'Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation state. Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all three.' - Discuss this statement by Stanley Wolpert

Satyagraha and the Khilafat Movement

 Though Gandhi’s policy of civil disobedience and passive resistance did not promote violence, it did however lead to violence as the movement of Satyagraha was merged with the aims of the Khilafat movement.

                 At the end of World War One the victorious allies were dividing the Ottoman Empire, which had been a German Ally during the war up. The Muslims of India had several grievances regarding this issue. They felt that the Ottoman Empire had been a symbol of Islam, and a vanguard of Muslim power. To present the grievances of the Muslims of India to the British government, the Khilafat movement was initiated. This movement included prominent Muslim leaders of the sub-continent. The Congress adopted the Khilafat movement as its own and included it in Satyagraha. Along with the demand for home-rule the concerns of the Muslim’s of India regarding the issue of the Ottoman Empire, were also included into the platform of Satyagraha. Satyagraha lead to civil disobedience and violence as peaceful protest turned into riots, culminating in the Churi-Churra incident in 1922 when a mob of protestors burnt down a police station killing seventy-seven policeman. The Congress and Gandhi voiced its appeal for peace and withdrew its programme of Satyagraha. The result of this movement and its consequences highlighted Jinnah’s warning at the Nagpur Congress Session in 1920 saying, that, “ you are making a declaration of Swaraj (home rule) within a year and committing the Indian National Congress to a programme, which you cannot carry out.” Though Jinnah’s worst fears were realized and he had left the Congress in 1920, he continued his efforts of Hindu-Muslim Unity that he considered “the most vital condition of Swaraj.”

Jinnah as stated above was the great constitutionalist. He believed that politics should remain in the corridors of power rather than taken onto the streets. The culmination of Satyagraha and the Khilafat movement in the Churi-Churra incidence and the later withdrawal of Satyagraha, made true Jinnah’s grievances over these policies. Jinnah still regarded the advancement of Hindu-Muslim unity as a core element in the Indian quest for home-rule. Jinnah felt even as Rabindranath Tagore did also feel that Satyagraha was at best a policy of negation and despair: it might lead to the building up of resentment, but nothing constructive.

The Delhi Conference Of 1927.

The deep mistrust of Hindu aims and the fear of Congress domination of the Indian political scene were amplified at the Congress-League meeting at Delhi in 1927. As part of the Montague-Chelmsford reforms of 1919 the reforms promised a revisal of the Act to accommodate an Indian constitution formulated by Indian politicians. The Delhi Conference aimed to outline a framework for an Indian constitution and then presented to the British for approval.

Controversy and discontent arose when in order to bridge the differences of the constitutional plan, these proposals waived the Muslim right of a separate electorate, a Muslim demand since 1906. At the conference Jinnah argued that; “What we want is that Hindus and Muslims should march together until our objective is achieved…. These two communities have got to be reconciled and united and made to feel that their interests are common”. The conference however refused these demands of a separate Muslim electorate. This represented the most ‘devastating’ setback in Jinnahs desire for communal unity and as he admitted to a Parsee friend at the time it was the ‘last straw’ and ‘the parting of ways for him’.

Jinnah had thus gone from being a staunch advocate of Hindu-Muslim unity to feeling disillusioned by the course of the events in Indian politics in 1929. The injection of Hindu ideals into the nomenclature of the Congress party led to a Hindu-Muslim divide. 

Jinnah, And The Muslim League.

        

        It was during Jinnah’s absence from India that the poet philosopher Allama Muhammad Iqbal, presented the two-nation theory in the congressional meeting of the All India Muslim league in Aligarh in 1935.It was for the first time that the idea of a separate muslim nation was presented, India he said, “was not one but two nations, Hindu’s and Muslims.”Iqbal was instrumental in convincing Jinnah to return to India to head the cause for the rights of the Muslims of India. Jinnah noted about Iqbal that, “my political career required direction, Iqbal presented me with one.”        

                On his return from Britain in 1936, the first order of business was to prepare for the 1936/37 elections based on the Government of India Act 1935, which granted greater autonomy to the Indian provinces. Thus the goal of home-rule had reached the provincial level. To be considered a force to be reckoned with, Jinnah and the Muslim League first had to show that they were the sole representatives of the Muslims of India. The Muslim League had to be recognized as the sole representative of the Muslims of India in order to play an active role in Indian politics and to present the grievances of the Muslim’s of India as a concern of the British Empire. A major victory on the part of the League was required to challenge the Congress’s claim of being a representative of all Indians.

This was easier said than done; the Muslims of India presented a sad spectacle. They were a mass of disgruntled and demoralized group of men and women. The Muslim league itself was dormant: ‘primary branches they had none, provincial organizations were incoherent and disorganized. Not even the central body had any coherent policy until the Bombay conference of the League in 1936 that was organized by Jinnah.’

         However undismayed by this situation Jinnah embarked on reorganizing the League, solving petty differences between League members, he embarked on a countrywide tour and urged the Muslims masses to organize themselves and join the league. Even with Jinnah’s efforts the performance of the Muslim League in the elections was poor. It won just 23 percent or 108 seats out of 485 Muslim seats in the Legislature. It had won just one seat in Punjab, and was empty handed in both the Sind and Frontier. It was only in Bengal that the League put up a respectable performance wining 37 out of 110 seats. The failure of the Muslim League to win a considerable mandate in any of the Muslim majority provinces or even to succeed in winning a majority in the separate Muslim electorate in these provinces severely damaged the Muslim Leagues claim to be the soul representative of the Muslims of India.  

        Congress Provincial Rule: 1937-39.

        

The Congress however was very successful in these elections. The Congress managed to gain power in eight of the eleven provinces. After this success in March 1937 Nehru remarked that the Congress and the Raj were the only two parties in India, Jinnah replied to the rebuff by claiming the Muslim League as a third and ‘rightful’ equal partner of the Congress.At the all India level the Congress high command was pressurizing princes to fill their federal seats by election rather than nomination, which would open the prospect of sufficient Congress victories to destroy the statuary check on its power.Jinnah however seeing this became convinced that parliamentary government would lead to Congress ‘totalitarianism’ in India.

                During the period from 1937 to 1940 Jinnah continued to voice his concerns for the Muslims of India. His concerns were amplified by the atrocities that Muslims had to face under Congress rule. Pigs were thrown into mosques while people were praying, a programme of boycotting Muslim shops began in various provinces, Muslim students were forced to read from the Hindu holy book at school, etc. These actions were taken by the Congress as part of the Hindu ideals that were added to the Congress nomenclature in 1927. The Congress however argued that these measures were not representative of the Congress manifesto; rather there were individual, regional acts beyond the Congress provincial control.  

A general consensus amongst the British and the Congress was therefore emerging that the Muslims were second-class citizens and that the Muslim League was not an equal partner in the decision making process of India. This attitude was developed after the failure of the Muslim League in the 1937 elections. At the annual conference of the Muslim League at Lucknow in 1939, Jinnah remarked about equality that, “an honorable settlement can only be achieved between equals,” He demanded in his speech that the Congress and Nehru recognize the Muslims on an ‘equal footing’. The argument here being that   if Muslims are considered second class citizens then their concerns would not be noted in a Congress dominated India. Jinnah during this period continued to argue that the Muslims did indeed have a stake in the political future of India. The attitude of Hindu’s and the Congress during the period 1937-39 was an example of the situation Muslims would face under Congress rule. The essential link between Jinnah’s leadership and the emergence of a Muslim national consciousness was that Jinnah personified the Muslims sense of persecution by the Congress and the denial of their achieved status. Thus as the period of Congress rule ended on the 22nd of December 1939, Jinnah declared the 23rd of December as a day of ‘deliverance’ to celebrate the end of Congress rule.

 

        The Demand for Pakistan:

                “We are a nation”, Jinnah claimed as the demand for a separate Muslim nation was formally announced on the 23 March 1940 in Lahore. In this historic speech Jinnah went on to say “ We are a nation with our own distinct culture and civilization, language and literature, art and architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of values and proportions…in short, we have our own distinctive outlook on life and of life. By all canons of international law, we are a nation.”Indian politics was changed forever, on the one hand it shattered forever the Hindu dream of a pseudo-Indian, in fact Hindu Empire on British exit from India and on the other hand it heralded an era of Islamic renaissance. While some would argue that a single speech could not ignite a renaissance, we must however understand the relationship that Jinnah had created between himself and that Muslim mass between 1937 and 1940. During the two years of Congress rule Jinnah paid a lot of attention to gain support and reorganize the Muslim League. Jinnah reorganized the Muslim League in such a manner that by 1938 they were active working branches of the Muslim League in every province.One influential factor in the development of the Muslim League in the late thirties was the role of the Muslim students. Jinnah visited the Aligarh Open University on four different occasions in 1939. Students at this college were mostly Muslim and belonged to prominent Muslim families.Jinnah successfully used the students of this college and others to raise the awareness of the situation of the Muslim’s of India. Students in there holidays traveled to villages to express the views of the Muslim League as they were still regions in India where people had not heard of the Muslim League. Jinnah also began a dialogue with Islamic political parties, such as Jamiat-e-Islami. These organizations did not recognize Jinnah’s leadership since he was a Parsee, an Islamic sect that was not recognized by all Muslims. Jinnah confronted these political parties through secret dialogues between 1939-1941 and gained their support. In turn these parties promised to support the Muslim League and recognize it as the sole representative of the Muslims of India.Jinnah also traveled throughout India to explain the manifesto of the Muslim League to rural areas, and to make poor peasant Muslims aware of the need for them to rise and to challenge the status quo. Which was an Indian political scene dominated by the Congress and Hindus.  

                After this mass contact scheme by the 23rd of March 1940 Jinnah had won the trust of the majority of Muslim Indians. This statement can be amplified by an event that took place at Minto Park, Lahore. Jinnah spoke a few words in Urdu and then turned to English and spoke for two hours. The audience comprised of poor, peasant locals who did not understand English. When one elderly member of the audience was approached by a BBC journalist and asked to why he was listening so intently to a speech in English, he replied, that if Mohammad Ali Jinnah is speaking, he must speak the truth. 

                His success in his mass contact scheme and reshaping the Muslim League can be judged by the success of the Muslim League in the 1946 elections where, the Muslim league won over 85% of the vote in the Muslim electorate and cemented itself as the sole representative of the Muslims of India. The 1946 elections took place under the Cripps Plan of 1944, which conceded the right of home-rule on a provincial level and greater influence in the federal government. As a result of the elections Jinnah successfully argued to the newly appointed viceroy to India that, the Muslim League’s success was nothing more than a referendum for Pakistan.

Conclusion:

                Through this essay I have shown that Jinnah early on from his political career was an influential member of Indian politics. He was a staunch Indian nationalist and supporter of Hindu-Muslim Unity. Though dismayed by the situation of Indian Politics he returned to lead the Muslim League and was instrumental in his success. His character and his effect on the masses can be judged by the event described at Minto Park in the previous heading.

                Jinnah also had another advantage over conventional Muslim Leaders that he was not related to a strong or controversial religious sect. He did not associate himself with any particular geographical location, and was not tied to any particular linguistic group. This helped ordinary Muslims to associate with his image.

                The link that Jinnah established with the masses and the trust that they placed in him and that fact that he was the only Muslim leader to gain such a wide spectrum of respectability shows that without him the creation of Pakistan would have been impossible. Thus proving Stanley Wolpert’s statement true. The following statement that acts as a summation of this essay and its aims can highlight this:

“Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s visit to the St Josephs convent in 1941 changed all our (students) ideas about the Muslim League and the rights of Muslims. We had previously not even considered the Muslim League seriously. His visit and subsequent speech changed that and by the end of the day we had joined the struggle for Pakistan.”

                

 

        

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Moore, R.J. Jinnah and the Pakistan Demand. India’s Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilization. Oxford University Press 1993.
2. R.Khairi, Saad. Jinnah Reinterpreted. The Journey from Indian nationalism to Muslim statehood. Oxford University Press NY 1995.
3. Qureshi, Saleem. Jinnah the Founder of Pakistan. Oxford University Press Karachi. 1998.
4. Wolpert, Stanley. Jinnah of Pakistan. Oxford University Press. NY 1984
5. Talbot, Ian. Nationalism, Command and Ethnic Identities and the Partition of India. From India and Pakistan. Oxford University Press 1994
6. Tinker, Hugh. Viceroy Curzon to Mountbatten. Oxford University Press. NY, 1997
7. R.G. Coupland. Indian Politics 1936-42. London 1943

Documents:

1. Cited in Bolitho. Jinnah.
2. Jinnah’s Presidential Address to the Muslim League at Patna, 26 December 1938. Jamil U Din Ahmad, Speeches and Writings of Jinnah. Lahore

Interviews:

1. Salem Akhter. Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Student Aligarh Open University 1937-1941. Later an Officer of Pakistan Army 1943-1967. President Pakistan Tobacco Company 1969-1981.
2. Mrs. Brig. Suriya Hussein. Student of St Josephs Convent 1941 at Lahore

  Internet Resources:

1) Jinnah: Founding Father of Pakistan. . 1997.

 

APPENDIX ONE

Evaluation Of Sources:

Moore, R.J. Jinnah and the Pakistan Demand. India’s Partition: Process, Strategy and   Mobilization. Oxford University Press 1993

A precise and concise book. Easy to read and well structured chronologically and gives clear detail to the events and its effects. This book was also helpful since it viewed each event and its consequences from the perspective all parties involved. Special focus is given to Jinnah and his role, a lot of information regarding the mobilization and restructuring of the Muslim League is also included. This is one of the books that I used the most while researching my essay.

R.Khairi, Saad. Jinnah Reinterpreted. The Journey from Indian nationalism to Muslim statehood. Oxford University Press NY 1995

An interesting book specifically helped me in my background reading. It helped me to examine the change in Jinnah’s political position through his political career. This book aided in guiding me through the 1920s as there is very little information related to that period in other texts. This text however can be noted that it follows a very traditionalistic approach to Jinnah and does contain some bias as a Pakistani author writes it.

 Qureshi, Saleem. Jinnah the Founder of Pakistan. Oxford University Press Karachi. 1998

Another book used in my essay. Though this book did not really help me form an opinion it did however provide me with various quotes etc that helped me support my arguments. Though again it should be noted that as a Pakistani author writes this there is some bias in the text. And it is also recently published and adds some information to the Pakistani stereotypical view of Jinnah.

Wolpert, Stanley. Jinnah of Pakistan. Oxford University Press. NY 1984

One of the main sources of my research. I have used this book sparingly to elaborate the image of Jinnah and his personality in this essay. I have also used this book as a chronological source for dates and events. A lot of personal quotes taken from Jinnah’s diaries and friends etc can be found in this book. A lot of my ideas on Jinnah’s character have been based on information from this book. Little bias is found in this book as it contains criticisms of Jinnah’s political manuvering.

Talbot, Ian. Nationalism, Command and Ethnic Identities and the Partition of India. From India and Pakistan. Oxford University Press 1994

Another important source, Talbot gives profound details of the Indian political scene. I used it as an important source of background reading, especially through the 1937-1947 periods. A lot of historiography is available in this text. Talbot looks at India through the opinions of various historians and also develops the divide between the Congress and the Muslim League and also provides information on the success of the Muslim League.

Tinker, Hugh. Viceroy Curzon to Mountbatten. Oxford University Press. NY, 1997

A good book for background reading especially since it gives details of the British attitude and policies towards India. I have not used this book extensively in my essay. Rather I have used it as background reading and information only.

R.G. Coupland. Indian Politics 1936-42. London 1943

 A great book, as it gives a lot of statistics, quotes and details on this period of Indian politics. I used this book extensively through the heading Congress provincial rule. A lot of background information used from this text. An interesting source that develops arguments on Indian politics from the perspective of each party.

-Cited in Bolitho. Jinnah.

-Jinnah’s Presidential Address to the Muslim League at Patna, 26 December 1938. Jamil U Din Ahmad. Speeches and Writings of Jinnah. Lahore

Both texts have been used to gain details and exact quotes from Jinnah’s speeches in Muslim League conferences.

Interviews:

Salem Akhter: A much respected member of the Pakistan Army. Who later served in the Pakistan Tobacco Company. Some bias maybe involved in his statements since he was a prominent member of the Pakistan Army in the infant years of the country.

Mrs. Rig. Suriya Hussein: A member of the Muslim League student association during the period 1945 to 1948. Again some bias may be involved. Later the wife of a prominent member of the Pakistan Army, and the daughter of the commissioner of Lahore under the British Raj.

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