M. Sarmad
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Why did he quit congress, just at the time when Ghandi started the mass based grassroots movement?
Gandhi and Jinnah were each other’s antithesis in beliefs and ways of life and furnished an interesting study in contrast. There was hardly anything in common between them which could hold them together on one political platform for any length of time. Gandhi had been active in politics since his return from South Africa in 1915 and had consistently waged battles against the British Government on the question of political and constitutional future of India.
It was a clash of two strong personalities, two distinct value systems and two irreconcilable ideologies and it were these differences what were ‘to dictate the course of the pen that wrote the history of India
[G. Allana, Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah: The Story of a Nation, Lahore, 1967, p. 106.]
About Gandhi :
Lord Wavell at the end of one meeting with him complained that ‘he spoke to me for half an hour, and I am still not sure what he meant to tell me. Every sentence he spoke could be interpreted in at least two different ways. I would be happier were I convinced that he knew what he was saying himself, but I cannot even be sure of that [Quoted in Leonard Mosley, The Last Days of the British Raj, London, 1961, p. 19.]
He was quite capable of interpreting and reinterpreting his own statements and was ‘perfectly prepared to go back at any time on anything he had said earlier’. He could assume that role of a dictator in the Congress Party when it suited him while on other occasions when he believed that Hindu interests could be better served by his silence he would withdraw and innocently plead that he was not even an ordinary member of that Party.
[Wavell, The Viceroy’s Journal, Karachi, 1974, p. 146.]
About Jinnah :
Jinnah, on the other hand was a down right political realist. True to his legal profession he would prepare his brief only after he was sure of his facts. There was a great deal of political idealism in him which was to grow with years but it was always based on the stark realities of the situation. He honoured his pledged word and as Lord Pethick Lawrence said, ‘a man of very firm resolution, a man who when made a promise always kept it and if he felt any body else with whom he was negotiating failed to keep his promise he reacted very strongly
[Jamil ud Din Ahmad, ed., Quaid-i-Azam As Seen by his Contemporaries (Lahore, 1966), p. 227]
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