The road that was taken: Mohammad Ali Jinnah

Power and politics make the deadliest of a pairing. Anyone under its influence has either got their names besmirched in the pages of history, or they have been revered as legends. Mohammad Ali Jinnah is one such controversial figure, whom we can not dissociate with politics and power. Now it is up to you to decide, as to what kind of man, leader, and politician he was.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah; Image Credit: Wikipedia

History has been replete with stories of figures who have been surrounded by controversies more than anything else. But this in no way implies a dissolution of their merits no matter how small or big the number. One such personality is Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Born as Mahomedali Jinnahbhai on December 25 1876, in Karachi, Jinnah was the eldest among the rest of his six siblings. He belonged to the family of a well-to-do Gujarati merchant. He completed his schooling at the Christian Missionary Society High School in Karachi. In order to do a job for Graham's Shipping and Trading Company, Jinnah went to London in 1887. Briefly, after he settled in London, his wife Emibai died. Jinnah would then quit his job to finish his graduation from the Lincoln's Inn and get a degree in law in 1896. He was greatly inspired by Sir Pherozeshah Mehta and Dadabhai Naoroji and became politically active at an early age. However, his time as a politician has often been surrounded by controversies. Even scholarly opinion on Jinnah's personality stands at variance.

While, he has often been celebrated as the founder of Pakistan: as their Quaid-e-Azam or great leader, some people in India have berated him for perpetuating the partition and the consequent bloodshed.

Let us look at four of the major phases of his career as a politician that has made him a subject of much discussion.

Jinnah reached the zenith of his first phase with the 1916 Lucknow Pact, where Muslims won major political concessions, much to the dismay of the Hindu Mahasabha. These concessions included Muslim reservations in the Imperial Council and Provincial Assemblies and separate electorates.

Jinnah had, however, by 1924 moved into the second phase, when he called for a 'radical revision' of the constitutional arrangement envisaged in this pact.

Historian Ishtiaq Ahmed remarks "the ‘unilateral breach of the Lucknow Pact by Jinnah’ merely ‘strengthened the hands of sceptics on both sides ’ and helped launch him as a Muslim communitarian."

1928 marked the beginning of his third phase, where Jinnah increasingly advocated the two-nation theory and thus, was hailed as a Muslim nationalist. This happened after major discontent arose from the All India Muslim League over the Nehru (Motilal) report of 1928, which had maintained its stand against ‘objectifying communal identities’ and also for the creation of a 'federation of loose constituent units' post India's independence. Jinnah would not settle for less, and demanded 'one-third representation for Muslims in the central legislature', even though among the population of United India no community made up more than 25% demographically. Jinnah also wanted the residuary powers to be vested in the provinces and the establishment of loose federations, both of which contradicted the principles of the Nehru report.

Historian Ishtiaq Ahmed opines, that the Nehru report was ‘a very reasonable and practical document for a united India’ that envisaged a power-sharing arrangement at the federal level of government, once independence had been secured'.

During this time Jinnah, also vociferously reinforced his rhetoric against the notion of Hindu-Muslim unity in a single independent unit and did not shy away to voice his dismay over the INC.

His last and the shortest phase of his career would be after the partition when he emerged as the head of Pakistan. Although he was only the titular head, Jinnah contravened democratic norms by supervising cabinet meetings.

'A victorious Jinnah – who at one time claimed to have established Pakistan singlehandedly with the help of just one typist and had arrogantly told a delegation of Sikhs that his word would be equivalent to God’s in Pakistan – made no bones about strengthening the central government vis-à-vis the federating units '. He made Urdu, the national language going against the demographics of the new nation, where Bengali-speaking Muslims also resided.

Jinnah was also widely discussed because of the speech given in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, just days before the creation of Pakistan.

In this address, he famously said that “in 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”.

The controversies and speculations around Mohammad Ali Jinnah are indeed some of the aspects that make him an interesting subject of enquiry. But even with all his peculiarities that may sometimes not put him in the good pages of history, we must not lose sight of the fact, that he was one of those great figures who, till the end, held the mast of a sinking ship.