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The Rediff Special/Akbar S Ahmed

'Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic State to be ruled by priests with a divine mission'

Jinnah's ideas about Pakistan remained vague. Vagueness was both the strength and weakness of the Pakistan movement. It became all things to all men, drawing in a variety of people for different reasons; but it also meant that once Pakistan was achieved there would be no clear defining parameters. During the last year or two of his life, Jinnah had begun to sharpen his concept of Pakistan. He travelled extensively and spoke tirelessly on radio and in public.

These speeches, together with what I have called this Gettysburg address, reveal that several themes are repeated again and again. The first is the unequivocal Islamic nature of Pakistan, drawing its inspiration from the Quran and the holy Prophet. This is the vision of an Islamic society which would be equitable, compassionate and tolerant, and from which the 'poison' of corruption, nepotism, mismanagement and inefficiency would be eradicated. Pakistan itself would be based on the high principles laid down by the Prophet in Arabia in the seventh century. Although Jinnah had pointed out the flaws in Western-style democracy, it was still the best-system of government available to Muslims.

Jinnah unequivocally did not want a theocratic state run by mullahs. In a broadcast to the people of the United States of America recorded in February 1948, Jinnah made his position clear: 'In any case, Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic State to be ruled by priests with a divine mission. We have many non-Muslims-Hindus, Christians and Parsees -- but they are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the same rights and privileges as any other citizens and will play their rightful part in the affairs of Pakistan.' When his enthusiastic admirers addressed him as 'Maulana Jinnah' he put them down, saying: 'I am not a maulana, just plain Mr Jinnah.'

Tolerance towards the minorities is another theme in his speeches. Jinnah had regularly reminded his Muslims audiences of what Islam maintains: 'Our own history and our Prophet have given the clearest proof that non-Muslims have been treated not only justly and fairly but generously.'

Jinnah's statements about the minorities (whether Muslims in India or Hindus in Pakistan) are significant: 'I am going to constitute myself the Protector-General of the Hindus minority in Pakistan.' He spent his first and only Christmas in December 1947 as a guest of the Christian community, joining in their celebrations. In the one act he incorporated the rituals of the minority community into Pakistani consciousness. (It is a far cry from the somewhat pointed distancing of Pakistani leaders from the rituals and customs of the minorities in contemporary Pakistan.) Although pressed for time, in Dhaka he met a Hindu delegation, in Karachi and Quetta a Parsee one, assuring them of his intention to safeguard their interests.

The other theme was the need to check provincialism which was already rearing its head. In his speeches Jinnah stressed the evils of provincialism, which he warned would weaken the foundations of the state, for example at Peshawar and Dhaka. In Pakistan people assume that the movement for ethnic assertion is recent, a product of Pakistan. On the contrary, such movements existed before the creation of Pakistan, as is clear in a letter to Jinnah of 14 May 1947, from G H Hidayatullah, a Sindhi leader based in Karachi: 'Some enemies of my wife and myself have been making statements in the press that we two are advocating the principle that Sind is for the Sindhis only. This is entirely false and baseless. Both of us are ardent supporters of Pakistan, and we have given public expression to this. Islam teaches universal brotherhood, and we entirely subscribe to this ... All this is nothing but false propaganda on the part of the enemies of the League.'

A week later, Abdus-Sattar Pirzada issued a statement making clear that Pakistan would be the home for all Muslim immigrants from India: 'Sind has been the gateway of Islam in India and it shall be the gateway of Pakistan too.'

Yet Jinnah sailed into an ethnic storm. In a momentous encounter in Dhaka, the capital of the province of East Pakistan (the future Bangladesh), he insisted that Urdu and Urdu alone would be the national language, although he conceded the use of the provincial language. Bengali students murmured in protest. The language movement would grow and in 1952 protesting students would be killed and provide the first martyrs. In time a far wider expression of ethnic discontent would develop at the imagined and real humiliation coming from West Pakistan and in particular the Punjab. But that was in the future. Jinnah had for the time being hung on to his idea of a united Pakistan, united in a political but also cultural sense.

When he made these speeches he was an old man, and he knew he was dying; they were his last words. What makes a last testament valid is the fact that the speaker is about to die, about to meet his maker. A person's last words are therefore considered authentic; event the law accepts them as evidence. We can thus believe in the sincerity of Jinnah's speeches in the last months of his life which establish that he was moving irrevocably towards his Muslim culture and religion.

Those who argue that Jinnah was cynical and exploited religion and custom need to understand the one year he had in Pakistan before he died. Consider his position after the creation of Pakistan. He was by far the most popular and most powerful man in the country, the revered Quaid-I-Azam of Pakistan, respected by millions of people. If he had decided to defy tradition and custom, he would have got away with it. He could have dressed, spoken or eaten in any way he wanted and still been venerated. There was too much affection for him to be shaken by anything.

The example of Kemal Ataturk, who rejected Muslim culture and tradition in Turkey -- another father of the nation -- comes to mind. But Jinnah took the opposite route. He may have started life at one end of the spectrum in terms of culture and tradition, but by the finish he was at the other end of it.

Many critics accuse Pakistan of having killed the father of the nation

Excerpted from Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity by Akbar S Ahmed; Oxford University Press, with the writer's permission.

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