Pakistan, Turkey friendship rooted in history: Ayaz

[M. Sarmad]

That is not true, if the entire religious establishment was against Jinnah and the Pakistan movement (just like to point out that the Quaid was not the creator of the Pakistan movement, he was the inheritor and made it a reality but not the creator, before his famous 14 points to congress he was against the movement), then how did Muslim league sweep the floor in the 1946 elections in almost every single Muslim majority areas?, how were Muslim families like my own willing to leave all the wealth and property they had to travel to Pakistan while the nationalist and secular Indian Muslims stayed behind?, also the founders of the Khilafat movement the Ali brothers were part of the Muslim League and were with the Quaid fighting for Pakistan, equating every single religious scholars being against Pakistan is an extreme biased historical view, and before you start projecting your own mindset onto the Quaid, tell me this his sister and mother of Pakistan Fatima Jinnah, why didn't she talked about his secular views later when Pakistan was created.

.

The 1945/46 Elections. ?? Here is what actually happened :

The rising popularity of Muslim League shattered the confidence of other parties , They became restless , and Maulana Madani (Rector of Dar ul Uloom Deoband and president of Jamiat e Ulema e Hind) called a meeting (Sept 1945) . The meeting was attended by over 150 delegates from different parties and they decided to oppose the League`s Agenda Tooth and Nail and formed a Muslim Parliamentary Board

(Deoband Ulemas Movement for freedom of India by Dr. Farhat Tabassum , p.158)

The president of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Husain Ahmad Madani went on to issue a fatwa in October 1945 declaring it Haram for Muslims to join the Muslim League ... But the Muslims of India ignored the senior most Mullahs (the pillars of Islamic orthodoxy) and voted for the Muslim League and Pakistan ...


As for the role played by the Ulema during Pakistan Movement:

https://defence.pk/threads/ulema-and-pakistan-movement.305745/

You claimed that the Quaid was against the Khilafat Movement while I quoted him directly stating that the dissolution of the Ottoman Khilafah is an attack on Muslim faith, I proved you wrong on this issue. .

Can you please tell me where did I say that ? Don't put words in my mouth. You are repeatedly doing it ...

Having said that, let me tell you my friend that you are wrong ... Jinnah was dead against the Khilafat movement. This is a well established and well documented historic fact. Please do some research on this.

Even if we accept that Jinnah criticized the British for dissolving the Ottoman Caliphate and described it as an attack on Muslims' Faith/religion, it does not automatically imply that he was a supporter of the Khilafat Movement in India. He, in fact, criticized the leaders of the Khilafat movement for mixing religion with politics because he believed that it was a crime to mix religion with politics (the way Gandhi did) and he warned Gandhi not to encourage the fanaticism of Muslim religious leaders and their followers. Do you get it now ?

Regarding Sir Syed Ahmed Khan rejecting hadiths, I will look into it.

Please do.

 

[CriticalThinker02]

The 1945/46 Elections. ?? Here is what actually happened :

Immediately before the Independence of Pakistan, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah had the whole subcontinent at the edge of his sword, his demands were clear either give us Pakistan or we go to war a civil war and that was the only reason Nehru's congress and the British accepted, hundred of millions of Muslim were willing to lay down their lives for Pakistan, Muslim League was able to gain support for Pakistan at the very grass root levels and yet the religious ulema were against Pakistan, I don't buy it but even if they were that doesn't change the fact Millions of Muslims of the subcontinent were ready to cut down their lives and leave their homes for Pakistan for what secularism yeah right, it was the ideology of Islam, if the Muslim clergies were against the very concept of Pakistan then they were wrong and neither possessed hindsight nor foresight, and I'm glad my forefathers rejected them, but Pakistan's ideology is Islam, always was and always will be, the same Muslims who thirty years earlier rose for the Ottoman Khilafah later rose for Pakistan.

Can you please tell me where did I say that ? Don't put words in my mouth. You are repeatedly doing it ...

Having said that, let me tell you my friend that you are wrong ... Jinnah was dead against the Khilafat movement. This is a well established and well documented historic fact. Please do some research on this.

First how am I passing my words onto your mouth when you are accepting it?, Secondly passing off your own personal opinions doesn't equate them as facts, what is factual is from the 1918's to the 1920's Muslim League was at the forefront with ceremonies and events to popularize the Khilafat movement, it was only after Ghandhi's non cooperation movement's involvement that Jinnah and the Muslim League took a step backwards because of the convergence of interest and potential danger of congress achieving independence, again please don't pass your own Mind set on to the Quaid, if he was vehemently anti pan-Islamic and secular in nature then why didn't he stated it openly specially after partition, your excuses are that he was censored, ok if that is the case then why didn't Fatima Jinnah mother of Pakistan mentioned this decades after Independence?

 

[wiseone2]

It's not about what you believe in or what I believe, it's about what the masses out there believe in. And the vast majority of Pakistani Muslims reject secularism because they believe that it is a "Western" concept. And they believe that all western concepts are anti Islamic.

there is nothing Western about secular. your all weather friend China is secular

 

[Joe Shearer]

Maududus impact both as a scholar and as a political figure were disastrous. I'll leave the religious aspect of his ideas to be torn apart later but in terms of just political idealism he was one of the delusional ones thinking that a "clergi-fied" military nexus was the way forward. In a way, he caused more damage to the internals of the armed forces.

Jinnah was a lot of things but nothing suggests that he was ever an extremist. He was a pan-Islamist but that term is badly abused as well. His idea was to ensure a prosperous future for his people and still link with the rest of the Muslim world. He did have a strong sense of identity but this switched from being a very Indian identity to a very Muslim Indian identity during the late 1920's and early 30's(one has to read Fatima Jinnah's book to get a feeler for this).

Ataturk was very Turk identity centred and Islam/God/Beliefs had little interest to him. To him, the Turk identity mattered most and the need to unify under something more than constantly squabbling scholars and sects.

It is very painful how he is consistently demonised by one section of Indians who still have not gone past the Collins-Lapierre version of the history of partition.

Personally, I have never successfully sorted out the strands of his mental make-up in terms of being Indian, being Muslim Indian and being a pan-Islamist. As is usual in most people, it may well have been that one aspect or the other came out according to the context of the situation. When he was focussed on the homeland for the Muslim Indian, I believe that he was the eminent advocate, fighting a desperate battle against mighty odds, but not so much the Muslim Indian himself. When he was considering the Muslim Indian against the backdrop of the world's doings, he was the pan-Islamist and had a (slightly romantic) vision of linkages with the rest of the world of Islam. I am tempted to think without any concrete evidence to back the thought that he might have seen things in terms of a benign Muslim commonwealth rather than in terms of the Ummah to which he never belonged in daily habit. Finally, when he was not considering the Muslim Indian in the world at large in general, and the world of Islam in particular, when he was not bending his powerful intellect to the purpose of a defensive laager for the Muslim Indian, when he was himself, I believe firmly that he was a Muslim Indian, Muslim in his affiliation if not in his habits, but an Indian: a man who confidently believed that after settling-in Pakistan, after laying down office, he would retire to his billiards table in his mansion in his beloved Bombay, a hallowed and respected figure in a country that he denied as an advocate for the Muslim Indian cause, but that he himself bore testimony to in his own daily life.

Shah Waliullah, Syed Ahmed Shaheed, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Maulana Shaukat Ali, Maulana Muhammad Ali, Maulana Muhammad Ali Jouhar, Chaudry Rehmat Ali, Allama Iqbal, Quaid-e-Azam, Liaquat Ali Khan etc

I know what you are trying to do, stop imposing your own mindset onto the leaders and founders of Pakistan.

An extremely controversial summation. It was precisely Shah Waliullah's successors who opposed the idea of Pakistan and opposed Jinnah in his latter years as a tireless advocate for the Muslim Indian. Maulana Azad was far more an heir of Shah Waliullah than was Jinnah.

 

[M. Sarmad]

... if the Muslim clergies were against the very concept of Pakistan then they were wrong and neither possessed hindsight nor foresight, and I'm glad my forefathers rejected them,

Yes, I am glad (too) that our forefathers rejected the so called Ulema, ignored their fatwas and stood behind Jinnah & his demand of Pakistan.

Forget about what I am saying (or have posted here). Do some research on this subject. And you may find out that Virtually every significant religious group in Undivided India, indeed the entire Muslim religious establishment was opposed to Jinnah's Pakistan movement and the Muslim League


And many Muslims might've supported the Pakistan Movement because they wanted an "Islamic" Pakistan, "Pakistan" had different meanings for different persons, but here we are discussing the vision of the Founding Father of Pakistan i.e. Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Secondly passing off your own personal opinions doesn't equate them as facts, what is factual is from the 1918's to the 1920's Muslim League was at the forefront with ceremonies and events to popularize the Khilafat movement, it was only after Ghandhi's non cooperation movement's involvement that Jinnah and the Muslim League took a step backwards

As you are calling it a "fact", the burden of proof lies with you. Please prove that Jinnah had supported the Khilafat Movement. Back up your claim with proper references/sources..

why didn't Fatima Jinnah mother of Pakistan mentioned this decades after Independence?

Do you know Fatima Jinnah started looking for a Pakistani author to do a biography of Jinnah. G. Allana was her choice. G. Allana assisted Miss Jinnah on the assignment but they parted company due to reasons undisclosed. Later both carried on their independent works on Jinnah. Her book “My Brother” was partially published by the Quaid-i-Azam Academy in 1987 only. We will never know what was there in her book that the authorities in Pakistan did not let her publish it in her lifetime.

Miss Jinnah worked tirelessly for the movement and was able to win respect and recognition within and outside the ML. However, after the movement was able to achieve a separate Muslim country in 1947, Miss Jinnah’s existence as a Pakistani was wrought with disappointments, disillusionment and eventual isolation.

In her book (the published parts) she laments how her brother was quickly ‘betrayed’ by even some of his closest comrades who had worked with him during the Pakistan Movement. She writes that Jinnah wanted a "liberal" constitution for Pakistan.

She died in 1967 under mysterious circumstances, her nephew Akbar Pirbhai insists that she was murdered.

This is a detailed topic and it won't be possible to discuss it here, so i will ask you to do some research.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Thanks for your invite. Much appreciated....

Don't get taken in. He is interpreting things in a totally warped and twisted manner. I regret to have to admit that Azlan Haider has it precisely correct, almost to the extent of microns.

@hellfire
@Nilgiri
@PARIKRAMA
@MilSpec
@Rain Man
@Spectre

If you have time, please read this thread closely. Many of you are militarists, but this is a unique thread, which at times reads uncannily like PTH in its glory days before it was swamped by Hindutvavadis. Azlan Haider's views summarise, leaving out much of the detailed discussion, the debate of the six months for which some eight of us (including YLH, B. R. Singh, whose middle in the ToI of the 19th I have been recommending, and others, both Pakistani and Indian), discussed Jinnah and his ideology and his relative role in the formation of Pakistan. I said so then and I say so again, that was at the level of a Master's class seminar on the subject - incidentally, it preceded Jaswant Singh by several quarters, and it was such a close projection of the views in his book that I have never lost the feeling that he had read PTH while he was writing the book. Azlan Haider displays such a familiarity with YLH that I suspect that he was part of PTH at the time, or perhaps later. I cannot remember the name after these years.

Please also read Oscar's terse but laden note.

Please tag others who might benefit.

@RAMPAGE
@PaklovesTurkiye

You will not get such a distilled view of the founding of Pakistan and the founder of Pakistan outside a full and generous reading list consisting of perhaps thirty or forty serious books on these and related subjects. My recommendation is to go strictly by Haider's exposition, and use opposing views to sharpen understanding of the theme.

Consider yourselves lucky.

 

[Nilgiri]

Don't get taken in. He is interpreting things in a totally warped and twisted manner. I regret to have to admit that Azlan Haider has it precisely correct, almost to the extent of microns.

@hellfire
@Nilgiri
@PARIKRAMA
@MilSpec
@Rain Man
@Spectre

If you have time, please read this thread closely. Many of you are militarists, but this is a unique thread, which at times reads uncannily like PTH in its glory days before it was swamped by Hindutvavadis. Azlan Haider's views summarise, leaving out much of the detailed discussion, the debate of the six months for which some eight of us (including YLH, B. R. Singh, whose middle in the ToI of the 19th I have been recommending, and others, both Pakistani and Indian), discussed Jinnah and his ideology and his relative role in the formation of Pakistan. I said so then and I say so again, that was at the level of a Master's class seminar on the subject - incidentally, it preceded Jaswant Singh by several quarters, and it was such a close projection of the views in his book that I have never lost the feeling that he had read PTH while he was writing the book. Azlan Haider displays such a familiarity with YLH that I suspect that he was part of PTH at the time, or perhaps later. I cannot remember the name after these years.

Please also read Oscar's terse but laden note.

Please tag others who might benefit.

@RAMPAGE
@PaklovesTurkiye

You will not get such a distilled view of the founding of Pakistan and the founder of Pakistan outside a full and generous reading list consisting of perhaps thirty or forty serious books on these and related subjects. My recommendation is to go strictly by Haider's exposition, and use opposing views to sharpen understanding of the theme.

Consider yourselves lucky.

I have been following it quietly actually....and agree with much of what he has to say.

I cannot fault many of the leaders of that generation for their idealism on what the immediate and lasting flavours of partition would be. Hindsight is 20/20 etc etc.

 

[Spectre]

Don't get taken in. He is interpreting things in a totally warped and twisted manner. I regret to have to admit that Azlan Haider has it precisely correct, almost to the extent of microns.

@hellfire
@Nilgiri
@PARIKRAMA
@MilSpec
@Rain Man
@Spectre

If you have time, please read this thread closely. Many of you are militarists, but this is a unique thread, which at times reads uncannily like PTH in its glory days before it was swamped by Hindutvavadis. Azlan Haider's views summarise, leaving out much of the detailed discussion, the debate of the six months for which some eight of us (including YLH, B. R. Singh, whose middle in the ToI of the 19th I have been recommending, and others, both Pakistani and Indian), discussed Jinnah and his ideology and his relative role in the formation of Pakistan. I said so then and I say so again, that was at the level of a Master's class seminar on the subject - incidentally, it preceded Jaswant Singh by several quarters, and it was such a close projection of the views in his book that I have never lost the feeling that he had read PTH while he was writing the book. Azlan Haider displays such a familiarity with YLH that I suspect that he was part of PTH at the time, or perhaps later. I cannot remember the name after these years.

Please also read Oscar's terse but laden note.

Please tag others who might benefit.

@RAMPAGE
@PaklovesTurkiye

You will not get such a distilled view of the founding of Pakistan and the founder of Pakistan outside a full and generous reading list consisting of perhaps thirty or forty serious books on these and related subjects. My recommendation is to go strictly by Haider's exposition, and use opposing views to sharpen understanding of the theme.

Consider yourselves lucky.

With all due respect, discussion on this thread borders on farcical.

There are two ways to analyze historical figures and their motivations -

a. Go into the minutiae and burn daylight over every word uttered and presecibe motivations.
b. Look at their actions.

As they say road to hell is paved with good intentions - I am least bothered about Jinnah's secularism, his "Indian-ness" and his "liberal proclivities".

I just know what he did and by extrapolation what Pakistan reaped -

He called for direct action day mindful of the potential for violence. Is it in anyway different from acts of much maligned Modi?

He advocated the creation of Pakistan on the basis of religion - While his supporters can try to color it in garbs of economic liberation and political freedom from dominant Hindu led Congress but the fact remains that millions of Muslims rallied because of "Islam" more than any other secondary factor. Jinnah being the clever cookie and lawyer par extraordinaire couldn't have been ignorant of this fact.

But did he dial back his rhetoric? No! He expanded on it.

It was only after Pakistan was formed that he made a plea for secularism which summarily dismissed by the majority of Pakistan as was expected. You can't make a house out of dung and then wish the smell away @Joe Shearer

So Pakistan today for better of worse is the fruit of the tree Jinnah planted if not the flower of his "motivation or wishes".

 

[Joe Shearer]

With all due respect, discussion on this thread borders on farcical.

There are two ways to analyze historical figures and their motivations -

a. Go into the minutiae and burn daylight over every word uttered and presecibe motivations.
b. Look at their actions.

As they say road to hell is paved with good intentions - I am least bothered about Jinnah's secularism, his "Indian-ness" and his "liberal proclivities".

I just know what he did and by extrapolation what Pakistan reaped -

He called for direct action day mindful of the potential for violence. Is it in anyway different from acts of much maligned Modi?

He advocated the creation of Pakistan on the basis of religion - While his supporters can try to color it in garbs of economic liberation and political freedom from dominant Hindu led Congress but in the fact remained that millions of Muslims rallied because of "Islam" more than any other secondary factor. Jinnah being the clever cookie and lawyer par extraordinaire couldn't have been ignorant of this fact.

But did he dial back his rhetoric? No! He expanded on it.

It was only after Pakistan was formed that he made a plea for secularism which summarily dismissed by the majority of Pakistan.

So Pakistan today for better of worse is the fruit of the tree Jinnah planted if not the flower of his "motivation or wishes".

We will discuss this in detail, but not now, not here. Please keep these points in mind, or, better still, if you are up to taking the trouble, mail me.

 

[XenoEnsi-14]

What's a SAT score of above 2401? Is that good or bad? I can guess it isn't very nice, but tell me anyway.

The highest score you can get on an SAT is 2400. Which makes you an Einstein, which is good.

 

[Hiptullha]

Don't recall writing about Jinnah. Nor making any claims. Figment of imagination?

When you're talking about the Muslim League and the Khilafat movement, you're flat out talking about Jinnah.

I didn't quote you, you did, a flamer.

It doesn't matter if you didn't quote me. When I clicked this thread, I was expecting a productive discussion regarding Pak-Turk relations. I don't want to see the Bharati brigade run amok, rambling on about the Khilafat movement and Turkish secularism.

Since you seem to be qualified on the subject, what do you think about the works of Syed Nesar Ahmed, especially his views on Khilafat Movement?

...And how is this relevant?

My contention, obviously remains, to highlight more of mutualism of political interests and evolution post respective independence, and similarities in the system thereof. By this, I refer to systematic undermining of the secular credentials of the Turk society

LOL Erdogan starts allowing women to wear headscarves and now there's talk of secularism being undermined in Turkish society.

and the Islamic state set up in Pakistan heading in the same direction, contrary to MA Jinnah's idea of Pakistan.

Most Pakistanis don't subscribe to the idea of a secular state. No need to worry yourself about what's happening to 'Jinnah's Pakistan' in that regard.

Why did MA Jinnah oppose the Khilafat movement?

He was opposed to the petty politics of his INC colleagues. He saw through the real charade and urged Indian Muslims to back out of political scoring by the INC.

 

[Hellfire]

@Azlan Haider In form, eh? The 'farmer' is having a "field day"!!!! Great work, really appreciated as always. Thanks for enlightening those of us, who may not be or may not want to be enlightened!

What I find the most absurd is that even JL Nehru has tried to vilify MA Jinnah in his autobiography.

"The enthusiasm of the people outside struck him as mob hysteria. There is as much difference between him and the Indian masses as between Savile Row and Bond Street and the Indian village with its mud huts. He suggested once privately that only matriculates should be taken into the Congress ... [this] was in harmony with his general outlook."

This was a malicious falsehood written of a Jinnah who censured the government in 1925.

"I say it is the greatest stigma on the government of any country in the world to show that after your 150 years of rule, as is the case in this country, you have not given knowledge and light, nay even the three R's, no more than 6 to 7 per cent of the population of this country. Is that going to be your policy? Is that the way you are going to advance India constitutionally and make her fit for self government and for self-defence?" (A.G. Noorani - Jinnah in India's History)

When there was a systematised attempt by both sides of the border to belittle and malign MA Jinnah, it is no wonder that majority of us have grown up with a distorted view of him and his role in history of the Indian sub-continent, perhaps at display by members @Waqkz @Farhan Bohra if I understood them correctly.

One can say, in my opinion anyways, that the aim in India to vilify Jinnah was to affix responsibility for the partition of the country on him, and try to forge a new nation on secular ideals where the fundamental issues, which led to the partition in the first place, could be avoided and yet again, remain unaddressed.

On Pakistan's side, as @Joe Shearer (on numerous previous occassions) and @Azlan Haider have amply illustrated, the effort to undermine Jinnah in a secular Pakistan started right after Pakistan was born, and had the support of the clergy, which emphasised the prominence of religion over nation in direct opposition of MA Jinnah's aim and aspirations for the new state. However, it is worth mentioning that this re-wrting of the narrative especially gained currency under the late Gen Zia-ul-Haq government.

The task of rewriting history books, and I rely on 'Rewriting the History Of Pakistan' by Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy and Abdul Hameed Nayyar when I state the following, started in earnest in 1981, when General Zia ul Haq declared compulsory, the teaching of Pakistan studies to all degree students, including those at engineering and medical colleges. Shortly thereafter, the University Grants Commission issued a directive to prospective textbook authors/writers specifying that the objective of the new course is to

'induce pride for the nation's past, enthusiasm for the present, and unshakeable faith in the stability and longevity of Pakistan'

[University Grants Commission directive, quoted in Azhar Hamid, et al. Mutalliyah-i-Pakistan (Islamabad: Allama IqbalOpen University, 1983), p. xi.]


To eliminate possible ambiguities of approach, authors were given the following directives:

To demonstrate that the basis of Pakistan is not to be founded in racial, linguistic, or geographical factors, but, rather, in the shared experience of a common religion. To get students to know and appreciate the Ideology of Pakistan, and to popularize it with slogans. To guide students towards the ultimate goal of Pakistan - the creation of a completely Islamised State (p. xii-xiii of aforementioned report)

In fulfillment of this directive, modern texts of Pakistani history are centred around the following themes:

1. The 'Ideology of Pakistan', both as a historical force which motivated the movement for Pakistan as well as its raison
d'etre.

2. The depiction of Jinnah as a man of orthodox religious views who sought the creation of a theocratic state

3. A move to establish the ulema as genuine heroes of the Pakistan Movement.

4. An emphasis on ritualistic Islam, together with a rejection of liberal interpretations of the religion and generation of
communal antagonism.


Modern textbooks invariably portray Jinnah as the architect of an Islamic ideological state:

The All-India Muslim League, and even the Quaid-i-Azam himself, said in the clearest possible terms that Pakistan would be an ideological state, the basis of whose laws would be the Quran and Sunnah, and whose ultimate destiny would be to provide a society in which Muslims could individually and collectively live according to the laws of Islam. (Azhar Hamid, et al., Mutalliyah-i-Pakistan, p. 221)

Jinnah began his political career as an exponent of Hindu-Muslim unity and as the leader of the liberal left wing of the Congress. His efforts culminated in the Lucknow Pact of 1916 between the Congress and the League. But when he again led the League almost twenty years later, the call was no longer for unity but for Hindu-Muslim separation. What brought about this transformation? It can not, by any stretch of imagination, be any single act, nor any epiphany which changed his direction.

Khalid bin Sayeed, one of his more respected biographers, gives convincing evidence that in the period 1929-1935 the Congress' intransigence was a major factor that changed him from an 'idealist' into a 'realist' who saw no future for Muslims in a united India.

In his personal life, Jinnah was liberal and Westernised and remained as such. Overcoming the taboos of cross-communal relations, he married a Parsi lady in the face of her parents' opposition - a marriage destined to end in tragic separation and the premature death of his wife. Jinnah maintained his inner secularism even in the seething cauldron of communal hatred following Partition, as is evident from the fact that he appointed Joginder Nath Mandal, a Hindu, to serve in Pakistan's first cabinet. His famous 11 August 1947 speech before the nation is the clearest possible exposition of a secular state in which religion and state are separate from each other:

We are starting with the fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State. . . Now I think that we should keep that in front of us as our ideal, and you will find that in due course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual but in the political sense as citizens of the state. Ö You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the business of the State.(M Munir, From Jinnah to Zia p.30)

In an interview to Doon Campbell, Reuter's correspondent in New Delhi in 1946, Jinnah made it perfectly clear that it was a Western style democracy that he wanted for Pakistan:

The new state would be a modern democratic state with sovereignty resting in the people and the members of the new
nation having equal rights of citizenship regardless of their religion, caste or creed.(M Munir, From Jinnah to Zia p.29)

In contrast, in Maulana Maudoodi's Islamic state, 'sovereignty rests with Allah' (mentioned by Oscar earlier). Thus, Jinnah rejects the basis for a theocratic state. This is stated even more explicitly in his 1946 speech before the Muslim League convention in Delhi:

'What are we fighting for? What are we aiming at? It is not theocracy, nor a theocratic state.' (Jamiluddin Ahmed, Recent Writings and Speeches, p. 248)


@Joe Shearer @Azlan Haider add or correct where I may be off.

@LadyFinger @ebrahym Thought you both might be interested in this thread, where it becomes serious anyways

@Hiptullha Good attempt! But now my troll mode is off. Sorry, won't be able to oblige your ignorant rants anymore. Maybe next time? However, a great attempt!

@SarthakGanguly The friendly 'bigot' is required to comment if any.

@Arsalan Tagging you in case you want to add anything anywhere in the thread. Also (and I must confess here) to show you that am not always in a troll mode, and you are fairly right in pointing me out at times when I go overboard

 

[RAMPAGE]

@Joe Shearer

NFP just posted this. I wonder if he's a visitor or a member. Just yesterday I was thinking about the possibility of having him here. What a jolly good fellow.

Nedeem sahab, Make yourself known if you're here, Would love to here from you.

http://www.dawn.com/news/1280325

Nah ... He's certainly here.

 

[SQ8]

It is very painful how he is consistently demonised by one section of Indians who still have not gone past the Collins-Lapierre version of the history of partition.

Personally, I have never successfully sorted out the strands of his mental make-up in terms of being Indian, being Muslim Indian and being a pan-Islamist. As is usual in most people, it may well have been that one aspect or the other came out according to the context of the situation. When he was focussed on the homeland for the Muslim Indian, I believe that he was the eminent advocate, fighting a desperate battle against mighty odds, but not so much the Muslim Indian himself. When he was considering the Muslim Indian against the backdrop of the world's doings, he was the pan-Islamist and had a (slightly romantic) vision of linkages with the rest of the world of Islam. I am tempted to think without any concrete evidence to back the thought that he might have seen things in terms of a benign Muslim commonwealth rather than in terms of the Ummah to which he never belonged in daily habit. Finally, when he was not considering the Muslim Indian in the world at large in general, and the world of Islam in particular, when he was not bending his powerful intellect to the purpose of a defensive laager for the Muslim Indian, when he was himself, I believe firmly that he was a Muslim Indian, Muslim in his affiliation if not in his habits, but an Indian: a man who confidently believed that after settling-in Pakistan, after laying down office, he would retire to his billiards table in his mansion in his beloved Bombay, a hallowed and respected figure in a country that he denied as an advocate for the Muslim Indian cause, but that he himself bore testimony to in his own daily life.




An extremely controversial summation. It was precisely Shah Waliullah's successors who opposed the idea of Pakistan and opposed Jinnah in his latter years as a tireless advocate for the Muslim Indian. Maulana Azad was far more an heir of Shah Waliullah than was Jinnah.

Jinnah was a human being Janab. He was imperfect like the rest of us(but certainly to much lesser degree than this scoundrel known as yours truly). As a passionate human being that has its proof from his turnabout from a scrawny lad playing marbles to one of the stars of Lincoln's Inn, to his sinking under the heavy burden of love for Ruti.
From knowing the difference between Chardonnay coming from Burgundy or Champagne to hand rolled cigars, he did not leave aspects of his life undone. The same way, that identity instilled within him during his days at the Sindh Madressa was pushed by the equally flamboyant persona of Allama Iqbal(although his ideas were more Pan-Islamic as compared to Jinnah's).


This is a man who did have dreams but set goals to achieve them.
Regardless of him , the issue now isnt what these men did or did not do; but what could be done to mitigate the ill effects and propagate the positives from now. The problem is that Pakistanis inherently are looking constantly for saviours or trying to find new ways to justify religious-nationalism, draconian laws or otherwise in tangential efforts to either avoid their problems or avoid their inability to stand up and solve them.

To borrow a quote from an article on the same:

"Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes"

 

[RAMPAGE]

^^^

I see it now, Joe. I see it now.

@Joe Shearer