By Saad Hafiz: Muhammed Ali Jinnah who founded Pakistan in 1947 was a refined, anglicised and secular Indian Muslim and lawyer. To Indian Muslims he was a man of sterling personal qualities, the Quaid-e-Azam, ‘Great Leader’. To many Indians, Jinnah was an anti-Hindu demagogue and a political shyster, an unyielding humour-less man with a vainglorious nature. To the colonial masters, Jinnah was a worthy adversary who respected British constitutional and liberal political traditions. Jinnah has been described as a highly conventional politician, who can take no credit for original political thinking at any point. His ‘-isms’ were nationalism and liberalism. He began his career thinking within an ‘Indian’ framework, in the sense of nationalist opposition to British rule. Later, he renamed India’s Muslim community a ‘nation’ and continued his opposition from a narrower … Read entire article »