Was Pakistan created in the name of Islam?

1WAS PAKISTAN CREATED IN

THE NAME OF ISLAM?

“I maintain that Hindu-Muslim is a conditionprecedent- nay it is a sine qua non- before any constitutioncan be completed for the Government of India …”(Jinnah, Speech on Federal Structure Sub-committee on 13 January 1931)

"I must record my own belief , that any attempt toestablish the reign of Hindu numerical majority in India willnever be achieved without a civil war... The Muslimsnumbering 90 million.. the word ’minority has no relevanceor sense when applied to masses of human beings numberedin many scores of millions’(Winston Churchill, December 13th 1946 atHouse of Commons)

One of our most persistent nationalmyths — put forward by both the state and

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2 Jinnah: Myth and Reality

its detractors — is that Pakistan wascreated in the name of Islam. It is saidthat Pakistan was created with the use ofthe slogans “Islam in danger” and “Pakistanka matlab kya, La illaha ilallah”, bothslogans which — ironically — were neverused by Quaid-e-Azam himself. Indeed Jinnahruled out “Pakistan ka matlab kiya, Laillaha illallah” when he censured a Leaguerat the last session of the All India MuslimLeague after partition in these words:“Neither I nor the Muslim League WorkingCommittee ever passed a resolution —Pakistan ka matlab kiya — you may have usedit to catch a few votes.”

Nevertheless, the fact that Pakistan wascreated as a result of a group’snationalism, which was based — in whateverwatered down form — on common religiousbeliefs, has damned Pakistan to a perpetualidentity crisis that continues to sap itsvitality. That no one on top sinceSeptember 11, 1948 has been able to talksense in this country has only aggravatedour predicament.

Fundamental to this identity crisis isthe national confusion surrounding the TwoNation Theory, which is hailed as theideological foundation of the state ofPakistan. It is one of the mostmisunderstood ideas in modern history, bothin terms of what it claimed and how it has

Was Pakistan created in the name of Islam? 3

been applied by various currents in ourhistory.

Both India and Pakistan do not disagree onwhat they consider the essentials of thetheory, but while in India it is a symbol ofexclusivism and communalism, in Pakistan itis part of the Islamic ideologicalnarrative. This is the publicist’s view ofhistory, but not necessarily one that isaccepted without question by historians.Perhaps the time has come to turn suchconventional common (non)sense about the TwoNation Theory on its head.

The Two Nation Theory, as adopted byJinnah and the Muslim League in 1940, was amere restatement of the minority problem innational terms and not a clarion call, touse Dr Ayesha Jalal’s vocabulary, forpartition. What Jinnah was aiming for waswhat in recent years has been coined as‘consociationalism’, a power sharing betweendisparate ethnic and communal groups inmultinational and multiethnic states. Thoughthe term was coined only a decade or so ago,consociationalism as a political system isquite old and is tried and tested in stateslike the Netherlands, Switzerland andCanada.

When the Quaid-e-Azam articulated theTwo Nation Theory, he referred to language,culture, family laws and historical


antecedents. He was, as an adroit lawyer,making the case for changing the status ofa minority to that of a nation and not forseparation of Islam from India as isalleged by his detractors.

Jinnah’s idea of Pakistan was notpredicated on the partition of India. Hisidea of Pakistan was a power sharingarrangement between the Muslims and Hindus.His Two Nation Theory did not, at least notuntil December 1946, suggest that theHindus and Muslims must be separated andeven then he spoke of Muslim India andHindu India. Still, even in May 1947,Jinnah was pleading against the partitionof Punjab and Bengal by arguing that aPunjabi is a Punjabi and a Bengali is aBengali before he is a Hindu or a Muslim.

Much of this is confirmed by one of themost extraordinary pieces of prescienceleft behind by H V Hodson, who was theReforms Commissioner in India in 1941.Hodson wrote in clear terms very soon afterthe Lahore Resolution that every MuslimLeaguer from Jinnah down to the last oneinterpreted the Pakistan idea as consistentwith the idea of a confederation of India.Hodson believed that “Pakistan” was a“revolt against minority status” and a callfor power sharing and not just definingrules of conduct how a majority (in thiscase Hindu) would govern India. He spoke of


an acute realisation that the minoritystatus with all the safeguards could onlyamount to a “Cinderella with trade unionrights and radio in the kitchen but stillbelow the stairs.” Jinnah’s comment wasthat Hodson had finally understood what theLeague was after, but that he could notpublicly come out with these fundamentaltruths, as these were likely to bemisunderstood at the time.

The origins of the Two nation theory

On the Muslim side the firstarticulation of the two nation theory camefrom the famous Muslim modernist, Sir SyedAhmed Khan, who decided after theexperience of Urdu-Hindi controversy of1867 that Muslims and Hindus were twoseparate nations, and were like two eyes ofIndia, who should have sovereign parity.When Congress was founded by A O Hume(1885), Sir Syed Ahmed Khan persuaded mostof the Muslims not to join the CongressParty because he felt the Muslims were notready educationally socially, andpolitically to face the Hindu community inthe mainstream of politics yet. He wassupported in these views by other Muslimmodernists of the time like Syed Ameer Ali.



The two nation theory finally reached aculmination in the form of the separateelectorates which were demanded by adelegation of the Muslim elite, andintelligentsia in their meeting withViceroy Minto. Lord Curzon’s partition ofBengal was also on the same lines.Partition of Bengal was annulled due toSwadeshi movement.

A Brief History of the All India MuslimLeague

The All India Muslim League was foundedin 1906 with the express purpose ofsafeguarding Muslim interests in a unitedIndia. Like the Congress Party, it startedoff as a party loyal to British Government.By 1913, the League was persuaded byMohammed Ali Jinnah of the Congress Partyto abandon its pro-British stance andassume a stance which was more in line withthe Congress. He was unable however tobudge the league on its stance on separateelectorates. In 1916 Mohammed Ali Jinnahmanaged to bring together the League andthe Congress on one platform workingtogether for the Independence of India.During the Khilafat Movement and the non-cooperation movement, the League becamesidelined when Gandhi led Congress wentover the league and made alliances with the

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Khilafat Conference and Jamiat-e-ulema-Hind, two radically Islamic organizationsagitating for the safeguard of the Islamicinstitution of Khilafat.

By 1928 there were two factions of theMuslim League: Pro-British faction led bySir Muhammad Shafi and the Pro-Congressfaction led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah. AfterJinnah’s brief exit from all India politicsin 1931, the League virtually ceased toexist. By 1935 the beleaguered leaguerswere clamouring for Jinnah to come back. In1935 Jinnah emerged out of his self-imposedexile to reorganize the league. With theexit of Shafi, Jinnah had a free hand, andfrom 1935-1937 Jinnah and the League werethe staunchest supporters of the efforts ofthe Congress Party inside and outside thecentral legislative body.

The Pakistan idea

In Allahabad in 1930, Dr. Muhammad Iqbalis said to have given the idea of a Muslimstate in the northwest of India within orwithout the British India. Reading theaddress, it becomes clear that Iqbal wastalking about an autonomous Muslim Provincewithin the British Empire and byimplication within the Indian Union. Thisidea had hitherto been unarticulated, but



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it was already there in many differentforms.1 The demand for autonomy had alwaysbeen there in the North West, and Iqbal wasonly giving it a more concrete picture.Iqbal’s concern was clearly the MuslimMajority areas, and not the Muslims inHindu majority areas. Hence Iqbal’s viewwas in contradiction to the officiallystated League position which was bestexpressed in the Lucknow Pact.

By 1933 Rahmat Ali, a student atCambridge University, came out with aneccentric scheme which he called’Pakistan : Our Fatherland’. Later thatyear he tried to enlist Mohammed AliJinnah, then in England, for this cause.Jinnah dismissed this idea as a mere dream,earning forever the wrath of Ch. RahmatAli.

The elections of 1937

The first elections held under theGovernment of India act 1935 saw Congressemerging as the majority party. It won 711out of total of 1585 seats, and could formgovernment in 5/11 provinces without thesupport of any party. Out of these 711seats only 26 seats were Muslim seats,1 K K Aziz mentions 88 different schemes containing partition of India before Iqbal finally gave his idea.

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thereby increasing Congress’s reliance onlocal Hindu leaders, which allowed fortheir agenda to be imposed on the Congress.

Muslim League on the other hand did wellon the Muslim seats in the Hindu Majorityprovinces winning 29 out of 35 seats in theUP. The league however couldn’t do wellagainst the regional parties in MuslimMajority areas.

Congress and the League

"I Sir, stand here with a clearconscience and I say that I am anationalist first, a nationalist second andnationalist last... I once more appeal tothis House. Whether you are a Mussalman ora Hindu, for God's sake do not import thediscussion of communal matters into thisHouse, and degrade this Assembly, which wedesire should become a real NationalParliament. Set an example to the outsideworld and our people." (Jinnah, 1925 Debateon the Indian Finance Bill.)

The Congress refused to come to anarrangement with the Muslim League,choosing instead Jamiat-e-Ulema-Hind forpartnership through Azad. This was a deathblow to the League and its leadership whowere at this point decidedly pro-Congress.On 22nd December 1939, League and its

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allies, the Scheduled Caste Federation andJustice Party of the Tamil Nadu, celebratedthe day of deliverance from Congress rule.

Nehru-Jinnah Correspondence isespecially vital in this regard. Nehru hadmocked the League as an elitistorganization and asked Jinnah to ’depend onthe league’s inherent strength’. Jinnah hadresponded in kind informing Nehru that fromnow on he would only depend on his inherentstrength. As a Historian rightly observed:

"More than Iqbal, it was Nehru whocharted a new mass strategy for the League,prodding and challenging Jinnah to leavethe drawing rooms of politics to reach downto the hundred million Muslims... There wasof course only one possible way for theleague to stir that mass, to awaken it andlure it to march behind Muslim leadership."

Muslim League and the Muslim Majority Areas

The League leadership had realizedthrough experience with Congress, that inorder to make good on its claim ofrepresentation of South Asian Muslims, itwould need to rally the Muslim Majorityareas behind it. In order to do that itrequired a slogan which would be vagueenough to bring an overwhelming mass of theMuslim majority areas behind the league.Jinnah started by luring the regional



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politicians into his fold. First cameSikandar Hayat of Punjab, and soon tofollow him was FazlulHaq of Bengal. Soonthe regional parties who had defeated theleague in the elections were ready to comeunder the league’s banner.

The Lahore Resolution

League’s transformation was complete in1940 when it adopted Iqbal’s slogan ofseparate Muslim majority state(s). The twomen who moved this resolution were the newentrants into the League, Sikandar Hayatand FazlulHaq. The Lahore Resolutionpresented a vague demand which did notspecify the nature of the Muslim majoritystate(s). No references were made to Islam,and the issue presented was a cultural oneinstead of a religious one. Needless to saythis resolution was in contradiction to thestated objective of the league as it didnot aspire to solve the problems ofLeague’s real constituents, the Muslims inHindu Majority areas.

The name Pakistan was imposed on theLeague by the Congress press, and theLeague leadership after initialprotestations accepted it.

C R Gopalachari’s formula whichvirtually gave Muslim League Pakistan was



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rejected by the League leadership. Thisseemed to suggest that League’s interestlay elsewhere, and not in the creation ofPakistan. Elections of 1945-1946 saw MuslimLeague sweep the Muslim vote. The turnaround was miracle in the Muslim Majorityareas. In Sindh and Bengal the league hadenough seats to form ministries of theirown. In NWFP and Punjab it still turned outto be the largest single party, but wasupstaged in the assembly by coalitionministries of Congress/Khudai khidmatgarsin NWFP, and the Unionist Party in Punjab.Having won 445 out of a total 490 Muslimseats, the League was now able to layexclusive claim to speaking for the Muslimsof India.

Lahore Resolution envisaged a federal andinclusive state

Every child in Pakistan is taught aboutthe symbolic significance of the LahoreResolution but hardly anyone in the countryhas ever bothered to read the words thatare cited as nothing less than a foundingdocument for the country. In many ways, theLahore Resolution is Pakistan’s equivalentof the US’s Declaration of Independence,though perhaps less eloquent. Indeed, muchlike the American declaration ofindependence, there is an original draft


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with handwritten corrections by Pakistan’sfounders, which lends us clues as to whatit was that they were after on thatmomentous occasion.

Yet the Lahore Resolution is much morethan that because it is a live documentlaying out not so much a blueprint but morean eternal guideline on how we were toshape the new state. Arguably, at the timeit was presented it was intended to belittle more than an alternative to theexisting constitutional thesis forwarded byboth the British and Congress. Increasinglydependent on Muslim support for the wareffort in the wake of Congress’ refusal tobe forthcoming, Lord Linlithgow had pressedJinnah to come up with an alternative tothe Government of India Act, 1935, and hadalso asked British India’s foremostconstitutional expert, Sir Zafarullah Khan,to draft a memorandum on the idea of twodominion states. It was Zafarullah’smemorandum that was finally adopted by theLeague in its Lahore session as the ‘LahoreResolution’.

The Lahore Resolution did not envisage apartition of India per se. It remainedvague in so much as it used both“autonomous” and “sovereign” forconstituent units with contiguous Muslimmajorities. Thus the issue really was of


sovereignty for Muslim majority areas,which itself went against the grain of theinterests of the Muslim League’s coreconstituency, i.e. the Muslim salariedclasses of UP and Bombay — indeed nothingless than a reversal of the famed LucknowPact that Jinnah had engineered 24 yearsprior. It was what the resolution impliedthat was most significant, i.e. an extendedperiod of time where foreign affairs,defence and customs would remain the domainof a centre. This was the bargainingcounter that Jinnah wanted the League tohave.

Documents of fundamental nationalimportance and constitutional naturehowever take on a life of their own,unconnected with the political realitiesthat brought them about. The LahoreResolution is therefore to be taken as morethan a mere resolution of a political partyor, in the League’s case, a big tentpolitical grouping. There are certainundeniable fundamentals of the new statethat have been laid down by it, mostimportant being the idea that constituentunits are sovereign entities delegatingtheir sovereignty to a Pakistan centre.This means that the centralised state thathas been in existence for over 63 years isultra vires the letter and spirit of theLahore Resolution. When stripped of the


history and baggage of partition andhonestly applied to our present condition,the Lahore Resolution envisages a “nationof nations”. The Two-Nation Theory itselfwas not so much a statement of exclusivenationalism but a connecting bridge betweenwhat the Communist Party of India describedat the time as submerged Muslimnationalities. To this end even Gandhi veryshrewdly pointed out to Jinnah in theirdiscussions that the Lahore Resolutioncontained no reference to the Two-NationTheory.

Given the debate on the role of religionin Pakistan, the Lahore Resolution laysdown a clear rule on how this proposednation of nations would deal with itsreligious minorities. Not only does theresolution contain no reference to Islamper se — a gaping hole for those who sayPakistan was created in the name ofreligion — but it goes on to say that“adequate, effective and mandatorysafeguards shall be specifically providedin the constitution for minorities in theunits and in the regions for the protectionof religious, cultural, economic,political, administrative and other rightsof the minorities, with theirconsultation.” Notice the word‘consultation’, which has been defined to


mean effective consultation in other casesin our jurisprudence. The minority viewthen would have to be the binding viewunless there were good reasons to thecontrary.

Now compare this situation to how thenotorious Objectives Resolution was passedin 1949. The voting pattern shows that allMuslim members of the constituent assemblysave one voted in favour and all non-Muslims voted without exception against it.There were several amendments proposed bythe non-Muslim members, which were rejectedby the majority. In essence, the spirit ofthe Lahore Resolution was thus betrayed atthe very outset of the constitution makingprocess. Pakistan thus voted in as its‘grundnorm’ a document that went againstthe very spirit of the basic document onwhich the country claimed to be based.

Similarly, the main crux of thesovereignty thesis forwarded by the LahoreResolution was negated when Pakistan choseto ignore Mujibur Rehman’s six points,which were, in essence, the elaboration ofthe Lahore Resolution. That led to theseparation of Bangladesh.

With the separation of Bangladesh in1971 and the worldwide conservative Islamicrevival of the 1970s and 1980s, Pakistanchose to underline its Islamic identity andin doing so became a state intolerant of


diversity. Just as multiculturalism is theconsequence of secularism, shrinking ofdissent and tolerance is the consequence oftheocracy. The most devastating impact of adeliberate detour from normality that ourleaders took from 1949 and the consummationof the marriage of religion and state in1973 has been a breakdown of civildiscourse in our society. In our quixoticquest of fusing the temporal with theeternal, we have denigrated the faith anddestroyed our government.

Cabinet Mission Plan

In view of the election results of 1946the British Government dispatched a highlevel Cabinet Mission to look into aworkable plan which was acceptable to thetwo major parties of India i.e. Congressand the League. After its deliberationswith the League and the Congress itpresented a series of proposals whichincluded the ’grouping scheme’. Thegrouping scheme allowed for a three tieredfederation between Hindu and Muslimprovinces, with the center only keepingissues of Defence/Foreign, Currency andcommunication with itself.

Salient Points of the Cabinet MissionPlan were:




Union Legislature and Union Executive. Three subjects as aforesaidNo parity- this was a critical element.

The Cabinet Mission Plan did not provideany parity for Hindus and Muslims at thecentre. The representation remained asbefore according to the Communal Award.

Grouping Scheme: This envisaged Muslimmajority provinces in the West and Eastforming groups with a group legislature anda group constitution. These were organizedas Sections A, B and C.

Residuary Powers: Residuary powers werevested in the provinces. The provincescould – and this became the main pincherlater- opt out under 19(V) of the CabinetMission Plan.

This plan was accepted by the MuslimLeague at Jinnah’s insistence, andprovisionally accepted by the CongressParty. However in July of 1946 Nehrudropped a bombshell when he declared thatthe Congress was not bound by anyagreements and that it would decide thefate of India in the constituent assemblyitself. Perhaps more importantly Nehruinterpreted – as did Gandhi- 19(v)differently from the way Cabinet MissionPlan intended it and how Jinnah acceptedit. They read it to mean that provinceswere free to remain out of the Sections abinitio. The correct interpretation as legal


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advice from His Majesty’s Government alsoaffirmed was that the provinces would formgroups and each province, after theelections, would have the right to opt outof a group. Thus Nehru sought to deny whatwas the main attraction of the plan for theMuslim League and Jinnah. This forcedJinnah to back out of his earlier agreementon the basis of the Cabinet Mission plan.

Wavell’s letter to Pethick Lawrence isrevealing:

"The strong reaction by Gandhi to mysuggestion that Congress should make theirassurance about the grouping categoricalshows how well justified Jinnah was todoubt their previous assurances on thesubject. It is to my mind convincingevidence that Congress always meant to usetheir position in the interim Government tobreak up the Muslim League and in theconstituent assembly to destroy thegrouping scheme which was the one effectivesafeguard for the Muslims’2

For the first time in anuncharacteristic move, Jinnah called for anationwide civil disobedience by the Muslim2 (Mansergh) Wavell to Pethick Lawrence,Mansergh, Transfer of power Page 323



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League. The league had till then neverresorted to unconstitutional means, but asJinnah put it, the British and the Congresshad long held the gun to their head, andnow they had forged a pistol too. For a lawabiding constitutionalist like Jinnah, thecivil disobedience was in of itself apistol as is apparent by his statementwhich clearly calls for a non-violentpeaceful mass civil disobedience movement.Some historians have tried to liken theanalogy to physical violence, but theirclaim is unfounded. For the most of thecities, especially where Jinnah wasphysically present, the direct action dayon 16th August 1946, remained peaceful, butin Calcutta horrible violence broke outbetween Hindus and Muslims. The CongressPress tried to blame this on the League andits Bengali leader Hussain ShaheedSuhrawardy.

Wavell’s letter to Pethick Lawrencesuggested that there was ’no satisfactoryevidence to that effect’ and that’appreciably more Muslims were killed thanHindus’ in the Calcutta riots. Had it beenorganized on purpose by the Muslim leagueministry clearly, that wouldn’t have beenthe case. There is much about the Calcuttakillings that exists in the Indianconsciousness that is just plain untrue.For one thing, the Indian version of events

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is as inverted as the official accounts ofthat blighted day that exist in Pakistan.Contrary to what the Indians hold, allhistorians now agree that the massacre inCalcutta was primarily of Muslims and notHindus.

Perhaps, revisiting this seeping woundwill help heal other wounds that exist inthe fractured polity of the subcontinent.The official Indian nationalist mythologyconjures up two villains of the DirectAction Day fiasco — Mahomed Ali Jinnah andHuseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy — ironically twoof the most liberal leaders thrown up byMuslim India. It is forgotten that in thegood work Gandhi is rightly credited within Calcutta and other places, he was aidedby Suhrawardy, and yet Suhrawardy isdirectly blamed by Indian nationalistauthors for planning and executingviolence. Similarly, if Gandhi was thegreat non-violent agitator, Jinnah wasconstitutionally non-violent and incapableof violence.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had famouslyburied the Cabinet Mission Plan with hisstatement that Congress would go into theConstituent Assembly unfettered byagreements. Nehru had, during the course ofhis discussions earlier in the year, toldthe British that the Muslim League was not


progressive enough to carry out ‘directaction’. He had calculated along with otherCongress leaders that as a party committedto constitutional politics, the MuslimLeague did not have the organisation or themanpower to carry out a civil disobediencemovement. Nehru was right of course exceptthat it was precisely this fact that led toan otherwise peaceful civil disobediencemovement degenerating into total communalbreakdown in Calcutta. The Congressremained convinced that if they were firm,Jinnah would back down from the brink.Jinnah, on his part, seems to have beenconvinced that if he threatened civildisobedience, the Congress wouldreconsider. Thus, when Jinnah and Nehru meton the evening of August 15, 1946, both menexpected the other to back down. Each madea terrible error by underestimating theother’s resolve.

Jinnah left the program for the dayvague in the hope that Congress and theBritish would relent. This view iscorroborated by Maulana Azad who alsowondered — in hindsight — how aconstitutional politician like Jinnahresorted to mass politics and concludedthat Jinnah was driven along a course thathe was reluctant to and, at any rate,understood little of. On August 14,explaining that direct action did not mean


direct action in any form but a peacefulhartal, Jinnah said, “I enjoin upon theMuslims to carry out the instructions andabide by them strictly and conductthemselves peacefully and in a disciplinedmanner.” H V Hodson, the British ReformsCommissioner and a student of Indianpolitics, wrote in his book The GreatDivide that “the working committee followedup by calling on Muslims throughout Indiato observe August 16th as Direct ActionDay. On that day, a meeting would be heldall over the country to explain theLeague’s resolution. These meetings andprocessions passed off — as was manifestlythe central League leaders’ intention —without more than commonplace and limiteddisturbance with one vast and tragicexception. What happened was more thananyone could have foreseen.” 3

The customary Indian accusation that theMuslim League planned and executed themassacre of innocents in Calcutta does notstand the test of facts. Lord Wavell wroteon August 21 that “the estimate ofcasualties is 3,000 dead and 17,000injured. The Bengal Congress is convincedthat all the trouble was deliberatelyengineered by the Muslim League ministrybut no satisfactory evidence to that effect3 (Hodson, 1997) Page 166


has reached me yet. It is said that thedecision to have a public holiday on August16 was the cause of trouble, but I thinkthis is very farfetched. There was a publicholiday in Sindh and there was no troublethere. At any rate, whatever the causes ofthe outbreak, when it started, the Hindusand Sikhs were every bit as fierce as theMuslims. The present estimate is thatappreciably more Muslims were killed thanthe Hindus”4

This was confirmed by Sardar Patel’sletter, where he gloated about more, manytimes more, Muslim casualties than Hindus.This letter is quoted by renowned Indianhistorian Sumit Sarkar on page 432 of hisbook Modern India: 1885-1947. One of thebig gaping holes in the Indian nationalistversion of history is that while allaccounts seem to indicate that Muslims werearmed with sticks, according to Sir FrancisTuker, “buses and taxis were charging aboutloaded with Sikhs and Hindus armed withswords, iron bars and firearms”. Who thenwas arming the Hindus and Sikhs?

The truth is that the Muslim Leaguecould not afford mass-scale Hindu-Muslimviolence in Calcutta or in India.Suhrawardy was in power through a cross-

4(Mansergh) page 274, Volume VIII, Transfer ofPower Papers


communal ministry, which depended as muchon Hindu support as it did on Muslimsupport. At the national level, after thecollapse of the Cabinet Mission Plan,Jinnah’s strategy was to hold out from theinterim government by pitching extremedemands. After being tainted with the samebrush as Congress, Jinnah could no longerhold onto his earlier demand of Congress-League parity in the interim government orthat, having swept Muslim seats, Leaguealone had the right to nominate Muslims tothe interim cabinet. Wavell — who absolvedthe League privately of the blame forCalcutta killings — used the killings as anexcuse to go ahead with the transfer ofpower to a Congress-only cabinet.5

Ironically, for all the later propagandaagainst the Muslim League on account ofDirect Action Day blitz, the Congressmouthpiece in Bombay, declared a weeklater:

“The worst enemies of the Muslim Leaguecannot help envying the leadership of Mr.Jinnah...cataclysmic transformation of theLeague from the reactionary racket of theMuslim Nawabs, Noons, and Knights into arevolutionary mass organisation dedicated,by word if not be deed, to an anti-Imperialist struggle, compels us to express5


the sneaking national wish that a diplomatand strategist of Jinnah’s proven calibrewere at the helm of the Indian NationalCongress. There is no denying the fact thatby his latest master-stroke of diplomacy,Jinnah has outbid, outwitted andoutmanoeuvred the British and Congressalike and confounded the common nationalindictment that the Muslim League is aparasite of British Imperialism.”

In fact, the opposite was true. Jinnahhad been outwitted by both Congress and theBritish in Calcutta who had managed tosully the pristine reputation of apolitician who throughout his life had beenknown for his secular and constitutionalapproach to politics. A G Noorani writesthat Jinnah gambled twice over; first inimagining that Congress would share powerand thus avert partition… and next in notreckoning with the predictable consequencesof partition.6

He was now branded a communalist, hate-monger and a mass murderer. Unsourced lineslike “we shall have India divided ordestroyed” are attributed to him eventhough there is no record of him saying anykind of it. Reliance instead is placed onthe highly partisan account given byMargaret Bourke-White who was a devotee of

6 (Noorani, 2010) Page 158


Mahatma Gandhi and whose account failsverification not the least because she wasactually not where she claimed to be thatday. Thus a caricature.

In this, however, Jinnah only had himselfto blame. He had tragically miscalculatedthe power of mob hysteria. As a much youngerman, Jinnah had been prophetic in hispredictions about the consequences of mobhysteria when he warned Gandhi in hisletter:

“I thank you for your kind suggestionoffering me ‘to take my share in the newlife that has opened up before thecountry’. If by ‘new life’ you mean yourmethods and your programme, I am afraid Icannot accept them, for I am fullyconvinced that it must lead to disaster.But the actual new life that has opened upbefore the country is that we are facedwith a government that pays no heed to thegrievances, feelings and sentiments of thepeople; that our own countrymen aredivided; the moderate party is still goingwrong; that your methods have alreadycaused split and division in almost everyinstitution that you have approachedhitherto, and in the public life of thecountry not only amongst Hindus and Muslimsbut between Hindus and Hindus and Muslimsand Muslims and even between fathers and


sons; people generally are desperate allover the country and your extreme programmehas for the moment struck the imaginationmostly of the inexperienced youth and theignorant and the illiterate. All this meanscomplete disorganisation and chaos. Whatthe consequence of this may be, I shudderto contemplate; but I, for one, amconvinced that the present policy of thegovernment is the primary cause of it alland unless that cause is removed, theeffects must continue. I have no voice orpower to remove the cause; but at the sametime I do not wish my countrymen to bedragged to the brink of a precipice inorder to be shattered. The only way for thenationalists is to unite and work for aprogramme, which is universally acceptablefor the early attainment of completeresponsible government. Such a programmecannot be dictated by any singleindividual, but must have the approval andsupport of all the prominent nationalistleaders in the country; and to achieve thisend I am sure my colleagues and myselfshall continue to work.”

The real tragedy that unfolded on August16, 1946 was that Jinnah had transformedinto precisely the kind of politician hehad warned his old friend Gandhi againstbecoming. He gave up the fine wisdom of theold ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity and


chose instead to walk the perilous courseof disorder and chaos, the world that hedid not and could not understand. TheBritish, of course, took full advantage ofhis predicament. The events that followedshowed what happens when gentlemenaccustomed to constitutional advancethreaten to fight in the streets likerabble. Their bluff is called with terribleconsequences for all.

Muslim League and its leadership hadhoped that by keeping the Pakistan demandvague, and by using the veto, the Leaguewill be able to bring Congress to accede totheir demands at the center, thereby comingto a final settlement with the League withrespect to the future of the Muslims withinthe Indian Union.

Pakistan did not fulfill Muslim League’sagenda. Its real constituents were theIndian Muslims, whose problems Pakistandidn’t solve. Hence Muslim League’sstrategy failed, and Jinnah was handed aPakistan he never wanted.

Not an ideological position

‘’Muslim League cannot agree to the partition ofBengal and the Punjab. It cannot be justified historically,economically, geographically, politically or morally. These







provinces have built up their respective lives for nearly acentury’ (M.A. Jinnah, the President of the MuslimLeague, Mid May 1947, in a letter to LordMountbatten)

India and Pakistan do not disagree onwhat they consider the essentials of the twonation theory, but while in India it is asymbol of exclusivism and communalism, inPakistan it is part of the Islamicideological narrative. The Two NationTheory, as adopted by Jinnah and the MuslimLeague in 1940, was a mere restatement ofthe minority problem in national terms andnot a clarion call, to use Dr Ayesha Jalal’svocabulary, for partition. What Jinnah wasaiming for was what in recent years has beencoined as ‘consociationalism’, a powersharing between disparate ethnic andcommunal groups in multinational andmultiethnic states. Though the term wascoined only a decade or so ago,consociationalism as a political system isquite old and is tried and tested in stateslike The Netherlands, Switzerland andCanada.

When the Quaid-e-Azam articulated theTwo Nation Theory, he referred to language,culture, family laws and historicalantecedents. He was, as an adroit lawyer,making the case for changing the status of

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a minority to that of a nation and not forseparation of Islam from India as isalleged by his detractors. On the Muslimside the first articulation of the TwoNation Theory came from the famous Muslimmodernist, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, who decidedafter the experience of Urdu-Hindicontroversy of 1867 that Muslims and Hinduswere two separate nations, and were liketwo eyes of India, who should havesovereign parity. When Congress was foundedby A O Hume (1885), Sir Syed Ahmed Khanpersuaded most of the Muslims not to jointhe Congress Party because he felt theMuslims were not ready educationallysocially, and politically to face the Hinducommunity in the mainstream of politicsyet. He was supported in these views byother Muslim modernists of the time likeSyed Ameer Ali. The two nation theoryfinally reached a culmination in the formof the separate electorates which weredemanded by a delegation of the Muslimelite, and intelligentsia in their meetingwith Viceroy Minto. Lord Curzon’s partitionof Bengal was also on the same lines.Partition of Bengal was annulled due toSwadeshi movement.

The All India Muslim League was foundedwith the express purpose of safeguardingMuslim interests in a united India. Like


the Congress Party, it started off as aparty loyal to British Government. By 1913,the League was persuaded by Mahomed AliJinnah of the Congress Party to abandon itspro-British stance and assume a stancewhich was more in line with the Congress.He was unable however to budge the leagueon its stance on separate electorates. In1916 Mahomed Ali Jinnah managed to bringtogether the League and the Congress on oneplatform working together for theIndependence of India. During the KhilafatMovement and the non-cooperation movement,the League became sidelined when Gandhi ledCongress went over the league and madealliances with the Khilafat Conference andJamiat-e-ulema-Hind, two radically Islamicorganizations agitating for the safeguardof the Islamic institution of Khilafat.

By 1928 there were two factions of theMuslim League… Pro-British faction lead bySir Muhammad Shafi and the Pro-Congressfaction led by Mahomed Ali Jinnah. AfterJinnah’s brief exit from all India politicsin 1931, the League virtually ceased toexist. By 1935 the beleaguered leaguerswere clamouring for Jinnah to come back. In1935 Jinnah emerged out of his self-imposedexile to reorganize the league. With theexit of Shafi, Jinnah had a free hand, andfrom 1935-1937 Jinnah and the League werethe staunchest supporters of the efforts of


the Congress Party inside and outside thecentral legislative body.

As mentioned above in1930 in Allahabad,Dr. Muhammad Iqbal presiding over theleague session, first gave the idea of aMuslim state in the northwest of Indiawithin or without the British India. He wasclearly talking about an autonomous MuslimProvince within the union. This idea hadhitherto been unarticulated, but it wasalready there in many different forms. Thedemand for autonomy had always been therein the North West, and Iqbal was onlygiving it a more concrete picture. Iqbal’sconcern was clearly the Muslim Majorityareas, and not the muslims in Hindumajority areas. Hence Iqbal’s view was incontradiction to the officially statedLeague position.

The first elections held under theGovernment of India act 1935 saw Congressemerging as the majority party. It won 711out of total of 1585 seats, and could formgovernment in 5/11 provinces without thesupport of any party. Out of these 711seats only 26 seats were Muslim seats,thereby increasing Congress’s reliance onlocal Hindu leaders, which allowed fortheir agenda to be imposed on the Congress.

Muslim League on the other hand did wellon the Muslim seats in the Hindu Majority


provinces winning 29 out of 35 seats in theUP. The league however couldn’t do wellagainst the regional parties in MuslimMajority areas. The Congress refused tocome to an arrangement with the MuslimLeague, choosing instead Jamiat-e-Ulema-Hind for partnership through Azad. This wasa death blow to the League and itsleadership who were at this point decidedlypro-Congress. On 22nd December 1939, Leagueand its allies, the Scheduled CasteFederation and Justice Party of the TamilNadu, celebrated the day of deliverancefrom Congress rule.

Nehru-Jinnah Correspondence isespecially vital in this regard. Nehru hadmocked the League as an elitistorganization and asked Jinnah to ’depend onthe league’s inherent strength’. Jinnah hadresponded in kind informing Nehru that fromnow on he would only depend on his inherentstrength.

The League leadership had realizedthrough experience with Congress, that inorder to make good on its claim ofrepresentation of South Asian Muslims, itwould need to rally the Muslim Majorityareas behind it. In order to do that itrequired a slogan which would be vagueenough to bring an overwhelming mass of theMuslim majority areas behind the league.Jinnah started by luring the regional


politicians into his fold. First cameSikandar Hayat of Punjab, and soon tofollow him was FazlulHaq of Bengal. Soonthe regional parties who had defeated theleague in the elections were ready to comeunder the league’s banner.

League’s transformation was complete in1940 when it adopted Iqbal’s slogan ofseparate Muslim majority state(s). The twomen who moved this resolution were the newentrants into the League, Sikandar Hayatand FazlulHaq. The Lahore Resolutionpresented a vague demand which did notspecify the nature of the Muslim majoritystate(s). No references were made to Islam,and the issue presented was a cultural oneinstead of a religious one. Needless to saythis resolution was in contradiction to thestated objective of the League as it didnot aspire to solve the problems ofLeague’s real constituents, the Muslims inHindu Majority areas.

The name Pakistan was imposed on theLeague by the Congress press, and the Leagueleadership after initial protestationsaccepted it. Elections of 1945-1946 sawMuslim League sweep the Muslim vote. Theturn around was miracle in the MuslimMajority areas. In Sindh and Bengal theleague had enough seats to form ministriesof their own. In NWFP and Punjab it still


turned out to be the largest single party,but was upstaged in the assembly bycoalition ministries of Congress/Khudaikhidmatgars in NWFP, and the Unionist Partyin Punjab.

Having won 445 out of a total 490 Muslimseats, the League was now able to layexclusive claim to speaking for the Muslimsof India.

Much of what Jinnah actually wanted isconfirmed by one of the most extraordinarypieces of prescience left behind by H VHodson, who was the Reforms Commissioner inIndia in 1941. Hodson wrote in clear termsvery soon after the Lahore Resolution thatevery Muslim Leaguer from Jinnah down tothe last one interpreted the Pakistan ideaas consistent with the idea of aconfederation of India. Hodson believedthat “Pakistan” was a “revolt againstminority status” and a call for powersharing and not just defining rules ofconduct how a majority (in this case Hindu)would govern India. He spoke of an acuterealisation that the minority status withall the safeguards could only amount to a“Cinderella with trade union rights andradio in the kitchen but still below thestairs.” Jinnah’s comment was that Hodsonhad finally understood what the League wasafter, but that he could not publicly comeout with these fundamental truths, as these


were likely to be misunderstood at thetime.7

It is important, however, to note thatJinnah’s August 11 speech and all hispronouncements thereafter made itabsolutely clear that the Two Nation Theorywould have no role to play in theprinciples of citizenship of the new state.Significantly, after partition, Jinnah wentback to using the word ‘community’ forHindus and Muslims instead of nations.

The concept of citizenship to Jinnah theliberal — a keen student of British history— could not be fettered by issues ofidentity. He wanted Pakistan to be animpartial inclusive democracy rather than anexclusivist theocracy, which regrettablyPakistan has become increasingly over thelast 30 odd years.

Jaswant Singh's 670-page book8 in 2009 onPakistan's founding father reignited thedebate on Partition. From an academic pointof view, however, he doesn't seem to havesaid anything out of the ordinary. Much ofthis was first stated by Maulana Azad in his"India Wins Freedom". In the interveningyears between Azad and Jaswant Singh,several perceptive historians and authors,many from India, also presented a similar7 (Jalal, 1985)8 (Singh, 2009)


view of history, chief amongst them H MSeervai with his classic "Partition ofIndia: Legend and Reality". However, thereis a new angle in Singh's biography that isas much an indication of where things aremoving in India as much as it is ahistorical context.

India today with its rising middle-class, secular constitution and a strongcapitalist economy was Jinnah's India notGandhi's or Nehru's, whether Indians caredto admit as much or not. Karan Thapar hadwritten as much in an article back in thebeginning of this decade. It wasn't asurprise then that Thapar was the first oneto interview Jaswant Singh after his bookwas released. My feeling is that India –with its economic gains and a confident newmiddle-class -- is looking for analternative founding father and moreappropriately the founding father it lost.In the 1930s and the 1940s, the Hindubourgeoisie was not nearly as mature –though much more so than its Muslimcounterpart -- to look up to a successfuland secular barrister from the minoritycommunity as its leader. Things aredifferent today though. The new middle-class in India finds itself alienated fromits heroes – if only subconsciously.

Gandhi just doesn't cut it – hisrejection of materialism, his village


philosophy, his glorification of povertyand his idealisation of ancient Hindusociety, things that made him so popular inhis time are exactly what are alienatinghim from this class. He can be revered butnever emulated. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru,though secular, has two major drawbacks: hewas born to considerable wealth and he wasa socialist. For many Nehru represents –despite his secularism and role as a globalstatesman -- the wrong kind of politician,a politician who has never had to work aday and therefore holds those who do workfor a living in contempt. The ironman,Sardar Patel, has been played up as analternative but he has been appropriated bythe Hindu nationalist crowd and the havocHindu nationalists wreak on not onlyminorities but most things western (forexample, their opposition to Valentine'sDay) automatically distances this new classfrom Patel. Maulana Azad couldn't possiblybe an idol for this class because he wasfrom the clerical Muslim class andrepresents in the Indian mind all thestereotypes associated with a Muslim.

Jinnah stands in contrast to all of thetraditional founders of India. He was fromthe middle-class and was entirely self-made. Through sheer hard work and some luckhe reached the top of his game both as a


lawyer and a politician. Though a Muslim,he was entirely westernised – perhaps moremodern in every sense of the word than mostIndians and Pakistanis even today -- andknew the ways of the world. He carved outhis space in cosmopolitan Bombay throughhis own efforts and this is something thatmost in the Indian bourgeoisie have alwaysadmired about him even if they disagreedwith his post-1937 politics. He was part ofthe Congress when Gandhi was still in SouthAfrica and when Nehru was in boardingschool in England. His legislativecontributions to India are second to none.He might well have been the founding fatherof an independent India -- as SarojiniNaidu had predicted -- had Gandhi notarrived on the scene and pulled the rugfrom under him. Jinnah's support for BhagatSingh is also increasingly underlined. Thelatter is seen -- despite his Marxism -- asan icon of a new Indian youth. Now free menand finally successful, the Indian middle-class is doing what free men are known todo – questioning officially sanctionedviews of history. It is to this class thatJaswant Singh has spoken.

This also indicates an internal strugglewithin the Bharatiya Janata Party. The BJPhas been successful in the past by bringingtogether the various anti-Congress elementsin India. The party itself has two or more


distinct groups -- one of which is led bythe RSS-inspired Hindutvist ideologues.Their vision of the BJP is that of a partyof the Hindu right and this is the wing thatchampions crazies like Varun Gandhi –ironically a great grandson of JawaharlalNehru. The other group consists of thoselike Jaswant Singh who realise that for theBJP to remain relevant it needs to become aparty of the centre or the centre-right.They have correctly analysed that in the21st-century India it needs to pose analternative to the Congress that is secularand business-friendly. It is they who wantto re-package Pakistan's founding father –hitherto abused, demonised and denigrated ascommunal -- as a secular founding-father ofIndia who was lost to bad policies. This isa prospect that needs to be welcomed by all.India is too big a country to have one ortwo visions alone. That it is now welcomingback into its fold its prodigal son and oneof its most successful patriots can meangood things for the future. 9

But where does it leave us Pakistanis?After all Jinnah of Pakistan did happen.And he did create our country. It certainlycan't be that we agree with Jaswant Singh's9 Jaswant Singh’s book is not the first onereconsidering Jinnah’s role. See Asiananda’sBook (Asiananda, 2005)


biography and yet hold on to our bankruptconception of Pakistan and Nazaria-e-Pakistan based on some undefined 'ideology'which our lawmakers take oath on. It is nowtime to dismantle the lies and buildPakistan on Jinnah's vision. It wouldrequire taking back the ground given tothose opponents of Jinnah, the maulanas andthe ulema of South Asian Islam. The goodnews is that here too we have a bourgeoisiethat is increasingly dictated by the globalworld and the more they realise thedividend that peace and modernity holds,the more they will underscore the visiongiven by Mahomed Ali Jinnah on August 11,1947, and in several other speeches of aPakistan that is inclusive, tolerant,secular and at peace within and without.There is no other way and the futurebelongs to Jinnah.

Islamic Nationalism

Unfortunately, those who make thecreation of Pakistan controversial rely onarguments favoured by the religious right-wing in the country, i.e. Pakistan was amillennial dream of Muslims to establishtheir exclusive hegemony in the name ofIslam. This is a lie that shows itself as alie the more our ideologues insist on it.Pakistan, like any other state on the


world’s map, is an accident of history,determined by forces and events that hadlittle to do with a poet dreaming amillennial dream about Muslims. Pakistanwas not founded in the name of Islam orreligion. The surest test for this is if wesubstitute Buddhist for Muslim in theequation, it would have made littledifference. In fact, to unite a communitydivided horizontally and vertically intoShias, Sunnis, Deobandis, Ahmedis, Ismailisand irreligious Muslims, the demand had tobe sufficiently general and devoid ofreligious dogma — for that would lead tothe obvious question: “Whose Islam”?Partition happened because the secondlargest communal group, numbering no lessthan 90 million, in India formed majoritiesin four provinces of British India and, onthe basis of this majority, they wanted afederal constitution that gave theseprovinces a uniform measure of autonomy andresiduary powers in a constitution with aneffective but limited centre. Ultimately,the final shape of the compromise, i.e. theCabinet Mission Plan, was rejected by themajority Congress leadership. Inretrospect, this was a good idea for allconcerned. It is argued by some sectionsamongst Indian Muslims that India’spartition was actually the partition of


India’s Muslims who were divided first intwo and then three. Without commenting onthe explicit irony in this statement, itwould have been disastrous for both Indiaand Pakistan had India stayed together inany form. For India, it would have meantperpetual constitutional and politicalconflict between 60 percent Hindus and 30percent Muslims and between Hindu-majorityand Muslim-majority provinces.

The success that India has had increating a secular democracy has beenlargely because it has manageable Muslimnumbers, hence Nehru and Patel’s insistenceon partition. Indeed, the only Muslim-majority region of Kashmir in India is onewhere India’s unity is tested. Similarly,the rigours of state building have forcedthe lower peasantry of West Punjab to fillin those professions that were, till 1947,considered Hindu vocations such as bankingor commerce, which have helped — in SumitSarkar’s words — to create a real Muslimbourgeoisie in the subcontinent. Some inthis class now decry Pakistan unable toappreciate the benefit they have gottenfrom partition. The searing irony of courseis that certain half-educated, self-proclaimed pseudo-liberals who questiontoday a process that had roots in historywould have been employed as little morethan peons in the local seth’s little


ginning mill had it not been for Pakistan.Of course, had Pakistan and Indiareconciled with each other and not made ahatch job of the Kashmir issue, theadvantages of partition would have beenmanifold more and both countries would haveevolved towards each other instead of awayfrom it. Pakistan is a legal nation state,one of the two successor states toerstwhile British India and duly recognisedby all countries of the world. A legalnation state does not need to constructideological frontiers, which, for the mostpart, are a fallacy and not based onanything concrete.

Ironically, however, this view cutsagainst the grain of the rationale forPakistan that was given by its foundingfather, Quaid-e-Azam Mahomed Ali Jinnah,who repeatedly described Pakistan as aHindu-Muslim settlement and necessary forpeace, tranquility and harmony for allpeople in the subcontinent. Far fromimagining India as an ideological enemy,Jinnah spoke of a South Asian MonroeDoctrine, which would allow India andPakistan to stand together against externalthreats. At least till December 1946,Jinnah was still pleading for a judicialcommission to resolve disputes betweenCongress and the League to revive the


Cabinet Mission Plan. Jinnah always had asense of South Asian unity above thesuccessor states. After Pakistan wascreated, Jinnah chose a Hindu, JagannathAzad, to write Pakistan’s first nationalanthem, indicating the inclusive andpluralistic nature of the new state.

At the very least, he was not concernedabout Pakistan’s ideological frontiers whenhe agreed to Gandhi spending his last daysin Pakistan. Gandhi would have had he notbeen so tragically assassinated.Incidentally, 64 years to this day, Jinnahsent Gandhi’s son a message of condolencedescribing his loss to be the “loss ofhumanity”. For three days, Radio Pakistan’sprogramming was completely dedicated to thelife and times of Mahatma Gandhi. Yet, therewas not even a whimper of protest from thefounding fathers about the invasion ofideological frontiers. Indeed, Pakistan’sflag flew half-mast for three days inmourning.

The great irony of this ideologicaldebate is that the self-styled champions ofPakistan’s ideological frontiers are thosewho were the staunchest opponents of thecreation of Pakistan. One need not remindthe reader that Maulana Maududi proudlydescribed the idea of Pakistan as “Na-Pakistan” and slandered the Quaid-e-Azammany times in public. Maulana Mufti Mahmud,


the father of Maulana Fazlur Rehman,declared in 1971, “Thank God we were notpart of the sin of making Pakistan.” Yetanother self-proclaimed champion ofPakistan’s ideological frontiers was AghaShorish Kashmiri, who belonged to theMajlis-e-Ahrar, which opposed the creationof Pakistan tooth and nail and afterpartition created the whole anti-Ahmeddiyasentiment to destabilise Pakistan. The roleof the ulema and parties like Majlis-e-Ahraris well documented in the Munir Report.

What was Jinnah after?

The crucial point in understanding whereJinnah was coming from is his famous 14points which deserve a reproduction as awhole:

1. The form of the future constitution should be federal with the residuary powersvested in the provinces.

2. A uniform measure of autonomy shall be granted to all provinces.

3. All legislatures in the country and other elected bodies shall be constituted on the definite principle of adequate and effective representation of minorities in


every province without reducing the majority in any province to a minority or even equality.

4. In the Central Legislative, Muslim representation shall not be less than one-third.

5. Representation of communal groups shall continue to be by means of separate electorate as at present, provided it shallbe open to any community at any time to abandon its separate electorate in favor ofa joint electorate.

6. Any territorial distribution that might at any time be necessary shall not in any way affect the Muslim majority in the Punjab, Bengal and the North West Frontier Province.

7. Full religious liberty, i.e. liberty of belief, worship and observance, propaganda,association and education, shall be guaranteed to all communities.

8. No bill or any resolution or any part thereof shall be passed in any legislature or any other elected body if three-fourth of the members of any community in that particular body oppose such a bill resolution or part thereof on the ground


that it would be injurious to the interestsof that community or in the alternative, such other method is devised as may be found feasible and practicable to deal withsuch cases.

9. Sindh should be separated from the Bombay presidency.

10. Reforms should be introduced in the North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan on the same footing as in the other provinces.

11. Provision should be made in the constitution giving Muslims an adequate share, along with the other Indians, in allthe services of the state and in local self-governing bodies having due regard to the requirements of efficiency.

12. The constitution should embody adequatesafeguards for the protection of Muslim culture and for the protection and promotion of Muslim education, language, religion, personal laws and Muslim charitable institution and for their due share in the grants-in-aid given by the state and by local self-governing bodies.


13. No cabinet, either central or provincial, should be formed without there being a proportion of at least one-third Muslim ministers.

14. No change shall be made in the constitution by the Central Legislature except with the concurrence of the State's contribution of the Indian Federation.

Points 1, 2, 3, 7, 8 and 14 representJinnah’s own views on what the constitutionof India should look like. The reference toseparate electorates was to rope in the pro-British Muslim League faction led by SirMuhammad Shafi but was amended by Jinnah toinclude a room for eventual adoption ofjoint electorates. Jinnah was looking fortruly federal constitution for India wherethe religion of its citizens would no longerbe a bar in real terms against themcontributing in full measure. In this themost important point was the reservation ofresiduary powers with the provinces. Allsubsequent actions – including the adoptionof Lahore Resolution- have to be seen in thelight of these 14 points which representedthe sine qua non and the irreducible minimumthat Jinnah had brought Muslims to concedeon in order to achieve Hindu Muslim Unity.

Was Pakistan created in the name of Islam?

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