. Experts in India said Monday that they hoped the study would prompt the government to enforce laws against the practice that are already on the books.
Campaigners have been trying to alert the government to the potential long-term social impact of the phenomenon, warning that, among other problems, it will make it harder for men to find wives. In China, where a one-child policy is strictly enforced, prenatal sex selection has resulted in an estimated 40 million bachelors.
``We conservatively estimate that prenatal sex determination and selective abortion accounts for 0.5 million missing girls yearly,`` Dr. Prabhat Jha, a public health professor at the University of Toronto, who headed the research team, said in a statement. ``If this practice has been common for most of the past two decades since access to ultrasound became widespread, then a figure of 10 million missing female births would not be unreasonable.``
The preference for sons has distorted the gender ratio throughout India.
As ultrasound equipment becomes cheaper, allowing more and more Indian clinics to purchase it, the gender imbalance in the population has grown greater. In 1991 there were some 945 women for every 1,000 men. The ratio dropped to 927 females per 1,000 males in 2001.
Jha`s team found that parents were more likely to abort a female fetus if the previous child had been a girl. Basing their conclusions on an ongoing Indian national survey of 133,738 births, the researchers concluded that in families where the first child was a girl, the ratio of girls to boys among second children was 759 girls per 1,000 boys - a reflection of the efforts made by families to ensure that at least one of their children was male.
``To have a daughter is socially and emotionally accepted if there is a son, but a daughter`s arrival is often unwelcome if the couple already have a daughter,`` Professor Shirish Sheth of the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai wrote in a commentary on the findings.
``Daughters are regarded as a liability,`` the professor continued. ``Because she will eventually belong to the family of her future husband, expenditure on her will benefit others. In some communities where the custom of dowry prevails, the cost of her dowry could be phenomenal.``
The study found that religion played no role in the phenomenon, but that well-educated and better-off families were more likely to find ways of breaking the law on prenatal sex selection.
The ban in 1994 on revealing the sex of a fetus is widely ignored and there is little attempt to enforce it. In theory, pregnant women who seek help for sex selection could face a three-year prison sentence and a fine of 50,000 rupees, or $1,100, while doctors can have their medical license suspended, but no case has yet come to court.
Dr. Sabhu George, who has been researching the phenomenon for the last 21 years, said the data from the study did not surprise him but added that he hoped that the publishing of the study in a well-respected international journal would put pressure on the Indian government to act.
``Over the next five years, we could see over one million fetuses eliminated every year,`` George said. ``The future is frightening.``
``The world needs to know about this problem because it is going to get worse,`` he said.
His research, conducted with the Center for Women`s Developmental Studies in New Delhi, indicates that as ultrasound technology becomes available in more remote areas of India, the number of abortions of female fetuses will increase.
Rajesh Kumar, of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, India, and a co-author of the study, agreed that the practice of aborting female fetuses was a problem.
``Our study emphasizes the need for routine, reliable and long-term measurement of births and deaths.``
NEW DELHI As many as 10 million female fetuses may have been aborted in India over the last 20 years as families try to secure a male heir, according to a study published Monday in The Lancet, the British medical journal.
In the two decades since ultrasound equipment, which allows prenatal determination of sex, became widely available, the number of girls born in India has declined steeply, despite a law banning doctors from disclosing the sex of a fetus to parents.
Although the routine aborting of female fetuses has been well documented, the study puts new light on the scale of the practice. Experts in India said Monday that they hoped the study would prompt the government to enforce laws against the practice that are already on the books.
Campaigners have been trying to alert the government to the potential long-term social impact of the phenomenon, warning that, among other problems, it will make it harder for men to find wives. In China, where a one-child policy is strictly enforced, prenatal sex selection has resulted in an estimated 40 million bachelors.
``We conservatively estimate that prenatal sex determination and selective abortion accounts for 0.5 million missing girls yearly,`` Dr. Prabhat Jha, a public health professor at the University of Toronto, who headed the research team, said in a statement. ``If this practice has been common for most of the past two decades since access to ultrasound became widespread, then a figure of 10 million missing female births would not be unreasonable.``
The preference for sons has distorted the gender ratio throughout India.
As ultrasound equipment becomes cheaper, allowing more and more Indian clinics to purchase it, the gender imbalance in the population has grown greater. In 1991 there were some 945 women for every 1,000 men. The ratio dropped to 927 females per 1,000 males in 2001.
Jha`s team found that parents were more likely to abort a female fetus if the previous child had been a girl. Basing their conclusions on an ongoing Indian national survey of 133,738 births, the researchers concluded that in families where the first child was a girl, the ratio of girls to boys among second children was 759 girls per 1,000 boys - a reflection of the efforts made by families to ensure that at least one of their children was male.
``To have a daughter is socially and emotionally accepted if there is a son, but a daughter`s arrival is often unwelcome if the couple already have a daughter,`` Professor Shirish Sheth of the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai wrote in a commentary on the findings.
``Daughters are regarded as a liability,`` the professor continued. ``Because she will eventually belong to the family of her future husband, expenditure on her will benefit others. In some communities where the custom of dowry prevails, the cost of her dowry could be phenomenal.``
The study found that religion played no role in the phenomenon, but that well-educated and better-off families were more likely to find ways of breaking the law on prenatal sex selection.
The ban in 1994 on revealing the sex of a fetus is widely ignored and there is little attempt to enforce it. In theory, pregnant women who seek help for sex selection could face a three-year prison sentence and a fine of 50,000 rupees, or $1,100, while doctors can have their medical license suspended, but no case has yet come to court.
Dr. Sabhu George, who has been researching the phenomenon for the last 21 years, said the data from the study did not surprise him but added that he hoped that the publishing of the study in a well-respected international journal would put pressure on the Indian government to act.
``Over the next five years, we could see over one million fetuses eliminated every year,`` George said. ``The future is frightening.``
``The world needs to know about this problem because it is going to get worse,`` he said.
His research, conducted with the Center for Women`s Developmental Studies in New Delhi, indicates that as ultrasound technology becomes available in more remote areas of India, the number of abortions of female fetuses will increase.
Rajesh Kumar, of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, India, and a co-author of the study, agreed that the practice of aborting female fetuses was a problem.
``Our study emphasizes the need for routine, reliable and long-term measurement of births and deaths.``
NEW DELHI As many as 10 million female fetuses may have been aborted in India over the last 20 years as families try to secure a male heir, according to a study published Monday in The Lancet, the British medical journal.
In the two decades since ultrasound equipment, which allows prenatal determination of sex, became widely available, the number of girls born in India has declined steeply, despite a law banning doctors from disclosing the sex of a fetus to parents.
Although the routine aborting of female fetuses has been well documented, the study puts new light on the scale of the practice. Experts in India said Monday that they hoped the study would prompt the government to enforce laws against the practice that are already on the books.
Campaigners have been trying to alert the government to the potential long-term social impact of the phenomenon, warning that, among other problems, it will make it harder for men to find wives. In China, where a one-child policy is strictly enforced, prenatal sex selection has resulted in an estimated 40 million bachelors.
``We conservatively estimate that prenatal sex determination and selective abortion accounts for 0.5 million missing girls yearly,`` Dr. Prabhat Jha, a public health professor at the University of Toronto, who headed the research team, said in a statement. ``If this practice has been common for most of the past two decades since access to ultrasound became widespread, then a figure of 10 million missing female births would not be unreasonable.``
The preference for sons has distorted the gender ratio throughout India.
As ultrasound equipment becomes cheaper, allowing more and more Indian clinics to purchase it, the gender imbalance in the population has grown greater. In 1991 there were some 945 women for every 1,000 men. The ratio dropped to 927 females per 1,000 males in 2001.
Jha`s team found that parents were more likely to abort a female fetus if the previous child had been a girl. Basing their conclusions on an ongoing Indian national survey of 133,738 births, the researchers concluded that in families where the first child was a girl, the ratio of girls to boys among second children was 759 girls per 1,000 boys - a reflection of the efforts made by families to ensure that at least one of their children was male.
``To have a daughter is socially and emotionally accepted if there is a son, but a daughter`s arrival is often unwelcome if the couple already have a daughter,`` Professor Shirish Sheth of the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai wrote in a commentary on the findings.
``Daughters are regarded as a liability,`` the professor continued. ``Because she will eventually belong to the family of her future husband, expenditure on her will benefit others. In some communities where the custom of dowry prevails, the cost of her dowry could be phenomenal.``
The study found that religion played no role in the phenomenon, but that well-educated and better-off families were more likely to find ways of breaking the law on prenatal sex selection.
The ban in 1994 on revealing the sex of a fetus is widely ignored and there is little attempt to enforce it. In theory, pregnant women who seek help for sex selection could face a three-year prison sentence and a fine of 50,000 rupees, or $1,100, while doctors can have their medical license suspended, but no case has yet come to court.
Dr. Sabhu George, who has been researching the phenomenon for the last 21 years, said the data from the study did not surprise him but added that he hoped that the publishing of the study in a well-respected international journal would put pressure on the Indian government to act.
``Over the next five years, we could see over one million fetuses eliminated every year,`` George said. ``The future is frightening.``
``The world needs to know about this problem because it is going to get worse,`` he said.
His research, conducted with the Center for Women`s Developmental Studies in New Delhi, indicates that as ultrasound technology becomes available in more remote areas of India, the number of abortions of female fetuses will increase.
Rajesh Kumar, of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, India, and a co-author of the study, agreed that the practice of aborting female fetuses was a problem.
``Our study emphasizes the need for routine, reliable and long-term measurement of births and deaths.``
NEW DELHI As many as 10 million female fetuses may have been aborted in India over the last 20 years as families try to secure a male heir, according to a study published Monday in The Lancet, the British medical journal.
In the two decades since ultrasound equipment, which allows prenatal determination of sex, became widely available, the number of girls born in India has declined steeply, despite a law banning doctors from disclosing the sex of a fetus to parents.
Although the routine aborting of female fetuses has been well documented, the study puts new light on the scale of the practice. Experts in India said Monday that they hoped the study would prompt the government to enforce laws against the practice that are already on the books.
Campaigners have been trying to alert the government to the potential long-term social impact of the phenomenon, warning that, among other problems, it will make it harder for men to find wives. In China, where a one-child policy is strictly enforced, prenatal sex selection has resulted in an estimated 40 million bachelors.
``We conservatively estimate that prenatal sex determination and selective abortion accounts for 0.5 million missing girls yearly,`` Dr.
To quote BBC ...
Doctor queries Indian abortions
Girl in India
Girls are often seen as a drain on families in India
A senior Indian doctor has called on UK health officials to investigate what he says are rising numbers of British Asian women having abortions in India. According to gynaecologist Puneet Bedi, the women are travelling to India to have abortions if they find they are expecting girls.
He said British GPs were referring women to clinics in India.
It is common, although illegal, in India for women to have terminations if the foetus is female.
A recent report in medical journal The Lancet estimated that as many as 10 million females may have been aborted in India in the last 20 years.
However, the Indian Medical Association disputed the findings, saying gender selection had dropped since a court ruling in 2001 clamped down on the practice.
There`s no difficulty at all in getting either sexing or abortions done at the right time from almost any clinic in north India and the rest of India as well
Puneet Bedi
Gynaecologist
Dr Bedi, a gynaecologist at one of India`s leading hospitals, the Apollo in Delhi, said the practice was lucrative for doctors.
``If anything it`s on the rise because the basic economics dictate and there`s a lot of money for the doctors to be made,`` Dr Bedi told the BBC.
He said it was common knowledge among gynaecologists that UK women were going to India from the UK for this practice.
``We all know that it happens all the time and most of the gynaecologists are directly involved in the business and practice of it.``
He said it was easy for women to access doctors as there was an ``openness and frankness`` around the issue.
``There`s no difficulty at all in getting either sexing or abortions done at the right time from almost any clinic in north India and the rest of India as well.``
He said British GPs were referring women to clinics in India.
TERMINATION REASONS
Daughters require dowry
Daughters cannot carry on the family name
Daughters are seen as lower than sons
However, Dr Mayur Lakhani, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners said the practice was not widespread in Britain.
``In this country, this is the first that I`ve heard of it, so I think we need to gather more evidence about this practice in this country.
``But just to be absolutely sure: GPs operate to a very high standard in this country, we have some of the highest standards in the world, I`d be very surprised if this was a widespread or common practice.``
An Asian women`s project in Derby said there could be various reasons why some Asian women would not want a girl.
The director of Karma Nirvana, Jaswinder Sangheera, said: ``With daughters come the issue of a dowry; with daughters they can`t carry on the family name; daughters` positions are seen as less than a male.
``So I think that this is a pressure that Asian communities perceive, and it`s a real one on the lives of a woman.``
The point is that we solving our issue... slowly but surely... what are you doing about the violence against women and the killing of female fetuses which is a way of life for many Indians.. how are you going to blame us for that? ... Are you going to keep trying to dig up stuff on Pakistan? Physician heal thyself...
To quote International Herald Tribune
India`s lost daughters: Abortion toll in millions
By Amelia Gentleman International Herald Tribune
TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 2006
NEW DELHI As many as 10 million female fetuses may have been aborted in India over the last 20 years as families try to secure a male heir, according to a study published Monday in The Lancet, the British medical journal.
In the two decades since ultrasound equipment, which allows prenatal determination of sex, became widely available, the number of girls born in India has declined steeply, despite a law banning doctors from disclosing the sex of a fetus to parents.
Although the routine aborting of female fetuses has been well documented, the study puts new light on the scale of the practice. Experts in India said Monday that they hoped the study would prompt the government to enforce laws against the practice that are already on the books.
Campaigners have been trying to alert the government to the potential long-term social impact of the phenomenon, warning that, among other problems, it will make it harder for men to find wives. In China, where a one-child policy is strictly enforced, prenatal sex selection has resulted in an estimated 40 million bachelors.
``We conservatively estimate that prenatal sex determination and selective abortion accounts for 0.5 million missing girls yearly,`` Dr. Prabhat Jha, a public health professor at the University of Toronto, who headed the research team, said in a statement. ``If this practice has been common for most of the past two decades since access to ultrasound became widespread, then a figure of 10 million missing female births would not be unreasonable.``
The preference for sons has distorted the gender ratio throughout India.
As ultrasound equipment becomes cheaper, allowing more and more Indian clinics to purchase it, the gender imbalance in the population has grown greater. In 1991 there were some 945 women for every 1,000 men. The ratio dropped to 927 females per 1,000 males in 2001.
Jha`s team found that parents were more likely to abort a female fetus if the previous child had been a girl. Basing their conclusions on an ongoing Indian national survey of 133,738 births, the researchers concluded that in families where the first child was a girl, the ratio of girls to boys among second children was 759 girls per 1,000 boys - a reflection of the efforts made by families to ensure that at least one of their children was male.
``To have a daughter is socially and emotionally accepted if there is a son, but a daughter`s arrival is often unwelcome if the couple already have a daughter,`` Professor Shirish Sheth of the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai wrote in a commentary on the findings.
``Daughters are regarded as a liability,`` the professor continued. ``Because she will eventually belong to the family of her future husband, expenditure on her will benefit others. In some communities where the custom of dowry prevails, the cost of her dowry could be phenomenal.``
The study found that religion played no role in the phenomenon, but that well-educated and better-off families were more likely to find ways of breaking the law on prenatal sex selection.
The ban in 1994 on revealing the sex of a fetus is widely ignored and there is little attempt to enforce it. In theory, pregnant women who seek help for sex selection could face a three-year prison sentence and a fine of 50,000 rupees, or $1,100, while doctors can have their medical license suspended, but no case has yet come to court.
Dr. Sabhu George, who has been researching the phenomenon for the last 21 years, said the data from the study did not surprise him but added that he hoped that the publishing of the study in a well-respected international journal would put pressure on the Indian government to act.
``Over the next five years, we could see over one million fetuses eliminated every year,`` George said. ``The future is frightening.``
``The world needs to know about this problem because it is going to get worse,`` he said.
His research, conducted with the Center for Women`s Developmental Studies in New Delhi, indicates that as ultrasound technology becomes available in more remote areas of India, the number of abortions of female fetuses will increase.
Rajesh Kumar, of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, India, and a co-author of the study, agreed that the practice of aborting female fetuses was a problem.
``Our study emphasizes the need for routine, reliable and long-term measurement of births and deaths.``
NEW DELHI As many as 10 million female fetuses may have been aborted in India over the last 20 years as families try to secure a male heir, according to a study published Monday in The Lancet, the British medical journal.
In the two decades since ultrasound equipment, which allows prenatal determination of sex, became widely available, the number of girls born in India has declined steeply, despite a law banning doctors from disclosing the sex of a fetus to parents.
Although the routine aborting of female fetuses has been well documented, the study puts new light on the scale of the practice. Experts in India said Monday that they hoped the study would prompt the government to enforce laws against the practice that are already on the books.
Campaigners have been trying to alert the government to the potential long-term social impact of the phenomenon, warning that, among other problems, it will make it harder for men to find wives. In China, where a one-child policy is strictly enforced, prenatal sex selection has resulted in an estimated 40 million bachelors.
``We conservatively estimate that prenatal sex determination and selective abortion accounts for 0.5 million missing girls yearly,`` Dr. Prabhat Jha, a public health professor at the University of Toronto, who headed the research team, said in a statement. ``If this practice has been common for most of the past two decades since access to ultrasound became widespread, then a figure of 10 million missing female births would not be unreasonable.``
The preference for sons has distorted the gender ratio throughout India.
As ultrasound equipment becomes cheaper, allowing more and more Indian clinics to purchase it, the gender imbalance in the population has grown greater. In 1991 there were some 945 women for every 1,000 men. The ratio dropped to 927 females per 1,000 males in 2001.
Jha`s team found that parents were more likely to abort a female fetus if the previous child had been a girl. Basing their conclusions on an ongoing Indian national survey of 133,738 births, the researchers concluded that in families where the first child was a girl, the ratio of girls to boys among second children was 759 girls per 1,000 boys - a reflection of the efforts made by families to ensure that at least one of their children was male.
``To have a daughter is socially and emotionally accepted if there is a son, but a daughter`s arrival is often unwelcome if the couple already have a daughter,`` Professor Shirish Sheth of the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai wrote in a commentary on the findings.
``Daughters are regarded as a liability,`` the professor continued. ``Because she will eventually belong to the family of her future husband, expenditure on her will benefit others. In some communities where the custom of dowry prevails, the cost of her dowry could be phenomenal.``
The study found that religion played no role in the phenomenon, but that well-educated and better-off families were more likely to find ways of breaking the law on prenatal sex selection.
The ban in 1994 on revealing the sex of a fetus is widely ignored and there is little attempt to enforce it. In theory, pregnant women who seek help for sex selection could face a three-year prison sentence and a fine of 50,000 rupees, or $1,100, while doctors can have their medical license suspended, but no case has yet come to court.
Dr. Sabhu George, who has been researching the phenomenon for the last 21 years, said the data from the study did not surprise him but added that he hoped that the publishing of the study in a well-respected international journal would put pressure on the Indian government to act.
``Over the next five years, we could see over one million fetuses eliminated every year,`` George said. ``The future is frightening.``
``The world needs to know about this problem because it is going to get worse,`` he said.
His research, conducted with the Center for Women`s Developmental Studies in New Delhi, indicates that as ultrasound technology becomes available in more remote areas of India, the number of abortions of female fetuses will increase.
Rajesh Kumar, of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, India, and a co-author of the study, agreed that the practice of aborting female fetuses was a problem.
``Our study emphasizes the need for routine, reliable and long-term measurement of births and deaths.``
NEW DELHI As many as 10 million female fetuses may have been aborted in India over the last 20 years as families try to secure a male heir, according to a study published Monday in The Lancet, the British medical journal.
In the two decades since ultrasound equipment, which allows prenatal determination of sex, became widely available, the number of girls born in India has declined steeply, despite a law banning doctors from disclosing the sex of a fetus to parents.
Although the routine aborting of female fetuses has been well documented, the study puts new light on the scale of the practice. Experts in India said Monday that they hoped the study would prompt the government to enforce laws against the practice that are already on the books.
Campaigners have been trying to alert the government to the potential long-term social impact of the phenomenon, warning that, among other problems, it will make it harder for men to find wives. In China, where a one-child policy is strictly enforced, prenatal sex selection has resulted in an estimated 40 million bachelors.
``We conservatively estimate that prenatal sex determination and selective abortion accounts for 0.5 million missing girls yearly,`` Dr. Prabhat Jha, a public health professor at the University of Toronto, who headed the research team, said in a statement. ``If this practice has been common for most of the past two decades since access to ultrasound became widespread, then a figure of 10 million missing female births would not be unreasonable.``
The preference for sons has distorted the gender ratio throughout India.
As ultrasound equipment becomes cheaper, allowing more and more Indian clinics to purchase it, the gender imbalance in the population has grown greater. In 1991 there were some 945 women for every 1,000 men. The ratio dropped to 927 females per 1,000 males in 2001.
Jha`s team found that parents were more likely to abort a female fetus if the previous child had been a girl. Basing their conclusions on an ongoing Indian national survey of 133,738 births, the researchers concluded that in families where the first child was a girl, the ratio of girls to boys among second children was 759 girls per 1,000 boys - a reflection of the efforts made by families to ensure that at least one of their children was male.
``To have a daughter is socially and emotionally accepted if there is a son, but a daughter`s arrival is often unwelcome if the couple already have a daughter,`` Professor Shirish Sheth of the Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai wrote in a commentary on the findings.
``Daughters are regarded as a liability,`` the professor continued. ``Because she will eventually belong to the family of her future husband, expenditure on her will benefit others. In some communities where the custom of dowry prevails, the cost of her dowry could be phenomenal.``
The study found that religion played no role in the phenomenon, but that well-educated and better-off families were more likely to find ways of breaking the law on prenatal sex selection.
The ban in 1994 on revealing the sex of a fetus is widely ignored and there is little attempt to enforce it. In theory, pregnant women who seek help for sex selection could face a three-year prison sentence and a fine of 50,000 rupees, or $1,100, while doctors can have their medical license suspended, but no case has yet come to court.
Dr. Sabhu George, who has been researching the phenomenon for the last 21 years, said the data from the study did not surprise him but added that he hoped that the publishing of the study in a well-respected international journal would put pressure on the Indian government to act.
``Over the next five years, we could see over one million fetuses eliminated every year,`` George said. ``The future is frightening.``
``The world needs to know about this problem because it is going to get worse,`` he said.
His research, conducted with the Center for Women`s Developmental Studies in New Delhi, indicates that as ultrasound technology becomes available in more remote areas of India, the number of abortions of female fetuses will increase.
Rajesh Kumar, of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, India, and a co-author of the study, agreed that the practice of aborting female fetuses was a problem.
``Our study emphasizes the need for routine, reliable and long-term measurement of births and deaths.``
NEW DELHI As many as 10 million female fetuses may have been aborted in India over the last 20 years as families try to secure a male heir, according to a study published Monday in The Lancet, the British medical journal.
In the two decades since ultrasound equipment, which allows prenatal determination of sex, became widely available, the number of girls born in India has declined steeply, despite a law banning doctors from disclosing the sex of a fetus to parents.
Although the routine aborting of female fetuses has been well documented, the study puts new light on the scale of the practice. Experts in India said Monday that they hoped the study would prompt the government to enforce laws against the practice that are already on the books.
Campaigners have been trying to alert the government to the potential long-term social impact of the phenomenon, warning that, among other problems, it will make it harder for men to find wives. In China, where a one-child policy is strictly enforced, prenatal sex selection has resulted in an estimated 40 million bachelors.
``We conservatively estimate that prenatal sex determination and selective abortion accounts for 0.5 million missing girls yearly,`` Dr.
To quote BBC ...
Doctor queries Indian abortions
Girl in India
Girls are often seen as a drain on families in India
A senior Indian doctor has called on UK health officials to investigate what he says are rising numbers of British Asian women having abortions in India. According to gynaecologist Puneet Bedi, the women are travelling to India to have abortions if they find they are expecting girls.
He said British GPs were referring women to clinics in India.
It is common, although illegal, in India for women to have terminations if the foetus is female.
A recent report in medical journal The Lancet estimated that as many as 10 million females may have been aborted in India in the last 20 years.
However, the Indian Medical Association disputed the findings, saying gender selection had dropped since a court ruling in 2001 clamped down on the practice.
There`s no difficulty at all in getting either sexing or abortions done at the right time from almost any clinic in north India and the rest of India as well
Puneet Bedi
Gynaecologist
Dr Bedi, a gynaecologist at one of India`s leading hospitals, the Apollo in Delhi, said the practice was lucrative for doctors.
``If anything it`s on the rise because the basic economics dictate and there`s a lot of money for the doctors to be made,`` Dr Bedi told the BBC.
He said it was common knowledge among gynaecologists that UK women were going to India from the UK for this practice.
``We all know that it happens all the time and most of the gynaecologists are directly involved in the business and practice of it.``
He said it was easy for women to access doctors as there was an ``openness and frankness`` around the issue.
``There`s no difficulty at all in getting either sexing or abortions done at the right time from almost any clinic in north India and the rest of India as well.``
He said British GPs were referring women to clinics in India.
TERMINATION REASONS
Daughters require dowry
Daughters cannot carry on the family name
Daughters are seen as lower than sons
However, Dr Mayur Lakhani, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners said the practice was not widespread in Britain.
``In this country, this is the first that I`ve heard of it, so I think we need to gather more evidence about this practice in this country.
``But just to be absolutely sure: GPs operate to a very high standard in this country, we have some of the highest standards in the world, I`d be very surprised if this was a widespread or common practice.``
An Asian women`s project in Derby said there could be various reasons why some Asian women would not want a girl.
The director of Karma Nirvana, Jaswinder Sangheera, said: ``With daughters come the issue of a dowry; with daughters they can`t carry on the family name; daughters` positions are seen as less than a male.
``So I think that this is a pressure that Asian communities perceive, and it`s a real one on the lives of a woman.``
#156 Posted by Inquirer on March 9, 2006 8:43:14 am
Re: # 155:
Were you able to read under the photographs?! May be not!!!!!!! So here is a quote for the likes of you to ponder. And may be learn!
``For weeks, Islamist groups had tried to ban women from the race. On Friday police arrested more than 400 people when a protest against the marathon turned violent. The controversy shook this city of 8 million, raising concerns that violence would disrupt the race, which was designed as a fundraiser for quake victims.
The threat only underscored for many the symbolic importance of the race.
``Though we are afraid, we are running,`` says Ethiopian star runner Ashu Kasim, who is Muslim. ``We can have our faith and we can run.``
The race went off without incident. The only challenge to some 6,000 police was controlling the exuberance of the crowds, who cheered more than 15,000 runners.``
****Was the number of police underestimated to please the boss Musharraf? ****
Were you able to read under the photographs?! May be not!!!!!!! So here is a quote for the likes of you to ponder. And may be learn!
``For weeks, Islamist groups had tried to ban women from the race. On Friday police arrested more than 400 people when a protest against the marathon turned violent. The controversy shook this city of 8 million, raising concerns that violence would disrupt the race, which was designed as a fundraiser for quake victims.
The threat only underscored for many the symbolic importance of the race.
``Though we are afraid, we are running,`` says Ethiopian star runner Ashu Kasim, who is Muslim. ``We can have our faith and we can run.``
The race went off without incident. The only challenge to some 6,000 police was controlling the exuberance of the crowds, who cheered more than 15,000 runners.``
****Was the number of police underestimated to please the boss Musharraf? ****
#155 Posted by MantoLives on March 9, 2006 7:36:06 am
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002770854_marathon30.html
Pakistani women defy threats, run mixed marathon
By David Montero | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
LAHORE, PAKISTAN – For Nabila Rafique, the race wasn`t about finishing first. She ran and walked the course wearing a traditional salwar kameez (loose-fitting tunic) with a shawl. As she focused on putting one foot in front of the other, she paid little heed to the throngs cheering on the curbs - or the armed police posted at every corner.
``This is just for the experience,`` says Mrs. Rafique, who felt her victory in Sunday`s Lahore Marathon was won at the word ``Go!``
For weeks, Islamist groups had tried to ban women from the race. On Friday police arrested more than 400 people when a protest against the marathon turned violent. The controversy shook this city of 8 million, raising concerns that violence would disrupt the race, which was designed as a fundraiser for quake victims.
The threat only underscored for many the symbolic importance of the race.
``Though we are afraid, we are running,`` says Ethiopian star runner Ashu Kasim, who is Muslim. ``We can have our faith and we can run.``
The race went off without incident. The only challenge to some 6,000 police was controlling the exuberance of the crowds, who cheered more than 15,000 runners.
But the fears of violence were not unfounded. Since the inaugural Lahore Marathon was held last January, allowing men and women to run together for the first time, marathons have emerged as one of the most contested battlegrounds in a country struggling to define its Islamic identity.
Progressive elements argue that races like this, by granting women greater freedom in public, advance Pakistan`s commitment to ``enlightened moderation,`` the program of social reform touted by President Pervez Musharraf. But the religious right here, whose political power and influence many say are growing, have grabbed attention by launching both verbal and physical attacks against races. In April 2005, supporters of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), a coalition of six religious parties, physically assaulted women running a race in Gujranwala, 60 miles north of Lahore, prompting the government to ban mixed gender races.
``It`s not only a marathon - it`s about whether Pakistan is moving toward liberalism, shedding its Taliban past,`` argues Jugnu Mohsin, publisher of The Friday Times, one of the leading progressive newspapers in Lahore.
Her religious opponents disagree, however, saying that mixed races are an unwanted transgression from Islamic tradition, which says that women and men should not mix freely in public.
``We have great support for the sports played by women ... but women should run separately and in a separate area,`` argues Hafiz Salman Butt, Lahore chapter president of the MMA. Mr. Butt and other religious leaders also scorned the idea of Pakistani women running in shorts on the streets of Lahore. In the end, however, only a handful of foreign professional women wore shorts, with most women wearing the traditional salwar kameez.
President Musharraf`s ``enlightened moderation`` was supposed to bring a greater dimension of liberal democracy to Pakistan, dispelling the notion that Islam is at odds with modernity.
But many analysts see the opposite trend at work. Right-wing religious groups swept to power in 2002, when the MMA took control of the provincial government of the North West Frontier Province. They are now the second-largest party in the National Assembly, occupying nearly one fourth of all seats. With greater political clout has come greater leverage to challenge national laws.
In March 2005, these groups successfully launched a campaign to stop the government from removing religious identities from passports. The MMA has also introduced a parliamentary bill seeking to ban women in advertising; a decision is pending.
Analysts say the dispute over marathons underscores the government`s ambivalence toward checking growing extremism. The Lahore government decided to hold a marathon last year, but they disrupted subsequent races after religious parties complained.
When the administration changes directions like this, analysts say, it translates into a victory for the religious right. Sunday`s race was therefore viewed as an important line in the sand, one which even ordinary citizens were not willing to yield.
``Today it`s saying that men and women can`t run together; tomorrow that they can`t work together,`` says Shakir Husain, a business consultant in Karachi, who felt compelled to pen a newspaper op-ed.
Efforts like these eventually paid off. Days before the race, Lahore city officials said the mixed race would go on. Hundreds of women, including Rafique, turned out for the shorter ``family`` runs, dashing and walking alongside their husbands and children.
Ordinary citizens hope their participation demonstrates the direction in which Pakistan is headed. ``My family took part in the race because we wanted to make a statement. Because we don`t find it right, the separation,`` says Aamir Rafique, Nabila`s husband, walking briskly to keep pace with his wife.
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#154 Posted by MantoLives on March 9, 2006 7:28:17 am
Dear inquirer...
Please review your own story...
The story is from May 13th 2005. I supported this run.
However as many as 5000 women had participated in the run in February 2005 and 6000 women ran in the Marathon January 2006.
Please grow up and stop twisting the facts. These are our problems... we are dealing with them.. but what about India where fetuses are aborted for being female in millions? Are you doing something about that or are you busy digging up stories from last year?
Oh wait... I forgot ... you are not one to accept anything but your narrowminded nationalistic bigotry... so keep repeating your nonsense.
Please review your own story...
The story is from May 13th 2005. I supported this run.
However as many as 5000 women had participated in the run in February 2005 and 6000 women ran in the Marathon January 2006.
Please grow up and stop twisting the facts. These are our problems... we are dealing with them.. but what about India where fetuses are aborted for being female in millions? Are you doing something about that or are you busy digging up stories from last year?
Oh wait... I forgot ... you are not one to accept anything but your narrowminded nationalistic bigotry... so keep repeating your nonsense.
#153 Posted by Inquirer on March 9, 2006 7:09:37 am
Re: # 152:
Read the story of your marathon. Open your eyes/stop deluding others! Your hero Jinnah has done it enough for allof you!!
Misogynist State
Beena Sarwar
May 23, 2005
Pakistan continues to hit headlines around the world for all the wrong reasons. On May 3, it was the journalists that the Islamabad and Lahore police roughed up as they demonstrated on World Press Freedom Day. Barely ten days later, on May 14, human rights activists got the rough end of the stick as they geared up for a symbolic run in Lahore, to assert the right of women to public space.
The women who were leading the run were especially targeted, in particular the lawyer Asma Jahangir who has become a symbol of the human rights movement in Pakistan.
The point is not that these people were violating Section 144, which prohibits the assembly of more than four people in a public place. As Asma Jahangir says, even if they had committed murder, the police had no right to humiliate the women and try to expose their bodies.
Secondly, Section 144 is routinely imposed in our cities, most often to restrict the public mobility of political opponents; somehow it never seems to apply to the `bearded brigade` that are allowed to hold `million marches` and attack women participating in a marathon, as in Gujranwala not so long ago. Why did they not attack anyone at the Lahore marathon on January 30 this year? It was the success of that event that led the Punjab Sports Board to plan a series of other marathons, including Gujranwala.
The government then tacitly accepted the religious extremists` point of view, releasing those who had led the Gujranwala attack and holding the remaining marathons as segregated events. MMA activists armed with sticks stood around menacingly outside the Sargodha stadium inside which the women ran -- their restriction to this confined space defeating the very purpose of a marathon which means a long distance run -- having announced that they would teach any woman a lesson who dared try and run outside. The police stood by watching.
Similarly, when a welfare trust in Khairpur wanted to hold a fund-raising all-women event, the police initially refused to grant them permission on the grounds that the `religious` group active in the area would not like it. (So now, as one women`s rights activist put it, we`re reduced to taking permission from the mullahs to hold public events.)
When Khairpur Nazim Nafisa Shah directed the police to allow the fund-raiser to take place, its organisers found the ground taken over by the so-called religious activists, who prevented the mela from starting for some nine hours as the police watched meekly. Finally, Ms Shah managed to negotiate for the event to take place at an alternative venue. But there too, the mullahs raised objections at the last minute, insisting that the ferris wheel would not be allowed, as boys outside would be able to see the girls at the top.
This time, Ms Shah refused to negotiate further, and the nervous organisers held the event as planned. The `religious` activists then demonstrated outside her office and in the market place, undisturbed by the police, hurling the choicest, most unprintable invectives. Their actions, apparently, are exempt from offending `religious sentiments`, or falling in the realm of `obscenity` and `vulgarity`.
Policemen and women themselves, while attacking the participants of the symbolic Lahore marathon recently, used the filthiest language against women -- including words and phrases that many of those present had never heard before. They dragged women by the hair, and tore clothes. The policewoman who attacked Asma Jahangir and ripped her shirt open, exposing the back, said she had orders to strip and humiliate Asma in public. In doing this, she was egged on by a (bearded) plainclothesman. Three policewomen who apparently disapproved of this activity told some marathon participants that this woman was especially trained to tear women`s clothes, particularly at PPP rallies.
The administration initially justified the police presence as necessary to protect the activists from the Jamaat`s student wing which allegedly was threatening to disrupt the event. ``Instead of preventing them, the administration decided to stop the race,`` comments a participant. ``In fact the religious activists were not even there and came after the police action, most probably at the administration`s request.``
Some defend what happened on the grounds that the marathon participants were violating Section 144.
One response to the news report of the incident, posted on an email list, sums up this point of view aptly: ``It has been highlighted as violation of human rights but I personally agree that whatever govt, police did was right. As section 144 was already imposed then y did hrcp want to have marathon? The best remedy was that hrcp should have gone into a logical dialogue and requested government to allow them for marathon.``
The writer, who is incidentally a woman, concludes that Asma Jahangir ``is responsible for her insult torn clothes and arrests of other human rights activists.``
This reasoning betrays two lines of thinking that are detrimental to democratic values. One is that if the government chooses to be unreasonable and deny citizens public space for a demonstration meant to highlight the right of women to that public space, the citizens should meekly go home.
The second, more sinister line of thinking, is that if a woman transgresses in any way, she is herself responsible for any subsequent attack on her person. It is this mindset that justifies rape, murder in the name of `honour` (karo kari, as this is known in some areas), domestic violence, and acid attacks.
Public processions and demonstrations are rarely segregated events in Pakistan. That has never been an issue before. As the HRCP said in a press release following the police action, ``Forcibly preventing participation in public events by women can act only to encourage extremism, and send out a message to orthodox elements that their actions are condoned by the state.``
It is these elements that are making women`s participation in public events into an issue.
They openly admire the Taliban, black out women`s faces on billboards, and are against girls` education, going to the extent of blowing up girls` schools -- as they did recently in Bajaur agency.
It is these elements that the government claims to stand against -- yet tacitly encourages by falling in line with their agendas, and using them as an excuse to crush those it should be supporting.
BUT THIS COMES FROM A WOMAN IN PAKISTAN!! MAY BE THAT IS WHY IT DOES NOT MATTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Read the story of your marathon. Open your eyes/stop deluding others! Your hero Jinnah has done it enough for allof you!!
Misogynist State
Beena Sarwar
May 23, 2005
Pakistan continues to hit headlines around the world for all the wrong reasons. On May 3, it was the journalists that the Islamabad and Lahore police roughed up as they demonstrated on World Press Freedom Day. Barely ten days later, on May 14, human rights activists got the rough end of the stick as they geared up for a symbolic run in Lahore, to assert the right of women to public space.
The women who were leading the run were especially targeted, in particular the lawyer Asma Jahangir who has become a symbol of the human rights movement in Pakistan.
The point is not that these people were violating Section 144, which prohibits the assembly of more than four people in a public place. As Asma Jahangir says, even if they had committed murder, the police had no right to humiliate the women and try to expose their bodies.
Secondly, Section 144 is routinely imposed in our cities, most often to restrict the public mobility of political opponents; somehow it never seems to apply to the `bearded brigade` that are allowed to hold `million marches` and attack women participating in a marathon, as in Gujranwala not so long ago. Why did they not attack anyone at the Lahore marathon on January 30 this year? It was the success of that event that led the Punjab Sports Board to plan a series of other marathons, including Gujranwala.
The government then tacitly accepted the religious extremists` point of view, releasing those who had led the Gujranwala attack and holding the remaining marathons as segregated events. MMA activists armed with sticks stood around menacingly outside the Sargodha stadium inside which the women ran -- their restriction to this confined space defeating the very purpose of a marathon which means a long distance run -- having announced that they would teach any woman a lesson who dared try and run outside. The police stood by watching.
Similarly, when a welfare trust in Khairpur wanted to hold a fund-raising all-women event, the police initially refused to grant them permission on the grounds that the `religious` group active in the area would not like it. (So now, as one women`s rights activist put it, we`re reduced to taking permission from the mullahs to hold public events.)
When Khairpur Nazim Nafisa Shah directed the police to allow the fund-raiser to take place, its organisers found the ground taken over by the so-called religious activists, who prevented the mela from starting for some nine hours as the police watched meekly. Finally, Ms Shah managed to negotiate for the event to take place at an alternative venue. But there too, the mullahs raised objections at the last minute, insisting that the ferris wheel would not be allowed, as boys outside would be able to see the girls at the top.
This time, Ms Shah refused to negotiate further, and the nervous organisers held the event as planned. The `religious` activists then demonstrated outside her office and in the market place, undisturbed by the police, hurling the choicest, most unprintable invectives. Their actions, apparently, are exempt from offending `religious sentiments`, or falling in the realm of `obscenity` and `vulgarity`.
Policemen and women themselves, while attacking the participants of the symbolic Lahore marathon recently, used the filthiest language against women -- including words and phrases that many of those present had never heard before. They dragged women by the hair, and tore clothes. The policewoman who attacked Asma Jahangir and ripped her shirt open, exposing the back, said she had orders to strip and humiliate Asma in public. In doing this, she was egged on by a (bearded) plainclothesman. Three policewomen who apparently disapproved of this activity told some marathon participants that this woman was especially trained to tear women`s clothes, particularly at PPP rallies.
The administration initially justified the police presence as necessary to protect the activists from the Jamaat`s student wing which allegedly was threatening to disrupt the event. ``Instead of preventing them, the administration decided to stop the race,`` comments a participant. ``In fact the religious activists were not even there and came after the police action, most probably at the administration`s request.``
Some defend what happened on the grounds that the marathon participants were violating Section 144.
One response to the news report of the incident, posted on an email list, sums up this point of view aptly: ``It has been highlighted as violation of human rights but I personally agree that whatever govt, police did was right. As section 144 was already imposed then y did hrcp want to have marathon? The best remedy was that hrcp should have gone into a logical dialogue and requested government to allow them for marathon.``
The writer, who is incidentally a woman, concludes that Asma Jahangir ``is responsible for her insult torn clothes and arrests of other human rights activists.``
This reasoning betrays two lines of thinking that are detrimental to democratic values. One is that if the government chooses to be unreasonable and deny citizens public space for a demonstration meant to highlight the right of women to that public space, the citizens should meekly go home.
The second, more sinister line of thinking, is that if a woman transgresses in any way, she is herself responsible for any subsequent attack on her person. It is this mindset that justifies rape, murder in the name of `honour` (karo kari, as this is known in some areas), domestic violence, and acid attacks.
Public processions and demonstrations are rarely segregated events in Pakistan. That has never been an issue before. As the HRCP said in a press release following the police action, ``Forcibly preventing participation in public events by women can act only to encourage extremism, and send out a message to orthodox elements that their actions are condoned by the state.``
It is these elements that are making women`s participation in public events into an issue.
They openly admire the Taliban, black out women`s faces on billboards, and are against girls` education, going to the extent of blowing up girls` schools -- as they did recently in Bajaur agency.
It is these elements that the government claims to stand against -- yet tacitly encourages by falling in line with their agendas, and using them as an excuse to crush those it should be supporting.
BUT THIS COMES FROM A WOMAN IN PAKISTAN!! MAY BE THAT IS WHY IT DOES NOT MATTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
#152 Posted by MantoLives on March 9, 2006 5:48:13 am
Inquirer...
So you are telling me that women don`t get raped in India? That is wonderful news. Is that because there are 10 million female fetuses killed in India every year? Let us remind ourselves that you are the one who was saying that your wife is incapable of doing physics, philosophy etc because she is a woman...
As for women not being able to jog... then how come 6000 women participated in the Marathon?
And while Pakistan`s Hudood laws are reprehensible, procedurally they are parallel and are seldom used... under normal laws ... women`s testimony is not 1/2 but equal to a man`s...
And I forgive you for being utterly incapable of reading (I am sure your wife could do better despite your imposed inferiority on her) ... because I have already answered Majumdar`s question.
#151 Posted by Inquirer on March 9, 2006 5:37:00 am
Muslim women`s greatest mistake, as is borne out by the fate of women in Pakistan exemplified by Mukhtaran Mai - no tramp, by the way - and the fact that according to Pakistani Shariat law one woman`s legal testimony is worth one tenth of a man`s testimony - and, get this, even in the case of a rape!!!!! - was to subscribe to the idea of Pakistan. Jinnah duped the Muslim woman, the master con man that he was!!!
After 60 years of development (!) of Pakistan a woman can not still jog on the streets of Pakistan!!!!!!!!!!! Of course, I meant unaccompanied by the henpecked husband!!!!!!!!!!!!
Answer to Majumdar, #149, instead of beating about the bush, Hamdani. May you did not understand the question because there were no question marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
After 60 years of development (!) of Pakistan a woman can not still jog on the streets of Pakistan!!!!!!!!!!! Of course, I meant unaccompanied by the henpecked husband!!!!!!!!!!!!
Answer to Majumdar, #149, instead of beating about the bush, Hamdani. May you did not understand the question because there were no question marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
#150 Posted by MantoLives on March 9, 2006 5:17:56 am
Dear Majumdar...
Jinnah was the first Muslim leader as far as I know who brought these women out of their char devaris...
Hindu leaders and reformers had been doing it since late 19th century... while Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, the great Islamic modernist, was deadset against women`s education. Muslim women`s dismal literacy rates are the result of the late start... the over all Muslim women`s literacy rates stand some where in mid 40s... before the Pakistan movement and Muslim League`s mobilisation there was ONLY one Muslim woman PhD in all of India... and she later joined the Muslim League ... became famous as Shaista Ikramullah.
As for poor Mariam Jinnah... you tell me. Its frankly beyond my comprehension.
Jinnah was the first Muslim leader as far as I know who brought these women out of their char devaris...
Hindu leaders and reformers had been doing it since late 19th century... while Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, the great Islamic modernist, was deadset against women`s education. Muslim women`s dismal literacy rates are the result of the late start... the over all Muslim women`s literacy rates stand some where in mid 40s... before the Pakistan movement and Muslim League`s mobilisation there was ONLY one Muslim woman PhD in all of India... and she later joined the Muslim League ... became famous as Shaista Ikramullah.
As for poor Mariam Jinnah... you tell me. Its frankly beyond my comprehension.
#149 Posted by majumdar on March 9, 2006 4:51:00 am
Dear Harish,
I think Jinnah did nothing wrong in his daughter`s case. Being a supporter of women`s liberation merely means that you allow them to live and act as per their best judgement not that you necessarily agree with them. If MAJ was unhappy with Dina`s choice just because Neville was a non-Muslim, it is understandable given the way we feel about ethnicity, however this does not gel well with MAJ`s other acts as far as his personal life is concerned- I think few people were as secular and broadminded in personal life in pre-independence India as MAJ was.
Dear Manto,
(Jinnah managed to bring women out enmasse in support of the Pakistan movement... and also managed to convince Muslims to educate their women... something no leader, including Sir Syed... had managed to do within the Muslim community... )
Where did these masses of women go after Partition/Independence. Why is that Muslim women have the worst literacy rates in the sub-continent.
``Mariam Jinnah: A model for all pious Muslim women``...
What did Mariam do to earn such praise
Regards
I think Jinnah did nothing wrong in his daughter`s case. Being a supporter of women`s liberation merely means that you allow them to live and act as per their best judgement not that you necessarily agree with them. If MAJ was unhappy with Dina`s choice just because Neville was a non-Muslim, it is understandable given the way we feel about ethnicity, however this does not gel well with MAJ`s other acts as far as his personal life is concerned- I think few people were as secular and broadminded in personal life in pre-independence India as MAJ was.
Dear Manto,
(Jinnah managed to bring women out enmasse in support of the Pakistan movement... and also managed to convince Muslims to educate their women... something no leader, including Sir Syed... had managed to do within the Muslim community... )
Where did these masses of women go after Partition/Independence. Why is that Muslim women have the worst literacy rates in the sub-continent.
``Mariam Jinnah: A model for all pious Muslim women``...
What did Mariam do to earn such praise
Regards
#148 Posted by MantoLives on March 9, 2006 1:26:17 am
#138
``Yaar, the article sufficiently and precisely addresses this point. ``
Actually it doesn`t. It was not like ``90 000 Satyagrahis`` were going to be hanged if Gandhi did not sign the Lord Irwin- Gandhi pact.
I think Drlokraj`s point holds a lot of merit and exposes Gandhi for what he was.
``Yaar, the article sufficiently and precisely addresses this point. ``
Actually it doesn`t. It was not like ``90 000 Satyagrahis`` were going to be hanged if Gandhi did not sign the Lord Irwin- Gandhi pact.
I think Drlokraj`s point holds a lot of merit and exposes Gandhi for what he was.
#147 Posted by MantoLives on March 9, 2006 1:22:03 am
Dear Harish Hyd,
We have discussed this and now we are going in circles... look as far as women`s liberation is concerned... Jinnah managed to bring women out enmasse in support of the Pakistan movement... and also managed to convince Muslims to educate their women... something no leader, including Sir Syed... had managed to do within the Muslim community...
There was no hypocrisy involved... Jinnah married Ruttie under Khoja Shiite Islamic Law after the latter nominally converted to Islam (which was in any event necessary because as Raw Dust pointed out you had to renounce your faith or become Christian to marry intercommunally- something which Jinnah was not ready to do- renounce his faith because in his personal life he continued to be a practising Muslim regardless of his pork culinary delights- recall my comments about Shiite Khoja Faith being relaxed about dietary observations)... I say nominally because Ruttie (and to some extent Jinnah as well) followed as a religious philosophy called theosophy ... which had many Muslims, Hindus and Christians in it...
When the question of Dina`s wedding came up... Jinnah asked Dina if Neville, a Christian convert of Parsi origin, would convert to Islam ... and she said no. Dina then followed the British law... renounced Islam and married Neville Wadia under civil law (which allowed
Christians to marry) ... thereby becoming defacto Christian.
So there is no hypocrisy there... Sadly what I don`t understand is that you repeat the same point and same claim (that Ruttie was Parsi and Jinnah married her- then why not allow his daughter to marry a Parsi- when Ruttie had converted nominally to Shiite Khoja Sect of Islam and was given the Islamic name of Marium)...
An Aside... and you will find this funny... there is a small body called ``Pakistan Movement workers body``... they were holding a seminar a few years ago in Lahore... it was called ``Mariam Jinnah: A model for all pious Muslim women``...
We have discussed this and now we are going in circles... look as far as women`s liberation is concerned... Jinnah managed to bring women out enmasse in support of the Pakistan movement... and also managed to convince Muslims to educate their women... something no leader, including Sir Syed... had managed to do within the Muslim community...
There was no hypocrisy involved... Jinnah married Ruttie under Khoja Shiite Islamic Law after the latter nominally converted to Islam (which was in any event necessary because as Raw Dust pointed out you had to renounce your faith or become Christian to marry intercommunally- something which Jinnah was not ready to do- renounce his faith because in his personal life he continued to be a practising Muslim regardless of his pork culinary delights- recall my comments about Shiite Khoja Faith being relaxed about dietary observations)... I say nominally because Ruttie (and to some extent Jinnah as well) followed as a religious philosophy called theosophy ... which had many Muslims, Hindus and Christians in it...
When the question of Dina`s wedding came up... Jinnah asked Dina if Neville, a Christian convert of Parsi origin, would convert to Islam ... and she said no. Dina then followed the British law... renounced Islam and married Neville Wadia under civil law (which allowed
Christians to marry) ... thereby becoming defacto Christian.
So there is no hypocrisy there... Sadly what I don`t understand is that you repeat the same point and same claim (that Ruttie was Parsi and Jinnah married her- then why not allow his daughter to marry a Parsi- when Ruttie had converted nominally to Shiite Khoja Sect of Islam and was given the Islamic name of Marium)...
An Aside... and you will find this funny... there is a small body called ``Pakistan Movement workers body``... they were holding a seminar a few years ago in Lahore... it was called ``Mariam Jinnah: A model for all pious Muslim women``...
#146 Posted by harish_hyd on March 9, 2006 12:52:47 am
#145 by Mantolives
[My point was that Jinnah did not make any effort to stop his daughter`s wedding and simply opposing her choice does not contradict his stance on women`s liberation.]
Bhai Yasser, if by ``effort to stop`` you mean physical force, you are absolutely right, Jinnah didn`t make such an effort. However he opposed Dina`s choice, which means he was not happy with the man she had chosen, a choice she made as an adult and a choice which he himself was guilty of.
Why was Dina marrying Neville wrong when Ruttie marrying Jinnah wasn`t? If nothing was, then what is it other than hypocrisy? Over that, Jinnah said she had thousands (or was it lakhs?) of Muslim boys to choose from to which she is said to have retorted that similarly, there were thousands of Muslim girls to choose from when he married Ruttie.
Not only hypocrisy, it also reeks of male chauvinism, so when someone as hypocritical as Jinnah talks about women`s liberation (which BTW also includes the freedom to make choices), it just doesn`t sound right.
Politicians are known to make tall statements but how sincere they are is anybody`s guess.
You are welcome to live in your sweet little cocoon where Jinnah was the wronged one who could never do any wrong, but outside of it, no one will buy it.
[My point was that Jinnah did not make any effort to stop his daughter`s wedding and simply opposing her choice does not contradict his stance on women`s liberation.]
Bhai Yasser, if by ``effort to stop`` you mean physical force, you are absolutely right, Jinnah didn`t make such an effort. However he opposed Dina`s choice, which means he was not happy with the man she had chosen, a choice she made as an adult and a choice which he himself was guilty of.
Why was Dina marrying Neville wrong when Ruttie marrying Jinnah wasn`t? If nothing was, then what is it other than hypocrisy? Over that, Jinnah said she had thousands (or was it lakhs?) of Muslim boys to choose from to which she is said to have retorted that similarly, there were thousands of Muslim girls to choose from when he married Ruttie.
Not only hypocrisy, it also reeks of male chauvinism, so when someone as hypocritical as Jinnah talks about women`s liberation (which BTW also includes the freedom to make choices), it just doesn`t sound right.
Politicians are known to make tall statements but how sincere they are is anybody`s guess.
You are welcome to live in your sweet little cocoon where Jinnah was the wronged one who could never do any wrong, but outside of it, no one will buy it.
#145 Posted by MantoLives on March 8, 2006 9:41:48 pm
Stuka...
First of all, I`d like it if you please refrain from using profanity- Thank you.
Now please try and under
As I clarified ab initio that I have NOT contested the claim that Jinnah opposed his daughter`s marriage. He did ... whether for religious reasons or political ... Who cares... it is irrelevant.
The issue here is how it relates to the context of Jinnah`s attempts to empower women. It was earlier brought up on this website ... that by opposing his daughter`s marriage he contradicted his own stance on women`s liberation and equality. Therefore to begin with Gandhi and his son`s conversion is irrelevant (and anyone can read this... unless we are talking of these leaders relations with other communities.
My point was that Jinnah did not make any effort to stop his daughter`s wedding and simply opposing her choice does not contradict his stance on women`s liberation.
As for ``best of social terms``... after 1941 they were definitely on the best of terms... This Dina Wadia confirmed in a documentary by Christopher Mitchell on the life of Jinnah.
Now my suggestion- instead of jumping in at a late stage ... see that I am only responding to a nonsensical argument. To me it is completely irrelevant what Nehru`s view of his son in law was or what Jinnah`s view of his son in law was... or whether Gandhi had a heartburn because his son converted to Islam. I have absolutely ZERO interest in this except that I am responding to constant and repetitive statements from a bunch of idiots... from your country. As for deep ends.. frankly your behavior here speaks for itself- and this is very sad for me.
First of all, I`d like it if you please refrain from using profanity- Thank you.
Now please try and under
As I clarified ab initio that I have NOT contested the claim that Jinnah opposed his daughter`s marriage. He did ... whether for religious reasons or political ... Who cares... it is irrelevant.
The issue here is how it relates to the context of Jinnah`s attempts to empower women. It was earlier brought up on this website ... that by opposing his daughter`s marriage he contradicted his own stance on women`s liberation and equality. Therefore to begin with Gandhi and his son`s conversion is irrelevant (and anyone can read this... unless we are talking of these leaders relations with other communities.
My point was that Jinnah did not make any effort to stop his daughter`s wedding and simply opposing her choice does not contradict his stance on women`s liberation.
As for ``best of social terms``... after 1941 they were definitely on the best of terms... This Dina Wadia confirmed in a documentary by Christopher Mitchell on the life of Jinnah.
Now my suggestion- instead of jumping in at a late stage ... see that I am only responding to a nonsensical argument. To me it is completely irrelevant what Nehru`s view of his son in law was or what Jinnah`s view of his son in law was... or whether Gandhi had a heartburn because his son converted to Islam. I have absolutely ZERO interest in this except that I am responding to constant and repetitive statements from a bunch of idiots... from your country. As for deep ends.. frankly your behavior here speaks for itself- and this is very sad for me.
#144 Posted by stuka on March 8, 2006 1:31:15 pm
``Gandhi`s late justification aside, it goes without saying that he stood against conversion ... and his own son`s conversion came as a rude shock. Surely if there was nothing wrong with theologically but only because in Gandhi`s opinion his son was a charlatan ``converting for the wrong reason`` the reaction would not have been that bad. ``
So you are essentially saying that Gandhi`s saying should be disregarded and his mind should be read in light of his ``reaction``?
``Similarly I maintain that the feroz gandhi episode has more to it then what you chaps want it to sound ... You people are frankly just amazing. Indians spin all sort of nonsense... but refuse to accept any explanation that is contrary to their understanding - calling it ``spin``. ``
Dude, you ``maintain`` on the basis of hearsay and call us ``frankly amazing``??? WTF? If you want to be taken seriously, you would provide something more than hearsay. What is your ``explanation`` based on other than complete hearsay of one person?
``The question is not why Jinnah opposed his daughter`s marriage... that is a personal question. It might have been for religious reasons or they might have been political....``
Here you disregard Jinnah`s reaction but on the basis that you cannot read his mind. Rather different nature of analysis for Gandhi and Jinnah.
``but what we know is Jinnah did not manipulate his daughter`s marriage the way Nehru did.. ``
Sure, because Jinnah and his daughter were not on the best of social terms. Indira and Nehru remained close through out. Two totally different situations.
``It is not a question of law... Jinnah and Ruttie reconciled soon after an assassination attempt on his life... and I have documentary proof for that. To say that Law allowed it.. is such a stupid argument. Didn`t law allow it in the case of Nehru`s daughter? Yet we see an overbearing father ruining his daughter`s life there... ``
What the fuck are you talking about??? Ofcourse the law allowed Jinnah`s daughter to get married. Jinnah could have done nothing about it. And yes, the law allowed Indira. The point is Nehru did not FLAT OUT OPPOSE Indira`s wedding to Feroze Gandhi.
To say that the law allowed it is a stupid arguement?? Then what is not? That Jinnah was magnanimous in not doing an honour killing of his daughter? Dude, you some times go over the deep end.
So you are essentially saying that Gandhi`s saying should be disregarded and his mind should be read in light of his ``reaction``?
``Similarly I maintain that the feroz gandhi episode has more to it then what you chaps want it to sound ... You people are frankly just amazing. Indians spin all sort of nonsense... but refuse to accept any explanation that is contrary to their understanding - calling it ``spin``. ``
Dude, you ``maintain`` on the basis of hearsay and call us ``frankly amazing``??? WTF? If you want to be taken seriously, you would provide something more than hearsay. What is your ``explanation`` based on other than complete hearsay of one person?
``The question is not why Jinnah opposed his daughter`s marriage... that is a personal question. It might have been for religious reasons or they might have been political....``
Here you disregard Jinnah`s reaction but on the basis that you cannot read his mind. Rather different nature of analysis for Gandhi and Jinnah.
``but what we know is Jinnah did not manipulate his daughter`s marriage the way Nehru did.. ``
Sure, because Jinnah and his daughter were not on the best of social terms. Indira and Nehru remained close through out. Two totally different situations.
``It is not a question of law... Jinnah and Ruttie reconciled soon after an assassination attempt on his life... and I have documentary proof for that. To say that Law allowed it.. is such a stupid argument. Didn`t law allow it in the case of Nehru`s daughter? Yet we see an overbearing father ruining his daughter`s life there... ``
What the fuck are you talking about??? Ofcourse the law allowed Jinnah`s daughter to get married. Jinnah could have done nothing about it. And yes, the law allowed Indira. The point is Nehru did not FLAT OUT OPPOSE Indira`s wedding to Feroze Gandhi.
To say that the law allowed it is a stupid arguement?? Then what is not? That Jinnah was magnanimous in not doing an honour killing of his daughter? Dude, you some times go over the deep end.
#143 Posted by amansandhu on March 8, 2006 1:01:02 pm
Heart burn, hahahahahahaahhhhhaaaaaaa, anyway I am not wasting my time anymore,
commenting on this mediocre piece.
commenting on this mediocre piece.
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