JINNAH: A POLITICAL SAINT Part-3

JINNAH: A POLITICAL SAINT

Part-3

Mr. Jinnah was a one man ‘think-tank’ of the Muslim League and Muslims of the sub-continent. Congress Working Committee with all its top brass including Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Azad and the rest deliberating together for days would come up with long winded arguments confronting the League on national and party issues. Quaid-e-Azam then would dictate to his personal assistant in one sitting, comprehensive and irrefutable replies to all the points raised by the Congress.Similarly on the conference table, he was more than amatch to Mountbatten, Nehru or Gandhi.

Always elegantly dressed in his Saville Rowtailored pin-striped suit or wearing a flawless cream coloured sherwani and Jinnah cap he attended conferences, participated in round table talks with the Viceroys and Congress leaders and travelled in style in the ‘first class’ at his own expense from town to town to address public rallies in English where almost over eighty percent of his audience could not understand a word of English but they raptly listened to him in silence. The Muslim masses were one behind him but some big name Muslim politicians for their personal ends particularly in the Muslim majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal were ‘with him and not with him’. Some such politicians joined Viceroy’s Defense Council against the advice of Mr. Jinnah and later when threatened to be expelled from the Muslim League, many of them blatantly resigned from the Council.

After World War II the Labour government of Attlee decided to free India and transfer power to the elected representatives. The political climate in India during the Congress rule in Muslim minority provinces after 1937 elections was hurting the Muslims. There wereeven calculative attempts to obliterate the Muslims as a separate cultural entity. The Muslims for their own safety drifted away from the mainstream Indian national politics.

Mr. M.A. Jinnah was now the Quaid-e-Azam and the established leader of Muslim India and All India Muslim League as the sole representative body of the community. Quaid-e-Azam knew that the time was ripe and on 23rd March 1940 under the lofty minarets of Badshahi Mosque Lahore, he declared Muslims as a nation and demanded a separate homeland for the Muslims of the sub-continent. The resolution known as the Pakistan Resolution was moved by Maulvi A.K.Fazal-ul-Haq of Bengal. The whole of Lahore ranted with Pakistan Zindabad slogans. There was no stopping them and the surge for an independent country that started with the passing of this Resolution snow-balled into a revolution and within seven years on August 14, 1947 the independent Muslim state of Pakistan appeared on the map of the world. Jinnah the Political Saint had done it.

After the passing of the Pakistan Resolution in March 1940 this became a passion with Muslim India which threatened to change the trend of Indian politic from “Indian Independence’ to Divide and Quit.

The British government saw the weight behind the Muslim demand and in 1942 sent Sir Stafford Cripps with certain proposals for the transfer of power. Congress and the League, both for their own reasons rejected the proposals.

The 1945/46 general elections gave Muslim League a unique position. There was a clean sweep when the League captured all the 30 seats in the Central Legislature and 423 out of the total 493 seats in all the 11 provinces. Quaid-e-Azam was now in an impregnable position of his demand for a separate homeland for the Muslims. British government was determined to transfer power but were keen to retain the unity of the country.

Once again in 1946 the British government sent what is known as a ‘Cabinet Mission’ to resolve the constitutional deadlock. The Mission presented its plan that envisaged three federal groups – two comprising the Muslim majority provinces, linked to the centres in a loose federation with three subjects only. The third group was the rest of India. All India Muslim League accepted the plan as a strategic move and as a first step for the attainment of their final goal. The Congress also accepted the plan but soon realized its long term implications and resiled from its stand. On the Congress rejection, the Muslim League also renounced its acceptance and observed 16th of August as a Direct Action Day. Hindu India reacted and there was lot of bloodshed as a result.

 Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of the British Crown arrived in India mandated to hand over power to the Indians preferable as a united India. Mountbatten’s conduct as an honest broker left much to be desired and then the dubious border alignments by the Radcliffe Commission are a subject for separate consideration. The Radcliffe Award was so blatantly prejudiced against Pakistan through Mountbatten/ Radcliffe axis that even Mr. Beaumont secretary of the Commission had to say, “Grave discrete to both”. (Mountbatten and Radcliffe)

To sum up and to back my assertion of Jinnah – A Political Saint, I will repeat the words of Prof. Sharif-ul-Mujahid with his permission of course when he said, “Jinnah had termed the Muslims a separate entity in 1935. He upgraded them to a third party status in 1937 and to nationhood in 1940. And within seven years he secured a national home-land for that nation.” That was SAINT JINNAH – the invincible!