Muhammad Ali Jinnah: Founder of Pakistan
24 March 2016By Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdi
The 139th birth anniversary of Pakistan's founder Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali
Jinnah was recently celebrated and I was invited to attend a function
organized by the Pakistan National Solidarity Forum, a common platform of
various political, academic, literary, cultural and other organizations in the
Pakistani community in the western region of Saudi Arabia. The speakers dealt
at length with the charismatic leadership qualities that catapulted Jinnah to
the helm of the Muslim League Party and enabled him to lead the party
successfully to establish a separate nation for Muslims.
Jinnah was born on 25 December 1876 in Karachi where he received his
elementary education. He then moved to Mumbai where he studied at Bombay
University and then traveled to London to study law at one of the most
prestigious law institutes in the world – Lincoln's Inn.
After returning to India, he practiced as a barrister in Mumbai. Jinnah, with
his advocacy and legal logic, shot to fame as a well-known barrister in the
city, thanks to his elegance, eloquence and absolute self-confidence. One of
Jinnah's fellow barristers from the Bombay High Court remembered that
''Jinnah's faith in himself was incredible.'' He recalled that on being
admonished by a judge with: ''Mr. Jinnah, remember that you are not addressing
a third-class magistrate''; Jinnah shot back: ''My Lord, allow me to warn you
that you are not addressing a third-class pleader.''
Another of his fellow barristers described him saying: ''He was what God made
him, a great pleader. He had a sixth sense: he could see around corners. That
is where his talents lay… he was a very clear thinker… But he drove his points
home—points chosen with exquisite selection—slow delivery, word by word.''
Jinnah entered politics by joining the Indian National Congress and rose to
prominence as one of its prominent young leaders. He played a great role in
India's freedom struggle. In the early years of his political career, Jinnah
was one of the proponents of Hindu-Muslim unity, and also a staunch advocate
of the rights of minorities, especially the political rights of Muslims. He
proposed a 14-point constitutional reform plan to safeguard the political
rights of Muslims. He was instrumental in shaping the Lucknow Pact between the
Congress and the All India Muslim League under which the two parties agreed on
the composition of the legislatures and the quantum of representation to be
allowed to the two communities. Jinnah, the chief architect of the Lucknow
Pact, was given the title of ''Ambassador of Hindu – Muslim Unity.''
Later, Jinnah resigned from Congress when the party agreed to follow a
campaign of ''satyagraha'' or non-violent resistance, advocated by Mahatma
Gandhi, and became leader of the All India Muslim League party. He became a
staunch advocate of the two-nation theory, which was a founding principle of
the Pakistan Movement and the partition of India. He told Gandhi that Hindus
and Muslims were two distinct nations, regardless of ethnic or other
commonalities. He also demanded that the British quit India after dividing the
country.
Edwin Montagu, the then British secretary of state for India, expressed his
opinion and found Jinnah: ''Perfectly mannered, impressive looking, armed to
the teeth with the dialects… Jinnah is a very clever man and it is of course
an outrage that such a man should have no chance of running the affairs of his
own country.''
After the adoption of the Lahore Resolution, which is also known as the
Pakistan Resolution, by the annual meeting of the All India Muslim League held
in Lahore in 1940, it was evident that Jinnah and his party were not ready to
accept anything other than partition of the subcontinent into India and
Pakistan on the basis of the two-nation theory. According to the theory, all
Muslim-majority provinces would join Pakistan while the minorities would have
the choice of migration to either of the two new states where their community
was a majority or of remaining in their original native place. After a long
and bitter struggle and great sacrifices, the new nation of Pakistan came into
being in 1947 and Jinnah became the first governor general of Pakistan. Jinnah
worked to aid the millions of Muslim migrants who had emigrated from the new
nation of India to Pakistan and he personally supervised the establishment of
refugee camps.
Though Pakistan was created on the principle of the two-nation theory, the
Muslim majority Kashmir was an exception. The Hindu Maharaja of Kashmir
favored accession of his princely state to India, and subsequently India and
Pakistan fought three wars over Kashmir. The United Nations Commission for
India and the Pakistan Resolution stated that the question of the accession of
the princely state should be decided through a free and impartial plebiscite
of the Kashmiri people. However, that plebiscite has yet to be held.
Quaid-e-Azam died in September 1948 just over a year after Pakistan gained
independence from the British Raj. Jinnah left a deep and respected legacy in
Pakistan. As his biographer Stanley Wilbert observed, he breathed his last
after altering the course of history, modifying the world map and creating a
new nation-state for the Muslims of the subcontinent.
I would like to emphasize that the best tribute for this great Muslim leader
would be the resolution of the problem of the stranded Pakistanis in
Bangladesh, whose only fault is their determination to maintain their identity
as Pakistanis.
— Dr. Ali Al-Ghamdi is a former Saudi diplomat who specializes in Southeast
Asian affairs. He can be reached at algham@hotmail.com
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