Advani in Karachi

Re: # 582

Dear Mohar,

Well thats very nice to know... and indeed very rational and noble. (Ironically it was your unbalanced post on Mahadev Gobind Ranade article, that had prompted me to dissect the angelic Gandhian myth, though not to replace it with another devilish Gandhian myth).

Gandhians may believe all that and more, but Mr French is not the flipside. He is a historian, pure and simple. Similarly none of Jinnah`s admirers ever claimed that he could walk on water. Some of them did try to make him into a modern day champion of Islam, but history rejects that view as it rejects all other unbalanced views. So you see I don`t feel the need for any disclaimers.


RE: #581 leveller1

Thankyou for your support. They say as the dust settles the truth comes out. I think the dust is finally beginning to settle on the events surrounding partition and it will have far reaching repercussions for South Asia`s future.

At the very least we know that the Mullah and the Islamic ideologues in Pakistan today are today as stunned as the RSS/VHP extremists in India. 60 Years of lies taught in Pakistani and Indian history books have been rubbished by 2 weeks of debate. Whatever Advani`s motives he must be lauded for that.

-YLH

Re: # 583 manto
//... I don`t feel the need for any disclaimers...//

I know :) Which is what I was talking about in the first place. Worshippers do not *feel* the need of disclaimers. But the disclaimers do exist and are valid. Which is what nakhok and others have been trying to feed you for a long time. You don`t take the gulp and that`s when I came in.

There are always two sides of any coin ... and in case of Jinnah, the dark side is too heavily loaded. You [and some ``historians`` you quote] fail to see it. Which is not extra-ordinary. To give you an analogy - 52% americans still believe there is WMD in Iraq - Bush is still the reigning king in the american heartland. People believe what they want to believe.

But reality is different. Reality is that Jinnah`s dark side is too loaded to ignore. His personality, actions and their consequences are stark and clear. The demagoguery of the man is for all to see........ Just because French and Worlpert don`t say it - doesn`t mean it wasn`t there. Just because Fox news doesn`t say it, doesnt mean that iraq war is a disaster.

Re: # 584
My dear Mohar11,

The only thing I am saying is that you hold this view because you have read a history that is actually mythology.

The correction here is that I don`t quote ``some historians`` but all historians who have studied the life of Mr Jinnah don`t agree with your ``darkside`` assessment. To compare Patrick French, H M Seervai, Asiananda, Irfan Habib, Rajmohan Gandhi, B R Ambedkar, H V Hodson or any other historian or author who has studied Jinnah`s life to Fox News is indicative of your narrowmindedness.

So instead of making these grandiose comments, try and argue logically. The fact is that you have in the last 3 years brought to the table no logical arguments. You actually don`t believe in your own claim. You are extremely hurt that your historical fallacies have been brutally exposed... the childhood brainwashing which made you believe in Gandhi Rama and Jinnah Ravana analogies are slowly being shattered...

The need for disclaimers usually emerges when people like you, who are in essence part of the status quo and worshippers of official state sponsored mythologies, want to draw a distinction between yourselves and others simply to sound neutral.

-YLH

Manto,

Why are you surprised that Nakhok etc resort to personal abuse. While you have put up succinct, well documented and sourced arguments, they seem to have relied on hyperbole and hackneyed accusations. I for one have no doubt what history has been taught in India and Pakistan for the last sixty years is all lies or mythology to use your words. Keep up the good work. Its fun seeing your opponents squirm in pain like they do.

The Leveller

For our dear friend Mohar11.... on ``real`` and ``false`` heroes...

From OUTLOOK INDIA


http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=19970806&fname=cover%5Fstory&sid=1&pn=6


Two Men From Gujarat
In `Liberty or Death`, acclaimed by the likes of Philip Ziegler, brilliant, young historian Patrick French reassesses the architects of Indian independence. Exclusive extracts:

PATRICK FRENCH


IF Gandhi is your hero, it can be a deflating experience to read what he actually did and said at crucial points in India`s political history.


The authorised version of the Mahatma is very different from the real one. Far from being a wise and balanced saint, Gandhi was an emotionally troubled social activist and a ruthlessly sharp political negotiator. As India`s Transport Minister Dr John Matthai said in 1947, the final failure to reach a satisfactory settlement with the Muslim League stemmed in part from the `Gujarati mentality` of the Congress leadership—`ie that of a trader driving a hard bargain`.


Gandhi remains the most baffling and inconsistent



Proving Netaji`s Death
THREE days after the Allied victory over Japan, Subhas Chandra Bose climbed into an aeroplane that was to take him from Formosa to Manchuria.
figure in the Indian freedom movement, a man who worshipped truth yet often had trouble identifying it, who shunned adulation yet seemed to do all he could to encourage it.


A close reading of his statements on a particular subject usually results not in a sense of illumination, but of obfuscation. He often changed his mind, and many of his pronouncements amount to ental spring-cleaning rather than an exposition of ideology. His opponents during his lifetime portrayed this as hypocrisy, but in fact there always seems to have been a sincerity to his actions. To British officials he was `a twister`, and his methods were simply devious: one provincial governor described him as being as ``cunning as a cartload of monkeys``.

When Gandhi first proposed the concept of Satyagraha, Jinnah was doubtful. He was a constitutionalist and a social elitist, who did not wish to soil his carefully scrubbed hands by consorting with the masses.

The befuddlement about his aims and motives, however, extended beyond Whitehall and New Delhi and into his own head. If in doubt about a suitable course of action, Gandhi would resort to tuning in to his often arbitrary `inner voice`, and expect others to listen to its dictates.


Gandhi`s famous Autobiography, which was first published as a series



of articles in the 1920s, is indicative of his singularity. The book`s themes are apparent from the chapter titles, which include `The Canker of Untruth`, `A Sacrifice to Vegetarianism` and `More Experiments in Dietetics`. It is an elusive book, and readers in search of an exposition of India`s freedom movement will be disappointed. The autobiography is a work of Victorian moral sermonising, linked to the author`s experiences of wrestling with his conscience. Its subtitle—The Story of My Experiments with Truth—is itself an example of his approach. For Gandhi, truth was never a static reality, but always a fluid concept that adjusted according to his personal whim.

This was to cause him considerable problems as a political negotiator, since his own recollections of discussions rarely tallied with those of other participants.


One of the results of Gandhi`s experimentation with truth was that he was apt to move rapidly between different aspects of human life, and try to unite them within a



Gandhi was a great believer in the increment of human excrement. His opening question each day to female disciples was: ``Did you have a good bowel movement this morning, sisters?``




unified theory. He intertwined religion, politics and philosophy with personal health, sexual relations and dietary fads. For him there was no distinction between the public, the private and the political. As his children found to their cost, it was not possible to have a one-to-one relationship with Gandhi.In an effort to avoid deceit, he tried to be open about all his doings. Thus, when it became known that he was sleeping with his great-niece Manu, he announced at a prayer meeting that ``he did not want his most innocent acts to be misunderstood and misrepresented. He had his granddaughter (sic) with him. She shared the same bed with him. The Prophet had discounted eunuchs who became such by an operation...It was in the spirit of God`s eunuch that he had approached what he considered his duty``.



The day-by-day diaries of Gandhi`s long-term secretary Mahadev Desai (`M.D.`) are instructive. On one page, Gandhi will be instructing a follower to add turmeric to her diet; on the next he will be promoting the need for cow protection, absolute punctuality and the use of Hindi; then he will begin attacking the drink evil and the smoking of cigarettes; next he will condemn inter-caste liaisons and the remarriage of widows, only to change his mind a few pages later and vigorously promote it. The logic of some of his pronouncements is hard to follow. After the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar in 1919, he complained that the dead ``were definitely not heroic martyrs. Were they heroes they would have unsheathed the sword, or used at least their sticks or they would have bared their breast to Dyer and died bravely when he came there in all insolence. They would never have taken to their heels.``



There were many contradictions in Gandhi`s way of living. He deified poverty and condemned modern industrialism, yet relied on lavish donations from the Birla, Sarabhai and Bajaj families, whose fortunes came from just such sources. He always travelled with a giant entourage of disciples, many of whom were renowned for their cold hauteur towards outsiders, yet he claimed to dislike special treatment. He wished to live like India`s rural peasantry, but wherever he went herbs, vegetables and chaste goats would be garnered, buildings scrubbed, whitewashed and decorated in an appropriate style, and mud refrigerated for him to smear on his stomach as one of his many `nature cures`. His opponent Mohammad Ali Jinnah made the point that he spent less than Gandhi on train fares despite travelling first class, since he only had to buy one ticket.



A remarkable amount of Gandhi`s time and energy was taken up not with the fight against British rule, but with the promotion of social change. He was a great believer in the increment of human excrement, which he referred to as `black gold`. He had elaborate theories about its management and its use in the cultivation of crops, a passion that must have been aided by his having no sense of smell. His biographers tend to steer clear of his



bodily preoccupations, but they form a substantial chunk of his Collected Works, and it is hard not to see them as critical to an understanding of his personality. He had an obsessive interest in other people`s diets and internal health, and his cure for almost any ailment was a saline enema, which he liked to administer to his acquaintances himself. His letters to his followers are full of instructions on matters such as the use of hip baths as a cure for vaginal discharge, and his opening question each day to his female disciples was: ``Did you have a good bowel movement this morning, sisters?`` After he took his vow of brahmacharya in 1906, Gandhi seems to have adopted massage and purgation as a substitute for other intimate contact. In his book Gandhi and his Disciples, which explores some of the more baffling aspects of the Mahatma`s teachings, Ved Mehta makes the interesting point that despite his detailed reading of contemporary ethical and social writers, Gandhi was unaware of the emotional or psychological implications of his `experiments`.There are numerous reports of the distress caused to members of his entourage by being separated from him, and of the `hysterical` reactions of his bedsharers when he showed the slightest sign of rejecting them.


WHEN Gandhi`s Bengali interpreter Nirmal Kumar Bose told him his sexual experiments were unwise, and that according to Sigmund Freud people ``are often motivated and carried away by unconscious desires in directions other than those to which we consciously subscribe``, Gandhi replied that he had only once heard mention of Freud`s name and knew nothing about his writings. This gap in Gandhi`s understanding is not to suggest that a Freudian or even a psycho-biographical analysis is the only way to understand him, but it is ironic that the man whom many regard as the embodiment of human wisdom should have shown such naivete about his own motivation.



In his Autobiography, Gandhi presents himself as a shy, inward, nervous boy who sipped cocoa alone in his London bedsit for three years. In fact he made many contacts when he was in the city, meeting among others Cardinal Manning, the Theosophists Madame Blavatsky and Annie Besant, the Parsi politician Dadabhoy Naoroji and the cricketing prince Ranjitsinhji. He enrolled at the Inner Temple and moved to Bayswater, took lessons in elocution, violin and ballroom dancing, put on a silk top hat, stiff collar, patent leather boots and spats, and carried a silver-topped cane. Rather than concentrating on work like most other Indian students in London, he consorted with a host of cranks, moralists, high-fibreists, Darwinians and utopian communitarianists. Before long he was preaching vegetarianism and pacifism house to house, and writing articles for a paper called The Vegetarian Messenger. His dietary obsessions were already apparent, as he progressed from bread, oatmeal and cocoa to milk, cheese and eggs, and then to fruit alone before reverting to vegetables and nuts.



...Gandhi`s time in South Africa represents the most influential period of his life, as it was there that he formulated the moral strategies for which he later became famous. He practised as a lawyer, although never with great success, and realised that his real skill lay in political organisation. Gandhi`s spiritual and social ideas were also being developed during this time, and he set up successive idealistic communities called Phoenix Farm and Tolstoy Farm. He began to preach his new morality to those around him; when he thought a friend was too emotionally attached to an expensive pair of binoculars, he threw them into the sea. His aim was to live as wholesome and simple a life as possible, regardless of the wishes of his wife and children.



Kasturba Gandhi was small, strong-willed and conventional. She remained orthodox in her religion, disliked hearing the Gita except from the lips of a Brahmin, and at first objected to wearing hand-spun cloth. She rebelled quietly against her husband, insisting on having private sleeping quarters and her own spending money although it was against his regulations. One of her rare known pronouncements was, ``Men are not blessed with the kind of common sense that women have, for we understand the language of sorrow better than they do.`` It is apparent that they disagreed over the upbringing of their four sons, who were denied any formal education because of their father`s theories. In later life they had continual worries over their son Harilal, who drank and gambled and briefly converted to Islam.Gandhi felt this was the result of his having led a ``carnal and luxurious life`` while the boy was a child, but Kasturba thought there might have been a more prosaic explanation.



In 1906 Gandhi told his wife that he was taking a vow of brahmacharya, believing it would help to conserve his `vital fluids` and raise him to a higher spiritual plane. His decision is said to have stemmed from the fact that he had been having sex with Kasturba while his father lay dying. Whether or not it was the deciding factor, Gandhi`s attitude towards sexuality remained troubled throughout his life. He saw it not as a creative result of human desires and emotions, but as a repellent bodily function through which men became `emasculated and cowardly` and women were defiled. His ambition was that sexual intercourse should be eradicated from human relationships altogether, except for the specific purpose of reproduction. Although there were elements of Hindu mythology in all this, there was also a good chunk of the prudish Victorian schoolmaster.



In January 1915 Gandhi and his family returned to Bombay. With funds from some Gujarati mill owners he set up an ashram on the banks of the Sabarmati. At Sabarmati Ashram, he was continually taken up by squabbles between the inmates over spinning, stealing, seductions, food, and worries when practitioners of brahmacharya began to engage in sexual experimentation. Adolescent groping among boys in the ashram school resulted in the already skinny Gandhi going on a week-long fast, a traditional form of Indian protest.



At this time he still believed in the benign nature of the British Empire. At the outbreak of the First World War he had raised an ambulance corps staffed by Indians in Britain. When the Theosophist Annie Besant founded a `Home Rule League` he refused to support any agitation, since he believed the British Empire was the best framework for India and that self-rule within the Empire was bound to be granted once the war was over. ``Mrs Besant,`` he said, ``you are distrustful of the British; I am not, and I will not help in any agitation against them during the war.``



At a crucial Delhi war conference in 1918, Gandhi supported a resolution proposed by the Viceroy Lord Chelmsford encouraging Indians to join the army—an action that he subsequently tried to wriggle out of in his Autobiography. Shortly afterwards he asked the Congress politician Mohammad Ali Jinnah to join the recruitment drive, on the bizarre grounds that it would encourage Indian nationalism. Even by the strange logic of Gandhi, his letter to Jinnah was peculiar: ``Seek ye first the Recruiting Office and everything will be added unto you.``



THE truth about Mohammad Ali Jinnah is that his political ideology developed and matured in a gradual and complex way over fifty years, and that the founder of the homeland for Indian Muslims remained a secularist of sorts to the end. In Pakistan itself he has been an uncomfortable father of the nation, and it was not until 1993 that the first volume of his papers was published. (The collected works of Gandhi, by comparison, run to ninety lovingly prepared volumes.) Yet his achievement, however flawed it may be, was phenomenal.



While a student in England, he enjoyed strolling around the streets of London, visiting the British Museum, and developed an interest in politics, going to the House of Commons to listen to the maiden speech by Britain`s first Asian Member of Parliament, Dadabhoy Naoroji.Unlike Gandhi, who undertook a remarkably similar voyage into London life, (he) does not seem subsequently to have been troubled by shedding the outward trappings of his cultural heritage. Before long he had forsaken his Sindhi tunic and turban for smart hand-tailored suits, starched collars, two-tone shoes, spats and a monocle, apparently in emulation of Joseph Chamberlain. In later life he owned over three hundred exquisite suits, and was said never to wear the same silk tie twice to court.



Back in India success came quickly, one colleague remembering him as `omnipotent` as soon as he came into a courtroom, partially because people were afraid of his precise, powerful, aloof manner. He combed his jet-black hair, grew a tentative moustache, and was said to scrub his hands scrupulously throughout



the day. Jinnah attended a meeting of the political campaigning organisation, the Indian National Congress, in Bombay in 1904, and was immediately marked out as a promising newcomer. Two years later he travelled to a Congress session in Calcutta, acting as secretary to the ageing and respected Dadabhoy Naoroji. Before long he gained a reputation as an uncompromising but resolutely non-communal politician. He must have realised that if he were to succeed in Congress like Naoroji and G.K. Gokhale (a mentor whom he shared with Gandhi), it would not be by virtue of his Muslim origins, but through a secular appeal.



IN 1913 he decided to join another political organisation, the Muslim League, while insisting that such action did not ``imply even the shadow of disloyalty to the larger national cause``. As the Congress activist Motilal Nehru told his friends, ``unlike most Muslims (Jinnah is) as keen a nationalist as any of us. He is showing the community the way to Hindu-Muslim unity.`` Jinnah became well known in the years leading up to the First World War as a promoter of religious unity, insisting that Hindus and Muslims should battle together for an end to colonial rule.



He remained a Congress stalwart, and in 1913 sailed to Liverpool with Gokhale for an official meeting with Lord Islington, the Under-Secretary of State for India. On return, he put forward a sensible proposal that the India Office should be funded by the British exchequer, rather than from India. He was also adamant that Indians should be allowed to become officers in the Indian army—after all, they were ``good enough to fight as sepoys and privates``. His political method was to campaign on small but important constitutional issues of this kind. The notions of revolutionary terrorism or a mass popular uprising were anathema to him.



Although the families of Jinnah and Gandhi had at one point lived little more than thirty miles apart in Gujarat, the similarities in their origins did nothing to unite the two men. The fatally antagonistic tenor of their relationship was set at their very first meeting. It took place in January 1915 at a garden party organ-ised by the Gurjar Sabha (Gujarat Society) of Bombay to celebrate Gandhi`s return from South Africa. Jinnah was the chairman of the society, and in response to his speech of welcome, Gandhi said he was ``glad to find a Mahomedan not only belonging to his own region`s Sabha, but chairing it``.



This would be a little like a British politician commenting pub -licly on a colleague`s foreign racial origins, in a situation where such matters were entirely incidental.



THE FORCE OF TRUTH



By now Jinnah was married.During the First World War he had begun wooing Ratanbai, or `Ruttie`, Petit, the young daughter of one of Bombay`s richest Parsi merchants. They courted in Darjeeling, and Jinnah was soon pursuing Ruttie, although her father, Sir Dinshaw Petit, was adamantly opposed to the marriage, even taking out lawsuits against his former friend and barrister. Mohammad Ali Jinnah, characteristically, would not let go, and Ruttie married when she was just eighteen at his luxurious house on Malabar Hill in Bombay. She had converted to Islam a few days before, and taken the name of Mariam, which is what Jinnah`s more orthodox Muslim colleagues now called her. All links with her family were severed until her separation from Jinnah less than a decade later. Their first and only child, a daughter called Dina, was born on the night of August 14, 1919.



Jinnah was now in his early forties, and Ruttie had a flamboyance to her character that, initially at least, inspired and stimulated him. His wife was beautiful, shocking, with long hair, bejewelled headbands, and she smoked cigarettes in an ivory and silver holder. She was intelligent but unhappy, taking refuge in a rather dippy kind of mysticism of the type that was fashionable at the time. At a dinner given by the Governor of Bombay, Lord Willingdon, Ruttie wore a low-cut Parisian evening dress, and Lady Willingdon promptly ordered a servant to bring her a `wrap` on the grounds that she might feel cold. Jinnah was so insulted that the couple left at once, and never saw the Willingdons again socially.



When a public leaving party was held for Willingdon by some eminent Bombay Parsis, Jinnah organised a disruptive boycott, shouting down a speech by the esteemed moneylender and opium trader Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy. Jinnah and his supporters were hustled out by the police, and he became, rather to his surprise, a hero on the streets of Bombay. A memorial hall was built in his honour following spontaneous fund-raising, and named People`s Jinnah Hall. Now, with the founder of Pakistan effaced from the history of Indian nationalism, it is referred to anonymously as `P.J. Hall`. This was the only time that Jinnah ever became physically involved in direct action to make a political point.



When Gandhi had first proposed the concept of Satyagraha, Jinnah was doubtful. He abhorred the notion of abandoning his elegant legal chambers and European clothes. Despite the similarity of their social origins, the two men offered diametrically opposed prototypes of leadership. Jinnah was a constitutional-ist and a social elitist, who did not wish to soil his carefully scrubbed hands by consorting with the masses. As he told Gandhi, a non-cooperative strategy would in his view appeal mainly to the young, the ignorant and the illiterate. He was right of course, but it was precisely this spread of the freedom movement to new levels of Indian society that was to put the British authorities on the back foot.



At Christmas 1920, with Gandhi`s radical tactics in the ascendant, there was a meeting of Congress at Nagpur. Membership was rising fast, and a new type of activist was emerging. Not only was Gandhi generating huge excitement among Hindus, but he was also gaining Muslim support through his backing of the Khilafat movement. For the first time, a nationalist leader had successfully appealed to workers and peasants from both communities. A resolution at Nagpur endorsing Gandhi`s strategy was greeted by `deafening, prolonged cheers and applause`, and seconded by the once-deported Congress hero Lala Lajpat Rai.Jinnah, resolute as ever in his opinions, opposed the mood of the meeting, determined to state that he believed such radicalism would be counterproductive. His feelings towards the new hero of Congress had never been warm, but the fanaticism with which Gandhi was now being hailed must have made things worse. Earlier that year Gandhi had irritated Jinnah by writing a letter to Ruttie, making a dig at his European appearance and saying, `Do coax him to learn Hindustani or Gujarati.`



Jinnah thought Gandhi`s tactics were turning a political campaign into `an essentially spiritual movement`. As he stalked up to the platform he was howled down with cries of `Shame, shame`, and berated for referring to his opponent at `Mr Gandhi`. `No,` howled the audience, `Mahatma Gandhi.` It is notable that there is no report of the Mahatma rebuking his disciples. So it was that the proponent of Hindu-Muslim unity and author of the Lucknow Pact was hounded from the Congress meeting. As his biographer has written: `He left Central India with Ruttie by the next train, the searing memory of his defeat at Nagpur permanently emblazoned on his brain.`



(By arrangement with HarperCollins Publishers, UK. Pages: 467, price: £20)

---

Maybe ... Patrick French is in a long line of ``Jinnah worshippers`` ... well he is in good company then... including most recently Irfan Habib, the finest Indian historian.

I ask Mr Nakhok to refrain from launching personal attacks and abuse simply because he can`t handle a debate.

Sincerely

YLH

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20050616&fname=french&sid=1&pn=2

The Bogeymen
Since 1947, Jinnah has been cast as little more than a malevolent bogeyman who was determined to destroy the unity of India. Advani, being a bogeyman himself, knew that he was risking trouble when he returned to his birthplace to make conciliatory remarks.

PATRICK FRENCH

Mr Advani, I know the feeling. Say that Mohammad Ali Jinnah was a secularist and you get your head bitten off. Whether or not it is true is irrelevant. Say that Jinnah`s conception of Pakistan and the way the country has turned out are at odds, and the same thing happens. Say that Pakistan was intended as a homeland for Indian Muslims and not as a theocratic Islamic state and people get angry.

When extracts from Liberty or Death appeared in Outlook in 1997 under the headline `Jinnah`s Secularism and Gandhi`s Fads`, letter-writers of India went mad. I was found to be ``blatantly biased``, ``Pak-sponsored`` and ``a shallow-minded attention-monging [sic] idiot``. My favourite letter came from a Mr P. Govindrajan of Bangalore who deduced on the basis of the extracts he had read that, ``The book, by all standards, is trash.``

Was Jinnah secular? Sort of. He used communal antagonism as a political bargaining tool in the Forties, and he failed to foresee the bloodshed and migration that might follow from it. But his essential nature was secular. He was a nationalist and a constitutionalist; he ate pork, drank alcohol and played the stock market. Motilal Nehru famously said he was ``showing the way to Hindu-Muslim unity``. As late as 1946, Jinnah was willing to accept an undivided India, and his founding vision of Pakistan –- quoted by L.K. Advani in his recent speech in Karachi –- as a land where ``you may belong to any religion or caste or creed`` was exemplary.

Jinnah`s demand for a separate Muslim State was provoked by the failure of the Congress to accommodate the reasonable demands of India`s Muslim community in the Thirties, and by its misjudgments during the negotiations leading up to 1947. Since Independence, dodgy history has flourished, and Jinnah has been cast as little more than a malevolent bogeyman who was determined to destroy the unity of India.

Advani, being a bogeyman himself, knew that he was risking trouble when he returned to his birthplace to make conciliatory remarks. His comments provoked Praveen Togadia of the VHP to stand up on his hind legs and proclaim, ``Jinnah was a traitor, is a traitor and will remain a traitor and a person glorifying him is also a traitor``. Inevitably, a spokesman for the Congress followed a similar script.

What had Advani done though? First he went to the Quaid-i-Azam Mausoleum in Karachi (a curious shrine to Jinnah where his golf clubs, monogrammed silk handkerchiefs, dandyish Hanover Square suits and even his Cadillac are on display) and wrote in the visitor`s book that Mohammad Ali Jinnah was one of those rare individuals ``who actually create history``. This is no more than a statement of fact: Jinnah redrew the map of the world and created what was at the time the fifth largest nation State on Earth.

Advani compounded his crime by going on to make a thoughtful speech in which he quoted Jinnah`s founding ideal for Pakistan and said that while Partition could not be undone, some of the follies of Partition could be

He said, ``I dream of the day when divided hearts can be united; when divided families can be reunited; when pilgrims from one country -- Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs -- can freely go to holy sites located in the other country, and when people can travel and trade freely, while continuing to remain proud and loyal citizens of their respective countries.``

For his enemies, of whom there are many, nothing that Advani says about waging peace in Pakistan will alter their image of him as a mosque-smasher. He is, however, a shrewd politician with a long memory. When I interviewed him some months ago, I was struck by the range and quality of the history books lining his shelves: Martin Gilbert`s Never Despair, Arnold Toynbee`s A Study of History. His remarks in Pakistan look like a calculated attempt to reposition himself and the BJP, and for good reason.

Advani knows that the killings in Gujarat in 2002 did incalculable damage to the party`s international reputation, and that the Modi-fied version of Hindutva is electorally a busted flush. If the BJP and its allies are to return to government, they have to do more than wave sabres and saffron flags. The Sangh parivar alone can never deliver enough votes. Whether the destruction of the Babri Masjid was really the saddest or the happiest day of Advani`s life is of passing relevance.

Behind this manoeuvring lies the running debate about what India is, or should be. Sanjay Subrahmanyam recently pointed out that the term `secularism` ``has become almost as Indian a word as `preponed` or `denting` (for removing a dent in a car)``. In most countries, the issue of `secularism` is rarely discussed. In India, it means little because its meaning varies depending on who is using it. The word has become a term of abuse and a badge of honour. `Fascists` denounce `secularists` as `pseudo-secularists,` and nobody is much the wiser.

Is a `communal` political party being `secular` when it pays a minority leader to deliver votes at an election? Is it secular to let Muslim men divorce their wives with the triple talaq when this is outlawed in most Islamic countries as outmoded, and even regarded as contrary to the teaching of the Quran? Is Atal Bihari Vajpayee more secular than Advani? Are proponents of secularism cleverer than everyone else?

Amartya Sen, writing in 1993 and sounding like an India Office official of a century earlier, deduced that the destruction in Ayodhya was caused by ``the extreme gullibility of the uneducated``. In short, the Hindu masses of UP were too stupid: ``While illiteracy may not be a central feature of communal fascism or of sectarian nationalism in general, its role in sustaining militant obscurantism can be very strong indeed.``

Jinnah believed in a Pakistan which was secular in a post-religious sense. He offered, ironically, a vision of modernity that was more realistic in the Forties than it is today, in this age of developing religious nationalism. ``You will find that in course of time Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State,`` he said.

Whether Jinnah`s vision can be realised in the short term is doubtful, but it would do both Indians and Pakistanis no harm to look again at what he was proposing for his country.

---

Patrick French is the author of Liberty or Death: India`s Journey to Independence and Division (Flamingo). This piece first appeared in the Hindustan Times under the headline, `Jinnah and his secularism`.

Dear Nakhok,

First of all it is useless to cast a doubt on my citation. Here is a complete record of H S Suhrawardy`s communication with Jinnah and Gandhi over that period

US NATIONAL ARCHIVES 845.00/11-2847

These are copies of letters that were sent as confidential from Howard Donovan to George Marshall, the then secretary of state. If you live in the US these are not that hard to access.

I don`t reject the fact that Suhrawardy had fallen out of favor with the top leadership, but I rejected your assertion that Suhrawardy was not allowed back into Pakistan till Jinnah`s death, which is just wrong.

Here is why:

1) Suhrawardy, along with Iftikharuddin, was one of the two members who spoke against the dissolution of the All India Muslim League on 17th December 1947 in Karachi.

2) Suhrawardy made his first speech in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly on 6th March 1948. This I am sure you can verify from any historical records maintained by Bangladesh government.


Since you don`t believe in ``US National Archives``, here are some verifiable sources for you:

http://www.dawn.com/2002/01/19/letted.htm#9

Finally, let us hear Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy in his own words which are as valid today as on 6th March, 1948, when he first addressed the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan:-

`Sir, a person has not only loyalty, he has several loyalties to several causes which are not ``antagonistic to each other, and I feel, Sir, that the greatest loyalty which a person can possess, is a loyalty to humanity which transcends all parochial loyalties .... if this State is not founded on the cooperative goodwill of all the nationals, a time will come when this State will destroy itself. `


Also Indian journalist A G Noorani`s paper (page 4):

http://www.jamiahamdard.edu/PDF/Studies%20on%20Islam.pdf


Now here is a letter from Terence Shone, the British High Commissioner dated 10th October 1947, which can be confirmed from British India Office documents:

“Mr Jinnah and Mr Liaquat Ali Khan always assumed that Suhrawardy would become the Prime Minister of Eastern Pakistan. Nazimuddin’s success was a complete shock to the Pakistan Ministers and Suhrawardy…. On 26th August Suhrawardy received a message from Mr. Jinnah asking him to become Ambassador at large for the Governor General of Pakistan with the idea of telling the world about Pakistan. No other position could be offered to Suhrawardy as in anticipation of his success as the leader of East Pakistan, Mr. Jinnah had filled his cabinet.

When he went to Karachi towards end of September , the question of his appointment to the Pakistan Central Government was raised. From various quarters it was suggested that he should succeed Suhrawardy succeed Liaquat Ali Khan as the Prime Minister.”

---

I know you are inherently incapable of accepting that you are at fault. But I try any way.

I have pointed out how Mantolives has expressed contempt for Bangladeshi references whenever they contradict his wholesale lies. But come to think of it, Mantolives had even pooh-poohed articles in DAWN to prove the very same facts to be non-facts! What else can you expect from someone who enjoys being a wholesale dealer of lies.

Anyway, I have no intention of glorifying Mantolives` nonsense by engaging in a serious debate with him. My posts are for those who are interested in facts and not for those who knowingly and dishonestly misinterpret archives to turn facts into non-facts.

Re: # 574 nakhok

You did a good job in presenting your case very succinctly and with facts. Reading your points and counter-points[which are mostly hyperboles] from YLH, I for one, has no doubt where Jinnah stood.

But the problem with YLH is that - he worships Jinnah, the false hero. So don`t expect YLH to get the message. Jinnah was simply a demagogue, man of no integrity and consistency - an opportunist of the basest kind who should be discarded in the dustbins of history where many other fools like him have found there rightful places.

Amen.

Re: # 578

Mohar11,

Looks like the truth is a burning sensation for people like you.

I hope and pray for poor old Nakhok`s sake that he is not taken by this little display by you to shamelessly skew the discussion here. As for your wishful thinking... the more you like
to believe this pipedream of yours... the more it is in your face.

As they say in Urdu: Doobtay ko tinkay ka sahara. So try all you want... but the truth will come out.

Mantolives # 564

I am not surprised that Mantolives can`t accept anything from Prof. Waheeduzzaman. This is quite in line with his earlier staements on what he thought of the National Encyclopaedia of Bangladesh or of statement of facts in editorials in Bangladesh papers like New Age.

And his incessant reference to ``US National Archives`` is ludicrous and he knows that. The fault is with Mantolives` willful misinterpretation to prove facts to be non-facts, namely, that Suhrawardy was denied entry into Pakistan when he tried to go from Calcutta to Dacca on the plea that he was an enemy of Pakistan and an Indian agent. And Liaqat Ali very conveniently brushed off Suhrawardy`s externment on the plea that it was a matter for the provincial government of East Pakistan and then had Suhrawardy ruthlessly expelled from the Constituent Assembly on a specious plea that paralleled the charge that Suhrawady was an Indian agent.

Mantolives knows all that. Nevertheless he must deliberately misinterpret ``US National Archives`` to turn facts into non-facts. Mantolives is not indulging in ``half truths`` - he is indulging in in wholesale lies.

Mantolives can wallow in his wholesale dishonesty as much as he wants to. I couldn`t care less even if I wanted to. My posts are meant for those who are not into expressing contempt for a reference merely because the author is a Bangladeshi Professor or because the source is the National Encyclopaedia of Bangladesh or an editorial in a Bangladesh newspaper.

Here`s another quote:

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..... True, as was quoted in almost every academic screed on Pakistan, [Jinnah] wanted the newly independent state to be one with equal rights. Such a Pakistan didn`t happen.

Jinnah was the one who made it an eternal impossibility. Before the sophistry of the westernised liberal, there was the proto-Islamist who institutionalised religious hate by advocating a state for the Muslims, independent of the incompatible Hindus. This from his speech at the Muslim League convention in Lahore in 1940: ``Very often the hero of (Hindus) is a foe of the (Muslims) ... To yoke together two such nations under a single State, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and the final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a State.`` .....

---

..... True, as was quoted in almost every academic screed on Pakistan, [Jinnah] wanted the newly independent state to be one with equal rights. Such a Pakistan didn`t happen.wanted the newly independent state to be one with equal rights. Such a Pakistan didn`t happen.

Jinnah was the one who made it an eternal impossibility. Before the sophistry of the westernised liberal, there was the proto-Islamist who institutionalised religious hate by advocating a state for the Muslims, independent of the incompatible Hindus. This from his speech at the Muslim League convention in Lahore in 1940: ``Very often the hero of (Hindus) is a foe of the (Muslims) ... To yoke together two such nations under a single State, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and the final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a State.`` .....

Manto-ji, Jinnah`s creation, Pakistan, is going to the dogs and you are more interested in sparking debate about Jinnah himself? His creation Pakistan is (yet again) ruled by a ruthless martial law dictator who will do anything to promote his personal interests, even pimp the county`s armed forces out to the highest bidder, bomb Pakistanis in their own country, tear down their homes and schools, and, above all, sell Kashmir, uptill now the sacred cause, to the Indian enemy, and all you are worried about is Jinnah`s reputation?? Don`t you think you`ve got your priorities a little mixed up?

#557


Manto, don`t kid yourself about Advani. He made a smart move that keeps things going smoothly until that Dhala from Dhili, the Pimp in Pindi, the Rental General Pervaiz Musharaf delivers to India a ``solution`` in Kashmir beyond their wildest dreams.

Your patriotism for this failed state Pakistan aka ``rent-an-army`` is SO misplaced, brother. It`s time for Punjabis to look beyond Pakistan now.

Re: # 569

Dear Dionysus,

I am not kidding myself with Advani, but I believe by touching off this debate he has done the subcontinent a great favor whatever his motives.

As for Punjab looking beyond Pakistan... we will definitely take up this issue and hammer it out some other day.