The Quaid as Jinnah
It is most difficult to portray someone as a human being when the masses consider that person as immortal. For tens of millions of Pakistanis the Quaid-e-Azam remains the ultimate (and perhaps only) symbol of everything they hold good in their lives and which they see in such short supply in our leaders since his death. As such, sacrilege though it may be, he is deified through the length and breadth of the country as an infallible human being, very conscious and in ultimate control of his own destiny as well as a hundred million or so Muslims in the 1930s and 1940s. As we know all leaders are human beings and they have the qualities and defects that every human being has, the Quaid made his share of mistakes but they were never out of ill-intent. However, in trying to portray the Quaid as without any aberrations, we may be responsible for the cynicism that the international public tend to believe about his personality and person. This adverse feeling has been enhanced by massive Indian propaganda that sees him as the villain of the piece that conspired to divide India and cost the Hindus 50 years of what they fantasized would be their hegemony after a thousand years of domination by the Muslims and then by the British. This lack of hegemony is rankling to the Hindu hierarchy.
There is an aura around Jinnah the man and Quaid the leader that transcends usual description. The modern tendency is to carry out a comprehensive analysis of any person with the mark of destiny on him, to lay before the audience the character and personality of the man as a person with all his qualities and his defects, to define that extra factor that converts the person into a leader who is loved, admired, respected, almost worshipped.
For a nation obsessed with its founder, as symbolised in the widespread respect for his person as well as the dissemination of his sayings, the amount of interest shown in the Quaid’s life and his surviving artifacts is surprisingly meagre. It was not till his grand-nephew, Mr. Liaquat Merchant, came on the scene that things started to get into focus, first by consolidating his known assets and then renovating them from the dilapidated shape that neglect over the years had thrust them into. As a founder member of the Jinnah Foundation and lately the Jinnah Society, Liaquat has done yeoman’s work in keeping alive the life and times of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. It was he who organised the financial rescue work of Mr Akbar Ahmad’s movie on the Quaid, yet to be released but in the final stages of editing, when a full-fledged campaign was started to undermine the credibility of the whole exercise and the government succumbed to the pressure, refusing to release the funds promised. The film was to be released by August 1997 but for this and other various reasons, mostly the lack of funds, it has been delayed by almost a year. In the meantime, the Jinnah Society commissioned a documentary on the Quaid as a person, to bridge the delay in the launching of the film.
Briefly, the documentary takes us from the Quaid’s birth in Karachi to his schooling, his apprenticeship and his sponsorship by a wealthy English philanthropist to study law in England. It takes the Quaid to England, his qualifying for the Bar, his long-distance marriage to a teenaged bride by proxy, his father’s death and that of his never-seen bride. It brings the Quaid back to Bombay and shows the humble beginnings till his appointment as temporary magistrate. His subsequent rise in the legal profession is described as spectacular, this period also sees him joining of the Indian National Congress as an ardent and eloquent supporter of Hindu-Muslim unity. The film then records his courting of 16-year-old “Ruttie” Dinshaw — a Parsi, the marriage is opposed by her father and literally everyone else. However Ruttie does not listen to anybody and walks out to marry the Quaid when she comes of age at 18 years. The narrative then documents the social life of the Jinnahs and his gradual disenchantment with the Congress, where in meetings Mohandas Gandhi persists in calling him a good “Mohammedan”, a term the Hindu hierarchy disparagingly uses for Muslims despite the fact that Muslims do not appreciate it. We see Ruttie then growing distant from Jinnah till at last she leaves him to set up lodgings in a five-star type hotel, that being the preference of the aristocrats and the rich of those days. The film then follows the Quaid while he leaves for London in 1920 with his daughter in tow, he sets up a home in Hampstead with his sister. They show the Quaid build up his legal practice and confine himself to life as a cosmopolitan citizen, “little believing that he would one day return to found an independent State”, to quote the commentator. The film then documents his return in 1934 on repeated urging from Muslim leaders who journey in increasing numbers to his London home, as the acknowledged leader of the Muslim League (ML) and the strategic planning wherein he takes the ML from only 10% of the Muslim vote in 1937 to almost 90% barely a few years later. It shows the Congress lose opportunity after opportunity for reconciliation with the Muslims, choosing obdurately not to recognize the ML as the sole representative of the community. The film follows the paroxysms of partition as Mountbatten, the last British Viceroy clearly supports Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress, particularly in the motivated partition of the Muslim majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal to the detriment of the Muslim majority. It shows the Quaid as the first Governor General of the new nation and the first President of its Constituent Assembly. We go through the events leading to the Kashmir War and the refusal of the British officers to participate in the campaign, thus keeping the newly formed Pakistan Army out of it, at least officially. It then abruptly takes us to the Quaid’s last illness, in Ziarat, his flight to Quetta and his death on arrival at Karachi.
I had the benefit of Air Marshal (Retd) Nur Khan sitting next to me through the showing of the documentary and as such have taken advantage of his knowledgeable comments. Liaquat Merchant gave a very inspiring speech leading upto the very positive and mature remarks of the Governor Sindh, Lt Gen (Retd) Moinuddin Haider. One has to commend Liaquat and his efforts to secure his ancestor’s physical effects on Earth as well as his memory. Jinnah Society is indeed a remarkable entity, never more greater in its vision and belief than when it offered its first newly constituted “Jinnah Award” on the occasion to Maulana Abdul Sattar Edhi. A more deserving person one does not know today in Pakistan, a man dedicated to the welfare of the people of the country, the needy and the wanting, very much a descendant of Quaid’s philosophy towards the Muslim congregation he created into Pakistan, giving the poor and the homeless a homeland where they are masters of their own destiny, or are they?
Perhaps because it was a documentary and it was too short, it raised some very disturbing questions. First, according to Air Marshal (Retd) Nur Khan and many who were present there the documentary seemed to suggest that the Quaid-e-Azam was not very committed or very confident, that Pakistan came out more by accident and circumstances rather than design. Next, some interviews were with personalities, who were not credible in the Quaid’s context, how can one have Sharifuddin Pirzada, the architect of legalising Martial Law, comment on one of the greatest Constitutionalists in history? Lastly, it seemed to suggest that Pakistan came almost because of Hindu obduracy rather than recognise the fact that Hindus and Muslims were two nations, with different destinies, and that Pakistan was the desire of almost all the Muslims of South-Asian Sub-continent. The treatment of each issue was perfunctory, particularly when it concerns an enigma as a person that was the Quaid, it needs to be more exhaustive.
The Quaid walks effortlessly through the pages of history as one of the few privileged human beings to create a nation on the force of mind and belief rather than the force of arms. He was a giant among pygmies and recognising the weak leadership and the time at his disposal, he compromised for a truncated Pakistan rather than nothing at all. We are still too close to his era to recognise the reality of his iron will that dominated the entire region in his time. The independence of India was always in the works, the State of Pakistan was not. That he achieved his goal despite overwhelming odds diminishes the stature of Gandhi and Nehru in comparison. It is true he made some major mistakes, one of them the issue of Urdu as a national language when a majority spoke other languages, but we must learn to come to terms with the fact that the Quaid was as fallible as any human being as any leader in history save the Prophet (PBUH). The effect of his deeds and words continue to guide the destiny of hundreds of millions in this region and elsewhere, relatively speaking he eclipsed Ataturk and other Muslim greats because he had a far greater canvas to cover. While there are no words to describe the fine work incepted by the Jinnah Society and Liaquat Merchant, one hopes that their future work will portray Jinnah the Man as he really is, Quaid the Great, the man for the moment at a crucial period in the lives of Muslims in the South Asian Sub-continent.
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