Whether Quaid-i-Azam was secular and wanted a Westernised, liberal polity on the Westminster model or subscribed to the ideology usually associated with the religious right and aspired a state predicated on Islamic principles ipso facto, caused polarisation among the Pakistani literati from the very outset.

Bridging that wedge in the political opinion is far beyond the realm of possibility. Left-liberal side of the ideological spectrum underlines the significance of Quaid-i-Azam’s speech that he delivered to the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947. In that speech, he proposed 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.”

To them, it was a policy statement which made it explicitly clear that Pakistan would be a secular state. Also, the way Quaid-i-Azam led his life, provides hardly an inkling to his being religious. Of course, he fought for the rights of the Muslims, but he did not advocate for Pakistan to be a religious state. Similarly, his acerbic exchange with Raja Sahib Mahmudabad (Muhammad Amir Ahmad Khan) is frequently referred to, in which Raja Sahib asked him to promulgate Islam but Quaid-i-Azam severely remonstrated him. He was quite weary of the sectarianism having pervaded to the very core of Muslim society, which would have fissiparous repercussions.

The relations got so strained that the speaking terms between the two were severed, not to be restored again. These views are presented in the writings of liberal/ secularist segment of Pakistani intelligentsia. Justice Muhammad Munir’s book, From Jinnah to Zia epitomises the liberal version associated with the politics of Quaid-i-Azam. Of course, he is not the only one projecting the liberal side of Quaid-i-Azam’s persona. A string of writers from Mohammadali Carim Chagla (1900-1981) and Hector Bolitho to Stanley Wolpert, Ajit Javed, Jaswant Singh, Ian Bryant Wells and Liaquat Merchant have foregrounded the plurality of his character.

Ayesha Jalal’s The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and Demand for Pakistan stands in lone splendour vis a vis all these works. Despite several hard-hitting detractors of this book, it is the most critically acclaimed account on Jinnah’s politics.

Markedly different from these writers are Sharif Al Mujahid, ZA Sulehri, Sikander Hayat and Riaz Ahmad. They tread the path that highlights Quaid-i-Azam’s separatist character but in their accounts, the question of the nature of the political imagery of Quaid-i-Azam remains ambivalent. They are apologists and don’t brook any equivocation to defend the protagonist. The more important caveat in their assertion is an element of primordiality in their bid to chart the history of inter-communal (Hindus vs Muslims) antagonism which, in fact, cracked open the surface in the last quarter of the 19^th Century, when Ayra Samaj was conjured into existence and started campaigns like Shuddhi and Sanghtan. Thus, communal antagonism became ubiquitous in Northern India, including the Punjab.

Liberal/ secular views are strongly contested by people from the other side of the ideological divide. Very recently, Saleena Karim’s book, Secular Jinnah and Pakistan: What the Nation Doesn’t Know has been republished by the University of Management and Technology, Lahore. For its Pakistani edition, Prof Salim Mansur Khalid must be commended. He is already working on bringing its Urdu and Sindhi translations that ought to be appreciated too. The 639-page book vigorously confutes the prism of a secular ideology, deployed by the liberals (secularists) to view Quaid-i-Azam’s life, his struggle for a separate Muslim state and his overall vision for that state.

Saleena Karim is a Nottingham-based independent writer and researcher who has authored, two non-fiction books on Pakistan. She has also written a “visionary fiction novel inspired by the Pakistan idea.” The book when published originally seemed to have been conceived as a rejoinder to Justice Munir’s, Jinnah to Zia. The success of that book persuaded the author to add new material specifically on the role of Mountbatten in 1947.

Of great interest is the material regarding the role of Ivor Jennings who was a jurist of repute and once the Master of Clare Hall College, University of Cambridge, for his advisory role in support of Pakistan’s government that perpetuated the dispensation that ensured Ghulam Muhammad’s centrality. What sets this book apart from other critical accounts as well as apologist/ hagiographical narratives on Jinnah is that she sees constant transition in his politics, from being nationalist to the champion of a separate state for the Indian Muslims.

Thus, the author relates the story of Quaid-i-Azam in teleological manner. Simply put, he, according to Karim, started his career in politics as a nationalist and was described as an ambassador for Hindu-Muslim unity because of his success in forging unanimity between Muslim League and Indian National Congress in 1916 at Lucknow. Through the pact concluded at Lucknow, Karim very rightly points out that Jinnah persuasively made Congress leadership to accept Muslim community at par with the Hindus.

Jinnah did not subscribe to Muslims being branded as minority. However, Mohan Das Karamchand Gandhi’s entry into Indian politics disturbed the apple cart of Jinnah’s politics. That happened despite the fact that both Jinnah and Gandhi were nationalists and influenced by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who died in February 1915. It seemed that the two giants of Indian politics could not be contained in a single political party, Congress.

Jinnah was petrified at Gandhi’s tactics of engaging the masses by using Hindu symbols like Raj Rajya, Wardha Scheme, Vidhya Mandir scheme that created communal divisions. Political symbols and strategy should have been culturally and religiously neutral so that it could be acceptable to all communities. Jinnah was also not comfortable with Gandhi’s satyagraha. The term satyagraha (in Sanskrit, holding firmly to the truth) originated in a competition in the news-sheet Indian Opinion in South Africa in 1906. Mr Maganlal Gandhi, grandson of an uncle of Gandhi, came up with the word “sadagraha“ and won the prize. Subsequently, to make it clearer, Gandhi changed it to satyagraha. Such campaigns, which had Hindu connotations, caused consternation to Quaid-i-Azam, who at one time wanted Indian politics to transcend communal and factional confines.

(to be continued)

The writer is a professional historian and an author.  He can be reached at tk393@cam.ac.uk