Unbottling the Djinn of Jinnah

The powerful persona of Jinnah still reverberates in India sixty years after his death. Dead Jinnah has the potential to shatter and disintegrate an increasingly fascist BJP where freedom and forgiveness are being applied selectively. What would have been the fate of BJP had Jinnah been alive? Nehru and Gandhi have been painted as permanent saints while Jinnah has been portrayed as a permanent sinner in the Indian history. When one looks closely at the cult figure of Jinnah, the famous line comes to mind: No man can be hero all through his life…

Nobody would have thought that Jaswant Singh, one of the tallest BJP leaders, would unbottle the jinn of Jinnah from the bottle of history and mystery! The core issue of the ongoing debate is not that Jaswant Singh’s new book on Jinnah has rattled the BJP but his contention that Jinnah was not responsible for the Partition of India and the blame lay with Nehru and Vallabhai Patel. We will examine this assumption later; let’s first have a look at the kind of man Jinnah was and what drove him towards two-nation theory which culminated in the creation of Pakistan.

Jinnah was a towering national leader much before Gandhi returned from South Africa and entered public life. Jinnah was a colleague of Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Bal Gangadhar Tilak. He was better known than Motilal Nehru, Tej Bahadur Sapru and M.R. Jayakar. Gandhi’s rise to prominence lies in the Khilafat movement which Jinnah bitterly opposed. Jinnah was a permanent secular liberal while Gandhi adjusted his secularism according to the prevalent condition and the requirement. Gandhi believed in the idea of compromise while Jinnah didn’t. Gandhi appeased Muslims with Khilafat movement and Hindus by intoning Ramrajya. Therein lays the popularity of Gandhi. It is this “compromise” of Gandhi that made him more popular than any other leader in the Indian subcontinent.

In a letter dated October 30, 1920 – which is of historic importance – Jinnah wrote to Gandhi:

“I thank you for your kind suggestion offering me ‘to take my share in the new life that has opened up before the country’. If by ‘new life’ you mean your methods and your programme, I am afraid I cannot accept them; for I am fully convinced that it must lead to disaster. But the actual new life that has opened up before the country is that we are faced with a Government that pays no heed to the grievances, feelings and sentiments of the people; that our own countrymen are divided; the Moderate Party is still going wrong; that your methods have already caused split and division in almost every institution that you have approached hitherto, and in the public life of the country not only amongst Hindus and Muslims but between Hindus and Hindus and Muslims and Muslims and even between fathers and sons; people generally are desperate all over the country and your extreme programme has for the moment struck the imagination mostly of the inexperienced youth and the ignorant and the illiterate...I have no voice or power to remove the cause; but at the same time I do not wish my countrymen to be dragged to the brink of a precipice in order to be shattered. The only way for the Nationalists is to unite and work for a programme which is universally acceptable for the early attainment of complete responsible government. Such a programme cannot be dictated by any single individual, but must have the approval and support of all the prominent Nationalist leaders in the country; and to achieve this end I am sure my colleagues and myself shall continue to work.”

Jinnah was beginning to dislike the dictatorship of Gandhi yet he remained a nationalist. After this, Jinnah’s disillusionment with Congress began to develop and there is historical evidence to this. The famous Nehru report which adopted alternative constitutional proposals ignored Jinnah completely. Jinnah’s 14-points were rejected the report. Further, he was personally humiliated at All-Parties Convention yet Jinnah remained steadfast and did not lose self-control. At the Convention he said, “We are all sons of the soil. We have to live together... If we cannot agree, let us at any rate agree to differ, but let us part as friends.”

In 1928, Jinnah advised and insisted Congress to seek Hindu Mahasabha’s assent to which Nehru arrogantly replied, “There are only two parties in the county, the Congress and the government.” Jinnah shot back, “There is a third party in the country and that is the Muslims.” Jayakar questioned Jinnah’s credentials as a representative and Nehru did the same in 1937 when he said, “May I suggest to Mr. Jinnah that I come into greater touch with the Muslim masses than most of the members of the League.”

Jinnah took up this challenge personally and began to work in order to establish his political credentials.

All this did not dishearten Jinnah to such an extent that he demands a separate homeland for Muslims. Till 1937, Jinnah saw “no difference between the ideals of the Muslim League and of the Congress, the ideal being complete freedom for India.”

Jinnah became to nurse a grudge against Nehru and Congress after his repeated attempts to obtain constitutional safeguards for Muslims and attempts at power-sharing had failed.
In October 1937, he said that “all safeguards and settlements would be a scrap of paper unless they were backed up by power.” In Britain the parties alternate in holding power. “But such is not the case in India. Here we have a permanent Hindu majority....”

This is where Jinnah went horribly wrong. His constant humiliation led him to majority-minority trap. He forgot that the key issue to Muslim development was through empowerment on all fronts including politics. Jinnah was so frustrated that he raised the slogan of “permanent Hindu majority”. As ace commentator A.G. Noorani writes, “The solution lay, not in aggravating the communal divide by his two-nation theory; but in the tactics of the Jinnah of old - mobilise both communities, espouse secular values and seek protection for the rights of all minorities as Dr. B.R. Ambedkar had urged him to do.”

In February 1938, Jinnah delivered a speech which is not well-known. There he poured his heart out: “At that time there was no pride in me and I used to beg from the Congress.” The first “shock” came at the Round Table Conference; the next, in 1937. “The Musalmans were like the No Man’s land. They were led by either the flunkeys of the British government or the camp-followers of the Congress…”

When viceroy asked him about the alternative, he replied on October 5, 1939, that “an escape from the impasse ... lay in the adoption of Partition”.

If Nehru compromised on minorities rights then Jinnah on India’s unity although both men were secularists. A.G. Noorani writes,

“Therein lies the tragedy. Nehru harmed secularism by denying the legitimacy of minority rights. Jinnah ruined it by the two-nation theory.”

He adds,

“Yet, it is doubtful if, in the entire history of India’s struggle for freedom, anyone else has been subjected to such a sustained, determined denigration and demonisation as Jinnah has been from 1940 to this day, by almost everyone - from the leaders at the very top to academics and journalists.”

The Cabinet Mission’s Plan of May 16, 1946, for a united India failed and dragged it “into the abyss of inevitability.” Everyone including Nehru and Patel had given up; only Maulana Abul Kalam Azad remained opposed to it. Both Nehru and Jinnah were equally responsible for the Partition.

“Jinnah”, in the word of A.G. Noorani, “was of a heroic mould but fell prey to bitterness and the poison that bitterness breeds.”

No man can be hero all through his life. It equally applies to Jinnah as well.

The last word should be left to M.J. Akbar:

History might be better understood if we did not treat it as a heroes-and-villains movie. Life is more complex than that. The heroes of our national struggle changed sometimes with circumstances.

Sunday Inquilab, August 23, 2009

Cricket and cocktail terrorism

Pakistan's cocktail terrorism: Can Pak look into the mirror?

Murray Walker, the renowned British sports commentator who had once said – you can cut the tension with a cricket stump – should be thinking to retract his verbatim. Murray had probably said this in a South Asian context knowing well that cricket, the white man’s British burden, can unburden South Asian tension especially between India and Pakistan. Till March 3, his statement was considered a witty and convincing idiom in the dictionary of cricket commentary. The Lahore terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team will change the language of cricket commentary forever.

The audacious broad daylight attack on Sri Lankan cricketers marks the beginning of cocktail terrorism in South Asia. The so-called ‘Jihad’ merged with modern day accessories popularised by Hollywood culture: sneakers, backpacks, big guns etc. The attack was the Pakistan’s Mumbai moment. The Mumbai syndrome has finally travelled to the place from where it had actually originated. The syndrome has spread like epidemic among a few home-grown bedbugs that have begun the task of eating up Pakistan; making it hollow from the inside.

Pakistan has suffered the fate of United States of America. It has been struck by the men with whom it had mushroomed and sympathised for years. The bad boys in the backyard have gone out of control. The parallel with United States is strikingly similar. The world’s lone superpower has a history of sympathising with ‘bad boys’ all across the world.

In 1970s and 80s, United States, armed and funded Muslim militants fighting against 1979 Russian invasion of Afghanistan; popularly known as Afghan Jihad. The American money and arms were directed and channalised through Saudi Arabia and Pakistan’s notorious intelligence agency ISI. Osama bin Laden is the American product of Afghan Jihad. The concept of jihad was legitimised and widely propagated as long as it suited America’s foreign policy. Afghan jihad was merely an extended exercise to contain America’s only rival: Russia. America’s love for mujahideen diminished the moment Russia withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. The point worth-noting here is this: Muslims still call this war as jihad while in American lexicon this was merely a cold-war exercise!

America’s understanding of the word ‘jihad’ improved with the 9/11. The men who allegedly flew planes into World Trade Centre followed a tradition long supported by the America. This was the first time that Americans experienced the biting of the feeding hand. Pakistan is undergoing the same phase for quite sometime now.

Cricket is a unifying game; the antithesis of the word ‘Partition’, an Afro-Asian phenomenon. Pakistan was always famous for the two things: Cricket and hospitality. These two assets were some of the positive elements that bound Pakistan to the rest of the world. A single attack has eroded the credibility of both. Jinnah (the Qaud-e-Azam) would have wept over this; Asif Ali Zardari does not even have tears. Pakistan is not a failed state; it has been paralysed by its leaders. It neither became an ideal Islamic state nor a model secular nation. Isn’t it a classical paradox of the Indian subcontinent? Pakistan has always dangled between autocratic theocracy and corrupt democracy.

Pakistan was born on the basis of a divisive idea called Partition. Partition has been the fate of this Indian blood brother separated at birth. 1947 was merely the beginning whose end is not in sight. 1971 saw the second partition of Pakistan which resulted into the birth of a new nation called Bangladesh. Pakistan has witnessed many partitions after the creation of Bangladesh. The third quite partition took place in North West Frontier Post where tribalism is the order of the day. The fourth partition began among murmur and metamorphosed into an uproar when Pakistan entered into an agreement with Taliban in Swat valley. If the first four partitions were physical, the fifth partition is ideological in nature. It is taking place inside Pakistan; implemented by the men carrying Kalashnikovs on their shoulders.

The crisis of failed leadership has plagued Pakistan for years. Pakistanis are fed up of new promises of the old faces. Corrupt leaders have provided vacuum for not only fundamentalists but also Army Generals. General Pervez Musharraf was tolerated for 8 long years because patriotism comes easily to army uniforms. The current political dispensation is not led by pious men. Pakistan is the world’s only country headed by “two former convicts.” It was the crisis of failed leadership that forced Fatima Bhutto to remark that “Pakistan remains a rich and diverse country held hostage to a government chock full of ill-equipped and unqualified carpetbaggers.”

The Lahore attack will have far-reaching consequences notably in South Asia which is witnessing a stream of violence. A cursory glance on the map of South Asia will make one’s blood freeze. Sri Lanka is engaged in a dangerous war against LTTE; an organisation dubbed as “terrorist” by United States but yet long supported by India. Bangladesh has just awakened to the horrors of an army rebellion unparalleled in the history of South Asia. Nepal has been a victim of Maoist violence. India faces a real threat to its internal security from Naxals who control at least 140 Indian districts. Pakistan – which should have become a land of the pure – has become a nightmare for men of purity. It has become “an international migraine” to borrow Madeline Albright’s words.

The body of South Asian does not merely suffer from a minor injury. It suffers from the cancer of violence which threatens to paralyse the entire body. The US and UN – famous for administering injection of reform – have done very little to restore the confidence of people in South Asia.

Coming back to cricket, one question that has baffled security experts and analysts is this: why did terrorists choose Sri Lankan cricket team which took a bold initiative of touring Pakistan amidst grave threat? Sri Lankan cricket team had gone to Pakistan perhaps to prove that law and order still reign supreme in a feudal country. They have been permanently proved wrong by a bunch of ‘bad boys’.

So why did terrorists target a cricket team?

The answer is truly European. The terrorists were perhaps inspired by the 18th century Irish poet called Oscar Wilde who breathed his last in the year 1900. Oscar Wilde didn’t like the idea of playing cricket because of the “indecent” cricket postures. He had once said,

“I never play cricket. It requires one to assume such indecent postures.”

Both Oscar Wilde and the terrorists who fired at the Sri Lankan cricket team shared the same point of view. The former employed his wit to express it while the latter believed in the weapon.

Sunday Inquilab, March 8, 2009

Ahmed Faraz: Death of a Romantic

Ahmed Faraz: Main jaa chuka phir bhi teri mehfilon mein hoon! I am not an obit writer; nor do I aspire to become one. August was a month of poetic obituaries; it was a month when angel of death plucked out longstanding poetic trees in two different countries: first it was Mahmoud Darwish of Palestine, and now Ahmed Faraz of Pakistan who died on August 25 at the age of 77. If Darwish penned the pain of Occupied Palestine, Faraz mourned a militarist Pakistan. Both voices signified the poetry of protest which is the last refuge of Muse. Surprisingly both bore an uncannily pictorial resemblance. The poetry of Darwish and Faraz reflected internal struggles within the Muslim world. Their sane and at times insane voices provided an alternative platform for love as well as lament. For Faraz, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq’s military rule was boon as well as bane. He was arrested and later had to leave Pakistan. It left him bitter but at the same time it gave him enough space to popularize ‘protest poetry’. As Faraz once said, “Yet it (military rule) also provided ample food for thought for the poet and made protest poetry so popular in Pakistan.” Faraz was a limited man but with unlimited ambition. Although Faraz was a wearer of many hats; his poetry can be summed up in two nouns each beginning with R: Romance and Revolution. Teenagers took comfort in his couplets while aspiring revolutionaries quoted him at length to drive their point. His ghazal Sunaa hai log use aankh bhar ke dekhte hain was an international hit. Faraz was not just a poet of romance and love; he was a poet of masses as well as mass hysteria – a syndrome which has consumed so much of Pakistan. His poetry gave voice to the suppressed souls of a depressed Pakistan. He spoke against the Partition as well: Ab kis kaa jashn manaate ho us des kaa jo taqsiim huaa Ab kis ke giit sunaate ho us tan-man kaa jo do-niim huaa (taqsiim=divided; do-niim=cut in two) He breathed life into the idea of romance in contemporary Urdu poetry. His romantic couplets may have sparked millions of romances all around the Urdu-knowing world but yet his writings failed to bring a revolution in his troubled homeland. Perhaps therein lies the irony of Ahmed Faraz. He was a crusading poet who did not believe in the idea of crusade. He preferred verse over weapon. He never shied away from raising the standard of revolt against the Pakistani establishment. He was an asset to Pakistan but Pakistan government treated him like a liability. He was a dissenting poet disenchanted by his own military government. It is primarily for this reason that he went into a self-imposed exile for six years. He told people of Pakistan to dream because he believed that dreams do not die. In his poem titled Khvaab marate nahiin (Dreams do not die), he said: Dreams are not hearts, nor eyes or breath Which shattered, will scatter (or) Die with the death of the body. Dreams do not die. Dreams are light, life, wind, Which can not be stopped by mountains black, Which do not burn in the hells of cruelty, Like light and life and wind, they Do not bow down even in graveyards. Dreams are letters, Dreams are illumination, Dreams are Socrates, Dreams are Mansur! Faraz was a poet of official dislike and unofficial like. Pakistan of Pervez Musharraf tried to woo him with the Hilal-i-Imtiaz in 2004. The trick did succeed initially. But the tricky success did not last. Faraz returned the award two years later because he was a man of conscience. He said, “My conscious will not forgive me if I remained a silent spectator of the sad happenings around us. The least I can do is to let the dictatorship know where it stands in the eyes of the concerned citizens whose fundamental rights have been usurped. I am doing this by returning the Hilal-e-Imtiaz (civil) forthwith and refuse to associate myself in any way with the regime...” Faraz had compared his life to that of a candle. Main bhi chup ho jaaunga bujhti hui shama’on ke saath… (Shama’on = candles). It will not be easy to forget Faraz. He will be remembered though he is not in our ‘mehfil’: To laut kar bhi ahle-tamanna ko kush nahi Main lut kar bhi wafa kay inhi kaaflon mein hoon Badla na mayray baad bhi mozon-e-guftagu Main jaa chuka phir bhi teri mehfilon mein hoon… We have lost Faraz forever. In his own words: Ab ke ham bichhde to shaayad kabhi khwaabon mein milen Jis tarah sukhe hue phool kitaaboN mein milen Those who know Urdu will understand the essence of the above verse because these lines will get derailed in English!