Adil Najam
Ordinarily, I might have just posted this photograph below as a comment on yesterday’s post on Diwali celebrations in Karachi (also here). But please, just look at the people in this photograph; its way too interesting to be relegated to a comments section.
The occasion is a Diwali celebration at the Islamabad Headquarters of the Pakistan Muslim League, standing (and clapping) extreme left is Syed Mushahid Hussain, Secretary General of the Pakistan Muslim League, next to him is Ijaz ul Haq (Minister of Religious Affairs, and son of Gen. Zia ul Haq), fourth from left is Tariq Azim, State Minister for Information.
The Daily Times (31 October, 2006) provides more details of the event:
Members of the Hindu community from across the country participated in the event where they performed their religious rituals and traditional dances in candlelight to mark the event… A number of office bearers of the party and ministers, including PML Secretary General Mushahid Hussain Syed, Minister for Religious Affairs Ijaz-ul-Haq, State Minister for Information Tariq Azim, Minister for Minorities Affairs Mushtaq Victor and members of the National Assembly (MNAs) Bindara, Donia Aziz, Akram Masih Gill and others were present on the occasion. Officials of the Indian High Commission also participated in the event.
Hussain said that Quaid-e-Azam had envisioned a Pakistan where all the religious minorities enjoyed equal rights. He underlined the importance of inter-faith harmony for the greater prosperity of the nation and announced that the PML would also celebrate the birthday of Baba Gurunanak next week. He said that the minorities played a vital role in building any nation. He said that the present government was allocating high importance to giving all minorities’ equal. Hindus are playing a leading role in country’s economic development and the present government will leave no stone unturned to ensure their safety and well being, he added.
This is, of course, a political gesture – some might even say a gimmick. But if so, let us have more such gestures and gimmicks. They will, in time, hopefully help change our perceptions and treatment of religious minorities in Pakistan.
Take a look at Liberty or Death – India’s Journey to Independence and Division by Patrick French and The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan by Ayesha Jalal to learn about Jinnah.
Dear Sridhar,
I think I have already addressed the purported (apparent)similarities between AIML and BJP in my longish post above. Needless to say on academic level, it just does not seem accurate.
Now as far as addressing the Advani-Jinnah similarity is concerned… I am afraid I’d have to disagree on this one as well. For one thing in order to establish a similarity, you would have to show us where for 35 years did Advani champion the cause of Hindu Muslim Unity, like Mahomed Ali Jinnah did ? Advani spoke for Hindus from day one unlike Jinnah who only spoke for Muslims after he thought Gandhi was hinduizing the Congress. Even in the hey day of his Post 1940 Muslim Nationalism, he carried along with him other communities and made it abundantly clear that the planks of his politics were minorities and constitutional law. On the converse side, you’d also have to establish where in his 42 year career, Jinnah did anything that even remotely resembled Advani’s push for Babri masjid demolition? If anything, Jinnah is known to have contributed to Hindu temples from his personal pocket, and the first religious service he attended in Pakistan was a christian one. Furthermore, once in the majority all his efforts were mainly directed to the protection of Hindus which he did so quite well in Karachi and for which historians do give him a lot of credit.
The only thing you seem to base your “comparison” on is that Advani is not a believing Hindu or is an atheist. I don’t know what the truth is in that, but in Jinnah’s case we know, his lifestyle was inspired by his admiration for western civilisation and John Morley’s radical liberalism…Jinnah modelled himself as a typical British barrister who was also a fabian socialist … added to this was the fact that the Islamic sect he belonged to was no where near as strict as the mainstream sunni Islam when it came to dietary observation etc.. to suggest that Jinnah was not a believing Muslim is merely a conjecture, when we know that in his personal life he was quite strongly Khoja Shia Muslim… it is quite another story that he did not interpret Islam the way our mullahs do.
So there to the similarity falls flat on its face. Hope this helps.
Adnan:
I did not in any post compare the BJP of today directly with the AIML of yesteryears, except to the extent of saying that both represent(ed) the interests of one community to the exclusion of and sometimes to the detriment of all others. As to the comparison of Advani and Jinnah, the points I noted are facts, not opinions. It was not to say necessarily that Advani and Jinnah sb. are alike in every way. It was merely to make a point that the BJP’s politics is not ‘religious’ but political (albeit communal). I pointed to how Advani in his personal life resembles Jinnah a lot simply to provide an analogy to make this point clearer (that politics can be ‘communal’ without being ‘religious’; in fact I do believe the converse that politics can be ‘secular’ even with its proponents being deeply religious, but that is a different discussion).
In any case, we cannot compare politics of then and now. Even at that time, who knows how events would have turned out if Jinnah sb. had lived longer. Who knows what would have happened to politics if the British were not in such a hurry to scoot at any cost and politicians who had spent years and sometimes decades in prison were not in a hurry to take charge at any cost, and indeed others who knew that they didn’t have time on their side were not in a hurry to achieve their goals lest time and political realities swept them aside.
Lastly, I think this discussion is straying far from the original topic. I thank other participants for responding to points I made and promise to give their views full consideration. But I am not sure that there is much life left in this discussion.
Sridhar, My friend, There is something inherently wrong in your comparison of Advani of present day BJP with Jinnah of AIML. Parties, the way they are, define their leaders and with that inference today’s “grab and retain” BJP, led by Advani, does not compare with “Jinnah’s” AIML. Also, this analogy implies intrinsic weakness on Advani’s part to not only stick with such a party but to actually lead it to its goals (and that makes it worse). This weakness alone effectively takes him out of any comparison with Jinnah. Think about it.
As for ML of after 1947, others, including yourself, have written accurately about it.
http://www.time.com/time/asia/2006/heroes/nb_jinna h.html
Mohammed Ali Jinnah
Pakistan, the nation the Quaid-i-Azam founded, needs him and his values more than ever
By Mohsin Hamid
My earliest memory of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s Quaid-i-Azam, or Great Leader, is from my childhood. The electricity had gone because of load shedding, and I was doing my homework despite my grandmother’s insistence that this was bad for my eyes. My textbook was part of the curriculum assigned to all primary-school students in Pakistan, and it described Jinnah as a young boy, himself reading a book by candlelight at his home in Karachi, a hundred years earlier. I had heard of Jinnah before, of course; his name was ubiquitous in Pakistan, a country otherwise unsure of its heroes. But it was the small miracle contained in the notion that heâ€