WAS JINNAH’S TRANSFORMATION FUELED BY PERSONAL MOTIVES OR AN AIM FOR A GREATER GOOD?

INTRODUCTION AND STAND:
Richard Attenborough’s Academy Award winning film, “Gandhi” that was “shot through a romantic Raj haze, ensured that millions of people came away with the impression that Jinnah created Pakistan because he was jealous of Gandhi and a villain at heart” .

Mohamed Ali Jinnah, a man who believes that he and his typewriter created Pakistan . A man of extremes, who detested being stereotyped as a ‘Mohammedan’, he created a ‘Muslim homeland’, which he declared a secular state.

The greatest mystery surrounding Jinnah however are the reasons fuelling his sudden transformation from the austere westernised gentleman he was when he began his political career to the Sherwani-decked Muslim politician who declared Pakistan independent. This essay will examine the ‘faults’ of Jinnah, the lack of a successor, autocratic rule and other factors which seem to suggest his self interest and juxtapose these factors with his denial of the prime ministership of an independent India as well as his aim to eventually establish a Pakistan with a modern, democratic constitution as opposed to the continuation of autocratic rule he started with. Although we can never know the real motivations of Jinnah, we can hypothesize, as does this essay, that Jinnah was motivated by his self-interests as opposed to the magnanimous politician of the people that some make him out to be.


DID HE ALWAYS ACT IN PAKISTAN’S BEST INTERESTS?
Jinnah ruled early Pakistan in an autocratic fashion and had groomed no clear successor, the knowledge that he knew of his impending death, paints him as a man who was too self-obsessed to prepare for a Pakistan after his death. Yet pragmatism comes into play here and one has to recognize that at that stage in Pakistan’s life, autocracy and a ‘supreme leader’ were absolutely essential to counter the many problems she was beset with, economically, politically and socially



SUCCESSION:
Benazir Bhutto once commented that Pakistan’s problems could be attributed to the Quaid-E-Azam
"Because Jinnah's death a year after Independence left the entire concept of Pakistan and Jinnah's dream unfinished. It left the nation leaderless and the constitution was made an orphan. The nation had never really recovered from that loss" .
According to her, the man who created Pakistan could also be said to be responsible for its ‘sorry state’ today due to his lack of foresight.

Jinnah knew from June 1946 that he was suffering from fatal tuberculosis and could be taken sick and die anytime. Yet, in his typical obstinate manner, Jinnah continued as always and refused to take measures to prepare for Pakistan’s survival after him. At no point did Jinnah appoint a successor or even hint to his “second-in-command” – Liaqat Ali Khan that his death was impending; such that measures could have been put into place to arrange for a smooth transition of power and to prevent a loss of ideals or principles which were the backbone of the new nation.

On the side of pragmatism, it must be admitted, “people seldom speak with one voice. In time of trouble there is a need to rally around a forceful and confident leader. ” Jinnah knew what he had to do once the gauntlet for Pakistan had been thrown down, come what may, to maintain the name of the Muslim League he had to follow through on the Lahore resolution, especially after the Cabinet Mission plan flopped. As such, he chose to be the rallying point for Pakistan. Perhaps he believed that if power was shared, the masses that vested their trust in him would be split too, and the unity he had worked so hard to achieve would be lost. Jinnah believed strongly in the dictum of ‘ignorance being bliss’ and in some situations he chose to ‘remain ignorant so that knowledge might not inhibit him from the course he wished to pursue’ . He did not wish news of his illness to prevent any party from doing what they would have done in any other case.

Furthermore, he believed in his ‘brethren’ following this dictum as well. Of the masses whose blood was spilled to attain the dream of Pakistan, most of them knew not where it was going to be, or what the essence of Pakistan was. Jinnah delivered his speeches in English and as depicted in the documentary “Partition of Blood”, we see that although the masses did not understand English and the meaning of Jinnah’s words, they nonetheless agreed with him and believed he was right and acting in their best interests .
AUTOCRACY:
When the time came, Jinnah opted to become the Governor General of Pakistan instead of Prime Minister because, under the Constitution, Governor General could give instructions to the Prime Minister, “in Pakistan, I will be Governor-General and the Prime Minister will do what I tell him to do”. In doing so, he cared little that he greatly insulted Lord Mountbatten who had been offered the Governor-Generalship of India and coveted that of Pakistan as well.

After becoming Governor General, Jinnah not only appointed the Prime Minister but also chose and appointed all the members of the Cabinet. He was the President of Muslim League, and did not relinquish party presidency even after becoming the Governor General. Thus, Jinnah accumulated all state power in him; as the leader of the party, head of the administration and the State - a virtual dictator. He even assumed authority to take care of the government's Kashmir and Frontier Departments. As a Governor General, he could influence the Legislative Assembly to endorse these additional powers. He even presided over Cabinet meetings, a move unprecedented in any parliamentary democracy, which is what Jinnah claimed Pakistan was. He often, without the knowledge of the Prime Minister, instructed the Provincial Governors, Ministers and Departmental Secretaries; resulting in increasing tension between Prime Minister Liaqat Khan and him. The tensions escalated to a stage where Liaqat Ali Khan resigned from his post, although Jinnah refused to accept the resignation, further increasing the tension level. Parliamentary norms were not applicable to Jinnah. In fact, the way Jinnah ran the administration, though briefly, established a precedent in Pakistan to concentrate all power and key positions in a single person; the tendency that later gave birth to military autocracy in Pakistan .

However, it must again in the name of pragmatism be admitted that given the unstable political climate of Pakistan at that time and his administrative, diplomatic and political abilities, Jinnah was undoubtedly the best candidate for all the above-mentioned positions. A fact that he knew and exploited, if only for the larger good; given his frail health, the responsibilities he took on must have been very taxing, nonetheless, it seems that Jinnah was driven by a superhuman strength and took it all in his stride.


SELF-INTEREST:
Jinnah was in every conceivable manner a contradiction. In the words of Collins and Lapierre:
“A more improbable leader of India’s Moslem masses could hardly be imagined. He drank, ate pork, religiously shaved his beard every morning and just as religiously avoided the mosque each Friday. God and the Koran had no place in Jinnah’s vision of the world”
Yet, it is impossible to deny that the founding father of Pakistan was a religious man; he was just ahead of his time. Jinnah’s practice of Islam has a contemporary ring to it, in western terms, “a modern Moses” The reasons for his rapid conversion from a constitutional, whiskey-swigging man to Quaid–E–Azam of the Moslems, can be explained in many ways, including the changing of the old guard following the death of politicians such as Gokhale and Dadabhai Naoroji who identified with Jinnah’s concepts of a united India achieved through constitutionalist methods. Gandhi and Nehru both contributed to this change and ironically to the idea of Pakistan gaining full steam. Gandhi, by becoming increasingly religiousin his politics with cow-protection acts and anti constitutionalist with his mass politics, which in Jinnah’s opinion caused ‘mass hysteria’. Nehru, by proving to India’s Muslims after the 1937 elections that he could not cater to the needs and wants of the Muslim community.

However, other, more personal factors were also at play here. The Islamic concept of 40 being the age where a man begins to take responsibility for his actions was strong in causing changes to Jinnah’s personality and politics. When Jinnah left India and politics and went to England to practice law after the death of his wife, he was already 59, perhaps it was at this belated stage that he realised that since Hindu-Muslim unity seemed an impossibility, the next best thing would be to create a separate Muslim homeland and by engineering it, he would gain favour in the eyes of God.

Of course, non-religious factors, like Nehru spurning him and his much-lauded 14 points as “preposterous” and advising Congress to “ignore Mr. Jinnah” also could have played a very major role in Jinnah wanting to assert himself and the power of the Muslims in general; making sure he could not be ignored.


FLIPSIDE: ALL FOR THE PEOPLE
“I have done my job, when the field marshal leads his army into victory, it is for the civil authority to take over” is what he said upon the declaration of Pakistan. Jinnah saw himself as a military leader leading his troops to victory, their prize being Pakistan. The mere title of Akbar S. Ahmed’s “Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: The Search for Saladin” is very telling. In his book Akbar compares Jinnah to Saladin , both of them uniting the Muslim masses and leading them to a common goal, while exhorting peace and minimum violence.

If indeed self-aggrandizement was most significant motivation Jinnah faced, then Gandhi’s offer to make him the first prime minister of an independent India would have been a dream come true, a Muslim leader at the head of an independent India, it would have been the greatest coup for Jinnah . However, Jinnah rejected the offer for the sake of his people.
It would appear from his speeches that Jinnah did indeed care about the largely subaltern masses he was leading. He has been known to mention at various junctures his concern for minorities and has gone so far as to declare the protection of Hindus in Pakistan ‘a sacred undertaking’ on the part of Pakistanis. He repeatedly mentions in his speeches credos like “universal brotherhood” , to “eschew violence of thought, word and action” and “subordinate personal interest to the welfare of others” .


CONCLUSION:
This essay aimed to examine the reasons behind the transformation of Jinnah from intensely secular, to quite the other extreme, and whether these reasons were largely personal or grassroots-centered.

It is easy to paint Jinnah as a man chasing after self-aggrandizement if one does not look at the lack of alternatives he was faced with at that time. To set up the incorruptible government he hoped to, he had to take on the majority of the responsibilities. His conversion that is often discussed was less of a personal choice than that of a politician who had to adapt to serve the needs of his people. He not only rejected the prestigious prime ministership of India but also knighthood under the British Empire and even Islamic Maulana-ship; preferring to remain ‘plain Mr. Jinnah’ .

It is often said that Jinnah came back from England a changed man, but even upon his return he tried to persevere for Hindu-Muslim unity, it was not until the elections of 1937 when Nehru and Gandhi tried to ignore the Muslims from politics altogether that Jinnah realized the plight the Muslims he was leading were facing and felt the need to do something .

On the other hand, it is equally simple to classify Jinnah as a man who worked for his people to the point where he completely neglected the state of his own health and “gave his life for Pakistan”.

The truth lies somewhere in between the two extremes. Jinnah was indeed a man who was worldly enough to enjoy and even crave the limelight and pomp that being a successful politician brought. However, he was driven by the liberal ideas he had picked up during his time in the West and from his daily consumption of newspapers from around the world. These were the very ideas that influenced him so deeply that they infused him with an almost superhuman strength, allowing him to survive him last 3 years on little more than willpower.

The perfect politician does not exist. At some point, power corrupts, with this notion in mind, we can analyse M. A. Jinnah as a man who was driven by the beautiful ideals of protecting the people who implicitly trusted him and for whom he wanted to set up a democratic, liberal society. However, he could not live in a fool’s paradise and had to, at times, make decisions and policies that went against his democratic beliefs. He demanded from his sister Fatima, whom she thought would take charge of all Pakistan’s problems when she asked him to rest for the sake of his health. Jinnah saw himself as the only hope for Pakistan, and in this way can be said to be self-obsessed, however this obsession sprung from his determination to deliver to his people the best he possibly could.

















Bibliography:

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2. Ahmed, Akbar S, “Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity : The Search for Saladin” New York : Routledge, 1997

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Internet Resources:

1. Farzana Versey, “Mohammed Ali Jinnah Haazir Ho”, September 10, 2004, http://www.chowk.com/show_article.cgi?aid=00004061&channel=gulberg&start=0&end=9&chapter=1&page=1
(Accessed on 12th March, 2005)

2. M B Naqvi : The News, Karachi, Pakistan, December 11, 2002 – “Why Jinnah's Pakistan Ended”
http://www.usenet.com/newsgroups/soc.culture.bangladesh/msg02747.html
(Accessed on 12th March, 2005)

3. Mubarak Ali, “Jinnah: Making a myth”, October 2000 http://sacw.insaf.net/i_aii/MakingJinnah_a_myth.html
(Accessed on 15th March, 2005)

4. Dr. Rashad Khalifa, “Authorized English translation of the Quran, The crucial age of 40”
http://www.submission.org/suras/app32.html
(Accessed on 15th March, 2005)



Film Resources:

1. Partition of India [videorecording]: legacy of blood. Cafe Productions; producer, Sophia Swire; director, Christopher Mitchell. Princeton, N.J.: Films for the Humanities, c1997.