Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Fundamental Human Rights

By Sharifuddin Pirzada

Quaid-e-Azam always believed in and stood for human rights. In pre-Partition period he championed the cause of liberty, freedom of speech and association and other rights. In the Eighteenth Annual Session of the Muslim League held at Delhi in December 1926, Quaid-e-Azam proposed a resolution demanding that the Government of India Act 1919 should be revised and that without delay a Royal Commission be appointed to formulate a scheme so as to place Indian Constitution on a sound and permanent basis with provisions to establish full responsible Government in India.The resolution further demanded that any scheme of the future of Constitution of India should secure and guarantee, among others, the following basic and fundamental principles.

"Full religious liberty i.e. liberty of belief, worship, observances, propaganda, association and education shall be guaranteed to all communities."

In the famous Fourteen Points formulated by the Quaid-e-Azam on March 28, 1929, point No.7 embodied the provisions relating to liberty, association, education, belief and other fundamental rights and it was demanded that such rights should be guaranteed to all the communities.

Dear Mr. Jinnah

Dear Mr. Jinnah,

I don’t think I ever got down to thanking you for your efforts in helping form Pakistan. I was born thirty-six years after you and a team of dedicated, patriotic and self-less leaders inspired the Muslims of India to separate themselves in pursuit of an independent nation. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives so that future generations like mine can live in a sovereign state. Thank you.

Things now aren’t as great as you visioned them to be though.

The religion you made the basis for separation is now divided within itself. It’s being abused, sabotaged and exploited by everyone who has the capability to do so. Islam meant peace. Now, it’s being cited as the root of everything otherwise.

The poor, helpless people whose rights you fought for aren’t poor or helpless anymore. They have become poor-er and more helpless.

You remember the overly rich and greedy people of your time? They still roam dauntlessly, sucking the blood of the common man and giving him nothing in return but grief, sickness and death.

There is no faith. There is no unity. There is no discipline.

The Creative Process of Founding a State

 

 

I

This paper suggests that the creation of a State by its very nature is not the work of one man. It is a joint product of a number of historical forces. The great man –the Quaid-i-Azam – who played a dominant role was himself conditioned by certain historical forces. There was not one Jinnah but at least two. There was the Jinnah of the early phase, which lasted until late thirties or even very early forties. The Jinnah of this phase was almost entirely constitutional or the rational or the westernized and aloof Jinnah. Jinnah in his second phase has been transformed by the current of Muslim mass support for the idea of a separate Muslim state.

The other major conceptual component of this paper is the idea of the founder of a state as distinct (analytically) from a leader of a nationalist movement like Gandhi or a visionary or a dreamer or a philosopher like Iqbal. These qualities of combining values and institutions are demonstrated in the personality of the founder of a state like the Quaid-i-Azam. Finally, we should try to distinguish between creating a new state on the structures of old or existing institutions, and creating a revolutionary state. In the former certain new values are grafted on the old or existing institutions. The result is dialectical struggle between the power of entrenched institutions in absorbing or subverting new values and the capacity and vigour of new values in transforming old or existing institutions. In the case of a revolutionary state, new values create new institutions.

A Set of Rare Pictures of The Quaid-e-Azam

Why The Quaid-e-Azam Left Congress

In 1913 the Quaid-i-Azam joined the All India Muslim League without abandoning the membership of the Congress of which he had been an active member for some years. But this membership of the two organizations ended in December 1920. On the occasion of the special session at Nagpur the Congress adopted a new creed which permitted the use of unconstitutional means and decided to resort to non-violent non-co-operation for the attainment of self-government. The new policy and programme in essence envisaged withdrawal of the students from schools and colleges, boycott of law-courts by lawyers and litigants as well as the impending elections to the legislatures under the Government of India act 1919 either as voters or as candidates.1 The new philosophy of the Congress had been shaped almost entirely under the influence of Gandhi who had, by then, emerged as a commanding figure in Congress politics. Although there were many prominent Congressmen such as C.R. Das and Lala Lajpat Rai who did not subscribe to the programme of non-co-operation2, Jinnah was the only one in a crowd of several thousand people who openly expressed serious disagreement.