Gone with the wind

A tale of two leaders

Doing well in school is no guarantee that you will do well in life; but to do well in life, you have to at least get to a school. Mohammad Ali Jinnah, father of Pakistan, was born in Karachi in 1875; his first school was a madrassah. He moved to a missionary institution at the age of seven, and then on to Lincoln’s Inn in London where he enrolled as a “gentleman-student”. He was called to the bar in 1896 but only on his fourth attempt. This academic setback never dented his self-confidence.

He began practice in Mumbai as the proverbial “briefless barrister”. Sir Charles Olivant, then law member in the Governor’s Council, saw some spark in this young man and offered him a place in the colonial judicial service at the then fabulous salary of Rs 1500 a month. Jinnah archly told his benefactor that he hoped to earn that much in a day. Within less than a decade, not only was his brief bulging, but Jinnah had become a member of the Viceroy’s Council.

M C Chagla, who was Jinnah’s junior in the 1920s and rose to become foreign minister under Mrs Indira Gandhi, called Jinnah a poor lawyer but a superb advocate. The law was less important than the case: a skill that enabled Jinnah to carve out Pakistan from the fog of possibilities that engulfed the subcontinent during its decade of uncertainty between 1937 and 1947.

Jinnah’s values were shaped by the liberal thought of a nation whose political grasp he was determined to overthrow, Britain. His political hero was the great Turkish hero and reformer, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who wrenched his nation out of Ottoman decline and placed it on the forefront of the modern world. Ataturk had long banned the veil and ensured gender equality through legislation when Jinnah told a Muslim League conference on 27 October, 1937, “I wish I were Mustafa Kemal. In that case I could easily solve the problem of India. But I am not.”

Perhaps that was the problem: Jinnah wanted Pakistan to be a secular nation with a Muslim majority, but along the way compromised with forces who sought a theocratic hegemony. The law was less important to Jinnah than the case. His advocacy created Pakistan; his comparative indifference to its ideology left room for others to twist Pakistan towards directions that would have left secular Jinnah aghast.

Could Jinnah have lived, or even survived, in a Pakistan where a girl child, Malala, was shot in the head by fundamentalist thugs merely because she wanted to go to school, no more than a madrassah of the sort where Jinnah learnt his first lessons in a life that would change the destiny of a subcontinent?

Was there corruption during Mahatma Gandhi’s freedom movement?

It began, formally, on 2 August, 1920, when Gandhi made an unusual demand: Britain, which had just defeated Turkey in the First World War, should restore suzerainty of the holy Islamic cities of Mecca and Medina to the Caliph. Gandhi also sought immediate “swaraj”, or self-rule, for India, whose armies had fought alongside Britain in the war and, indeed, had helped it vanquish the Ottoman empire. This mass upsurge is known, therefore, as the non-cooperation as well as the Khilafat (Caliphate) movement.

Gandhi’s principal ally was the All India Khilafat Committee, led by both conservative ulema as well as Oxford-returned gentry like Shaukat Ali and Mohammad Ali. India had witnessed nothing like it. Hindu-Muslim unity shifted from treetop conference resolutions to grass and its roots, and Indians, woken from slumber, shivered with passion as they went in search of the India of their dreams. Gandhi was heart and soul of that great moment. Rabindranath Tagore honoured him with the honorific of Mahatma, a tribute endorsed by public acclaim.

Funds came from street donations: wives of businessmen threw their jewels into cloth bags held by volunteers; the less fortunate gave the anna in their pocket. Receipt books existed, but were often nominal. And there lay the nub. Suspicion arose; enquiry committees were soon in place. It is a long and not very pleasant story, but they discovered that some Khilafat leaders were charging their laundry and barbershop bills to the fund; a venerable maulana was thought to have purchased his Chevrolet out of them; and one Mumbai merchant had diverted Rs 16 lakhs to his business.

But when investigation was complete into the fund controlled by Gandhi, there was not a rupee that could not be accounted for. Gandhi financed the liberation of India over a quarter century with donations from Indians. He had his weaknesses. He made his mistakes. But greed was not among them.

What would Gandhi have thought of 21st century India, where corruption is endemic, where public life and private sector business is consumed by a gangrene called loot?

If there are tears in Heaven, the rivers of Paradise must be in saline flood.

The columnist is editor of The Sunday Guardian, published from Delhi, India on Sunday, published from London and Editorial Director, India Today and Headlines Today.