Jinnah, My Hero

Like a satori, it had finally dawned on me. I was not an island. Out I was from the bottomless pit of a fantastic journey. The inner search had sprouted outwards. The quest, the curiosity, to understand where I was dropped at in the outer world had me look around.

Well, what do you know! It was South Asia! And me a Muslim at that!

But who were these people? What is history? Why Pakistan? Who was this much maligned Jinnah whom many, including some Muslims, disliked so much?

Just as most things in life, Jinnah appeared different depending on the angle he was looked at.

The more I became aware of South Asia, the better I understood Jinnah. The more I read its history, the more I understood Jinnah. The more I understood the deep-seated religious enmity and bigotry between the two main religious groups, the more I understood Jinnah. The more I understood the petty South Asians, the more I understood Jinnah.

Jinnah, the fragile man with an iron will. Jinnah, who could not be charmed, purchased, or manipulated into submission. Jinnah, the brilliant constitutional lawyer. Jinnah, the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity. Jinnah who, when he saw South Asian politics up-close, wanted to stay away from it with a distance of seven seas. Jinnah who thought of the idea of a Pakistan a joke.

What happened? Why the U-turn? Why did Jinnah start believing in Two Nation Theory? Why did he become a South Asian politician? Why did he take that joke so seriously? Did he not know that more Muslims will be trapped in India than in that joke? What about all that killing and human suffering that would follow if the joke became a reality?

Jinnah must have had a satori. Of belonging. That realization must have created a deep passion in him for ‘his’ people. Just like Moses. But he could part no sea! No, sir, no prophet was he. No miracles he could perform. No gods smiled on him. The poor soul! He was playing with no cards in his hands. Yet, using the joke, he bluffed he had the best cards of them all: Nehru, Gandhi, Mountbatten.

His bluff was called and he, of course, lost the game. In his defeat he was handed the truncated, moth-eaten joke.

It is Pakistan’s greatest tragedy that Jinnah died before he had a chance to pick up the pieces and turn that joke of an idea, which had cost so much in terms of human suffering, into his persona: a confident, respectable, dignified, tolerant, progressive, forward-looking, peaceful, prosperous homeland for the Muslims of South Asia. He would have tried to achieve that by giving Pakistan a constitution of which the posterity would be proud.

The jokers who replaced my hero, especially after 1970, made sure that Pakistan becomes a basket-case, a laughing stock of the world. You name it. ZAB (Pakistan’s second greatest tragedy), the Dictator (the third greatest tragedy), BB (the showgirl with no substance), and now the purest-of-the-pure in this Land of the Pure, Amir-ul-momeneen. Today’s Pakistan is my hero’s worst nightmare come true.

The pork-eating, wine-drinking, nothing-to-do-with-religion Jinnah is my hero because he was, and believed in, everything that is decent and civilized. One only needs to read his speeches to see who he was and what he wanted Pakistan to be. Alas!

Simon and Garfunkel, singing for another hero, cry out:

Where have you gone Joe Dimaggio

Our nation’s lonely eyes have turned to you

... Jumpin’ Joe has left and gone away ...