Jinnah's Pakistan - Then and Now

[muse]

Words without deeds are worthless. Which steps did the former ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity take to stop the riots erupted during parition and to ensure the safety of life and property of a normal non-Muslim Pakistani? Even in Sindh, which was not directly affected by the partition and its violence, the innocent Hindus were being threatened and forced to leave the country by the immigrants from India. What did he do to stop the ethnic cleansing of Hindus in Sindh, and particularly in Karachi? Didn't he see that at the speed the non-Muslims were being thrown out of the land of the pure, hardly any Hindu would be soon left in his Pakistan to go to a temple?

Jinnah was just a man - I really don't know if I can answer this question and do your concern justice - because it seems to me that while the pain may seem distant to others, for some it is ever present - and I think it's time for us to move on from partition - sounds heartless, yes, I know, however, I don't know of any other way to get past the pain -- There is little we can do about the pain, other than be aware of it - but if it means anything to you, God holds Jinnah to his bosom and Zia burns in hell.

 

[Jango]

Jinnah said " I have visited villages in the country side, i see people who hardly have one meal a day, is this the idea and goal of Pakistan?, if so, i would not like to have it." Has any of our leader visited the countryside and rural areas and seen the true plight of the man. ??, And then we are going to get bilawal here who hardly knows how to speak urdu!!

 

[Mughal1]

We are better of making it Jinnah ka Pakistan than confuse it with Islam ka Pakistan !

Dear pak marine, you are right about making pakistan jinnah ka pakistan but we all need to find out what was his vision of islam and pakistan.

Jinnah was certainly not a kafir as mullahs would have us believe. He understood islam better than all the mullahs put together.

Mullahs are as bad as ruling elite if not worse. They would show their true self if they had power. We only need to see how they use whatever little power they have. The ruling elite has already shown what it can do when it has power.

Neither mullahs islam nor ruling elite's secularism can solve problems of pakistan. It has to be islam as understood by sir seyyid ahmed khan, alaama iqbal and jinnah.

So what is needed is a good debate on islam as to what it exactly is. What exactly is difference between islam and religion and islam and secularism.

In proper islamic terminology kufar is not accepting the sovereignty of God and refusing to live by his constitution ie by goals set for mankind to achieve for their own good according to his set out guidelines.

Islam is all about fighting for freedom, justice, fairness, compassion, brotherhood, progress and prosperity of mankind in the name of God.

Islam tells people how to live in this world peacefully and none can live peacefully unless we live by divine goals. For peace inside your house, there has to be peace outside or outside troubles will fall inside as well, as they spread. The air you breath is outside, the food you need to eat to survive is outside and the water you need to drink is outside. It is not possible to remain calm inside if the world outside falls apart.

This is approach of islam which is opposite of religions. This is why mullahs are as silly as any other person if not worse. Religion has no solution to human problems rather it creates problems by not letting people do what they need to do and by making them do things which they should not be doing. Secularism is equally bad because it creates problems by rule of law that is based on double standards which is recipe for disaster than solution of problems.

It is for this reason mankind need to understand islam properly and adopt it. This is more important for muslims to do because they claim to believe in the divine message. They were supposed to understand it properly and spread it properly but so far they failed. They failed themselves very badly that is why nobody wants to know islam because muslims have been busy giving it a very bad reputation themselves.

Mullahs have been deliberately misinterpreting islam and misrepresenting it for centuries. The very fact that they have been fighting between themselves is a very strong proof that they do not know much about islam.

I think it will be good idea if people started learning islam themselves so that they could challenge mullaism and force a change in the right direction. So long as people remain ignorant things will only get bad to worse because ignorance gives mullahs power over people.

I do not want to post videos showing how people of all religions are worshiping people, graves, animals and things. Only education can help people be human beings.

regards and all the best.

 

[Porus]

At least do some research before typing away emotionally.

You did a lot of research and after a lot of googling this is all you stumbled upon? Gandhi went on a long fasting to stop violence. Nehru stopped the further influx of refugees to UP - a preemptive action to prevent riots from spreading to other provinces, and all Jinnah did was some verbal vitriol.

That was all he did to stop the ethnic cleansing of non-Muslims that was going on right under his nose in karachi? The non-Muslims made up almost 15% of the population and their presence was imperative to keep Pakistan a secular state. Being such a far-sighted and prudent person he must have been able to forsee the far-reaching effects of that ethnic cleansing on his Pakistan.

The few excerpts you quoted here suggest that he was not serious in converting his good words into deeds. Otherwise I would like to know how many ministers or police officers or other government officials he sacked for failing to meet his expectations?

Here is an excerpt from an article of Dr. Mubarak Ali that suggests that Jinnah possesed that authoritative power that was needed to curb the riots, at least in the Capital.

"Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah had all the qualities and characteristics in his personality which go into the making of a myth. He was reticent, reserved, kept his personal matters secret, behaved coolly and proudly and was not warm towards anybody. Thus he created a halo of awe and fear around himself.

Sri Prakash, the first Indian High Commissioner to Karachi, in his book Pakistan: birth and early years gives an account of a reception which was given by the Governor-General of Pakistan, just after Independence to the diplomatic corps. It was also attended by the party leaders and bureaucrats. According to his version, Mr Jinnah was sitting at a distance alone on a sofa and called one by one those he wanted to talk to. He exchanged notes with each one of them just for five minutes. To the High Commissioner, he appeared a lonely man, averse to people. His serious and sombre expression made all those who interacted with him uneasy in his company. This conveyed the impression that he was the final authority in every matter. The Muslim League and its leaders were merely rubber stamps."

 

[angela]

We will get Jinnah's Pakistan one day! InshAllah

 

[T-Faz]

You did a lot of research and after a lot of googling this is all you stumbled upon? Gandhi went on a long fasting to stop violence. Nehru stopped the further influx of refugees to UP - a preemptive action to prevent riots from spreading to other provinces, and all Jinnah did was some verbal vitriol.

I see that you are a man of little knowledge and more emotions.

Gandhi's primary reason for fasting was India's refusal to give Pakistan its reserved assets.

The Reserve Bank of India adopted every measure not to pay Pakistan’s Share of 750 millions of its assets of four billion rupees. However, the first instalment of Rs.200 millions was paid and the rest amount was withheld. Sardar V. Patel threatened Pakistan not to pay the rest amount of Rs. 550 millions until it recognized the Kashmir as an integral part of India. Mahatma M. K. Gandhi came to the help of Pakistan. He went on hunger strike against the decision of India. Hence, India paid its second instalment of Rs.500 millions.

Pakistan Early Difficulties after 1947 | About Pakistan

I don't think I want to waste my time on someone who does not even know history the way it actually occurred.

Atleast read the book which details his actions to curb the violence.

Jinnah actually took effective measures but you obviously can't read the book I referenced and you shall remain blind.

Here is the link again:

Indian Muslims and partition of India - Google Books

This so called "verbal vitriol" was backed up by firm action and he was able to save what was left of the half a million Hindu's left in Pakistan.

Today the number of Hindu's number into millions.

Had Jinnah lived, he would have achieved his goals of a secular state that caters to it citizens regardless of caste, color and creed. Pakistan would also have been in peace with everyone but alas he died far too early.

 

[Porus]

Gandhi's primary reason for fasting was India's refusal to give Pakistan its reserved assets.

Good, now google again to find the whole reason why Gandhi went on a long fast.

Atleast read the book which details his actions to curb the violence.

Jinnah actually took effective measures but you obviously can't read the book I referenced and you shall remain blind.

Here is the link again:

Indian Muslims and partition of India - Google Books

This so called "verbal vitriol" was backed up by firm action and he was able to save what was left of the half a million Hindu's left in Pakistan.

Today the number of Hindu's number into millions.

Had Jinnah lived, he would have achieved his goals of a secular state that caters to it citizens regardless of caste, color and creed. Pakistan would also have been in peace with everyone but alas he died far too early.

I have read the book that you quoted in your post, not the whole book but just few page from 458 onwards, cause I think only here the writer has mentioned all those tears the Quaid shed when he saw the Hindus in a dreadful condition in refugee camps. Tell me the page numbers where the practical measures Jinnah undertook to help the Hindus are mentioned. You didn't read my last post carefully. I said that the whole Urban Sindh was purified of Hindus, only in those areas of interior Sindhi which were not overrun by the refugees from India still have a sizeable amount of Hindu community.

 

[pak-marine]

Dear pak marine, you are right about making pakistan jinnah ka pakistan but we all need to find out what was his vision of islam and pakistan.

Jinnah was certainly not a kafir as mullahs would have us believe. He understood islam better than all the mullahs put together.

Mullahs are as bad as ruling elite if not worse. They would show their true self if they had power. We only need to see how they use whatever little power they have. The ruling elite has already shown what it can do when it has power.

Neither mullahs islam nor ruling elite's secularism can solve problems of pakistan. It has to be islam as understood by sir seyyid ahmed khan, alaama iqbal and jinnah.

So what is needed is a good debate on islam as to what it exactly is. What exactly is difference between islam and religion and islam and secularism.

In proper islamic terminology kufar is not accepting the sovereignty of God and refusing to live by his constitution ie by goals set for mankind to achieve for their own good according to his set out guidelines.

Islam is all about fighting for freedom, justice, fairness, compassion, brotherhood, progress and prosperity of mankind in the name of God.

Islam tells people how to live in this world peacefully and none can live peacefully unless we live by divine goals. For peace inside your house, there has to be peace outside or outside troubles will fall inside as well, as they spread. The air you breath is outside, the food you need to eat to survive is outside and the water you need to drink is outside. It is not possible to remain calm inside if the world outside falls apart.

This is approach of islam which is opposite of religions. This is why mullahs are as silly as any other person if not worse. Religion has no solution to human problems rather it creates problems by not letting people do what they need to do and by making them do things which they should not be doing. Secularism is equally bad because it creates problems by rule of law that is based on double standards which is recipe for disaster than solution of problems.

It is for this reason mankind need to understand islam properly and adopt it. This is more important for muslims to do because they claim to believe in the divine message. They were supposed to understand it properly and spread it properly but so far they failed. They failed themselves very badly that is why nobody wants to know islam because muslims have been busy giving it a very bad reputation themselves.

Mullahs have been deliberately misinterpreting islam and misrepresenting it for centuries. The very fact that they have been fighting between themselves is a very strong proof that they do not know much about islam.

I think it will be good idea if people started learning islam themselves so that they could challenge mullaism and force a change in the right direction. So long as people remain ignorant things will only get bad to worse because ignorance gives mullahs power over people.

I do not want to post videos showing how people of all religions are worshiping people, graves, animals and things. Only education can help people be human beings.

regards and all the best.

Thanks for the post fundamental issue is resolving differences btw the sects , you see these sects are actually bloody fueds btw muslims from last few decades ... every sect beleives that there version is corect and there are appx 72 different sects Now to get all of them at one platform will take another 100years .. i dont think we have that sort of time on our hand if we were to compete with the present world and really wish to work towards the welfare and prosperity of Pakistanis !? As for Jinnahs vision he has clearly stated after the independence on few occasions ,and it was there he clearly mentioned that he wanted pakistan to become a secular state

 

[Porus]

I see that you are a man of little knowledge and more emotions.

Gandhi's primary reason for fasting was India's refusal to give Pakistan its reserved assets.

Nehru and Gandhi persistently reterated the need to protect Muslims, to retain them in the country and to revent their mass ejection from India. As Nehru told a group of Muslim labourers in Delhi, 'As long as I am at the helm of affairs India will not become a Hindu state.' Barbed wire was fixed up in Muslim Sufi shrines and mosques, at Dargah Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia and Dargah Hazrat Qutbuddin Chisti amon others, guards shooed away looters. Gandhi imperilled his life by fasting for peace and reconciliation in 1948. during Gandhi's fast, the government swung behing the peace effort, even franking envelopes sent by post with slogan urging social reconciliation. 'Communal harmony will save Gandhiji', the message declared and , 'It is only through communal unity that Gandhiji can survive'. The crux of the matter was keeping the minorities' faith in the state#s ability to protect them.


The great Partition; The making of India and Pakistan.

 

[pak-marine]

Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan
By Rasul Bakhsh Rais
Published: August 14, 2011

The writer is professor of political science at LUMS rasul.rais@tribune.com.pk

What Jinnah envisioned for Pakistan as a state remains a distant dream. We continue to grope in darkness for a constitutional state based on equal rights and separation of religion from the state. But we have walked slowly and steadily in the opposite direction.

Let us clear some of the fog about Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan first. I believe Jinnah’s speech before the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947, is unambiguous about what kind of ideas of state and nation-building our great leader had in mind. In a nutshell, he wanted citizenship not religion as the founding principle of the new state. His frequently quoted parts of the speech, “You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the state” is neither understood in terms of the context nor for the selection of the expression. Contextual interpretation is extremely important for any great speech or analysis, undertaken by historians and later-day commentators to explain the intent of great leaders. For the context, Pakistan was only three days away from achieving independence. Secondly, the forum was the Constituent Assembly of the new state, tasked with the responsibility of framing a new constitution.

Jinnah, like many other Muslim leaders of the subcontinent who strived for the creation of a new state comprising the Muslim majority areas, was a modernist. The three streams of philosophy that influenced movement for Pakistan, unfortunately, got pushed back with the second generation of Pakistani leaders — constitutional struggle for the protection of minority rights, modernism and a territorial state. Let us spell these ideas in some detail.
The cultural roots of minority Muslim nationalism go back many centuries. Over time, Muslims developed a deep sense of identity but within the Indian context. As the issues of representation in the elected assemblies and state institutions under colonial rule emerged important for all communities, the Muslim community began to raise demands for proportionate representation. The community thought it was their right to do so, which was, on occasion, granted through separate electorates. As the Muslims and other parts of the Indian nation struggled for independence, the constitutional protection of rights in the post-colonial, unified state emerged as the defining issue for the Muslims. They wanted it to be settled before the English left; it was the collective failure of the British, Congress and the Muslim League that galvanised the demand for Pakistan. What we have done with our own religious minorities after independence is another story — truly heartbreaking.

There is a social and political category all over the world called the modernists that we also find among the dreamers and founders of Pakistan. The modernists don’t reject the past, or the heritage in cultural and religious spheres. They essentially live in modern times and propose and implement solutions to the contemporary problems of the society on rational, pragmatic and practical grounds.

Pakistan, in my view, is a territorial state. Its acronym is drawn from the territorial domains it contains. It also means that all citizens of all faiths, sects and religious pursuits are equal citizens. These are the founding ideas of Pakistan, which the successive generations of Pakistanis have lost.
The counter-narratives about the creation of Pakistan and what kind of state and society we should have replaced our founding ideas. It was expedient for the ruling groups to play an emotional Islamic card in politics rather than build a modern, nation state based on equal citizenship. Doing so would have required democracy and constitutionalism that our ruling classes have accepted only as conveniences and not as ideology — the ideology of Jinnah.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 15th, 2011.

Jinnah

 

[Mughal1]

 

[Moorkh]

I might have taken the time to watch the videos, but you put one up from India TV.

 

[muse]

The importance of Jinnah
Yasser Latif Hamdani



A little more than 90 years ago, the Governor of Bombay, Lord Willingdon, invited a leading lawyer-politician and his wife to dinner. The lawyer’s wife wore a strapless backless dress, which had been tailored on the boldest fashions of the day. The Governor’s wife, Lady Willingdon, insisted that the bearer bring her a shawl to cover her bare skin, which she found most improper. Incensed, the lawyer said that if his wife were feeling cold, she would ask for a wrap herself and then immediately left the dinner table.

The lawyer of course was none other than Mohammed Ali Jinnah, our founding father, but these facts are deliberately kept from our people. Instead, our people are brought up on a diet of shame and honour, inextricably linked to women.

The result is that a Station House Officer (SHO) — instead of fighting crime — feels that it is his duty to tell a respectable woman that she is a ‘loose woman’ for wearing a sleeveless shirt. A few days after the famous Nairang incident, this writer happened to visit NADRA for renewal of his National Identity Card (NIC), wearing knee-length shorts, only to be told that it was not allowed. When asked for a notification, the guard quickly pronounced me “beghairat” (shameless) and physically attacked me along with another guard. Apparently, my knee-length shorts were more obscene than the Punjabi film posters in the vicinity. I wonder what the aforesaid SHO and NADRA guards make of Quaid-e-Azam’s defence of his wife’s ‘indecent dress’? (In all fairness I must point out that the NADRA chairman, a rare enlightened man in the corridors of our bureaucracy, took the strictest notice of this issue and has since suspended those responsible.)

Unfortunately, quoting Jinnah is bound to get you branded ‘intellectually barren liberal’ on ‘foreign payroll’ as one respected journalist put it in his column.

He had taken as a personal insult the idea that liberals only quote Jinnah’s August 11th speech (though there are about 30 odd speeches by Jinnah that say the same thing, though perhaps less eloquently) to try and prove that Jinnah wanted a secular state. A plethora of quotes out of context are then produced to prove that Jinnah said different things at different times. One favourite it seems is Jinnah’s speech to the bar association in Karachi on Eid Milad-un-Nabi where a single line is quoted from the speech out of context to prove that Jinnah promised the enforcement of shariah in Pakistan. When one reads the complete speech, one realises that the Quaid is actually saying that nothing in Islam stops us from making a constitution that promises equality, justice and fair play for all citizens of Pakistan without distinction of religion.

Then there is the so-called letter of Pir of Manki Sharif. In the said letter, Jinnah promises the continuation of shariah for personal affairs of the Muslim community, i.e. personal law. The Shariat Act of 1937 is still on the books in secular India. Somehow these inferences that are being drawn by our mullahs and Jinnah-hating self-proclaimed intellectuals from selective quotes are supposed to trump Jinnah’s clear pronouncement as the President of the Constituent Assembly at the initiation of the constitution-making process. The speech, given immediately after Congress leader Kiran Shankar Roy’s speech asking Jinnah to clarify whether Pakistan would be a secular state or not, states very clearly that the new state would be completely impartial and neutral to a person’s religion, which is to be the personal faith of an individual. The speech calls for fusion of all communities into one Pakistani nation and for making religious identity irrelevant through cooperation and working together for a common goal. These are broadly the contours of a secular not religious state.

So what was — one might ask — the need for a separate state for Muslims? First of all, for Jinnah the idea that Muslims and Hindus had been unable to forge a common Indian identity was a matter of great regret. As the only political leader to be called the best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, Jinnah had tried for 33 odd years to effect a settlement between Hindus and Muslims but his efforts were foiled by people on both sides. Unable to achieve his cherished goal of Hindu-Muslim unity on mutually acceptable terms in a United India, Jinnah pinned his hopes on the Muslim majority to be generous in Pakistan and bring about a common secular Pakistani identity in “due course of time”. Here he miscalculated for the Muslim majority in Pakistan has proved to be brutish and cannibalistic.

The point is that Pakistan was envisaged as and ought to be a secular state. To this end Jinnah becomes a very important marker and the only credible master signifier. It is Jinnah alone who stands — from beyond the grave — in the way of Muslim majoritarianism just as he had stood against Hindu majoritarianism in United India. When the MMA-led government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa tried to ban western dress, ANP legislators, no great admirers of Jinnah, used Jinnah’s portrait as their shield. So in order to ensure that Pakistan becomes a humanistic, liberal and inclusive democracy, we will first have to reclaim Jinnah — the real Jinnah who stood for civil liberties, minorities’ rights and equality for all. Or you can try to do it your way and fail.

The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore. He is also a regular contributor to the Indian law website myLaw: A Network for Lawyers and blogs on http//globallegalforum.blogspot.com and Pak Tea House. He can be reached at yasser.hamdani@gmail.com

 

[Mughal1]

No doubt jinnah was very much western but he changed and the person who changed his point of view was none other than alaama iqbal. Again we can see how iqbal himself changed his point of view as he studied islam and the real world. It is natural development one does not remain a baby all his life.

Here is an interview of Alama parwez on ptv

And an interview of Parwez by jang

For more please see Allama G.A.Parwez was Quranic advisor to Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah

Also

Quran: The Constitution for Humanity

Real islamic history has been suppressed by ruling elite and mullahs.

Even pakistani discussion forums are divided between secularists and religious. You cannot have free debate on islam on either of them.

We can paint rosy pictures but reality always stares us in the face asking some tough questions that need to be answered.

People in power have things under their control and it is they who feed us the information as well as ways to look at it.

What we need to do is scrutinize things thoroughly against firmly founded rules and principles and see what is really true and what is really false. It is odd voices that tell the truth who just want to inform people about things that are normally suppressed. Their motive is well being of humanity and nothing else.

 

[Zarvan]

Quaid never used the word secular and Quaid started this movement because of Iqbal and Iqbal never wanted a secular Pakistan Quaid E Azam also on many occasions said that Pakistan Constitution will be based on Quran