Pak Tea House » History, Jinnah » Important Corrective to distortion of history by Viewpointonline
Important Corrective to distortion of history by Viewpointonline
By Yasser Latif Hamdani
Waseem Altaf’s article on Viewpointonline (Jinnah “the Quaid”) made some completely inaccurate claims that need to be addressed. Almost every claim in the said article is inaccurate when tested on the touchstone of historical facts. Since Viewpointonline is as closeminded in its approach to dissent as Daily Ummat or LUBP, they are unlikely to publish my rebuttal.
Mr. Altaf’s first claim is that Jinnah became a Shia to advance his political career. This is completely inaccurate. Jinnah had converted out of Ismaili Khoja Faith in 1901 (5 years before Jinnah entered politics as an Indian Nationalist) after his sister Mariam was excommunicated from the Aga Khani sect by the Aga Khan himself for marrying out of the Aga Khani sect. In any event most of Muslim League’s founding members were Ismaili and Aga Khan was the first president of the Muslim League. Therefore Mr. Altaf’s claim is laughable to say the least. In any event Jinnah should have either converted to Sunni Islam or to Hinduism to forward his political career by that logic.
Mr. Altaf’s second claim that Jinnah disowned his daughter is also not backed by any real historical evidence. Not only is there no legal document that states that Jinnah disowned his daughter but evidence suggests to the contrary. A substantial amount is left to his daughter in his will after the said marriage. Here is an account by Dina Wadia (from “A Daughter’s Memory”):
“My father was not a demonstrative man. But he was an affectionate father. My last meeting with him took place in Bombay in 1946. He had come from New Delhi, in the midst of most heavy preoccupations with crucial negotiations. He phoned, inviting me and my children to tea.
“He was very happy to see us – Dina was five and Nusli, two. We mostly talked about the children and politics. He told me that Pakistan was coming. Despite his pressing engagements in New Delhi he had found time to buy presents for us. “As we said good-bye, he bent down to hug Nusli. The grey cap, which he wore so often that it now bears his name, caught Nusli’s fancy, and in a moment he had put it on his grandson’s head saying, ‘Keep it, my boy.’ Nusli prizes the cap to this day. I remember the gesture because it was characteristic of his sensibility and consideration for me and my children. At the time of partition, Dina decided to stay on in India. She had married into one of the wealthiest Parsi families of India, the Wadia family.”
Does this sound like he disowned his daughter?
Dr. Ayesha Jalal’s painstaking work as well as that of H M Seervai shows that Jinnah’s Pakistan was not synonymous with partition of India or the partition of Punjab and Bengal. Neither Mountbatten nor his latter day apologists like Mr. Waseem Altaf fully understand the significance of the fact that Punjabi and Bengali are not synonymous with “Indian”. The multiple identities thesis is well known and when Jinnah argued that a Punjabi is a Punjabi before he is Muslim or a Hindu he was stating what was obvious to a historian – regional identities trumped communal ones and communal trumped and continue to trump national identities. Jinnah himself an Indian nationalist for most of his life was well aware of this unfortunate fact. Mountbatten’s response- again not completely stated in terms that Mr. Altaf gives (he seems to be very generous in paraphrasing)- showed Mountbatten’s inability to understand the complex dynamics of identity in South Asia. In any event partition was forwarded by Nehru and Gandhi who shot the cabinet mission plan down. Even Maulana Azad accepts it. That Jinnah was moved by the violence at partition is admitted even by unsympathetic Indian historians. That he made every effort to put it down ruthlessly where ever he could is also recorded as part of history. I do not wish to respond to the wild fantasies about wine parties and what not because they have no historical merit.
Then we come to other odd distortions of history- the caricature of Jinnah created conveniently over the years- that Mr. Altaf deploys in his poorly researched article. Almost all impartial academics have rejected charges of “excessive snobbery” and “elitism” leveled against Jinnah. Ian Bryant Wells writes on Page 237 of “Ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity”: “Jinnah was not, however, a political elitist that he is sometimes painted as being… he remained committed to the rights of the people of India and showed himself able to come to the streets to motivate and lead the masses”. Incidentally even today in Mumbai there is a hall commemorating the mass agitation Jinnah led against Lord Willingdon.
The reason why Jinnah chose to be Governor-General instead of prime minister is plain enough. The Times of London wrote in its editorial of July 11, 1947: “Yet those who will be called to rule Pakistan may hold that relatively undeveloped qualities that make up much of its territory must be guided by a governor general capable of exercising the functions of higher control and co-ordination which formerly vested in a Canning or a Curzon.” The powers Jinnah enjoyed were far less than those enjoyed by either Canning or Curzon, mind you, and when compared to, say, powers vested in and assumed by President Abraham Lincoln in the aftermath of the civil war, Jinnah’s powers were toothless.
Even Lord Mountbatten, who never made any effort to hide his ambitions, had more power as Governor-General than Jinnah. Mountbatten was handed — allegedly — a blank piece of paper by Nehru for cabinet selection. Mountbatten presided over not just every major decision of the Indian government but he even commanded and directed the Indian troops in Kashmir. This was far beyond the powers Jinnah had.
As a student of law and constitution, I must state here that in the empire’s history, a powerful politician like Jinnah taking over as the first Governor-General of a self-governing dominion is the norm and not the exception. Lord Elgin and Lord Dufferin were two such political Governors-General, both instrumental in the formative phase of Canada. Ireland’s first Governor-General of the Dominion was an active party politician (Jinnah on the other hand had resigned from the presidency of the Muslim League soon after independence stating that he could not as Governor-General remain at the head of an avowedly communal organisation). So if Jinnah is to be called autocratic, then from Bismarck to Lincoln and Roosevelt, every Dominion Governor-General was autocratic, including India’s first Governor-General.
So why did Nehru choose to become prime minister instead of Governor-General? Important as Nehru was, he was just one party leader and at best a stalwart amongst at least three others. There was no question of Congress forwarding Nehru’s name for the Governor-General given that he was not a neutral arbiter for the various party factions. He had a major rival in Patel and his position in the Indian pantheon was by no means as absolute as Jinnah’s. Jinnah was — as Nehru wrote in his book, Discovery of India — the only Muslim League politician of noted ability, and entirely without the lure of office. Nehru’s role in India was to be that of a respected party politician and not that of an impartial arbiter that Jinnah’s followers expected.
There are many myths that are woven around Jinnah’s period as Governor-General of Pakistan, one of which was forwarded by Campbell Johnson who inaccurately claimed in his book Mission With Mountbatten that Jinnah applied for powers under the Ninth Schedule of the Government of India Act 1935 (GOIA 1935). It was the Ninth Schedule of the GOIA 1935 that strengthened the Governor-General and gave him powers to ensure passage of bills in a form that had been recommended by the Governor-General. From July 19, 1947 onwards, the Ninth Schedule was no longer available.
A constitutional point of divergence between the Dominion of Pakistan and the Dominion of India was Section 93, which empowered the Governor-General to dismiss provincial legislatures. It was Pakistan that omitted Section 93 and India that adopted it. Therefore, the Pakistani Governor-General could not, in contrast to the Indian Governor-General, dismiss a legislature. This is very relevant in the context of the Khan Ministry dismissal, for that dismissal was not the dissolution of a legislature but simply constitutional manoeuvring. The governor of NWFP, after concluding that Dr Khan Sahib no longer commanded the confidence of the House, invited Abdul Qayyum Khan to form the government, which he did. After this, the House was prorogued and reconvened when Qayyum had established a majority before the budget session. Technicality? Perhaps. However, the Canadian Governor-General as late as December 2008 used the same constitutional device to save Prime Minister Harper’s government and no one accused her of being undemocratic.
The dismissal of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP, now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) government has long been cited as an example of an early streak of authoritarianism in Pakistan’s history. It is said much of Pakistan’s later crisis of democracy has its roots in this decision. This sound bite has been used by many critics of Jinnah as being one grave example of lack of statesmanship at a critical juncture. I have a different view and I will endeavour to explain why.
We must examine whether Jinnah’s actions vis-à-vis the NWFP Assembly in that first week of independence were unconstitutional. If these actions were not unconstitutional, were these undemocratic and malicious under a veil of constitutionality? Finally, if we conclude that these actions were either unconstitutional or undemocratic, were these actions responsible for Pakistan’s subsequent crisis of constitutionalism and democracy, which manifested itself in the form of prolonged periods of direct military rule in the country.
To begin with, it is important to note again that Pakistan opted to omit Section 93 powers, which allowed the central government to dismiss provincial legislatures. India, on the other hand, retained these powers and used the same on several occasions to dismiss provincial legislatures. The dismissal of the Khan Ministry in NWFP, however, was not a dismissal of the legislature. The governor of NWFP, Sir George Cunningham, acting on the advice of the Governor-General under Section 51(5), dismissed Dr Khan Sahib as the chief minister and invited Abdul Qayyum Khan of the Muslim League to form the government. Therefore, the issue of constitutionality of the action does not arise per se.
Now the real question is whether this meant a dismissal of a democratically elected government and whether this action taken at the behest of Jinnah was indeed undemocratic or malicious. To address whether the decision was democratic or not, let us consider the facts. Dr Khan Sahib became the premier after the 1946 election on the basis of 30 members in a House of 50. Out of these 30 members, 12 were Hindu MLAs. It may be pointed out that the weightage given to the Hindu community was 24 percent against an actual population of six percent in the province; 11 of these 12 Hindu members moved to India at independence. Of the remaining 19, two belonged to the Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind, an ally of the Congress Party. Congress proper had won only 16 seats out of a total of 38 Muslim seats. Therefore, Dr Khan Sahib enjoyed the support of 19 members in a House of 39, already a minority government. Later the Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind members also parted company and so did a Congress member Mian Jaffar Shah, leaving Dr Khan Sahib with only 16 members in a House of 39. As for the procedure adopted to effect a ministry and get the requisite support, the newly formed League ministry had to show its numbers by the next budget session, which it did.
Even otherwise Dr Khan Sahib had lost all moral authority to govern after the referendum a couple of months before independence, which had returned 51 percent votes in the Muslim League’s favour. While in recent years some have tried to argue that the referendum was questionable, the truth is that Congress had not only endorsed the referendum but had successfully procured the removal of Sir Olaf Caroe, who it deemed inaccurately as pro-League, as governor, replacing him with Sir Robert Lockhart to preside over the said referendum. Even Dr Khan Sahib had confidently declared that if the League received 30 percent of the votes in the election, he would resign. Dr Khan Sahib himself agreed that the referendum was as proper or improper as the election that had gotten him into power and this was promptly reported to the Viceroy by Rob Lockhart, Congress’ governor of choice. Lockhart went on to advise Dr Khan Sahib that the right and proper thing to do was to resign immediately. The governor also expressed concern that the continuation of a ministry so utterly hostile to the new state would be untenable and that the Viceroy should consider dismissing the NWFP government under section 93, which would be the best course available. In public, of course, both Dr Khan Sahib and Bacha Khan continued to declare that the referendum was improper and fraudulent. To this end, it is important to quote Kanji Dwarkadas, who in his letter of July 26, 1947 said: “An American journalist who has returned to Delhi from the Frontier has told me that…the Frontier referendum was run on fair lines and not as Dr Khan Sahib and Abdul Ghaffar Khan have explained it. He found Dr Khan Sahib to be muddled headed and both Khan brothers are now rather sore with the Congress for having let them down.”
As a liberal democrat with close to four decades of parliamentary experience in the Indian legislature, Jinnah was repulsed by the idea of dismissing any Legislative Assembly. Therefore, in early August, he suggested instead that if given a chance the Muslim League could form a coalition government with non-Muslim representatives, which would give the Muslim League legislative majority and thereby bypass the Section 93 dismissal. As mentioned earlier, this Section 93 was in any event not available after August 14, 1947. Rob Lockhart was of the view that if a change was to be made, in the fitness of things, it had to be made quickly because he recalled that Dr Khan Sahib had warned of a mass movement, which he “would try and keep non-violent”. Lord Mountbatten failed to heed either advice and consequently it fell to the Governor-General of Pakistan to take a decision that he had hoped to avoid.
The Khan brothers were openly hostile to Pakistan. They had boycotted the referendum citing that it did not have the option of NWFP remaining independent or worse joining Afghanistan. Bacha Khan had on June 27, 1947 called for an independent and free Pathan state based on Islamic principles and social justice. Dr Khan Sahib meanwhile continued to distribute arms licences to his party men. Similarly, consider the police intelligence report of August 5, 1947 that said: “It is rumoured in some circles that Congress and Red Shirt supporters might start civil disobedience after the 15th of August if the Congress Ministry is made to vacate the office. It is reported that the Faqir of Ipi will declare jihad against the British and the Hindus after the Id and that the Zalmai Pakhtoon Party would fight the Muslim League for the attainment of Pathanistan” (See No 220, National Documentation Centre, Islamabad, 1996, 263-264, The Referendum in NWFP). In the circumstances, which government was going to allow an openly hostile government to continue in power, especially when that government had lost its majority in the Legislative Assembly? In the US for example, President Abraham Lincoln had dismissed not one but five state legislatures in the South in the immediate aftermath of the civil war. Jinnah, on the other hand, had not dismissed the legislature but had ensured an in-House change. Therefore, in the view of this writer at least the dismissal of the Khan Ministry was constitutional, democratic and morally responsible.
Finally on Balochistan and the annexation of Kalat, I would say that no princely state in Indian subcontinent was given the right to sovereignty by either India or Pakistan. This is the legal paradigm. It is no more coercion than India’s actions in Hyderabad, Junagadh, Tripura or Travoncore. So frankly that is neither here nor there.
Filed under: History, Jinnah · Tags: Governor General, Important Corrective, Jinnah, Pakistan
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Its funny to see MAJ being made some kind of champion of minorities, fighting the case in the name of islam, Musalmans etc. No minoirty have survived under Islam or Musalmans, starting from old Medina in Arabia to Modern Medina,Pindi in Pakistan. The last thing any one in right mind will do is to leave the minority population at the mercy of Islam or Musalmans. A person with the view that Islam is the best example of democracy must not have been from this planet. MAJ was smart man but did not know the real nature of Islam and its ill effect on the mind of its followers. Once he started the game of curing minor headache by administring the the repeated dose of Islamic Cancer cells in the body ,it was matter of time for cancer to spread and take over both the head and the body.Now Islam fixated Pakistan is in Hospice while civilized world pay the bill and patiently waits for its natural outcome. Had there been no partition, kuffar world would not have seen the reality of the best Islamic product, Pakistan. Indians owe gratitude to MAJ and every other good soul who contributed toward partition and making the distinction clear for evey one to see. May God grant them Moksha so they can transcend the barrier of duality and enjoy immortality as well infinite bliss .
Milestogo
Sometimes it feels that Muslims are complaining that they have been pushed into Islam – by Indians , by zia – it’s wierdly funny-
MTG
This is gonna get really accute and unique to Indian land. The rise of Mother civilzation wih its full ancient glory will be te double whammy for converts becoming Dhobi ke pet in real sense. There is reason for term Snatani/Eternal Principles used for Indics. Temporaray phenomenons based on Person, Place and Personality are persihable like the buubles over water and cant last long in front of Eternal Truth. Satymeve Jayte. Listen to this Non Dual Prayer, Nothing being asked for selfish , egoistic purpose. No mediveal smallness, stink of false ego like I am this or that and only one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvbJUomIX6M
Pure islami bana dia tumne dokhe se, hum to kachche Pakke musalman hi achhe the…
Pakistan Allah ke razo me se ek raz hai, na congress ne banaya na jinnah ne – ise Allah ne banya hai…
Mr. Hamdani: After reading your hagiography of Jinnah, the question arises: did Jinnah make any mistakes at all ? Or is he equivalent to God Almighty in being blemish-less, incapable of committing any errors ?
Regards, R. Bhawani Prasad
I cannot believe that my moronic son has been writing crap while sitting in the land of the ultimate capitalists. MAJ did a huge favour to us by creating Pakistan because so many moslems would have been impregnating all the hindu chicks. Love you MAJ.
seems like liberals are getting stronger -
http://dawn.com/2012/08/20/memoirs-of-a-hindu-girl/
its still too early but the movement seems to be gaining momentum…
Wall might not seem to be moving but on these days it will fall down suddenly in a flash.
Myth buster your understanding is incorrect. Group C was not the princely state group. Group C was Bengal and Assam. How the groups dealt with pruncely states would depend on the constitution each group framed. It would have been the same as it actually happened after partition. On the Sikh issue … the right of self determination would have been off the table. Please read the CMP.
“On the Sikh issue … the right of self determination would have been off the table. Please read the CMP….”
.
That is exactly why accepting the CMP would have been a major injustice, even unethical because it would have forced a whole people against their wishes to live as second class citizens under another. Many more JN Mandals would have been hounded out……
Bhawani Prasad Ji,
“After reading your hagiography of Jinnah, the question arises: did Jinnah make any mistakes at all ? Or is he equivalent to God Almighty in being blemish-less, incapable of committing any errors ?”
.
No sir. You misinterpreted the latent meaning in the article. This is just a bargaining tactic by Mr. Hamadani like Jinnah did.
Mythbuster… again this view is untenable. Sikhs would have been a force in Punjab within a CMP-India. As a matter of fact given the events of 1980s, I don’t think Sikhs could have been worse off.
The real reason why Congress insisted on partitioning Punjab and Bengal because Punjab and Bengal – at the head of their own groups – would have dominated India… and Sikhs obviously would have been better off… given that there would be no massacres on either side and no bhindrawale, golden temple and genocide of sikhs etc etc.
Like Bengalis were better off…
Yasser:
You know a lot but there are two things that you have no idea about.
1. The degree to which the Sikhs had been embittered by the AIML by 1946
2. The Sikh militancy phenomena and the Sikh status in India. If you want I can elaborate separately. Let us leave it at that for now.
.
As someone who has read your articles for years, I admire your energy and intelligence even more your idealism and core conviction despite harsh criticism you often put up with but I think you (and Ayesha Jalal for that matter) are only partly right about Jinnah and the AIML. While the evidence supports that Jinnah indeed wanted a secular state it is less clear that his party men shared his views. Because of that it is hard to agree that preserving the Union under the CMP was a good thing for all, especially the minorities of United Punjab and Bengal.
.
Accepting the CMP would have been a major injustice because then almost all the Sikhs and Bengali and Assamese minorities would have ended up against their wishes as second class citizens with no recourse except perhaps a civil war. Jinnah’s attempts to woo the Sikhs and other minorities failed because the the rhetoric of the AIML in the run up to the partition had left no doubt in their minds that life under an AIML rule could never be secular, regardless of what Jinnah said or wanted. There is some evidence that even if Jinnah had lived, the outcome would not have been much different. Read below.
.
In a recent article, Noorani reported the following:
People’s War, the CPI’s organ (before it became New Age), was the only paper to report on the Muslim League Council’s proceedings in camera in Karachi on December 13-14, 1947. The High Commissioner to Pakistan Sir Lawrence Grafftey-Smith’s report to London on December 19 is therefore invaluable. “It is understood that the debates were heated, sometimes violent, and that Mr Jinnah himself was involved in acrimonious exchanges. It appears that three main trends of opinion were displayed at the outset; Muslims from the Frontier Province were in favour of a purely Islamic state in Pakistan and urged the expulsion of all-non-Muslims; a contingent from the Punjab favoured the maintenance of the Muslim League in its present form, covering both the dominions, and opposed division; and the East Bengal delegation, led by Suhrawardy, pressed for the replacement of the League by a separate ‘National League’ in Pakistan, open to non-Muslims, and by an organisation in India which, though its membership would apparently continue to be Muslim, would be primarily political rather than communal in its activities and would be prepared to cooperate with the Congress and the Government of India..”
Elsewhere it was reported that Despite Jinnah’s support, the proposal was strongly opposed by a majority of the Leaguers of Pakistan. Finally only ten members, including Suhrawardy and Mian Iftikharuddin, a former Congress leader of undivided Punjab, voted for the resolution. [The meeting was held in camera.] Suhrawardy was condemned and called the enemy of Pakistan and later his name was dropped from the Pakistan Constituent Assembly. When he went back to East Bengal to promote communal harmony, he was arrested by the Chief Minister Nazimmudin and jailed…”
.
Jinnnah’s 11th Aug. Speech is widely reported; what is not widely known is the reception it got. It was was later reported that the fundamentalists in the press office in the administration refused to publish those portions of his speech in which he spoke about Pakistan to be a secular and democratic state. It was only when Altaf Hussain, who had taken over the editorship of Dawn from Pothan Joseph, threatened that he would go to Jinnah to report the matter if the press advice was not withdrawn that they agreed to publish his speech. Even after that some of the news-papers published his address in brief without those paragraphs. Later attempts were made to have this speech burnt or removed from the official record.
His speech also earned him the wrath of the illiterate Muslim masses that had been given an Islamic picture of the new state by the Muslim leaders before partition. Three days after the inauguration of Pakistan, Jinnah was in Lahore. There he went to the Shahi Mosque to address the gathering at Id prayers, but people refused to listen to him. He was shouted down and obliged to leave the mosque by the back door…..”
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Jinnah had made a Faustian bargain in pursuit of his political goals; but he remained a decent man at heart. Perhaps that is why destiny spared him the misery of watching his dream vanish. That unfortunately was not true for the millions of minorities who trusted his words and ended up paying the price for their gullibility. You yourself are one of them I sincerely wish you the best in your Herculean struggle…..
YLH
If Sikhs wanted to STAY with MUSLIMS then there would have been
NO Partition of Punjab
.
Sikhs DID NOT want to stay with Muslims
.
Similarly BENGALI HINDUS and Assamese Hindus WANTED Partition
YLH You have written this
.
” The real reason why Congress insisted on partitioning Punjab and Bengal because Punjab and Bengal – at the head of their own groups – would have dominated India… ”
AND Who was the MAJORITY in these TWO Groups
.
Answer is MUSLIMS
.
SO What you WANT is that SIKHS AND BENGALI HINDUS
BECOME THE HOSTAGES OF MUSLIMS
YLH
You have written this
.
” The real reason why Congress insisted on partitioning Punjab and Bengal because Punjab and Bengal – at the head of their own groups – would have dominated India… ”
.
YLH , What your, this PARAGRAPH has DONE has BLOWN
off your MASK
.
Infact What YLH wants is that MUSLIMS would
Hold SIKHS AND HINDUS AS HOSTAGES
.
What would have happened if CMP would have been accepted
as YLH is DREAMING
.
Group B and Group C ie MUSLIMS in the Majority groups
WOULD FIRE THEIR GUNS FROM THE SHOULDERS OF HINDUS AND SIKHS
.
Groups B and C would have ALWAYS THREATENED SECESSION
.
Groups B and C would have DEMANDED MORE AND MORE Resources
and powers and privileges USING Sikhs and Hindus as HOSTAGES
.
SLOWLY and Surely Sikhs and Hindus would have been
either Converted or Killed or driven out
.
AND the WHOLE of PUNJAB and Bengal and Assam and Kashmir
would have been conquered by Muslims
YLH,
in a peculiar (convoluted) sort of way, you seem to be high-lighting the far sightedness of Patel/Nehru.
Looking at how minorities are being treated in Pakistan, I am sure you would agree that Partition was much better than CMP.
Pankaj,
some of these intellectuals from Pakistan are not confused but scared. They need an alternative to Islam. That is why MAJ is being a demigod. Just like Christ, in another 150 years he will declared divine .
What other choice do they have? They are smart people and see what Islam has done to the country
” being made a demigod”
“What other choice do they have? They are smart people and see what Islam has done to the country…”
.
IMHO it is the other way around.
For serious students of history there is enough published evidence that it was the AIML politician of Jinnah’s time who did it to Jinnah, Pakistan and Islam, in that order…..
Myth buster,
What I do know is that the bloodletting caused by partitioning Punjab would not have happened. I also know that had Sikh and Hindu majority areas stayed within Pakistan, they would have formed a formidable minority and would kept Pakistan secular. In my opinion Sikhs would have been happier in such a state… this is my point of view. Jinnah had offered Sikhs a blank cheque even in 1947. It is a tragedy that these two great communities could not give up their mistrust.
I spent the 11th August day this year with a number of Christian and Hindu activists … we held a protest and vigil outside the Lahore Press Club. There were a young Sikh man there too.. who seemed to be by his dress and demeanour – unlike the Christians and Hindus – from upper middle class, having driven there in the latest model vehicle and what not. The Christian and Hindu activists did not want to associate with him… one of them remarked to me “Sikhs are hardly a minority in this country. They are the pampered elite amongst the minorities. This guy probably is on ISI’s payroll”. I asked him why he felt this way and he said that Sikhs have always been pampered by the ISI for their own objectives in Khalistan and what not. If true this shows the nefariousness of the ISI. However, it also shows that Sikhs were in no danger in Pakistan.
If you are going to go by how Pakistan treated its minorities then I agree with you that Sikhs probably were better off in India. After all the Christian League and its betrayal by the Pakistani state after having made solemn promises to them is an example. Even Ahmadi Muslims after their amazing contributions to the Pakistan Movement WERE stabbed in the back.
However the comparison vis a vis Cabinet Mission Plan is not fair. Cabinet Mission Plan provided a perfect horizontal division to deal with the vertical division. In any event, Sikhs in Group B would be part of the Indian Union and not second class citizens simply by force of their numbers as well as the fact that there would be no exchange of populations.
In any event, self determination on a district level was an illogical demand… if taken to its logical conclusion, it would have only been fair to give Pakistan parts of UP, Kerala, and South India on the same principle. Given that most of Pakistan’s support came from those areas, it was a given that had a district wise division was to take place, all Muslim areas of India would have joined Pakistan in 1947.
Therefore I cannot accept your point of view. The basic idea of Pakistan was reconstitution of existing constituent units… not carving up those constituent units. For the most part India did not carve up its constituent units… it stands to reason then that Sikhs and Hindus of Punjab and Bengal should have gone with Pakistan or better still, the Cabinet Mission Plan.
In any event… this can not be a good argument against the federation under the CMP.
Romain,
Cabinet Mission Plan would have ensured that minorities in any of the groups would be equal citizens and as such there would be no issues… at the very least blood letting could have been avoided… and if parting of the ways had to happen it could have been in a civilised manner… at the end of the day even if an exclusively Muslim state would emerge it would exist as an ally of India as whole and we would have avoided pain and heart break on all sides.
“Myth buster your understanding is incorrect. Group C was not the princely state group. Group C was Bengal and Assam. How the groups dealt with princely states would depend on the constitution each group framed. It would have been the same as it actually happened after partition….”
.
I think you may have misunderstood the thrust of my questions on the Princely states.
My first question about makeup of the legislature was to highlight that it was to be made up of not only the members from Groups A, B, C BUT ALSO THE REPRESENTATIVES OF PRINCELY STATES.
Am I wrong?
If true, a large portion of territory that is today’s India would have been represented by unelected hereditary monarchies with complete freedom within their own territories.
Then, my understanding of the CMP groups were as follows:
.
1. Muslim-majority provinces would be grouped – Baluchistan, Sind, Punjab and North-West Frontier Province would form one group, and Bengaland Assam would form another.
2. Hindu-majority provinces in central and southern India would form another group.
3. Princely States were separate, in neither groups (Thus representing themselves).
Under the CMP they too were in effect formed another grouping, ceding ONLY FP, Communications and defense to the Indian Union. The congress could not legally interfere in their internal status for human rights, land reforms etc.
.
This is not what happened in the end when the British Empire ended, their treaties with the princes lapsed and unlike under the CMP they had no treaty protections etc. It was this change that allowed Patel to integrate them rapidly for he was under no other obligation to respect their separate status.
“I spent the 11th August day this year with a number of Christian and Hindu activists … we held a protest and vigil outside the Lahore Press Club…”
.
Like I have said before you are a good man. Best of luck
RHR should declare that ylh is a troll for bringing up his repetition of Jinnah worship after every two weeks.
Why should I alone have the “honor” of being (called) a troll (that too undeservedly)?
—
Jinnah was a cynical scoundrel – like many (but not all) of his lawyer profession. For him winning case for any high-paying criminal today was more important than bothering about where that leads to in future.
MAJ = Megalomania, Arrogantce, Jealousy
That is what drove him. And when that got combined with this typical islamic MAJ of the ML then the result was bound to be catastrophic.
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I am not a historian. I never bothered about all this CMP etc. earlier. It was not my field. But the debate on the PTH did tell me that we non-muslims were lucky that the partition did not come in 1957 because that would have been far worse for the hindus. WHOLE of Kashmir, Panjab, Bangal, Hyderabad (deccan) and most of Assam and Kerala would have been lost to islamo-fascist, islamo-imperialist Pakistan.
The CMP-given choice for hindus was: either get deceived and mauled by muslims in 1947 or worse later in 1957.
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Too bad that Gandhi did the blunder of letting muslims stay back in India after August 1947 and September 1948 (Hyderabad action). These “indian” muslims are now becoming a bigger source of terror and blackmail for hindus than the pakistani muslims. The hindus will be (again) paying a bitter price for M K Gandhi’s blunder.
ylh’s Jinnah worship has crossed the limits of decency and honorability.
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The british came up with the CMP. Not the hindus. Neither the agents and quislings of british imperialism (from London) nor the agents and quislings of islamic imperialism (from Makkah) had or have any right to tell the hindus what to do in the indian subcontinent.
“”"”"QUIT INDIA YOU QUISLINGS”"”"”
Someone mentioned having read Ayesha Jalal a number of times but having found it hard to know how she arrived at her conclusions.
I have a theory that may partly explain those conclusions, but it can only be evaluated by someone who knows Ayesha Jalal’s arguments reasonably well.
Is there any way we can connect to see if some of this makes sense or not? I do think we may have something a little interesting on our hands. Thanks in advance.
parashankara@yahoo.com
ylh writes:
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“I asked him why he felt this way and he said that Sikhs have always been pampered by the ISI for their own objectives in Khalistan and what not. If true this shows the nefariousness of the ISI. However, it also shows that Sikhs were in no danger in Pakistan.”
…what a cynical interpretation and an insult to the sikhs. Sikhs as helpers/darlings of the ISI!
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“It is a tragedy that these two great communities could not give up their mistrust.”
Are sikhs and hindus great communities in the eyes of a muslim? Never.
Was there one single muslim (leader) who was trustworthy and would or could have kept any of those nice promises? Islam dictates that muslims must become the majority and the absolute power-holders and non-muslims may live under islam only as 4th class citizens on their knees.
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“…and if parting of the ways had to happen it could have been in a civilised manner… at the end of the day even if an exclusively Muslim state would emerge it would exist as an ally of India as whole and we would have avoided pain and heart break on all sides.”
This is not valid today and was not valid in 1947 or earlier. It was never the case. Sooner or later the world UMMAH (=United Muslim Monolith for Arabic/Aggressive Hegemony) would have forced Pakistan to become an enemy of India. This “exclusively Muslim state” would have been twice as big as Pakistan and the fleeing hindus would have had no place in a smaller India. M K gandhi in his typical muslim-appeasing fast-to-death manner would have let muslims remain in India and increased our burden intolerably.
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ylh comes up with all arguments of a scoundrel – very similar to those of his worshipped idol Jinnah.
YLH
it’s not like as if an attempt was not made by the Congress and the AIML at a joint effort at governance. we all know what happened to that and in this regard, Nehru’s decision to pull out can be interpreted as the leagues unwillingness to cooperate and the two not being able to see eye to eye on any issue.
all this is to suggest that it was not an outright refusal of a united India on the part of the Congress. they did give it an honest shot.
as far as the interview is concerned, i would first like to tell you about ho impressed i was with the manner in which you debunked it. if you alone suspected of being false and then wrote that challenge then it is very impressive indeed.
but that also then puts the prescience of Azad in doubt for me since my view of Azad’s prescience was based on that fabricated interview. so what he did think about Nehru carries less wait with it?
look, i don’t know how you interpret grouping, but the grouping was seen to be the most invidious part of the entire proposal which embittered Gandhi towards it.
that is my main opposition towards the plan. i do not believe for a second that united India would ever be peaceful after such grouping. the manner in which the grouping and the demographics entailed therein would impact all decisions would never see peace.
the nationalisms that would then be spawned from inveterate religious aspects of the grouping would be more powerful than any other nationalism that India or Pakistan have individually experienced since then given the fact that this grouping combined both regional and religious nationalsims.
you say that the Congress, by virtue of being the single largest party, had the mandate to amend the grouping clause. do you think that the league would have put up with that? the entire premise of the league was the grouping clause. amend that( in the manner with which the Congress wanted), and that would be the end of the alliance then and there.
i am fascinated by your interpretation of the Woodrow Wyatt affair. both of us have interpreted it based on our own narratives which is why you have interpreted it as face saving for Jinnah and i have kept the more invidious option open. how do we know which one of us is correct? how do you REALLY know if it was face saving or if Jinnah really meant that to be a stepping stone in the direction of Pakistan? the account can be interpreted in both ways and i don’t know how to interpret it at this point.
in the video, Jalal does say that as a group, only the Muslims cannot be privileged with the right too self-determination and that is another issue that has not been given enough attention. The Sikhs for example were not given that right and neither were the parsis or the christians. even among Hindus, there are so many languages and so many cultures that nationalism could done the rather more forceful mantle of regionalism as opposed to religions. Linguistic groups too could stake claims at self-determination.
YLH, your stand on Jinnah’s position is biased and so you are unwilling to concede the fact that Jinnah was just as intransigent as anyone else in his position. you say that Jinnah acquiesced to the CMP and that makes him more flexible. but the fact of the matter is that the CMP was of his making anyway. you force an issue, and then you accept it’s consequences and then appear magnanimous? that is being extremely high handed. the Congress’ position from the beginning was that Muslims do NOT need special safeguards and the AIML’s point was that they do. argue this.
It is here that i am saying that the Congress, certain of it’s own ideology and position, did not believe that Muslims needed any special safeguards. Why do you not blame the AIML for asking for special safeguards for the Muslims?! do you realize what that sounds like from a Hindu perspective? from a Hindu perspective, the demands of the AIML sounded like saying, ” we just do not trust you or your penchant for violence once we get unity from the British which is why we need safeguards for our safety.” the demands of the AIML were always embarrassing and painful for the Hindu community which is a secular community. THIS is why it was so essential for the Congress to deny the basic standpoint of the AIML. my question to you even the last time around was, why do you not find fault with the intransigence and the fixed view of the AIML that the Muslims needed safeguards? partition then, was a result of the two clashing viewpoints where neither was willing to relent. so India then became the India of the Congress where there were NO special safeguards in the way of separate electorates and grouping for the Muslims and Pakistan became a country for the Muslims.
we are lucky that now, 65 years down the line, we have the advantage of seeing who’s view was sincere. Today, muslims in India are equal citizens of the state equipped with all the rights that a Hindu is and in fact has the freedom to follow his own law code based on his scriptures. he is denied nothing and this is after the partition when the population of Muslims in India was 6%. In Pakistan on the other hand, forget minorities, all other sects Islam apart from Sunni’s are discriminated against and need people like you to speak up for them. This was not Jinnah’s doing. i only brought this up to tell you that the future after the immediate aftermath of the partition of India is proof enough of the Congress’ genuine and honest belief in the ability to ensure secularism and equal rights to Muslims. using this knowledge can we not say that at the time that these special rights were being demanded by the league, the Congress was right in rubbishing them? to me, it was.
if the Congress gave into those demands, the question is the number of other demands they would have to concede. and then what would the concept of united India be? a collage of special safeguards were nobody was equal? such a state is not plausible.
what you have to understand is that the problem Indians have always had with the partition is that Indians never felt that there was any need of it or of any special safeguards and that the demand was an insult pointing to their nature. so naturally they would deny it. i don’t understand why Pakistan’s historians do not see this.
H M Seervai is an extremely respected memory in India. he was awarded the second highest civilian award and was offered the post of Attorney General in India which he declined.
his reputation itself is of the highest.
but he remained a constitutionalist in his perspective and did not realize that the AIML demand was an insult to the minority community and so HAD to be rejected.
i am not saying that the demand for safeguards is completely unjustified. i am just trying to give you the Congress point of view which has to be understood and not dismissed like you seem to be doing.
i have already told you my objections with the CMP.
when the league found out that the Congress, by virtue of it’s better electoral performance, could change the nature of the CMP, they realized then that they did not want to be a part of the process anymore.
they too finally rejected the plan although the congress did so first. the leagues rejection was not just symbolic but was making a clear statement vis-a-vis the Congress’ superior powers of enabling change.
ylh
when you say that Pakistan’s constitution was the 1935 document, you know that you are trying to defend Jinnah on very flimsy ground here. no one can accept that argument otherwise Pakistan would not have made another constitution later on.
what was said and done in 1935 is not applicable to the new Pakistan or if it, that should have been made clear to everyone which was not done. Jinnah never said in specific terms that, ” i now declare the 1935 document to be the constitution”.
until and unless this is not made clear, the public do not know what powers are being given.
i have no doubt that had Jinnah conducted elections, the overwhelming verdict would have been in his favour. but that he did not conduct elections means that he did not initiate the democratic process nor did he make a decisive move towards a secular constitution that would then be binding.
that is the first thing that Nehru and India did.
The problem in your Jinnah narrative is his apparent infallibility which makes it superfluous and unbelievable. That’s the difficulty when a writer eulogizes a certain figure. your interpretation of facts is also Jinnah specific which is indicated in the manner with which you interpreted the Wyatt account.
there are many ways of interpreting the same set of facts.
Perhaps another incident that betrays something about Jinnah’s view is his response to the death of Gandhi. on hearing of his death, Jinnah remarked to his ADC that Gandhi’s passing marks the death of one of the great Hindu’s. when his ADC replied saying that perhaps Gandhi’s legacy surpassed the boundaries of his own religion, Jinnah replied, ‘NO. that is what he was. a great Hindu.’
this after only weeks after Gandhi had threatened to go on a fast unto death if Pakistan was not given it’s share of resources which Nehru and Patel were loath to hand over.
i suppose this account is also interpreted differently by you? to say that Gandhi was not great is fine. they were rivals after all. but to say that he was a great Hindu an nothing else, suggests that Gandhi cannot be compared to Muslims at all by virtue of his religion.
to fingolfin
There is this quote from some muslim leader of the 1940′s in which he says that Gandhi for all his virtues will be in the eyes of allah always a lesser human being than the most criminal muslim.
Jinnah was the helper of such muslim leaders. He thought he will lead them to the paradise of islamic secularism (a contradiction in itself) – but actually they were using him as the supervisor over their own hell-construction. Jinnah overestimated his abilities and also did not bother that he was going to die soon, leaving Pakistan behind to those who wanted to make it into an islamofascist theocracy (who were the majority in the ML and even more so in its blackmailing collaborator groups). He was alone with his views (when these views were in anyway progressive). He had no real base and no colleaugues and no supporters in the ML. Muslim masses had been incited to jubilate to him, but he had no real understanding friends among muslims. He was a deluded megalomaniac (like some Benito Mussolini, who was later hanged by his own people).
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Whoever praises or defends islam, kuran or Mohammad is strengthening the islamofascists.
The islamofascists hide behind or among muslim women, muslim children, muslim refugees and muslim liberals and thus protect themselves.
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Neither islam nor Jinnah worship will save Pakistan – quite the contrary.
Ylh
As somebody rightly pointed – your mask is off. Sometime back rexie used to have a mask he was forced to shed it too.
Now you said “Sikh minority would have kept us secular” – never ever say that – that’s blasphemy and if you can get it removed – do it.
Basically you are saying is Islam own it’s own can not survive – it needs sizeable kuffar minority to Go with it.
That’s what kuffar Hindus would say to insult Muslims.
PTH is slowly and steadily fixing the wiring that got faulty over the years and now we are having short circuits.
With respects to all the leaders who extoll virtues of Hinduism. They all believe that Hindism tells us that each person has the wisdom to follow his own path. So as a corollary it does not behove any body to lecture another. At a different level we need to respect others views as we want respect to our views. Discussion or Shashtrath are and should be and was a regular feature in the development of Hinduism. There were learned men who were opposing each other. Many were 180 degrees to each other. But we have respected each one of them however different their views. We have clled each one of them Rishis. Just because they used Sanskrit did they become Rishis. I think when we degenerate others views it means we only give lip service to Hinduism.
Muslims need just the right quantity of kuffar-
Too many kuffar – Islam is in danger
Too little kuffar – Islam becomes talibanized and Taliban consumes the kuffar
Not only does Muslims need right amount of kuffar – they need the kuffar be maintained at that level. Because as islam comes into contact with kuffar, some kuffar will see the ultimate truth and convert thus changing the delicate balance of kuffar and muslims.
I think the optimum balance is 40% kuffar. We can ask some djinns to confirm that but that’s my best guess.
May be we can start by sending manmohan Singh to Pakistan.
1. He will help make Pakistan secular.
2. Ghazwa-e-hind requirements will be satisfied.
We might have to change his Hindu name to Islamic but it could work out…
Ylh
Where will you get Sikh minority to keep Muslims secular once the entire planet converts to Islam? Isn’t that what Allah wants anyways?
May be we will have to import minorities from moon then…If only Zaid hamid could speed up his moon mission…
Ylh
You will have plenty of common history to celebrate with Sikhs – Here is one example
Sikhs can never forget the many personal sacrifices of Guru Gobind Singh. These began perhaps at birth when his father Guru Teg Bahadur could not be present while making a diplomatic tour of four years duration.
Prince Gobind Rai became guru at the age of nine with the beheading of his father by the Mogul Emperor, when Guru Teg Bahadur sacrificed himself to prevent forced conversion of Hindus to Islam.
Guru Gobind Singh’s eldest two sons achieved martyrdom in battle with Mogul tyrants at the ages of 14 and 18.
Shortly afterward, the Moguls captured and imprisoned the Guru’s mother and youngest two sons in an open tower. The young princes achieved martyrdom at ages 9 and 7 when their captors had them bricked alive. Upon their demise the captors beheaded the children and delivered their heads to Mata Gujri, their grandmother, who suffered heart failure at the sight.
Sikhs are one if the reason rest of India has not turned into Pakistan.
I am gradually coming to a conclusion that Islamic brainwashing can not be reversed it can only be prevented (likes of rhr are rare exception)
MTG,
Internet , spread of knowledge will do the final push .falsehood is always afraid of truth and ignorance /belifs afraid of knowledge. No surprise that none of the kuffar world religious , spiritual, ethical , philosophical system is afraid of open knowledge. In contrast islam , Muslamans are afraid , runing scared and trying to get away with old, repetitive ,void of truth taqqiyesque excuses. Golden bright face of Truth is now being slowly unveield by the spread of knowledge and it will completely remove the darkness of medieval, childish Beliefs keeping , preventing immature minds from evolving.
Vinsh kalle Viprit Budhhi. Musalmans have still few inches of deapth left to fall. The upper storey have been Intellectually vacant for long time . Kuffar world have not made up their mind yet to how to dsitribute the war booty after conquering the land/s. Once they come up with the mutual understanding most of the Islamic Myths gonna evaporate in puff of smoke .
All analyses involving islam (and muslims) fail if they don’t take into consideration the fact that islam is an inherently fascist ideology. Some of islam’s fascism is subtle or hidden. Muslims are proving this everyday. The other important truth about islam is that it is an arab imperialist ethnofascist ideology.
Muslim history-writing has to deceive because muslims wish to hide or ignore these two truths.
Have I said earlier that Jinnah was not a protector of minorities?? If he were he would have struggled for Muslim minority in India within the fold of Greater India. But he didn’t and Pakistan came to him as a windfall!!
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Mirjai’s were not yet declared a minority non-Muslims when they hid under the Muslim garb and therefore never raised any protest against sufferings of minorities in Indo-Pak. On the contrary they accepted higher posts and did the country hell so much so that they invented a new prophet of their own and tried to levy it on Muslims , Hindus and christians –together!
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the Mirjai’s are raising all this hue and cry because they have now been thrown out of the fold….and are just trying to swim the channel by catching at the 11aug 47 speech straw of Jinnah which is not even once endorsed by his contemporary compatriots or any other leader of Pakistan or India. What nonsense is YLG trying to get to give lies a foot to stand !!!
My views may be diamatrically opposite to Ahem’s or sachbol’s but I am as much a Hindu as they are or they are as much Hindu as I am. To me it does not matter that Quran was written in Arab and Bible in Jerusalem but if they strike a chord in me they are a part of my religion and if Gita is written in Sanskrit and in Hmalayas or Kashi but something does not strike a chord it is not a part of my religion. Even in classicalHinduism there are so many strands there is Tantra, there is Vam Marg (meaning opposite way or wrong way)but if it strikes a chord it is your way. The problem becomes to distinguish between when is a thought striking a chord or when you think it is striking a chord because it suits your desires at that time.I keep searching for that elusive enlightenment.But Hinduism gives me the belief I have that maybe not in this life but in future lives I may find that enlightenment. LOL.
Reg. Tejendra’s comment that you can’t find any evidence of Krishna in Mathura. Well Krishna may be a mythical figure but Gita is not.
I may also say that I am not alone in my views many view Hinduism as an all embracing philosophy not limited by language time or place.
to Vijay
When a book is called holy or revelation and we are forced to accept it as a whole, then it can be like 99 grams of honey mixed with 1 gram of poison. It is the poison that dominates in the end result. That is why kuran is bad. If the agents of the kuran had said that it is a book like any other and some parts are not good and you can expunge them now, then you could have said something nice about the good part of the kuran. In fact the good parts of the kuran merely act to camouflage the bad parts and this make the bad part more effective in its destructivity. This is a correct logic which muslims refuse to accept or see.
Muslims have distorted the history-narrative to glorify kuran, Mohammad and muslim marauders-imperialists and thus established their “reputation” as compulsive liars.
My dear Ahem. I believe Religion is a matter of faith and heart. Arguments lead nowhere. We every day see great lawyers arguing day after day and judges delivering volume of judgments without really resolving any issues. I am also a very poor arguer. Have never won an argument. However let me point out no one asks you to follow the whole book hook line and stinker. Suppose you follow one part of Gita and I follow another and no one is able to convince the other should not we agree to disagree shake hands and have a glass of bear together.
to vijay
You wrote:
“I believe Religion is a matter of faith and heart.”
Which religion? Are all religions equal or same?
Islam is a matter of the sword (violence and political power), lies and briberies.
Muslims themselves say that islam is different from all other religions. It in deed is. It is in its core spirit and intention a totalitarian and arab imperialist ideology.
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Arguments lead to nowhere when you are dealing with muslims, because islam tells them that islam is the final perfect truth (which it definitely is not) and if they fail to defend islam then the arab god will throw them into eternal hell.
Once that virus of conceit and arrogance enters your brain (and muslims get it as children) you are lost into a fascist way of life.
B.Gita can be taken partially – not so the kuran. When you believe in the kuran then the fascist parts/commands of the kuran will unltimately dominate.
Yasser Latif Hamdani says: ‘What I do know is that the bloodletting caused by partitioning Punjab would not have happened. I also know that had Sikh and Hindu majority areas stayed within Pakistan, they would have formed a formidable minority and would kept Pakistan secular. In my opinion Sikhs would have been happier in such a state…’
There is a slight problem here. This would have made a mockery of the two-nation theory. If Hindus and Muslims could not live together in India, how could they live together in Punjab? How can you have it both ways? Why do high-caliber intellectuals fail to see this simple logic?
The Sikhs made a terrible mistake by not staying on in Pakistan. They would have been living in eternal bliss like the Ahmadis.
How would Mr Hamdani respond to someone who says: ‘What I do know is that the bloodletting caused by partitioning India would not have happened. I also know that had Muslim majority areas stayed within India, they would have formed a formidable minority and would kept India firmly secular, marginalizing extremists from all communities. In my opinion Muslims would have been happier in such a state…’
As for the Cabinet Mission Plan, its acceptance by Jinnah was totally contrary to the politics that he had been practicing since 1940. Hadn’t he said that Pakistan was essential to save Islam from complete annihilation in India?
Shakil Chaudhry,
That is your ignorance about Two Nation Theory and what it meant or what it stated. Had you bothered to read the Lahore Resolution you would realise that Two Nation Theory never suggested that Hindus and Muslims could not live together. The Lahore Resolution is quite clear about the fact that minorities would live as citizens of each state so formed.
As for Jinnah’s acceptance of CMP being in contradiction to his politics… utter hogwash. More discerning political observers conclude otherwise.
Much of this is confirmed by one of the most extraordinary pieces of prescience left behind by H V Hodson, who was the Reforms Commissioner in India in 1941. Hodson wrote in clear terms very soon after the Lahore Resolution that every Muslim Leaguer from Jinnah down to the last one interpreted the Pakistan idea as consistent with the idea of a confederation of India. Hodson believed that “Pakistan” was a “revolt against minority status” and a call for power sharing and not just defining rules of conduct how a majority (in this case Hindu) would govern India. He spoke of an acute realisation that the minority status with all the safeguards could only amount to a “Cinderella with trade union rights and radio in the kitchen but still below the stairs.” Jinnah’s comment was that Hodson had finally understood what the League was after, but that he could not publicly come out with these fundamental truths, as these were likely to be misunderstood at the time.
Fingolfin,
1. Government of India Act, 1935 was the constitution of Pakistan from 1947-1956 (and of India from 1947-1950). Government of India Act, 1935 was adapted and adopted by both dominions in 1947. To say that it was never declared the constitution of Pakistan is frankly not historically accurate and then calling my argument flimsy. I expect an apology from you for suggesting that I was making it up. Click on this link: http://www.google.com.pk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmillat.com%2Fdemocracy%2FConstitution%2Fbriefing_paper_english_18.pdf&ei=E6Q4UMXRFI334QTT4oH4DA&usg=AFQjCNE1euGUKuOfSl_llxubetWpzXYerg&sig2=XdE8dV1LjOO7e8XhZApzlg
2. Grouping was not invidious at all. It gave Congress all the powers in Group-A that it craved. I did not say that Congress had the power to undo groupings. What I said was that secession would have been impossible.You are clearly not following the chain of argument.
While I thank you for your kind words, your comment about GOIA1935 just showed me how basic your understanding of constitutional law and history of the subcontinent is and therefore I do not think there is any point arguing with you.
Btw… partition of Punjab argument is also made by Shakil Chaudhry’s favourite author Ishtiaq Ahmed in his recent book… but then people like Mr. Chaudhry hardly know what they are talking about.
Yasser Latif Hamdani Sahib: In a facile and judgmental manner, you have declared me ignorant of two- nation theory (TNT) and of what it meant or what it stated. According to you, if I had you bothered to read the Lahore resolution, I would have realized that the TNT ‘never suggested that Hindus and Muslims could not live together.’ Wow!
If I am ignorant of the TNT, then, barring you, the entire country is in the same boat. I would really like to be enlightened as what the TNT meant? As for the Lahore resolution, I have read it pretty well. In fact, I wrote an article on it over two decades ago. This article appeared in The Friday Times of Mr Najam Sethi, one of the few people who are fortunate to be in your good books. In fact, Mr Sethi called me to appreciate it because it had been written from a non-traditional perspective.
Paving the way for the Lahore resolution, Mr Jinnah declared on March 24,1940: “Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religions, philosophies, social customs and literature. They neither inter-marry nor inter-dine and, indeed, they belong to two different civilizations that are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their concepts on life and of life are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Muslims derive their inspiration from different sources of history.” Did he highlight and exaggerate these differences to prove that they could live in harmony with each other? If so, why didn’t he make such statements when he was known as the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity?
I guess Mr. A.G. Noorani is also in your good books. Hasn’t he criticized Jinnah for aggravating the communal divide and for ruining secularism by his TNT?
With respect, you have not cited Jinnah or any other Muslim League leader in support of your claims that appear a little untenable to me. Instead, you sought confirmation by ‘one of the most extraordinary pieces of prescience left behind by H V Hodson, who was the Reforms Commissioner in India in 1941.’
You have quoted Jinnah as saying that ‘Hodson had finally understood what the League was after, but that he could not publicly come out with these fundamental truths, as these were likely to be misunderstood at the time.’ It is strange that not a single Indian was able to understand what the League wanted and only the superior brain of an Englishman could fathom it. And the leader could not speak some ‘fundamental truths’ because ‘these were likely to be misunderstood at the time.’ What a marvelous argument!
You seem to believe that the partition was something evil and that Jinnah had nothing to do with it. That’s why you have approvingly quoted Jinnah as telling Kuldip Nayar, ‘Young man, don’t blame me for partition, it is Nehru who is responsible for this.’ If the partition was really evil, why did Jinnah and the Muslim League demand it in the first place? Why on August 11, 1947, did Jinnah justify the partition by saying: ‘Any idea of a united India could never have worked and in my judgment it would have led us to a terrific disaster?’
In your latest post, you made another declaration: I don’t know what I am talking about. Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed has made an argument about Punjab’s partition because he does not believe in the TNT. Anyone who believes in the TNT and talks of avoiding the partition of Punjab or Bengal is totally different. Simply put, he is trying to have it both ways.
Yes. HV Hodson ICS (Reforms Commissioner) got closest to understand the working of Jinnah’s mind. Pakistan WAS a bargaining counter. Nehru ensured it became a reality ! Nehru played on Jinnah’s vanity (ZIDD). India was free in 1935 itself. (1947 was simply a ratification of GOI Act 1935 by the 2 dominions!). It took 12 years (1935-47) for Patel, Gandhi and Nehru and riots [Gurmukhteshwar Bihar]…(in that order) to tire Jinnah and push him into accepting partition of India. The moment had reached such a cresendo that AT THAT POINT IN TIME, it was not POSSIBLE to DISMOUNT. There was one way to avoid partition of India.
A surrender by Jinnah and Muslim League before PATEL (moneybags Producer and Director / Riot Distributor / Financier of the IN Congress), Gandhi ji and Nehru (in that order). Jinnah could not surrender b4 Patel. Afterall Jinnah had asked for 33% for 28.5% Muslim Population of India. It was ameagre 4% difference. Tej Bahadur Sapru had said : “Give Jinnah what he wants [33%] and resolve the issue”., but Jawaharlal Nehru poured cold water.
Because Nehru was worried about the 4% differential ! Exactly the same way as Kapil Sibal, worries about Indian Muslim students who study in the Madrasas ! ONLY 4% Muslim Students study in the Madrasas. Kapil Sibal worries for them.. the 4%.. while completely IGNORING the 96%.
Kapil Sibal did not establish 1 (one) quality High School (KG-12) with CBSE Sylabbus (1st Lang : Eng, 2nd lang : Hindi, 3rd lang: Urdu)., anywhere in India. Only Iftar Party and Mushairas for Muslims.
IT IS THIS attitude of the Congress that led to partition. UNCARING for muslim concerns. Did not give a damn to muslim feelings/apprehensions (they were not fit responding to)… THIS led Jinnah to walk away.
Patel (and the Marwari-Bania) got a clear-cut victory. AZAD understood this ZIDDAM-ZIDDA game plan being played against Muslims and Jinnah… but he couldnt hold the storm. Mainly because Azad was a poor man… and he did not have the financial resources.. to enlighten Indians… about the disaster that partition of india meant (for all concerned… the only beneficiaries were marwari-banias).. The common man suffered (and is still suffering) thru-out S.E. Asia. India-Pakistan-Bangladesh-Sri Lanka.. The Aam Aadmi is still suffering for : Drinking Water – Food Security – Health Care – Education – Roads and Transportation – Security of Life/Honor/Property… let alone luxuries like Freedom of Expression.. and Freedom of Thought and Action….
Hodson had understood Jinnah’s mind.. and AZAD understood the GAME PLAN of PATEL………….and Nehru. (Pre-1947 Nehru was Narendra Modi in an Achkan).