[p. 496] The long and eventful life of Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1875–1948) began and ended in the city of Karachi, in a predominantly Muslim area on the Arabian Sea. His parents had moved there from the Kathiawar Peninsula of Gujarat to the southeast, and so their eldest son shared with his chief political rival, M. K. Gandhi, a common heritage of ancestral life in that highly political peninsula. Jinnah's father was a restless and ambitious man. Trade drew him to Karachi and enabled him to become one of that city's leading businessmen. He sent his son Muhammad Ali to a Muslim-managed school with classes in English, had him married, then sent him to England for further education at the age of sixteen. Young Jinnah arrived in London to start his studies the year after Gandhi finished his own legal studies and left for home.
Jinnah's legal studies in London developed his keen mind, and the parliamentary elections of 1892 aroused his fighting instincts. Dadabhai Naoroji, the elder statesman of the Congress, ran for Parliament that year in a workingman's district in London on the Liberal ticket. When the Tory prime minister, Lord Salisbury, insulted him with a racial slur, Jinnah joined other Indian students in working for Naoroji's campaign, which was victorious. Meanwhile, Jinnah's mother and wife had died, and when he returned to Karachi in 1896 he found his father deep in business troubles. Rather than go into practice there, where his family had numerous friends, the young lawyer insisted on enrolling as a barrister at the Bombay High Court, where he could work his way up through his own resources. After three lean years, Jinnah's abilities began to receive favorable attention from British officials: first the acting advocate-general, then [p. 497] the head of the judicial administration, and in 1903 the president of the Bombay municipality, who hired him as its attorney. Nattily dressed after the latest English fashion, he gradually became an independent, wealthy, and highly respected member of the Bombay bar. Jinnah's upright character and forthright manner made a lasting impression on the legal community in that sophisticated city.
Once established in his chosen profession, Jinnah began to take an interest in political matters. He joined the Moderate wing of the Congress, attended its annual sessions, and in 1906 acted as the personal secretary of Dadabhai Naoroji, Congress president for that year (see chapter 4). In 1909 the Bombay Presidency's Muslim constituency elected him to the Imperial Legislative Council at Calcutta, where his ability and independence soon won him recognition. He now came into close contact with his fellow legislator from Bombay, G. K. Gokhale (see chapter 4), and a warm friendship grew up between the two men. Both were dedicated to gradually improving the lot of the Indian people through constitutional means. Each admired the other: Jinnah aspired to become “the Muslim Gokhale,” and Gokhale called Jinnah “the best ambassador of Hindu–Muslim unity.”
Jinnah did in fact serve as such an ambassador during the second decade of the twentieth century by joining the Muslim League in 1913 (at the suggestion of Mohamed Ali [see chapter 6]), and working in both Congress and League to bring the two bodies to agree in 1916 to a common national demand for India's self-government within the British Empire. This represented a great change for the Muslim League, and to bring it about Jinnah persuaded Tilak, then president of the Congress, to accept the League's principle that Muslims should continue to be protected from Hindu domination by the three major constitutional safeguards created in 1909 by the British Parliament. These were: separate seats in the provincial and central legislatures, reserved for Muslim legislators only; a somewhat greater proportion of seats than the percentage of Muslims in the total electorate; and the election of Muslim legislators by Muslims alone. This so-called communal electorate was subsequently attacked by Hindus who feared being underrepresented in the legislatures, and it remained a source of bitter controversy for the next thirty years. Jinnah's argument for it resembled Lincoln's defense of majority rule in his First Inaugural Address: for a democracy to function, there should be no permanent majority, but always the possibility that the minority could attract enough support to become a majority.
Jinnah's masterful debating powers were described by Britain's cabinet officer, Secretary of State for India Edwin Montagu, after their 1917 meeting: “They were followed by Jinnah, young, perfectly mannered, impressive looking, armed to the teeth with dialectics.... I was rather tired and I funked him. Chelmsford [the Viceroy] tried to argue with him, and was tied up into knots. Jinnah is a very clever man, and it is, of course, an outrage that such a man should have no chance of running the affairs of his own country.”
The years after the end of World War I saw the rise of Gandhi as the leader of the national movement. Jinnah, however, had no use for the new techniques of non-cooperation and civil disobedience, nor had he much liking for the defense of the prewar [p. 498] status of the Ottoman caliph, which Gandhi and Mohamed Ali were making the basis for Hindu–Muslim unity. The unrealistic aims of this movement, the unqualified acceptance of Gandhi's leadership, and the confidence that the mere withdrawal of the British would enable Hindus and Muslims to settle their differences all struck Jinnah as dangerous for the future of the country.
Gandhi's movement for achieving brotherhood between India's two major religious communities through popular anti-government agitation did prove unrealistic. Nevertheless it displaced Jinnah from his role as mediator between the Congress and the League. Jinnah tried again in 1927 to forge an agreement on a constitutional demand, proposing that the Muslims give up their right to a separate electorate if the Congress would grant them 33 percent of the seats in the national legislature. (At that time they formed 26 percent of the inhabitants of the British-ruled provinces.) Gandhi opposed the plan and wrote, “no special legislation without a change of heart can possibly bring about organic unity,” and the Muslim League split over the issue, leaving Jinnah in political limbo. To add to his troubles, his second wife, a beautiful young Parsi, died at a time when the couple had had a painful separation.
In 1931 Jinnah decided to withdraw completely from India's problems, and settled down to a lucrative law practice in London. Two years later Liaquat Ali Khan (later Pakistan's first prime minister; see chapter 9) urged him to return to India to lead the Muslims and the Muslim League. Jinnah waited for evidence of greater support; when it was forthcoming, he sold his house in London, and in 1935 moved back to Bombay. Parliament's enactment of a new constitution for the governing of India in that year accelerated the tempo of political life, for it enlarged the suffrage from 4 to 10 percent and made the provinces virtually self-governing. The Muslim League fared badly in the elections, however, while the Congress, led by Nehru, captured majorities in six of British India's eleven provinces. At this point Muhammad Iqbal, whose life was nearing its end, wrote Jinnah advising him to turn the League into a body representing the Muslim masses, and to demand the creation of “a free Muslim state or states” in order to ensure the survival and development of Islamic culture and law.
From 1936 to 1946 Jinnah worked tirelessly in province after province to recruit Muslims into the League, so that it could become what it claimed to be: their sole representative. He accused the Congress of anti-Muslim activities, and declared it was a “day of deliverance” for Muslims when the Congress provincial governments resigned in 1939 (in protest against not being consulted when the viceroy declared India at war with Germany). Not until 1940 did he embrace Iqbal’s idea of a separate Muslim polity. He then had the League adopt as its goal the establishment of “independent states” in the northwestern and eastern parts of India, where Muslims formed the majority of the population.
While the entire Congress cadre remained in jail from 1942 to 1945, Jinnah continued to build and organize the Muslim League. As a result, in the central and provincial elections of 1945–1946 it won 460 out of the 533 seats reserved for Muslims. Jinnah's case for Pakistan was now very strong, although the British, the Congress, and some Muslim religious groups remained reluctant to grant it. He now took the momentous step in mid-August 1946 of calling for Muslims to resort to “direct action” to [p. 499] gain their hoped-for national homeland. “This day we bid good-bye to constitutional methods,” he declared. His opponents accused him of unleashing a tide of blood, as killings—of Hindus and Sikhs by Muslims, of Muslims by Hindus and Sikhs—spread across the plains of eastern, northern, and northwestern India. To stop this violence, in the following year the new viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, persuaded the Congress, League, Sikh, and princely leaders to agree that India should undergo a surgical operation—partition into Hindu- and Muslim-majority areas—as soon as possible.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah assumed power at Karachi as governor-general of Pakistan on August 14, 1947. Already ill, he wore himself out trying to meet the new nation's most pressing problems: a shortage of administrative personnel; an influx of millions of refugees into West Pakistan; a war with India over Kashmir; hunger, disease, and poverty. Amidst all these trials, the task of framing a constitution receded into the background. Unfortunately for the land he had worked so hard to see established, and for those Muslims who had hailed him as their Quaid-e Azam (the Great Leader), he died in September 1948.
At the 1928 All Parties National Convention in Calcutta, Jinnah made a strong plea for constitutional guarantees to protect the Muslim minority. At the time he was clearly hoping for unity between Hindus and Muslims, but after all but one of the resolutions he introduced on behalf of the Muslim League were voted down by large majorities, he left the convention. As he boarded the train for Delhi, he said to a Parsi friend, “This is the parting of the ways.”
The Report of the Committee which you appointed has already been read out and placed before you. I am exceedingly sorry that the Report of the Committee is neither helpful nor fruitful in any way whatsoever. I am sure, gentlemen, that you all realize that the present moment is very critical and vital to the interest not only of the Musalmans, but to the whole of India. I think it will be recognized that it is absolutely essential to our progress that Hindu–Muslim Settlement should be reached, and that all communities should live in a friendly and harmonious spirit in this vast country of ours.... I am sure you will ... consider the present situation in which we are working and struggling for freedom and record your vote in favour of [the] modifications proposed, which, I have said before, are ... reasonable and ... enable us to triumph in our cause.
[From The Proceedings of the All Parties National Convention (Allahabad: Rafi Ahmad Kidwai, Secretary, All Parties National Convention, 1929), 78–79.]
Every country struggling for freedom and desirous of establishing a democratic system of Government has had to face the problem of minorities wherever they [p. 500] existed and no constitution, however idealistic it may be, and however perfect from [a] theoretical point of view it may seem will ever receive the support of the minorities unless they can feel that they, as an entity, are secured under the proposed constitution and government and whether a constitution will succeed or not must necessarily depend as a matter of acid test [on] whether the minorities are in fact secure. Otherwise no proper constitution will last but result in a revolution and a civil war....
We are here, as I understand, for the purpose of entering into [a] solemn contract and all parties who enter into it will have to work for it and fight for it together. What we want is that Hindus and Musalmans should march together until our object is obtained.... Do you want or do you not want Muslim India to go along with you? You must remember [that] the two major communities in India—I say this without the slightest disrespect to the other communities like Sikhs, Christians, and Parsis—are the Hindus and Musalmans and naturally therefore these two communities have got to be reconciled and united and made to feel that their interests are common and they are marching together for a common goal.... I am asking for this adjustment [giving Muslims one-third of the seats in the national legislature, keeping residuary powers in the provinces rather than in the central government, along with other safeguards] because I think it is the best and fair to the Musalmans. Look at the constitutional history of Canada and Egypt. The minorities are always afraid of majorities. The majorities are apt to be tyrannical and oppressive, particularly religious majorities, and the minorities therefore have a right to be absolutely secured. Was the adjustment between French Canadians and British [Canadians] arrived at on [a] population basis or on the ground of pure equity? Was the adjustment between the Coptic Christians and Musalmans in Egypt regulated by such considerations? ...
If you do not settle this question today, we shall have to settle it tomorrow, but in the meantime our national interests are bound to suffer. We are all sons of this land. We have to live together. We have to work together and whatever our differences may be let us at any rate not create more bad blood. If we cannot agree, let us at any rate agree to differ but let us part as friends. I once more repeat. Believe me there is no progress for India until the Musalmans and Hindus are united and let no logic, philosophy or squabble stand in the way of our coming to a compromise and nothing will make me more happy than to see the Hindu Muslim Union.
[From The Proceedings of the All Parties National Convention, 92–95.]
The following selection is taken from Jinnah's most famous speech, his presidential address to the annual meeting of the Muslim League at Lahore in March 1940. It is the clearest statement of “the two-nation theory,” that is, the claim that Hindus and Muslims were more than two religions—they were two nations. At the conclusion of [p. 501] this speech the great gathering passed what became known as the Lahore Resolution. It stated that “no constitutional plan would be workable in this country or acceptable to the Muslims” unless it was recognized that “the areas in which the Muslims are numerically in a majority ... should be grouped to constitute ‘Independent States’ in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign.”
The British government and Parliament, and more so the British nation, have been for many decades past brought up and nurtured with settled notions about India's future, based on developments in their own country which has built up the British constitution, functioning now through the Houses of Parliament and the system of cabinet. Their concept of party government functioning on political planes has become the ideal with them as the best form of government for every country, and the one-sided and powerful propaganda, which naturally appeals to the British, has led them into a serious blunder, in producing the constitution envisaged in the Government of India Act of 1935. We find that the most leading statesmen of Great Britain, saturated with these notions, have in their pronouncements seriously asserted and expressed a hope that the passage of time will harmonize the inconsistent elements of India.
A leading journal like the London Times, commenting on the Government of India Act of 1935, wrote: “Undoubtedly the differences between the Hindus and Muslims are not of religion in the strict sense of the word but also of law and culture, that they may be said, indeed, to represent two entirely distinct and separate civilizations. However, in the course of time, the superstition will die out and India will be molded into a single nation.” So, according to the London Times, the only difficulties are superstitions. These fundamental and deep-rooted differences, spiritual, economic, cultural, social, and political, have been euphemized as mere “superstitions.” But surely it is a flagrant disregard of the past history of the subcontinent of India as well as the fundamental Islamic conception of society vis-à-vis that of Hinduism to characterize them as mere “superstitions.” Notwithstanding a thousand years of close contact, nationalities, which are as divergent today as ever, cannot at any time be expected to transform themselves into one nation merely by means of subjecting them to a democratic constitution and holding them forcibly together by unnatural and artificial methods of British parliamentary statute. What the unitary government of India for one hundred fifty years had failed to achieve cannot be realized by the imposition of a central federal government.....
The problem in India is not of an intercommunal character but manifestly of an international one, and it must be treated as such. So long as this basic and fundamental truth is not realized, any constitution that may be built will result in disaster and will prove destructive and harmful not only to the Mussalmans but to the British and Hindus also. If the British government are really in earnest and sincere to secure [the] peace and happiness of the people of this subcontinent, the only course open to us all is to allow the major nations separate [p. 502] homelands by dividing India into “autonomous national states.” There is no reason why these states should be antagonistic to each other. On the other hand, the rivalry and the natural desire and efforts on the part of one to dominate the social order and establish political supremacy over the other in the government of the country will disappear. It will lead more towards natural good will by international pacts between them, and they can live in complete harmony with their neighbors. This will lead further to a friendly settlement all the more easily with regard to minorities by reciprocal arrangements and adjustments between Muslim India and Hindu India, which will far more adequately and effectively safeguard the rights and interests of Muslims and various other minorities.
It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders, and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality, and this misconception of one Indian nation has gone far beyond the limits and is the cause of most of your troubles and will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in time. The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, literatures. They neither intermarry nor interdine together and, indeed, they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions.... It is quite clear that Hindus and Mussalmans derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, different heroes, and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other and, likewise, their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a state....
History has also shown us many geographical tracts, much smaller than the subcontinent of India, which otherwise might have been called one country, but which have been divided into as many states as there are nations inhabiting them.... Whereas under the plea of the unity of India and one nation, which does not exist, it is sought to pursue here the line of one central government, we know that the history of the last twelve hundred years has failed to achieve unity and has witnessed, during the ages, India always divided into Hindu India and Muslim India. The present artificial unity of India dates back only to the British conquest and is maintained by the British bayonet, but termination of the British regime, which is implicit in the recent declaration of His Majesty's government, will be the herald of the entire break-up with worse disaster than has ever taken place during the last one thousand years under Muslims....
Muslim India cannot accept any constitution which must necessarily result in a Hindu majority government. Hindus and Muslims brought together under a democratic system forced upon the minorities can only mean Hindu raj [p. 503] [rule]. Democracy of the kind with which the Congress High Command is enamored would mean the complete destruction of what is most precious in Islam. We have had ample experience of the working of the provincial constitutions during the last two and a half years and any repetition of such a government must lead to civil war and raising of private armies as recommended by Mr. Gandhi to [the] Hindus of Sukkur [in Sindh] when he said that they must defend themselves violently or non-violently, blow for blow....
Mussalmans are not a minority as it is commonly known and understood. One has only got to look round. Even today, according to the British map of India, four out of eleven provinces, where the Muslims dominate more or less, are functioning notwithstanding the decision of the Hindu Congress High Command to non-cooperate and prepare for civil disobedience. Mussalmans are a nation according to any definition of a nation, and they must have their homelands, their territory, and their state. We wish to live in peace and harmony with our neighbors as a free and independent people. We wish our people to develop to the fullest our spiritual, cultural, economic, social, and political life in a way that we think best and in consonance with our own ideals and according to the genius of our people. Honesty demands and the vital interests of millions of our people impose a sacred duty upon us to find an honorable and peaceful solution, which would be just and fair to all. But at the same time we cannot be moved or diverted from our purpose and objective by threats or intimidations. We must be prepared to face all difficulties and consequences, make all the sacrifices that may be required of us to achieve the goal we have set in front of us.
[From Jinnah, Some Recent Speeches and Writings, ed. Jamīl-ud-dīn Ahmad (Lahore: M. Ashraf, 1942), 1:174–180.]
In 1943 Jinnah voiced his confidence that India's Muslims would turn the idea of Pakistan into a reality; inspired by Islam's ideals, they would then create their own constitutional democracy. His attack on “landlords and capitalists” won the greatest applause, perhaps because Hindus were generally wealthier than Muslims.
The progress that Mussalmans, as a nation, have made, during these three years, is a remarkable fact. Never before in the history of the world has a nation rallied around a common platform and a common ideal in such a short time as the Muslims have done in this vast subcontinent. Never before has a nation, miscalled a minority, asserted itself so quickly, and so effectively. Never before has the mental outlook of a nation been unified so suddenly. Never before has the solidarity of millions of population been established and demonstrated in so limited a time and under such peculiar circumstances as are prevalent in India. [p. 504] Three years ago Pakistan was a resolution. Today it is an article of faith, a matter of life and death with Muslim India....
We have created a solidarity of opinion, a union of mind and thought. Let us concentrate on the uplift of our people for their educational, political, economic, social and moral well-being. Let us cooperate with and give all help to our leaders to work for our collective good. Let us make our organization stronger and put it on a thorough[ly] efficient footing.... We, the Muslims, must rely mainly upon our own inherent qualities, our own natural potentialities, our own international solidarity and our own united will to face the future.
I particularly appeal to our intelligentsia and Muslim students to come forward and rise to the occasion. Train yourselves, equip yourselves for the task that lies before us. The final victory depends upon you and is within our grasp. You have performed wonders in the past.... You are not lacking in the great qualities and virtues in comparison with the other nations. Only you have to be fully conscious of that fact and act with courage, faith and unity....
[From Jinnah, Speeches and Writings, 1:470–471.]
I have no doubt in my mind that a large body of us visualize Pakistan as people's government. Either you seize it by force or get it by agreement. But until you get it, whether it is from a foreign nation or whether it is our own government, the question as to the constitution and the form and system of a government does not arise.... You will elect your representatives to the constitution-making body. You may not know your power, you may not know how to use it. This would be your fault. But I am sure that democracy is in our blood. It is in our marrows. Only centuries of adverse circumstances have made the circulation of that blood cold. It has got frozen and your arteries have not been functioning. But, thank God, the blood is circulating again, thanks to the Muslim League efforts. It will be a people's government. Here I should like to give a warning to the landlords and capitalists who have flourished at our expense by a system which is so vicious, which is so wicked and which makes them so selfish that it is difficult to reason with them [Tremendous applause.] The exploitation of the masses has gone into their blood. They have forgotten the lessons of Islam. Greed and selfishness have made these people subordinate others to their interests in order to fatten themselves. It is true we are not in power today. You go anywhere to the country-side. I have visited villages. There are millions and millions of our people who hardly get one meal a day. Is this civilization? Is this the aim of Pakistan? [Cries of no, no.] Do you visualize that millions have been exploited and cannot get one meal a day? If that is the idea of Pakistan I would not have it [Cheers.] If they are wise they will have to adjust themselves to the new modern conditions of life. If they don't, God help them [Hear, hear, renewed cheers and applause.] Therefore let us have faith in ourselves.... The constitution of Pakistan can only be framed by the Millat [the Muslim community or nation] and the people. Prepare yourselves and see that you frame a constitution which is to [p. 505] your heart's desire. There is a lot of misunderstanding. A lot of mischief is created. Is it going to be an Islamic government? Is it not begging the question? Is it not a question of passing a vote of censure on yourself? The constitution and the government will be what the people will decide. The only question is that of minorities.
The minorities are entitled to get a definite assurance and ask: “Where do we stand in the Pakistan that you visualize?” That is an issue of giving a definite and clear assurance to the minorities. We have done it. We have passed a resolution that the minorities must be protected and safeguarded to the fullest extent and as I said before any civilized government will do it and ought to do it. So far as we are concerned our own history, our Prophet, have given the clearest proof that non-Muslims have been treated not only justly and fairly but generously.
[From Jinnah, Speeches and Writings, 1:506–508.]
Rachel Fell McDermott, Leonard A. Gordon, Ainslie T. Embree, Frances W. Pritchett and Dennis Dalton, eds., Sources of Indian Traditions, vol. 2: Modern India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, 3rd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), pp. 496–505.