Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah was one of the greatest leaders of the modern age, who not only led his people to independence but founded a separate homeland for them, where they could mould their lives in accordance with the teachings of the Holy Quran and traditions of Islam and cultivate their culture and civilisation.
This was a far greater achievement of the Quaid than any other national liberation leader. Other leaders struggled for independence within states already in existence, the Quaid alone sought a separate homeland where none had existed. This he achieved almost single-handed and constitutionally, and in the teeth of opposition.
Stanley Wolpert has rightly said about the Quaid that "Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Muhammad Ali Jinnah did all three".
Pakistan's emergence was not just the emergence of a new state, but it was created on the basis of an Islamic ideology. If Pakistan had not been created, the Muslims would have been under the militant Hindu majority in united India and lost in the Hindu majority.
The only objective of the Pakistan movement was not to separate some provinces to save them from Hindu domination. Had it been so the Muslims of the minority provinces would never have taken the active part that they did in the freedom movement. The Muslims of the minority provinces knew that if Pakistan was created they would stand to gain nothing, indeed might lose everything. In fact, the Muslims of South Asia believed that they were not fighting for a territory only, but for the preservation of their culture and civilisation, language and literature and Islamic way of life.
The Quaid-i-Azam at first devotedly worked for the cause of Hindu Muslim Unity and spent most of energies and efforts towards its attainment. His efforts were appreciated and Mr Jinnah was acknowledged by the Hindus, themselves as an Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity. But the force of emerging conditions soon led the Muslims of the sub-continent to change their outlook and adopt a different course.
The awareness of a separate Muslim nationhood in the Sub-continent can be traced back to a millennium when noticed for the first time by Alberuni. He visited India in the ninth century and wrote in his famous work "Kitab-al-Hind" as under:
"For the reader must always bear in mind that the Hindus entirely differ from us in every respect, many a subject appearing intricate and obscure which would be perfectly clear if there were more connection between us. The barriers which separate Muslims and Hindus rest on different causes. First, they differ from us in everything which other nations have in common. And here we first mention, the language, although the difference of the language also exists between other nations".
This consciousness of a distinct national identity was later stressed by Hazrat Mujaddid Alf-i-Thani (D.1624), Shah Waliullah (D.1762), Sayyid Ahmed Shaheed (D. 1831) and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (D.1898).
Allama Iqbal for the first time pleaded for a separate homeland for the Muslims of the sub-continent in December 1930 from the platform of the All India Muslim League.
In the Presidential Address at the 21st Session of the All India Muslim League at Allahabad on 29th December, 1930 Allama Iqbal announced:
"Personally, I would go further than the demands embodied in it. I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sindh and Balochistan amalgamated into a single self-government formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State that appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India ...India is the greatest Muslim country in the world. The life of Islam, as a cultural force in this living country very largely depends on its centralisation in a specified territory. This centralisation of the most living portion of the Muslims of India, whose military and police service has, notwithstanding the unfair treatment from the British, made British rule possible in this country, will eventually solve the problem of India as well as of Asia. It will intensify their sense of responsibility and deepen their partriotic feeling. Thus, possessing full opportunity of development within the body-politic of India, the North-West Indian Muslims will prove the best defenders of India against a foreign invasion, be that of invasion, one of ideas or of bayonets.
He further continued:
"We are a nation. And a nation must have a territory. What is the use of merely saying that we are a nation? Nation does not live in the air. It lives on the land, it must govern land, and it must have territorial state and that is what you want to get:
Pakistan was created as the first Islamic State after the establishment of the state of Medina in 622 AD as an ideological state on the basis of Islam. Why could Hindus and Muslims not coalesce into one nation although they lived together for centuries? The answer to this question can be found in the Quaid's speech at Aligarh, in 1944, wherein he remarked:
"Pakistan started the moment the first non-Muslim was converted to Islam in India long before the Muslims established their rule. As soon as a Hindu embraced Islam he was outcast not only religiously but also socially, culturally and economically.
As for the Muslim, it was a duty imposed on him by Islam not to merge his identy and individuality in any alien society. Throughout the ages, the Hindus had remained Hindus and Muslims had remained Muslims, and they had not merged their entities - that was the basis Pakistan".
Discussing the philosophical difference between Islam and Hinduism the Quaid-i-Azam declared at All India Muslim League Lahore Session on 23rd March, 1940:
"It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religions. in the strict sense of the world, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders, and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality and this misconception of one Indian nation has gone far beyond the limits and is the cause of most of your troubles and will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in time.
The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies social customs, literatures. They neither intermarry nor inter-dene together and, in need, they belong to two different civilisations, which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspects on life and of life are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Musalmans derive inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, different heroes, and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is foe of the other and, likewise, their victories and defeats overlap. 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 final destruction of any fabric that may be built up for the government of such a state".
The Quaid-i-Azam was fully conscious that partition would leave minorities in both states, but in one Muslims would be dominant and in the other Hindus. He was aware that a considerable number of Muslims would be left in India, but there was no other way out. Those who would be left in India could not be helped even if all Muslims were left in India.
Quaid-i-Azam at the All India Muslim League Session at Lahore on 23rd March 1940 discussed this point and said:
I may explain that the Musalmans, wherever they are in a minority, cannot improve their position under a united India or under one Central government. Whatever happens, they would remain a minority, by coming in the way of the division of India they do not and cannot improve their own position. On the other hand, they can, by their attitude of obstruction; bring the Muslim homeland and 60000000 of the Musalmans under one government, where they would remain no more than a minority in perpetuity.
During his interview on the 18th December 1943, the, Quaid told Beverley Nicholas that "Islam is not merely a religious doctrine but a realistic and practical code of conduct in terms of everything important in life, of our history, our heroes, our art, our architecture, our music, our laws, our jurisprudence. In all these things our outlook is not only fundamentally different but often radically antagonistic to the Hindus. There is nothing which links us together. Our names, our clothes, all are different; our economic life, our educational ideas, our treatment of women, our attitude to animals we challenge each other at every point of the compass. Take one example, the eternal question of the cow, we eat the cow, the Hindus worship it".
In the light of historical facts it is clear that the Quaid's concept of Pakistan was an ideal Islamic state with its socio-economic set-up based on the teachings of the Holy Quran and Sunnah.
Outlining the purpose of the creation of Pakistan the Quaid said in a speech the officers of the Defence Services on 11th October 1947, that the establishment of Pakistan was only a "means to an and not an end in itself." The idea was that we should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own light and culture and where the principles of Islamic social justice could find free play".
In fact the Quaid's vision of Pakistan was that it would be an Islamic Welfare State where no one would be exploited. Also in the Islamic Welfare State it is the duty of the state to see that there is none without food and clothes and every individual is at least provided with the basic necessities of life.
The writer is former Director, Quaid-i-Azam Academy, Karachi and presently Professor of History, General History Department, Sindh University Jamshoro