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 on Mr. Jinnah’s death :
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.
Thanks Sridhar. I’ll try to get my hands on a copy, I’m sure I would find one at the library, or at Borders.
Such accounts always leave one heart broken!!!!
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.