Adil Najam
Today is 9/11. Much will be written and much discussed on the 5th anniversary of the cruel attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, on what has happened since, on all the ways in which the world changed, and on all the other ways in which it did not. Today is a sad day, and at ATP our hearts and prayers go out to the dear ones of the victims of this tragedy, and to the loved ones of all who have lost their lives in the events that were unleashed by it.
While 9.11.2001 will be much debated elsewhere, we here at ATP want to recall the events of 9.11.1948.
For Pakistanis, 9/11 has always been a sad date. A date on which - barely a year after the nation’s birth - its founding leader, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, died. Here is a short (50 sec) newsreel video clip with a report by Gaumont British News on Mr. Jinnah’s death (made availabel on the Internet by the GandhiServe Foundation):
Like every year, APP has announced in advance how the “nation” will mark this occasion, and every newspaper (e.g., Dawn) has printed this “news” on its front page:
ISLAMABAD, Sept 10: The nation will observe Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s 58th death anniversary on Monday with a pledge to transform Pakistan into a vibrant, progressive and enlightened country as envisioned by the great leader.
I am glad that the APP has he psychic power to know exactly how this “nation” will observe the anniversary, even before the occasion. They have been making the same stale prediction every year for as long as I can remember. Maybe, we as a “nation” do actually make that “pledge” every year. Its just that we have not been very good at keeping the pledge.
Some might argue that the “nation” had already begun to let Mr. Jinnah down even in those brief 13 months that he lived in the country he had founded. Others like to believe that Pakistan’s history might have taken a very different path had he lived longer. It may well have. I am just not sure what that path might have been given that tensions between him and those who were running day-to-day Pakistan had begun to appear even while he was alive.
His death, and the circumstances of his death, was itself not without controversy (see, for dramatic effect, the opening scenes of the movie, Jinnah, here). But today, September 11, should not only be a sad reminder of his untimely death. It should also be a moment to reflect on his life. And, maybe, it should be a moment to reflect on what lessons that life might have to offer for the future.
From its very inception, ATP has had an ongoing discussion on the legacy of Mr. Jinnah and the various meanings it has for different people. Today seems to be an appropriate day to continue that discussion; to think, yet again, about the meaning of the life and death of Mr. Jinnah.
Related ATP Posts:
- Read about the Other Side of Mr. Jinnah
- Watch Jinnah: The Movie
- Read about Jinnah’s first message to the nation
- Watch historic footage from August 1947
- Read about the Jinnah-Gandhi relationship
- Listen to and watch Mehdi Hassan’s classic, “yeh watan tumhara hai”, which is in many ways Jinnah speaking to the rest of us.
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A fleeting view of Jinnah as a person can also be seen in this chapter, though it is not primarily about him.
http://iref.homestead.com/DirectAction.html
One caveat is that this is Jinnah seen through the eyes of one person, albeit an outsider.
Saima:
You asked for a reference that might help in your original quest for understanding Jinnah as a person. There aren’t very many personal portraits of his and he did not write very much either. One is forced to piece together his persona from his public speeches, interviews etc., but it is hard to see him as a person from these sources.
One exception is an account by Margaret Bourke-White, which is a chapter in her book, “Halfway to Freedom”. Bourke-White was a correspondent for the Life magazine and became very famous for her photoessays for the magazine. She worked for Fortune and Life for several years and was a war correspondent during World War II. Some of her most famous images are those of the survivors of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp at the end of the war - these images have often been used since then to define the holocaust.
She wrote a book, “Halfway to Freedom”, based on her travels through India and Pakistan just after independence in August 1947. The book consists of personal portraits of people across the subcontinent, from famous people like Jinnah and Patel and Gandhi to child labourers to Maharajas to merchants to a survivor of the Direct Action Day violence in Calcutta.
The chapter on Jinnah is given below. The book also has photographs of Jinnah in his house, but they are not in this link. If you are interested, I can scan them from my personal copy of the book and post them.
http://iref.homestead.com/Messiah.html
and here is the a Life cover photograph of Jinnah, taken by Bourke-White.
http://www.collecting-old-magazines.com/images/bou rke-white-010548.jpg
Sridhar
Dear Adnan Sisddiqui,
As much as I wanted to stay away from this discussion (after your distortion and mis-interpretation of my views on your blog), I feel compelled to clarify a few things for you , as you yourself confessed to be “kinda confused”.
You need to realise that Jinnah was not an angel, niether was he an evil….he was a human being and a mortal with positive and negative qualities….His integrity, honesty righteousness, quest for social equality and justice were his strengths, which made him a remarkable leader, but if we start analysing him for his personal choices and what we did in his private life….especially when that life had no impact on the future of this country or the policies he adopted…..then it would be an injustice to him and to our sensibilities.
Your dilemma(I maybe wrong here in my assessment) is that you can’t accept the fact that a man who was not a staunch muslim(as you believe a leader has to be) and believed in religious and personal freedom can be a good leader also.
For years the books in our schools have taught us to be judgemental and to be in denial about the good deeds of people who are not muslims….now when the reality hits home….it is confusing, unacceptable and humiliating…..
It is not a coincidence but a an organised effort on part of the govt. to prepare a generation which is misinformed and ignorant….just reading different versions of bible is not enough to compare christians or muslims or hindus or muslims…..our actions speaks louder than word….we need to prove that we are worthy of being a free citizen of a free country, where people’s life and honour are safe and sacred.
Dear Adnan Siddiqui,
I can’t do anything if you deliberately choose to be blind to the facts.
1. Bhagat Singh was never in the Indian Army. Please go check your facts. Same goes for Chanrashehkar Azad.
2. That Jinnah was an Ismaili Khoja Shiite is well known and historically proved.
3. Whether he ate pork or not is his personal business.
4. The Islamic principles that Jinnah defined were Equality, Fraternity and Justice for all. Nothing non-secular about that either.
5. About Qudratullah Shahab, I have read the book several times and find it the most ridiculous piece of nonsense ever to come out of Pakistan.
Your problem is that you are so utterly unable to accept any point of view that contradicts your own that you will reject everything as a grand zionist conspiracy.
This is why we are where we are.
dear MLQ I already answered here .Christianity and Islam are not same religion and those who think are same and hence required sepration are actually betraying themselves.
[quote post="301"]so by the same token… how could he have participated in the “freedom movement� and/or “Pakistan movement�? Was he ever a member of the Muslim League or the Congress or any other party? He was a loyal ICS officer[/quote]
your statment doesn’t make any sense.Where was it written that thos who were with muslim league are only Freedom MOvement member?My grandfather was not a league member but very active freedom movement supporter?What do you say about bhagat singh,chandra shekar azaad etc?they were part of British machinary/army but they were loyal to nation rather british govt so your statment doesnt hold water that those who were in ICS coudnt be loyal to new nation.After this statment of yours i believe you haven;t read shahab’s biography or just skipped the particular chapter.Can you tell me the chapter deals with his attachment with movement and his meeting with Jinnah?
[quote post="301"]If Saima Nasir thinks Jinnah is secular, to her (and to me) that is a positive thing.[/quote]
Find I dont need to argue about this anymore since both of you have potrayed jinnah according to your belief.All I know Jinnah wanted to lay Pakistan’s foundation on basis of Islamic prinipals,his speeches are witness of it so one tries as much to prove otherwise,its just wastage of time.
As I said,i visited resources which you were also mentioning and every one was potraying jInnah according to his belief.Somene called him ismaili,some says shia as well as said ate pork.Kinda confused me tht what kinda faith he had? anyways,I have not made further searches but I am sure some jew on earth would even claim that jinnah was a jew originally therefore I just dont believe in media blindly.
Brother Adnan,
Re your point number 4.
Being a liberal and a good Muslim are not mutually exclusive. One can be both. Similarly, in my view, one can be secular and Muslim at the same time.
Regarding Mr. Jinnah, the subject of this post,I suggest you read, if you find time, Ardeshir Cowasjee’s column in Dawn (Sunday, Sep. 17). It removes a lot of cobwebs from one’s mind about Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan.
dear bro MQ,walikum salam!
1-I know this thing ,I am always sorry for that.
2-I know you are not wrong about spelling mistakes but they are not intentional.Also I don’t feel shame that my written english is not as good as others herere or around the world so one would have to bear that or if proper english is a core requirment then I happily surrender to comment here.
3-No you took me wrong here.I just despise that if some x person is potrayed in form other than its orignal to justify statements.This is what I always disagree and I am not ashamed of it.
4-The definition you provided is not what Islam never touched.I’m sure you didn’t mean that Islam don’t comply all attributes you mentioned above.Usually I met people who calls themselves liberals are far away from basics of Islam[e.g; Namaz] so I use my experience to give any such statment.
Brother Adnan Siddiqui, A.O.A.(W.R.W.B.H)
Much as I would like to read your comments at lenght I cannot because they tend to be too lengthy and not easy to read. May I suggest a few tips that might help:
1. Keep your comments to within 300 words or 30 lines in the space provided for typing your comment.
2. Before hitting the Submit button go over what you have typed and edit the spelling and other obvious mistakes. Such mistakes negatively affect the credibility of your message. Also, edit out the anger from your message. It doesn’t help the reader.
3. Don’t make every discussion a battle between “good” and “evil” or “kufr” and “Islam”.
4. You often use the terms “liberal” and “secular”. Liberal does not mean ‘drinking and dancing’ as most Pakistanis tend to interpret it. Liberlism relates to basic freedoms: economic, political, religious and of speech. Similarly, secualrism does not mean absence of religion or “la-deeniyat”. It means non-interefence of state in religious matters.
Now to the topic under discussion, all credible accounts of Jinnah’s life indicate that he was a liberal and a secular person. And that, were he alive today, the article 62 (?) of the constitution would not allow him to be a candidate for the National Assembly or the senate.
P.S: This comment of mine is a longish comment but I have only used about 260 words.