The snake venom Orya Maqbool Jan and his rightwing fascist ilk is spewing isutterly incompatible with the vision Jinnah gave in his August 11, 1947 speech
Yasser Latif Hamdani
A civil servant who doubles as a journalist of sorts, Orya Maqbool Jan has made two startling claims vis a vis the father of this nation, startling not because there is even an iota of truth in them but in the sheer audacity with which he has made these erroneous claims. The more serious claim is his negation of the August 11, 1947 speech by the Quaid-e-Azam. He claims that because Civil and Military Gazette did not cover this speech, it did not exist. Unfortunately for Orya Maqbool Jan and fortunately for this nation, the speech exists in Jinnah Papers as well as archives. The citation is Jinnah Papers Volume IV Appendix IX, Item 4: President’s address. It was also widely covered by the press all over the subcontinent, including The Hindu newspaper. Indeed it was very big news. Muslim League dissident G M Syed had called it a “chastening”. Two weeks later on August 27, 1947 across the border the Indian Constituent Assembly debated the speech, using it as a justification for why the Indian Constitution ought to be secular. M.A Ayangar said: “…Therefore, it is up to us to create a secular State. It would not be wrong for me to quote Mr. Jinnah in this connection, whatever, he might have said before Partition. He said: ‘My idea is to have a secular State here’. Somebody asked : “Religious or secular?” He said: ‘Hindus and Muslim are alike to me. They must have equal opportunities’.” Speaking in the same debate Mr. B Pocker Sahib Bahadur said:
“We cannot recognise Religion as far as the State is concerned. I wonder if my friends who have suggested separate electorate for minorities would appreciate the remarks of a great leader of India. It is Mr. Jinnah who, in his address to the Pakistan Assembly says: “…We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens, and equal citizens of one State. We would keep that in front of us as our ideal and in course of time you will find that in the political sense the Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because religion is the personal faith of each individual.” That is what the Governor-General of one of the parts of India says…..I submit Sir, that even they are believers of oneness of their people. Why should we introduce this separatist tendency into our politics? Sir, at another place the same very great leader says “…you are free to go to your temples and places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to one religion or caste or creed, that has nothing to do with the business of the State.”
Yet Orya Maqbool Jan has started claiming that Jinnah made no such speech. Why then were the legislators in India quoting it? The reason is that Orya understands quite well that the snake venom he and his fellow rightwing fascist colleagues have been spewing in Urdu newspapers about the ideology of Pakistan is utterly incompatible with the vision Jinnah gave in the speech.
Jinnah’s August 11 speech is extraordinary – both in terms of its message and the breadth of its vision. It was the crowning glory of a magnificent career in law and politics. It was too fine for philistines and immediately after it was delivered, efforts were underway – then too by a scheming civil servant called Chaudhry Muhammad Ali, the forerunner of the Oryas of Pakistan – to censor the speech and stop it from being published. Despite all that, the speech survived and was referred to by Jinnah himself on several occasions when speaking to minorities about the protection of their rights.
The Pakistan Constituent Assembly records for August 11, 1947 show that Mr Jinnah rose up to speak after Kiran Shankar Roy of the Congress Party, then a member from East Pakistan, had spoken congratulating the Quaid-e-Azam on his election as president of the Constituent Assembly and asking him to make a clear pronouncement on whether Pakistan would be a secular state or not. Jinnah answers that question unequivocally in the speech. Turning his attention to partition, he spoke of why he felt division may have been necessary but that the final decision would be left to history. He then listed well-being of the people as the key goal of the state.
After this he came to the part which needs to be quoted in full: “I cannot emphasize it too much. We should begin to work in that spirit, and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim community – because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on, and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnavas, Khatris, also Bengalees, Madrasis and so on – will vanish. Indeed if you ask me, this has been the biggest hindrance in the way of India to attain the freedom and independence, and but for this we would have been free people long long ago. No power can hold another nation, and specially a nation of 400 million souls, in subjection; nobody could have conquered you, and even if it had happened, nobody could have continued its hold on you for any length of time, but for this. Therefore, we must learn a lesson from this. You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the State. As you know, history shows that in England conditions, some time ago, were much worse than those prevailing in India today. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants persecuted each other. Even now there are some States in existence where there are discriminations made and bars imposed against a particular class. Thank God, we are not starting in those days. We are starting in the days where there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle: that we are all citizens, and equal citizens, of one State. The people of England in [the] course of time had to face the realities of the situation, and had to discharge the responsibilities and burdens placed upon them by the government of their country; and they went through that fire step by step. Today, you might say with justice that Roman Catholics and Protestants do not exist; what exists now is that every man is a citizen, an equal citizen of Great Britain, and they are all members of the Nation. Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal, and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus, and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.”
There are some who claim, unlike Orya, that this vision is completely compatible with Islam. More power to them. It is however clear then that under the state as envisioned by Mr Jinnah on August 11 – a speech which cannot be denied or hushed under the carpet – is not the theocratic and backward dystopia that Orya wants to make it. Call it Islamic or call it secular but the state envisaged by Mr Jinnah was plural, democratic and inclusive.
The attempts to distort Mr Jinnah’s legacy are nothing new. After Chaudhry Muhammad Ali, Majeed Malik, an establishment hand and quite ironically Salman Rushdie’s uncle, had meticulously edited out “inappropriate” stuff from Hector Bolitho’s draft of “Jinnah the creator of Pakistan”. One of the changes dealt with the August 11 speech, the quote of which was ‘suitably amended’ to make it conform to the national ideology. Then in the 1980s General Zia banned Stanley Wolpert’s book “Jinnah of Pakistan” when it came out because it mentioned something about Jinnah’s dietary habits. During General Zia’s time, a diary was also discovered which the Quaid-e-Azam used to keep but was till then miraculously tucked away. These claims were withdrawn soon after they were made – never to be heard of again. Not content with the incorrigible foot-in-mouth manoeuvre that Orya tried to pull vis a vis the August 11 speech, he has also ‘discovered’ a document that he claims shows Jinnah’s desire to form an Islamic Research Centre to be headed by Allama Asad. No such document exists in Jinnah Papers or Jinnah archives. Even more surprisingly the so called Islamic Research Centre was formed under Punjab government and not the federal government. The patron of the idea was Nawab Mamdot. Jinnah had no idea or clue about its existence.
Perhaps more interesting is Orya’s lionizing Allama Asad as a counterweight to what he inaccurately terms “secularist propaganda.” Perhaps he hasn’t applied his mind to Allama Asad’s interpretations of Islam. Clearly even Asad’s thoughts do not quite correspond to the narrow-minded and bigoted interpretation of Islam that people like Orya put up. Of course Pakistan need not follow Jinnah’s prescription to its own peril, in my opinion, for Jinnah’s idea of Pakistan is the only solution to our current quagmire. Obviously Orya has every right to forward his ideas but he has no right to distort the facts of history. The very fact that he has attempted this shows what lengths the right wing will go to ensure that real history and facts are not taught to the people of Pakistan. ‘Jinnah’s August 11 speech is extraordinary – both in terms of its message and the breadth of its vision. It was the crowning glory of a magnificent career in law and politics. It was too fine for philistines and immediately after it was delivered, efforts were underway – then too by a scheming civil servant called Chaudhry Muhammad Ali, the forerunner of the Oryas of Pakistan – to censor the speech and stop it from being published.’
The writer is a lawyer and writer based in Lahore, Pakistan. He has authored the book “Jinnah: Myth and Reality”.
