Quaid-i-Azam
Muhammad Ali Jinnah
Columnist Lt Col (Retd) ZAMAN MALIK writes about our great founder.
“Do
not be disheartened on not having wealthy and resourceful parents. Rely
on your capabilities, work hard, live purposefully. Be honest. Trust God.
Never harbour defeat. Success in the long run is yours! “(Quaid-i-Azam
Muhammad Ali Jinnah).
In these days when the leaders of various political parties are preparing
to file their’s and their Party members’ nomination papers
for October general elections, the people of Pakistan (voters) have shown
increasing interest in analysing the character qualities of each one of
them by comparing their conduct with that of the Quaid. They are keen
to know as to how this man, Muhammad Ali Jinnah did come to be called
Quaid-i-Azam, and how did he galvanise the Muslims of the Subcontinent
to come out with one voice. “Quaid-i-Azam Zindabad, Pakistan Zindabad”,
even if they were to sacrifice every precious possession of their’s,
for the achievement of Pakistan. Let us take a glance of the Quaid’s
life.
What is a Leader?
A leader is a person who is not an average person of his
society. He epitomises the best of what his society can possess and offer.
He becomes an embodiment of all that is around. He shuns all that is otherwise,
he is a man of determination, he exerts the faculty of criticism and tries
to find out what is right and what is wrong. Stance of such a person is
hardly influenced by others.
His standpoint is not a haphazard one. It is always well-thought out.
He is never in a hurry in respect of giving himself away. He is his own
secret bearer and adviser. He does seek advice from others, but it is
generally to strengthen his own opinion by virtue of contrast. Such a
person on account of possessing all that is useful and being free from
all that is useless, rather harmful around, by and by, is recognised by
his companions, colleagues and others who come to know him as head and
shoulders above them.
In the long run, such a person becomes a rallying point for the whole
society or the nation. He gets all his strength from his nation but being
an accumulation of all the strong points, he becomes the strongest, i.e.
stronger than all others. Heraclitus did not do any injustice when he
said: “Quaid-i-Azam was Iqbal’s Eagle. In the life time of
many renowned and trusted Muslim leaders, it was only Mr. Jinnah on whose
capabilities Allama Muhammad Iqbal relied. Iqbal’s symbol of conquest
was the “Eagle”. In the thirties Margarita Barns characterised
M. A. Jinnah as an eagle. It reads thus: “My friend Kelen, the distinguished
Hungarian Cartoonist, has a way of visualising his subjects in the form
of a bird or an individual. Mr. Jinnah reminded him of an eagle. The symbolisation
is apt.” (Margarita Barns in ‘India today and tomorrow —
George Allen & Unwin, London, 1936, P. 37).
On Course Towards
Leadership
Quaid-i-Azam was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
He belonged to a family of Khoja traders, who had fallen on bad days.
When Jinnah returned from England after completion of his studies in Law,
he had nobody who could promote his cause in the social and official circles.
His life is an encouraging example for all those whose circumstances are
not easy and congenial. He earned through the sweat of his brow, he earned
through honest means, he rose to fame through his determination, honesty
of purpose, and integrity. In the twentieth century, he taught the practical
lesson which theoretically would have been difficult to believe. He taught
the Muslims and non-Muslims alike, that the truthfulness was the most
useful weapon in politics. He earned money. He made his position financially
strong. And after that, all his life, he spent judiciously so, on others.
He entered politics when he was thirty years of age. He bore the travelling
charges and paid for boarding expenses from his own pocket even when he
was a member of All India Congress Committee. He always made donations
to Muslim League and to his nation. He was impeccably transparent and
extremely open in declaring his assets. He was not a whole time sucker
of his community’s funds.
How expensive had been Gandhi’s simple saintliness is well expressed
by Sirojni Naido. When asked by Mountbatten “whether in view of
determined poverty in which Gandhi chose to live, Congress party could
really protect him?” Ah, she laughed, “you may imagine that
when he walks down that Calcutta station platform looking for a suitably
crowded third class carriage, that he is alone. Or when he is in his hut
in the untouchables colony, he is unprotected! He knows very well that
there are dozens of our people dressed as untouchables walking behind
him crowding into that carriage. When he moved into ‘Bhanghi Colony’
in Delhi, a score of Congress workers again scrupulously clothed as Harijans,
were sent to live in the hovels around him. My dear Lord Louis, you will
never know how much has it cost the Congress party to keep that old man
in poverty.” (Freedom at midnight, P. 98).
US former President Clinton, like his ideal President John F Kennedy,
following in the footsteps of Mrs. Annie Besant — a Jewish leader
of the Home Rule Movement, raised her stature to prophethood. There are
many books written by the contemporary Hindu writers, which they, and
many like them, should have read before forming such a colossal opinion
about her.
The question of objective analysis has today become rather more difficult.
Any Muslim (whether he really knows what Islam is or not) is being lampooned
and denigrated by the IT operations launched by US, Israel, and India,
to meet the target of US own material goals across the world. The Israelis
and Indians are being made the victims of the US carrot and stick policy.
They are killing and are being killed because of the US fear. The US applies
double standards. Why does it not choose to do the same for others, what
it would wish to have for itself? What if as a sole superpower the Red
Indians were to tell Americans to leave, their continent?
Comparison with
the Contemporary Leadership in India
Oceans of explanations would appear to contain the ferment that the founder
of Pakistan might be having to launch a struggle for Pakistan, when the
British Empire having conquered India from the Mughal Empire, in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries was giving away to the Pax Americana from almost
one sixth of the world, after the Second World War Muslims had ruled India
like the British, for about one thousand years, prior to the establishment
of British Empire in India. As for the largest minority that were to be
left behind in India after the creation of Pakistan, it may be remembered
that Pakistan was to be created in the Muslim majority regions of the
subcontinent. Muslims are everywhere across the globe, almost in every
country! No harm comes to the people, in a truly democratic country, which
both the Indian and Pakistani leadership was envisioned to follow. India
is only for Hindus, was never imagined to be contrary to what is the current
thought prevailing in the Indian leadership, which is following fanaticism,
continuing genocide of non-Hindus very speedily; imbued by the spirit
of Hindutva. India is not a secular democracy; it is a state that is fast
eliminating non-Hindus from ‘Bharat Mata’, creating religious,
recial, and communal hatred amongst its Hindu majority, to establish Hinduism,
that existed in the subcontinent before the arrival of Muslims from the
Middle East in A.D. 712, that was followed by the Muslims from across
the Hindu Kush, from where the Aryans had come, to establish the caste
system in India; which created alarm in the minds of the Muslim Leadership
of the subcontinent, when the British were about to leave India after
the mid-forties. Having conquered India from the Muslim rulers with the
connivance of Hindus, the British government had rendered the Muslims
in a most miserable condition on one hand while raised the Hindus to a
much higher pedestal (in the empirical sense only), correspondingly on
the other. The reasons for the creation of Pakistan would now become crystal
clear after one reads the following: “Here I should like to give
a warning to the landlords and the capitalists who 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. They have forgotten
the lesson of Islam. Greed and selfishness have made these people subordinate
to the interest of others, in order to fatten themselves — there
are millions and millions of our people, who hardly get one meal a day.
Is this civilisation? Is this the aim of Pakistan? ... If this is the
idea of Pakistan, I would not have it.” (Quaid-i-Azam, while addressing
the thirtieth session of the All India Muslim League at Delhi, on 24th
April 1943). Under the majority system without guaranteeing separate and
inviolable rights of four freedoms for the Muslims in the undivided India,
despite relentless efforts by the Muslim leadership, the Hindu leadership
of India was forcing the Muslims for the demand of a separate country.
Lets now come straight to the comparison.
How the Congress party played the fraud on the untouchables, Harijans
(Dalits), and also on the nation is obvious. Stark hypocrisy! Gandhi knew
the realty of his mask. Quaid-i-Azam had more important things to do.
Robert Frost were to explain for him in these verses:-
“Though woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep.”
It is comparison with others which makes him rise higher in the eyes of
the world. Here is a chapter in The Tughlaq of India, by Shiv Lal, published
in Delhi. The caption of the Chapter is “The Politics and economic
corruption.” In this Chapter the facts relating to selfishness of
Congress leaders, ministers and presidents, expose them in their true
colours. How greedy was Giri? How pompous a person was Lal Bahadur Shastri?
And about Nehru, here is the narration:-
“Was it not Nehru who on his return from England in the 1920s started
pressing the working committee for a fixed monthly salary for himself?
This was for the first time in India that politics was conceived to be
a profession, and not a social service; service as was the practice in
those days. Is it not a fact that Jinnah who is considered to be India’s
enemy No. 1, willed all his property in Bombay, to a Bombay school and
a hospital? Jawahar Lal’s will, determined the succession of his
movable and immovable property only to Mrs. Indira Gandhi.” (P.
158).
“A prodigious worker, with his briefs or his political papers. Not
even his political enemies accused Jinnah of corruption or self-seeking.
He could be bought by no one, nor was he in the least degree a weather
cock swinging in the wind of popularity or changing his politics to suit
the chances of times. He was steadfast idealist as well as a man of scrupulous
honour. The fact to be explained is that in the middle of his life, he
supplanted one ideal by another and having embraced it, clung to it with
a fanatic grasp to the end of his life.”
(Hodson, H.V.,
The Great Divide).
He had grasped the fact in the early forties and struggled only, either
to have separate and guaranteed rights as equal citizens in the undivided
India or a separate country for the second great majority of India, in
the regions where Muslims were in majority; to avert the spectacle of
genocide and bloodshed that is the matter of daily occurrence in India.
What about Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or Nepal; don’t they feel eternally
threatened by the Indian hegemonistic instincts? Surely,
Quaid-i-Azam was absolutely right.
“I have called Mr. Jinnah ‘The most important man in Asia’.
India is likely to be the world’s greatest problem, and Mr. Jinnah
is in a unique position of strategic importance. He can sway the battle
the way he chooses.” (‘Dialogue with Giant’ in his book
‘Verdict on India Dec 1943).
“Jinnah was the Muslim League. He held the future of India in his
hands... I tried the same technique to warn him. He had only one dream
that was a Muslim state.” (Richard Hough, Mountbatten Hero of our
time. Weidensfels & Nicholson, 1980, P. 218). That was comparison!
Quaid-i-Azam had punctured lungs and he knew it since long. He had appealed
to Dr. Patel in the name of personal integrity to keep the secret of his
lungs disease. “He made no effort whatsoever, to follow his doctor’s
advice. He was going to his rendezvous with history. With extraordinary
courage, with an intense and consuming zeal that sent his life’s
candle puttering out in a last harsh of flame, Jinnah longed for his life’s
goal.”
“‘Speed’, Jinnah had told Mountbatten in their first
discussions of India’s future, was ‘the essence of the contract’.
And so too, had it become the essence of Mr. Jinnah’s own contract
with destiny.” (Larry Collins & Lapieerre, Dominique Freedom
at Midnight — London, 1975, Pt III).
“Whatever I have done, I did as servant of Islam and only tried
to perform my duty and made every possible effort and contribution within
my power to help our nation. “(Addressing the Jirga at the Government
House Peshawar, on 17th April, 1948).
We know and the whole world knows that Quaid who spoke the truth and whose
stand was righteous, won, and those who pretend to do what they did not
do, lost. Quaid proved that real statesmanship and also politics was based
on truth. “Truth is the basic quality of a man of character. Destinies
are shaped according to character... The sense of honour and highest sense
of integrity, conviction, incorruptibility, readiness at any time to efface
oneself for collective good of the nation. “(Address to Legislator’s
Convention, Delhi, April 1946). A nobel deed, indeed has an inspiring
effect. A lofty fulfilment must stimulate spirit. It is like pervading
music that enlivens and elevates souls. He who performs such an act conquers
his fate. Quaid-I-Azam’s life is a massive monument, that must be
emulated by the new leadership particularly, and the old one as well,
even at this late hour of their lives. The voters must keep the personality
of the Quaid in front, while deciding to elect their choiced candidate
through the balloting process, in the forthcoming general elections, in
October.
