What the British thought Jinnah wanted for declassified folder DO 142/476- Jinnah had Islamist and pan-Islamic ambitions

[SQ8]

Jinnah had the well documented tactic of influencing allies by speaking their language regardless of his own overall agenda to the matter. So when he speaks of Islamic state his idealism doesn’t translate into other practical and political steps he took otherwise in terms of guidelines for the state.

If anything, he had kept the British guessing his intentions on governorship all the way until early 47. Hence, to read too much into pan-Islamic ideals from an individual who by both career and ideals is rooted in pragmatism and political maneuvering to achieve his goals is racing to conclusions at best and myopic at worst.

Without reading of all of Jinnah’s actions - drawing conclusions from these letters is sheer laziness and cherry picking

 

[MastanKhan]

Jinnah, IMO, understood the Hikmet and Hakikat of the Time which isn't without it's MASTER. Moreover, he had a clear understanding of the trends in the Murad-i Ilahi.....


Bottom-line: Jinnah, being in a 5x weaker position, outsmarted his fellow Gujrati Barrister Gandhi.

*In a sense the Hindutva folks were right in killing Gandhi for his failures vis-à-vis Jinnah.
**A moth-eaten Pakistan is still better than no Pakistan. Ask any Indian Muslim.
***The British are 100% hypocrites. In Jinnah's case, they lowered it to 40%. Not a bad deal.

Hi,

Most pakistanis don't realize that---Jinnah Sahib had performed a miracle of the millenium---.

A free nation for a minority---.

 

[Ssan]

Jinnah had the well documented tactic of influencing allies by speaking their language regardless of his own overall agenda to the matter. So when he speaks of Islamic state his idealism doesn’t translate into other practical and political steps he took otherwise in terms of guidelines for the state.

If anything, he had kept the British guessing his intentions on governorship all the way until early 47. Hence, to read too much into pan-Islamic ideals from an individual who by both career and ideals is rooted in pragmatism and political maneuvering to achieve his goals is racing to conclusions at best and myopic at worst.

Without reading of all of Jinnah’s actions - drawing conclusions from these letters is sheer laziness and cherry picking

The point is that the people best equipped and incentivized to understand who Jinnah was and his pragmatism were the British. The documents are interesting in that this is what they think - these are declassified after 50 years and serve as a time capsule of sorts.

In fact, they don’t just come to these conclusions casually. Being the policy making nerve of the UK govt, at the highest levels, these declassified documents also give indication to why they came to these conclusions.

So it’s not cherry picking at all. No more than when another individual cites another historian. Except that in most cases, there is no price that the academic historian pays in getting it wrong. The price that the UK would pay for misjudging Jinnah is clear and apparent.

 

[Ssan]

I think these documents are musings of bureaucrats that don't mean much. Also, how does it matter whether the British 'believed' that Jinnah had accepted an 'accent'? Reality is, Britain was a spent power in 1947. Confirmation of Britain's greatness being history is the Suez crisis of 1956,

The bureaucrats in question are high commissioners, permanent undersecretaries. They have a line to the cabinet directly, are experts on the ground and inform and shape policy. Like I said, in this docket, the folio of which is attached, a letter even gets sent to the PM of the UK. Additionally this is from a period where the British had left not one year ago.

It would be more accurate to call the opinions of academic historians writing 50 years after the fact as musings given the lack of price they would pay for getting it wrong, while the price these bureaucrats pay would be significantly more immediate and heavy.

 

[DabbuSardar]

T

Hi all, as some of you may know, I was nosing around some archival materials related to early Pakistan history. In particular, I was able to get access to docket DO 142/476 which is a public document in the British archives stored in Kews Gardens as shown here - https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C3735104

I managed to obtain digital copies of this docket and also publishing rights to post it publicly and put together a pdf document attached here which has all the folios in this docket excluding blank pages.

The documents in this file were all classified secret documents of the British govt and released recently in maybe ?the 2000s?

I took care to note where each folio in the docket was, ie the docket position, the introducing documents doc#1-8 were not in any folder stash, but after that they were generally in reverse chronological order. I have them re-arranged in chronological order.

The substance of the documents is really interesting as it deals with Pakistan right after being formed in 1947

This is gold!

I have just started going thru these archives (below screenshots), and the first thing I noticed was British were differentiating east and west punjab way before 1947, which makes me think all this partition affair wasn’t religious, but strategic.

Too early to say (since these british bastards dont allow me to access the full reports without being registered in that ghetto physically), but let me posit a theory- Punjab wasnt divided on religion, but more on what was more beneficial for the british post war, peoples that lived together for over a thousand years suddenly got an urge to divide nations, made no sense.

Always had that nagging feeling why punjabis slaughtered each other at the behest of Jinnah and the British, turns out it seems all political manipulations.

Will research and post more.

The bureaucrats in question are high commissioners, permanent undersecretaries. They have a line to the cabinet directly, are experts on the ground and inform and shape policy. Like I said, in this docket, the folio of which is attached, a letter even gets sent to the PM of the UK. Additionally this is from a period where the British had left not one year ago.

It would be more accurate to call the opinions of academic historians writing 50 years after the fact as musings given the lack of price they would pay for getting it wrong, while the price these bureaucrats pay would be significantly more immediate and heavy.

 

[Muhammad Saftain Anjum]

Sorry if it's off topic

 

[indushek]

I feel that when people get eulogized to such levels, like Jinnah sahab in Pakistan and Gandhi ji/Nehru ji in India, public stops thinking of them as normal humans. This only compounds as years pass by, and these characters become National symbols. This makes it hard to accept that, like any one of us these characters have flaws in them. Compared to the West we in the East, never try to speak bad of people who passed away. Its general respect to elders and those who have died, so talking about them in a more objective manner is very difficult.

https://thewire.in/books/jinnah-pakistan-british-gandhi-book-review-ishtiaq-ahmed

There is a Pakistani Author who took a relook at Jinnah sahab, and this summary of the book does point to British machinations in the breakup of India. What is interesting is that, the author points to differences between Gandhi ji and Jinnah sahab from the start. Similarly Nehru ji had his own ambitions, which marginalized other leaders.

The partition happened because of clash of personalities along with ideological difference, but people focus on the effect more. Coming to the British, its so clever of them that, they helped creating both Congress and Muslims League. This just shows they were engineering political parties from long time, so it won't be a stretch that the whole partition was engineered as well.

Expansion of Soviet Union into Eastern Europe, spooked the Imperialist Brits fully. They wanted a country in this region, who will be amenable to them. Pakistan's cozy relations with West, and their subsequent role in Soviet invasion of Afghanistan shows the objective did get achieved.

https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/sovi.html

Coming to Jinnah Sahab's aims for islamist ideology or pan islamism, it kind of doesn't workout considering his behavior during Khilafat movement. He felt it was a Turkish issue, and disagreed with involving religion into Independence movement.

We can all argue as to why Pakistan went the Islamic way, if Jinnah sahab wasn't aiming for Islamic thought. His actions before partition don't seem to look like, he had some religious outlook in his personal outlook. I personally think he took what he had in hand, so that he didn't get sidelined by Gandhi ji and Nehru ji. His untimely passing away, more or less threw a spanner in his plans for the country he created.

 

[SQ8]

The point is that the people best equipped and incentivized to understand who Jinnah was and his pragmatism were the British. The documents are interesting in that this is what they think - these are declassified after 50 years and serve as a time capsule of sorts.

In fact, they don’t just come to these conclusions casually. Being the policy making nerve of the UK govt, at the highest levels, these declassified documents also give indication to why they came to these conclusions.

So it’s not cherry picking at all. No more than when another individual cites another historian. Except that in most cases, there is no price that the academic historian pays in getting it wrong. The price that the UK would pay for misjudging Jinnah is clear and apparent.

I disagree completely - the British are one angle for it. He had family and he had friends. You cannot use just one narrative to build a picture in a flawed academic approach. Heck try that on any topic and use just one reference and likely you will get a poor grade.

You cannot study Jinnah without the works of Wolpert, Bolitho, Dehlavi or his own sister.

Anything else is Cherry picking -

As for the British - they might even have played it out as they wanted by manipulating both the rulers of Pakistan and the overall institutions both state and non-state.
Jinnah was a forlorn conclusion in 48 - his influence on what Pakistan was to be died after the 61 election fraud by Ayub.

So whether or not he was some pan-Islamist is now irrelevant to the current Pakistan which has nothing to do with Jinnah besides his portrait on its bank notes.

 

[Muji.Iqbal]

I disagree completely - the British are one angle for it. He had family and he had friends. You cannot use just one narrative to build a picture in a flawed academic approach. Heck try that on any topic and use just one reference and likely you will get a poor grade.

You cannot study Jinnah without the works of Wolpert, Bolitho, Dehlavi or his own sister.

Anything else is Cherry picking -

As for the British - they might even have played it out as they wanted by manipulating both the rulers of Pakistan and the overall institutions both state and non-state.
Jinnah was a forlorn conclusion in 48 - his influence on what Pakistan was to be died after the 61 election fraud by Ayub.

So whether or not he was some pan-Islamist is now irrelevant to the current Pakistan which has nothing to do with Jinnah besides his portrait on its bank notes.

Personally I think Jinnah is now irrelevant. He has been dead for almost a century. Time to move on now.

I mean come on its 2023 now.

 

[El Sidd]

Personally I think Jinnah is now irrelevant. He has been dead for almost a century. Time to move on now.

I mean come on its 2023 now.

Without Jinnah, your avatar would remain an obscure misunderstood Lahori.

Despite mass social engineering Iqbal and Jinnah remain an institution upon themselves for Pakistanis and Pakistan. Revered to such an extent that people have given up trying to be like them.

 

[Bilal Khan (Quwa)]

Jinnah had the well documented tactic of influencing allies by speaking their language regardless of his own overall agenda to the matter. So when he speaks of Islamic state his idealism doesn’t translate into other practical and political steps he took otherwise in terms of guidelines for the state.

If anything, he had kept the British guessing his intentions on governorship all the way until early 47. Hence, to read too much into pan-Islamic ideals from an individual who by both career and ideals is rooted in pragmatism and political maneuvering to achieve his goals is racing to conclusions at best and myopic at worst.

Without reading of all of Jinnah’s actions - drawing conclusions from these letters is sheer laziness and cherry picking

We should also stop narrowing in on Jinnah and, instead, ask the more important question: what did the first-generation of Pakistani elites want? Ultimately, those elites were administrators in British India and, in all likelihood, lacked the knowledge and desire to implement a Pan-Islamic ideal. Their job was to run an extractive state with secular institutions, but cultural/religious overtones. IMO, there was no scenario where Jinnah was going to overrule these powers.

 

[Muji.Iqbal]

Without Jinnah, your avatar would remain an obscure misunderstood Lahori.

Despite mass social engineering Iqbal and Jinnah remain an institution upon themselves for Pakistanis and Pakistan. Revered to such an extent that people have given up trying to be like them.

Don't get me wrong. I respect Iqbal and Jinnah. But Jinnah is gone. Now the Muslims of Pakistan will determine their destiny now.

 

[Ssan]

I disagree completely - the British are one angle for it. He had family and he had friends. You cannot use just one narrative to build a picture in a flawed academic approach. Heck try that on any topic and use just one reference and likely you will get a poor grade.

You cannot study Jinnah without the works of Wolpert, Bolitho, Dehlavi or his own sister.

Anything else is Cherry picking -

As for the British - they might even have played it out as they wanted by manipulating both the rulers of Pakistan and the overall institutions both state and non-state.
Jinnah was a forlorn conclusion in 48 - his influence on what Pakistan was to be died after the 61 election fraud by Ayub.

So whether or not he was some pan-Islamist is now irrelevant to the current Pakistan which has nothing to do with Jinnah besides his portrait on its bank notes.

I am not disregarding what Jinnahs friends and family thought of him. However, my understanding of the study of history ultimately limits me from accepting a pedagogy of the academic historians who may write on Jinnah. But I am cognizant to accept facts but then question conclusions.

First, history is often invoked in support of ideology. It cannot be divorced from it. People use history to support their ideological slants. In that sense at least, history is often best viewed through the context of a Hegelian dialectic.

You have invoked a few good western historians who wrote on Jinnah. For these historians, the dialectic is actually more a matter of Jinnah vs Gandhi or Nehru, Pakistan vs India- this affects the way they write and who they are more sympathetic of. They are less interested in the question of whether Jinnah was secular or Islamist.

For the Pakistani historians, due to our domestic issues, that is the dialectic we engage in. When you have a healthy debate, people will decide which viewpoint of history, or combination of viewpoint is true.

In any case, this is neither here nor there. The purpose of this thread was just to publish declassified docs of the UK govt at the highest levels with the complete original folios of the docket so that we may have another viewpoint of history. If you read them, you will see they are genuinely interesting in their own right.

 

[Ssan]

We should also stop narrowing in on Jinnah and, instead, ask the more important question: what did the first-generation of Pakistani elites want? Ultimately, those elites were administrators in British India and, in all likelihood, lacked the knowledge and desire to implement a Pan-Islamic ideal. Their job was to run an extractive state with secular institutions, but cultural/religious overtones. IMO, there was no scenario where Jinnah was going to overrule these powers.

It’s quite a bit more complicated than that. There were multiple camps split up on various ethnic, ideological, and other group identities. In early Pakistan, before Justice Muneer and Ayyub, there was quite a bit of interplay between all these groups until eventually, the Punjabi (as opposed to Muhajjir or Bengali), secular and bureaucratic/army group won out.

The history of this happening, the interplay of regional and ideological considerations is really interesting in and of itself. But as far as the islamists and secularists are concerned, it’s really interesting that as far as the political process was concerned, the secularists managed to thwart the islamists in securing an Islamic constitution three times, April 1953, November 1954 and November 1958 as Leonard Binder mentions in the preface to his book “religion and politics in Pakistan”.

We should also stop narrowing in on Jinnah and, instead, ask the more important question: what did the first-generation of Pakistani elites want? Ultimately, those elites were administrators in British India and, in all likelihood, lacked the knowledge and desire to implement a Pan-Islamic ideal. Their job was to run an extractive state with secular institutions, but cultural/religious overtones. IMO, there was no scenario where Jinnah was going to overrule these powers.

Grafftey-Smith, the UK HC, notes this too. In doc # 16, he writes in the last para of his note, “I may add that there are many elements here which, despite the official accent on an Islamic State, have a greater sympathy for the achievements of Turkey.”

 

[M. Sarmad]

The attempts by the followers of Mullahs to portray Jinnah as an Islamist are nothing new, This thread is just another example of desperate attempts by amateurs to rewrite and distort history.

The referred British archives don't have the original letter allegedly written by Jinnah to Al-Banna. Instead, it refers to a letter that might not have actually existed or could have been intentionally fabricated by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to mislead British spies. There is no trace of the original letter itself. Instead, we have an alleged translation of what Jinnah purportedly wrote to Al-Banna in an undisclosed language. This supposed letter was obtained through an unknown associate of Al-Banna, who then passed it on to an unidentified individual in Egypt. Subsequently, this individual purportedly translated the letter into English and forwarded its contents to a British diplomat. The diplomat, in his note to the UK, expressed his opinion that the claims being made are plausible. This is the document currently present in the British archives, and not the original letter itself.

The information presented in the documents provided in the OP is purely speculative and lacks any academic credibility, as it relies solely on highly speculative accounts from British spies and diplomats.

The only letter ever written by Jinnah to Al-Banna is archived in the Governor General files in Islamabad (F. 156-GG/5-6, Dated: Nov 29, 1947). In this letter, Jinnah explicitly denied any affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood or any of their representatives.