Speakers call for implementing Jillani’s landmark judgment of 2014

Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan was a vision of a modern democratic state where the parliament should be sovereign, said Prof Dr Syed Jaffar Ahmed on Wednesday.

Dr Ahmed, director of the Institute of Historical & Social Research and dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Sohail University, was addressing the sixth instalment of the Ziauddin University Dialogues that was titled ‘Jinnah’s Vision of Pakistan: You are free to go to your temples’.

The session was moderated by Syed Muaz Shah, director of the ZU Centre for Human Rights and Faculty of Law. The dialogue was organised to get opinions and analyses of experts on Jinnah’s vision about religious freedom, democracy, equality, rights of minorities, and social and cultural differences among ethnicities.

Talking about the historical context of Jinnah’s presidential address to the first constituent assembly on August 11, 1947, Dr Ahmed said the Quaid gave a vision of future Pakistan.

He said that the main crux of Jinnah’s speech was that why India was partitioned, and at that point he clarified that we partitioned because of the angularities of minority and majority. “Mr Jinnah was trying to convince people that in India there was a likelihood of the majority becoming a permanent political majority, and there was a possibility of the cultural minority becoming a permanent political minority.

“If communities are divided along cultural lines, and if those cultural lines transform in political divisions, definitely those divisions become permanent, then we can’t think of one nation. “There’s an example of the subcontinent where we failed to build as a nation, and then we have Pakistan, where apart from majority and minority, we all have equal rights and opportunities to grow further as a nation.

“Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan was a vision of a modern democratic state where the parliament should be sovereign. When Pakistan came into being, three of the four governors of the country were Christians. All three commandants of chief of the different forces were Christians, the law minister of Pakistan was Hindu.

“And it would’ve been the same law minister who would’ve presented the constitutional bill in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, but unfortunately, Jinnah sir died in the three months after the declaration of the country. This shows that Mr Jinnah was quite clear about the equalities of minorities and majorities.”

Talking about the Objectives Resolution, he said: “It does talk about the people, the federation and democracy. See the framing of the words ‘sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to Allah Almighty’.

“Congressmen were sitting there, non-Muslims were sitting there in the constituent assembly, and Mr Jinnah was presenting a resolution to them. That’s where the differences started, because it was taken in a wrong context and presented as if we want only Muslims to live in this country, which is totally wrong. Quaid-e-Azam did talk about Islam but he never discourages the other religions of this country.”

Using the lens of the landmark judgement delivered by the then chief justice Tassaduq Hussain Jillani in 2014, Peter Jacob said: “It’s been seven years, and two governments have completed their tenure and yet failed to work on the implementation of the Jillani judgement to set up a special task force for social and religious harmony, promote peace through education, set up a task force to protect minorities’ worship places, establish a national minorities commission to give them say in policymaking.”

Jacob, executive director of the Centre for Social Justice and chairperson of the Peoples Commission for Minorities Rights, added: “Even after 20 hearings by the Supreme Court and 60 court orders, not even a single cabinet meeting has been called or a parliament has discussed this judgement. They all seem to be so reluctant to implement those orders of the Supreme Court.

“By taking all these in consideration, we can see what has built up over a decade: (i) there’s an extreme discrimination on the basis of religion, (ii) there are certain laws which are instrumentalised by the religious lot here, by the sectarian and violent groups. These are centres of intolerance against minorities. If we take the recent example of the temple destruction at Rahim Yar Khan, the blasphemy law was instrumentalised initially to get people attacked.

“Particularly, in 1992, the movement against the inclusion of a column for religion and national identity, which was mainly led by the Christian lot and later joined by Hindu politicians, besides the civil society of Pakistan, against the system of separate electorates in the country — and that’s how in 2002 you got rid of separate electorates.”

Talking about the Objectives Resolution, he said: “General Ziaul Haq felt himself at liberty to alter the Objectives Resolution, so he removed this term ‘freely practice their religions’ when it comes to minority rights. That’s why the minorities want the guarantees and freedoms they got by law. They actually want them to be practised.

“This policy framework had been forgotten, and an alternative narrative and policy framework was evolved through the decades for Pakistan which did not subscribe to the vision of the democratic state. It’s more a religious state. That’s why you see the imposed identity on the citizens of Pakistan that was perpetuated during that time.

“The struggle is on by civil society. I’m a great admirer of those who led this struggle for the respect of human dignity and rights of all people in the vicinity of Pakistan’s territory. “It’s a great reminder that after 74 years, still we’re in a state of struggle and, hopefully, we’ll win this battle in favour of everyone, for the glory, prosperity and democracy of Pakistan.”