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Editorial: Let’s agree on Jinnah’s role

In his new book, Jinnah — India, Partition, Independence, India’s former foreign minister who later also served as finance minister in the last BJP government, Mr Jaswant Singh, has given India a positive portrait of Pakistan’s founder, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Given the fact of Mr Singh’s BJP affiliation, the book is being treated as an extraordinary event in India.

Because of his rightwing credentials, no one in India can doubt Mr Singh’s patriotism. That is why the book is going to be an important Indian revision of a highly demonised Muslim leader. Some other Indians too have done the job of balancing the distorted Indian view of Mr Jinnah, but this time history may be reinterpreted more permanently in favour of an Indo-Pak détente through a “reinterpretation” of Mr MA Jinnah.

Mr Singh has been blunt in his promotional interviews: “[Jinnah was a great man] because he created something out of nothing, and single-handedly he stood against the might of the Congress Party and against the British who didn’t really like him...Gandhi himself called Jinnah a great Indian. Why don’t we recognise that? Why don’t we see (and try to understand) why he called him that?”

Perhaps more significantly than anything else he has said in praise of his subject, Mr Singh’s explanation of the last-minute rupture between Nehru and Jinnah will become important in the coming days: “Nehru believed in a highly centralised polity. That’s what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity. That even Gandhi accepted. Nehru didn’t. Consistently, he stood in the way of a federal India until 1947 when it became a partitioned India”.

Although pointed out earlier by Ayesha Jalal and Sugata Bose in their book Modern South Asia, Pakistani writers have ignored this real foundation of disagreement which made Pakistan possible. Both Allama Iqbal and Mr Jinnah wanted a confederal or federal arrangement in which the Muslims could attain a measure of autonomy and freedom from Hindu majoritarianism. The Cabinet Mission Plan which promised this arrangement as late as 1946 was scuttled, not by Mr Jinnah, but by Mr Nehru.

Mr Singh puts forward a point of view rejected in the past as a “communal” stance: “Muslims saw that unless they had a voice in their own economic, political and social destiny they will be obliterated. That was the beginning (of their political demands). For example, see the 1946 election. Jinnah’s Muslim League wins all the Muslim seats and yet they don’t have sufficient numbers to be in office because the Congress Party has, without even a single Muslim, enough to form a government and they are outside of the government”.

Pakistan’s myth of Indian opposition to the existence of Pakistan is based on the frequently expressed Indian view that Partition was wrong and that it was brought about entirely by Mr Jinnah and British machinations. Where the great Parsi Indian judge Mr HM Seervai had failed to remove the bilateral myths of partition with his book Partition of India (1994), Mr Singh might succeed. If that happens, both Pakistan and India will have to “rationalise” their view of Mr Jinnah.

In Pakistan, the conservative right and the liberal intellectuals are hopelessly divided on the person of Mr Jinnah. But both tend to stand together when it comes to what they think is Indian prejudice against the great man. Now that Mr Jaswant Singh has set the record straight in India, it may be easier for Pakistan to frame Mr Jinnah in a more realistic national reference. The identity of the state of Pakistan has been consciously moulded over the years in relation to India as the “enemy” state.

The Quaid can save Pakistan from its internal crisis if Pakistanis are prepared to see that the terrorists hiding behind “Islam” are opposed to what he wanted Pakistan to be. Pakistan’s statute books that contain laws against the minorities should be revisited in light of what he really stood for. He was never an enemy of India; India can reclaim him now. And in the process, India and Pakistan can change their bilateral equation, abandoning the path of an arms race, and accepting the mutual cooperation and economic interdependence dictated by history and current circumstances. *

Second Editorial: Our attitude to Afghan elections

As the elections in Afghanistan approach, the international press is reporting on how the Afghan people are reacting to them. Reports say it is going to be a close call for the favoured candidate, President Hamid Karzai, because of the condition of polling 50 percent of the votes. If he faces a run-off with the second best candidate he might lose.

The Taliban have asked the Afghans not to vote so as to doom the democratic process in Afghanistan. They have threatened attacks against the entire process of polling and against those who go out and vote. But the last time it happened the Afghan nation went out and voted and, despite allegations of hanky-panky, the world accepted Afghanistan’s fledgling democracy.

Media opinion in Pakistan has been negative, which is ironic because elections in Pakistan have rarely been free and fair. Our media thinks that Mr Karzai is not a good man and that his family is involved in drugs and corruption. The world not long ago had accused Pakistani leaders of much the same sort of things. So this is no reason align our approach with that of the Taliban. They are no friends of Pakistan. We should know that if he is replaced by the next best candidate from the Northern Alliance it will be no improvement for us.

Mr Karzai is Pashtun and the Afghans think he will win. Afghan women in particular are optimistic. But our security establishment thinks he is not good for us because he has allowed over 4,000 Indians to work in his country and build its infrastructure under cover of doing mischief in Balochistan. But, truthfully, we have no alternative to Mr Karzai except the Taliban. And Taliban have never listened to us even when eating out of our hands in Kabul from 1996 to 2001. Above all, after 9/11 they were able to isolate Pakistan in the world to Pakistan’s great disadvantage.

Pakistan should welcome elections in Afghanistan and not call the next elected Afghan leader an American “kathputli” (puppet). Ironically, many among us apply the same epithet to the government in Islamabad. Whoever wins the elections should be good enough for us if he is good enough for the Afghans. *

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