The Tragedy of Jinnah - Simon Kovar

‘Mahattenborough’ (to use Salman Rushdie’s memorable phrase) is certainly guilty of semi-deifying a man, Gandhi, who – in his religious doctrines, abusive personal experiments and response to European fascism in the 1930s – was far from blemish-free. But he is guilty too of libeling Jinnah, one of the sole liberal voices at the high table of Indian politics. It is noteworthy that the Hindu nationalist politician L.K. Advani, an apologist for the slaughter of Indian Muslim citizens in Gujarat, chose the word ‘secular’ to describe Jinnah during a visit to Pakistan in 2005. Advani was criticised for apparently having ‘praised’ Pakistan’s founder; but the Hindu far-right is not noted for regarding the epithet ‘secular’ as a term of praise.

In fact, Jinnah fits quite closely the model of the classic liberal politician. He disdained populist politics, not least of the sectarian religious variety, and argued for constitutionalism, equality under the law and the separation of ‘church’ and state (explicitly stating that “religion should not enter politics”). It was this that lead him, in 1920, to resign from the Congress Party which had by then fallen under Gandhi’s sway. Gandhi sought to mobilise mass sentiment, both Hindu and Muslim, through a naked appeal to religious symbolism – an appeal Jinnah regarded as highly dangerous. He had no ideological commitment to separatism: instead he was focused on what he termed the “political issue” of how to safeguard minorities in the new India. While many Congress politicians had no problem with simply taking over the old unitary colonial state (in Nehru’s case in order to pursue socialistic planning policies), Jinnah argued that the whole basis of the nation had to be renegotiated in order to safeguard the rights and interests of all minorities.