Showing posts with label M.A. Jinnah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label M.A. Jinnah. Show all posts

Mohammad Ali Jinnah's legacy 1000s of Years into the future

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There was a man who had a dream to create a land with diverse beauty and wonderful people to call their own. That land called Pakistan, a dream of unity, diversity and equality made a reality by one great man but that dream did not end with one man. Because of him that dream spread to millions of people and later hundreds of millions people and eventually billions of peoples who live on distant worlds who wanted to explore, achieve unimaginably great, ambitous and positive contributions to humanity stretched across the stars. Mohammed Al Jinnah inspired other great leaders such as Admiral Mehmood Shahjahan and Lieutenant Kamilah, courageous heros of the future to come who would lead Pakistan into a golden age of space exploration with the formation of Pakistani Starfleet. Mohammed Al Jinnah, would be grateful to know so far into the future what started out as a nation to achieve the dreams most thought was impossible became an ambassador to a world to reach out and and make contact with other diverse civilizations on distant worlds with the blending of techinology and cultral tradtion. Pakistan and the Pakistani Starfleet...............like no other............equality is achieved by diversity.

This is a painting by Kenny Irwin :aka: Perfectlymadebirds showing three leaders that stretch across over 1200 years from the formation of Pakistan with Mohammed Al Jinnah and later on, eventually leaders Mehmood Shahjahan and Lieutenant Kamilah of the Pakistani Starfleet. All three legendary figures sit dreaming of the future below the stars and Earth's terraformed moon in the 34th century as many of Pakistan's vast and diverse cities glimmer behind them in complete prosperity and peace along with the greater world of many unique nations and galaxy of untold numbers of diverse civilizations.


Courtesy: Kenny [Hassan] Irwin

Famous quote of the Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah

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!قومیں ایک دن میں نہیں بنا کرتیں
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Pakistan Monument and Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah

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It is a shot from Pakistan Monument situated in Islamabad. Its showing the founder of Pakistan Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah with her beloved sister Fatima Jinnah.
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Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah with Kashmiri alumni of Aligarh University in Srinagar, 1944

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Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah with Muslim League members of the Punjab Assembly

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Quaid-e-Azam in Peshawar, 1940

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Quaid-e-Azam with civil servants

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Quaid-e-Azam with Nawab Jogezai in Quetta

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Quaid-e-Azam with his main partymen, Karachi, 1947

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Thank you Mr Jinnah

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By Dr Syed Mansoor Hussain

Unfortunately for the Palestinians, they had nobody like Jinnah leading them — someone who had the foresight and the courage to accept the partition of Palestine. Instead of accepting partition, the Palestinians and the Arabs attacked the newly formed Jewish state

Whenever a few Pakistanis or Pakistani expat ‘liberal’ types get together, after a couple of libations to lubricate ideas and speech, often the conversation comes to the question whether we in Pakistan would have been better off if there were no partition of India.

Now I am not a serious student of the history of partition and am aware only of the basic facts. These being that the Muslim League won most of the Muslim seats during the elections held in 1946 and as such also won the right to represent the Muslims of India. Jinnah, as the leader of the Muslims, decided to opt for Pakistan when the All India Congress led by Nehru and Patel rejected the Cabinet Mission Plan. And this Pakistan that came into being was not quite what Jinnah had expected.

Some historians have said that Jinnah referred to the country he got as a “moth-eaten” Pakistan. Whether that is true is not material since Jinnah accepted whatever he got and it laid the foundation of one and then two Muslim majority countries in the Indian subcontinent, something envisaged by the Lahore Resolution of 1940. It is also an undeniable fact that we in Pakistan could indeed have done a lot better for ourselves.

Quaid-e-Azam on Women

Quaid-e-Azam with Dehli Women's Muslim League members, 1947

The great personality and Founder of Islamic Republic of Pakistan , Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah said:

“Another very important matter which I want to impress upon you, is that no nation can rise to the height of glory, unless women are side by side with you. We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime against humanity to shut up women within the four walls of houses as prisoners. Let us try to raise the status of women according to Islamic ideals and standards. There is no sanction anywhere for the deplorable conditions in which our women have to live. We should take the women along with us as comrades in every sphere of life. We cannot expect a woman who is ignorant herself to bring up our children properly. Women have the power to bring up children on the right lines. Let us not throw away this asset. (Muslim league meeting at Muslim University of Aligarh March 10, 1944.)

He also said:

"I have always maintained that no nation can ever be worthy of its existence that cannot take its women along with men. No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men. There are two powers in the world. One is the sword and the other the pen. However there is a third power stronger than both, that of the women.”

Quaid-e-Azam - Not a Maharaja!

The Quaid with Raja Sahib of Mahmudabad

Once Quaid-e-Azam stayed with the Raja of Mahmudabad in Butler Palace. During the lunch a servant stood as a waiter. Quaid-e-Azam was lost in his thoughts, and then seeing the man exclaimed: “What do you want”?. The servant explained that he was under orders to wait on him during the lunch. In the evening addressing the Raja of Mahmudabad Quaid-e-Azam said: “If your man stands over my head like that, I will be disturbed in my thoughs. I am an ordinary person of Bombay and not a Maharaja.” This provided good entertainment for the guests.
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Rajgopalacharya has no mind

C Rajgopalacharya with the Quaid-e-Azam

In the course of his statement on the Pakistan Resolution Mr. Rajgopalacharya said “Indeed not even Tipu Sultan or Hyder Ali or Aurangzeb or Akbar, all of whom lived during the days when difference seemed more deep rooted than now, imagined that India was anything but one and indivisible.”

On his Quaid-i-Azam observed: “Yes, naturally they did so as conquerors and paternal rulers. Is this the kind of government Mr. Rajagopalachrya does still envisage? And did the Hindus of those days willingly accept the rule of these ‘great men?’ I may or may not be suffering from a diseased mentality, but the statement of Mr. Rajagopalcharya and his criticism of the Lahore Resolution indicate that in him there is no mind left at all.”

Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah addressing a press conference in London, 1946

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Quaid-e-Azam - A Towering Personality!

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A Barrister - Not an Actor

A judge asked Quaid-e-Azam to speak a little louder. Quaid-e-Azam retorted;

“I am a barrister, not an actor.”

Jinnah: The Man - The Young Jinnah

by Hector Bolitho

Young Jinnah

 

Jinnah Creator of Pakistan is the best biography of Jinnah yet written by a Westerner. Hector Bolitho is an English journalist. In this selection he considers some of the significant influences on the young Jinnah. Most of the Jinnah’s observers have noted that he was strict and methodical in his habits and attitudes. Both in small matters, such as his monocle, and in large matters, such as his belief in constitutional procedure, Jinnah remained consistent from his early teens to the end of his life. The picture Bolitho gives of the able young student and advocate, aware of his abilities and of the obstacles before him, is an important clue to Jinnah’s later activities.

 

In the heart of the bustling new city is old Karachi, the town of mellow houses that Jinnah knew as a boy. Some of the streets are so narrow, and the houses so low, that the camels ambling past can look in the first-floor windows. In one of these narrow streets, Newnham Road, is the house – since restored and ornamented with balconies – where Mohammad Ali Jinnah was born. The date is uncertain: in the register of his first school, in Karachi, the day is recorded as October 20, 1875; but Jinnah always said that he had been born on Christmas Day – in 1876. If the 1876 date is correct, he was seven days old when Queen Victoria was proclaimed the Kaiser-i-Hind, on the Plain of Delhi. He was born in the year that the Imperial India was created, and he lived to negotiate, with Queen Victoria’s great-grandson, for its partition and deliverance from British rule.

 

In one of the tenement houses in old Karachi there lives Fatima Bai, a hand some old woman, aged eighty six; one of the few persons who can remember Mohammad Ali Jinnah when he was a boy. She was a bride of sixteen, married to one of the Jinnah’s cousins, when she arrived in the family home in Karachi. The year was 1884. Jinnah was then seven years old.

 

Fatima Bai lives with her son, Mohammad Ali Ganji , in rooms at the top of a flight of bare stone stairs. I went there one evening and she received me in her own room, in which there were her bed, an immense rocking-chair, and a wardrobe where among the bundles of clothes, the few existing documents – the family archives – were kept. Mohammad Ali Ganji spread the papers on the bed, beside his mother, and then gave me the bones of the early story.

 

Although Jinnah’s immediate ancestors were Muslims – followers of the Khoja sect of the Aga Khan – they came, like so many Muslim families in India, of old Hindu stock. Mohammad Ali Ganji said that the family migrated to the Kathiawar Peninsula from the Multan area, north of the Sind desert, long ago. From Katiawar, they moved to Karachi, where they settled and prospered in a modest way.

 

When Jinnah was six years old, he was sent to school in Karachi. When he was ten, he went on a ship to Bombay, where he attended the Gokul das Tej Primary School, for one year. He was eleven when he returned to Karachi, to the Sind Madrasah High School; and he was fifteen when he went to the Christian Missionary Society High School also in Karachi.

 

Mohammed Ali Ganji said, “In the same year that he was at the Mission School, he was married by his parents as was the custom of the country, to Amai Bai, a Khoja girl from Kathiawar. In 1892 he went to England to study law and, while he was there, his young wife died. Soon afterwards, his mother died, and his father became very poor…”

 

Fatima Bai raised her hand and interrupted her son: she said, “He was a good boy; a clever boy. We lived, eight of us, in two rooms on the first floor of the house in Newnham Road. At night, when the children were sleeping, he would stand a sheet of cardboard against the oil lamp, to shield the eyes of the children from the light. Then he would read, and read. One night I went to him and said, ‘You will make yourself ill from so much study,’ and he answered, ‘Bai, you know I cannot achieve anything in life unless I work hard.’ “

 

As Fatima Bai finished her story, an old man appeared at the door; a smiling old Muslim with tousled, snow-white hair. His name was Nanji Jafar. He came in, sat in the rocking-chair and said that, as far as he knew, he was in his eighties. Though he had been at school with Jinnah, all he could recall was, “I played marbles with him in the street…” When I asked, “Can you remember anything he said to you?” he looked from beneath his thick brows and repeated, “I played marbles in the street with him.”

 

I asked him to close his eyes and to see, once more, the coloured glass marbles in the dust. Nanji Jafar closed his eyes and deeper into his memory: then he told his only anecdote of Jinnah’s boyhood. One morning, when Nanji Jafar was playing in the street, Jinnah, then aged about fourteen, came up to him and said, “Don’t play marbles in the dust; it spoils your clothes and dirties your hands. We must stand up and play cricket.”

 

The boys in Newnham Road were obedient: they gave up playing marbles and allowed Jinnah to lead them from the dusty street to a bright field where he brought his bat and stumps for them to use. When he sailed for England at the age of sixteen, he gave Nanji Jafar his bat and said, “You will go on teaching the boys to play cricket while I am away.”

 

All Jinnah’s story is in the boyhood dictum – “Stand up from the dust so that your clothes are unspoiled and your hands clean for the tasks that fall to them….

 

At the time when Jinnah finished his schooling, there was an Englishman, Frederick Leigh Croft, working as an exchange broker in Bombay and Karachi. He was heir to a baronetcy – a thirty-two-year-old bachelor, described by a kinswomen who remembers him as “something of a dandy, with a freshly picked carnation in his buttonhole each morning, a recluse and wit, uncomfortable in the presence of children, whom he did not like.” But he liked Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and was impressed by his talents. Frederick Leigh Croft ultimately persuaded Jinnah Poonja to send his son to London, to learn the practice of law.

 

Mohammad Ali Jinnah was not yet sixteen when he sailed across the Arabian Sea, towards the western world….which was to imbue him with an Englishness of manner and behaviour that endured to his death.

 

Mrs. Naidu wrote of Jinnah some years later, “It seems a pity that so fine an intelligence should have denied itself the hall-mark of a University education.” Jinnah appearantly withstood the temptations of literature, and art, and even of history. His mind seldom doted on the past, and it would seem that his habits in London were narrowed down – that his way was from lectures in Lincoln’s Inn, to debates in the House of Commons, without any pausing in the National Gallery on the way. He was to do two things brilliantly in his life: he was to become a great advocate, and he was to create a nation. From the beginning, he did not dissipate his energies with hobbies, nor his strength in dalliance. His chief passions were in his mind.

 

In an address to the Karachi Bar Association in 1947, Jinnah recalled, “I joined Lincoln’s Inn because there on the main entrance, the name of the Prophet was included in the list of great law-givers of the world.” He spoke of the Muhammad as “a great statesman, and a great sovereign.” His appreciation of the Prophet was realistic: perhaps his political conscience, as a Muslim, had already begun to stir while he was in England.

 

Jinnah told Dr. Ashraf that, during the last two years in London, his time was “utilized for future independent studies for the political career” he already “had in mind.” Jinnah also said, “Fortune smiled on me, and I happened to meet several important English Liberals with whose help I came to understand the doctrine of Liberalism. The Liberalism of Lord Morley was then in full sway. I grasped that Liberalism, which became part of my life and thrilled me very much.”

 

This awakening in politics coincided with significant personal changes. Up to April 1894, Mohammad Ali Jinnah used his boyhood name, Jinnahbhai – bhai being a suffix used in Gujrati language which was his mother tongue. On April 14, 1894, he adopted the English fashion in names and became Mr. Jinnah, the form he used for the rest of his life. He had also abandoned his “funny long yellow coat” and adopted English clothes; and – perhaps encouraged by the sight of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain in the House – he had bought his first monocle.

 

It must have been an important moment in the development of his courage, and his personality, when he went to an optician’s shop in London and bought the first of many monocles, which he wore during the next fifty year – even at the end, when he was being carried into his capital on a stretcher; a dying warrior, holding the circle of glass between his almost transparent fingers.

 

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Jinnah had said that “the Liberalism of Lord Morley” thrilled him very much. The thrill much have been intensified on June 21, 1892, when he read of the Royal Assent to the Amendment to the Indian Councils Act, empowering the Viceroy to increase the numbers in the Legislative and Provincial Councils – an amendment that gave the people of India, for the first time, “a potential voice” in the government of their country.

 

The beginning of Jinnah’s partiality for Liberalism was well-timed. At the end of May 1892, Mr. Gladstone spoke “with a vigour and animation most remarkable in a man of eighty-two.” He was rewarded in the following August, when the Liberals came into power after six years of Tory rule under Lord Salisbury.

 

The early 1890’s offered refreshing opportunities for any young novice in politics, newly arrived from India, anxious to learn, and naturally in love with agitation and reform. In 1893, when Jinnah must have recovered from his loneliness and “settled down,” he was able to listen to some of the lively debates over Mr. Gladstone’s Irish Home Rule Bill: he was able also to study English reactions to affairs in India, and Egypt; to watch the growing power of Labour, and to develop his sympathy with the political emancipation of women – a reform that became a fixed part of his political creed when he returned to India.

 

There was another stiring innovation, nearer his own heart. Jinnah arrived in London in time to watch – perhaps to help – the election of the first Indian, Dadabhai Naoroji, to the British Parliament, as a member for the Central Finsbury.

 

Dadabhai Naoroji was a Parsee, aged sixty-seven at the time of his return: for many years he had been a businessman in London. Photographs of him, in later life, reveal some of the reasons why he came to be known as the “Grand Old Man of India.” His humorous old eyes, long white beard, and relaxed hands, proclaim the teacher, about whom young Indians gathered to learn – rather than the furious agitator in love with change for its own sake.

 

When Dadabhai Naoroji announced his intentions to stand as Liberal candidate for Central Finsbury, Lord Salisbury committed the clumsy foly, in a speech at Edinburgh, of saying, “I doubt if we have yet got to the point of view where a British constituency would elect a black man.” The Scottish electors shouted “Shame!....” Victoria, attended by Indian servants and engrossed in her study of Hindustani, was much displeased.

 

The unhappy insult – addeldy unfortunate because Dadabhai Naoroji had a paler skin that Lord Salisbury – soon made the Parsee Liberal into a hero. The chapters in his biography, describing the controversy awakened by the election in Finsbury, make an exciting story. Women’s Suffrage was one of his aims, and he was therefore overwhelmed by women helpers. Among the letters sent o him was one from Florence Nightingale: “I rejoice beyond measure,” she wrote “that you are now the only Liberal candidate for Central Finsbury.”

 

Dadabhai Naoroji was elected, with a majority of three, and the quick-tongued Cockneys who have voted for him turned his difficult name into “Mr. Narrow Majority.”

 

Mohammad Ali Jinnah was caught up in the excitement of the Finsbury election, and he prospered under the influence of Dadabhai Naoroji, whom he was to serve, as secretary, fourteen years later. It is reasonable to suppose that Jinnah learned much from Naoroji’s speeches; that he absorbed some ideas from the Grand Old Man….

 

Mohammad Ali Jinnah returned to India in the autumn of 1896. He was then a qualified barrister, aged almost twenty, and devoted to the Liberalism he had absorbed from Gladstone, Morley, and Dadabhai Naoroji. English had become his chief language, and it remained so, for he never mastered Urdu even he was leading the Muslim into freedom, he had to define the terms of their emancipation in an alien tongue. His clothes also remained English, until the last years of his life, when he adopted the sherwani and Shalwar of the Muslim gentlemen. And his manner of address was English: he had already assumed the habit, which he never gave up, of shaking his finger at his listener and saying, “My dear fellow, you do not understand.”

 

Mohammed Ali Jinnah sailed for Bombay in 1897, but he was to endure three more years of penury, and disappointment, before he began to climb. Mr. M.H. Saiyid, who was Jinnah’s secretary in later years, has written of this lean time. “The first three years were of great hardship and although he attended the office regularly every day, he wandered without a single brief. The long and crowded foot-paths of Bombay may, if they could only speak, bear testimony to a young pedestrian pacing them every morning from his new abode….a humble locality in the city, to this office in the Fort,….and every evening back again to his apartments after a weary, toilsome days spent in anxious expectation.”

 

As the turn of the century, Jinnah’s fortune changed, through the kindness of the acting Advocate-General of Bombey, John Molesworth MacPherson, who invited the young lawyer to work in his chambers. Mrs. Naidu wrote of this as “a courteous concession – the first of its kind ever extended to an Indian,” which Jinnah remembered as “a beacon of hope in the dark distress of his early struggles.”

 

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The second advocate resumed his story: he said: “You must realize that Jinnah was a great pleader, although not equally gifted as a lawyer. He had to be briefed with care, but; once he had grasped the facts of a case, there was no one to touch him in legal argument. He was that God made him, not what he made himself, God made him a great pleader. He had a sixth sense: he could see around corners. That is where his talents lay. When you examine what he said, you realize that he was a very clear thinker, though he lacked the polish that a university education would have given him. But he drove his points home – points chosen with exquisite selection – slow delivery, word by word. It was all pure, cold logic.”

 

The first advocate then told another story. “One of the younger men practicing at that time - younger than Jinnah – was M.A. Somjee, who became a High Court Judge. They were appearing, as opposed counsel in a case which was suddenly called for on hearing. Mr. Somjee was another court at the time and the solicitor instructing him asked Jinnah to agree to a short adjournment. Jinnah refused. The solicitor then appealed to the judge, who saw no objection, provided Jinnah would agree. But Jinnah would not agree: he stood up and said: ‘My learned friend should have anticipated this and he should have asked me personally for an adjournment.”

 

“Jinnah’s arrogance would have destroyed a man of less will and talent. Some of us used to resent his insolent manner – his overbearing ways – and what seemed to be lack of kindness. But no one could deny his power of argument. When he stood up in Court, slowly looking towards the judge, placing his monocle in his eye – with the sense of timing you would expect from an actor – he became omnipotent. Yes, that is the word, omnipotent.”

 

“May be,” said the third advocate, “but, always, with Jinnah one comes back to his honesty. Once when a client was referred to him, the solicitor mentioned that the man had limited money with which to fight the suit. Nevertheless, Jinnah took it up. He lost – but he still had faith in the case and he said that it should be taken the Appeal Court. The solicitor again mentioned that his client had no money. Jinnah pressed him to defray certain of the appeal expenses out of his own pocket and promised to fight the case without any fee for himself. The time, he won; but when the solicitor offered him a fee, Jinnah refused – arguing that he had accepted the case on the condition that there was no fee.”

 

I’ll tell you another story along that line,” said the second advocate. There was a client who was so pleased with Jinnah’s services in a case, that he sent him an additional fee. Jinnah returned it, with a note, ‘This is the amount you paid me-. This was the fee. Here is the balance-.’ “

 

When the three lawyers were asked, “Did you merely admire Jinnah or did any of you become fond of him?” one of them answered, “Yes, I was genuinely fond of him, because of his sense of justice. And because, with all the differences and bitterness of political life. I believe he was a man without malice: hard, maybe, but without malice.

 

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Two of the advocates who spoke Jinnah were Hindus: One was a Parsee. Some time later, a veteran Muslim barrister gave his different, perhaps more penetrating, impression of Jinnah’s work at the Bar. “One must realize,” he said, “that when he began to practice, he was the solitary Muslim barrister of the time: there may have been one or two others, but they did not amount to a row of pins. This was in a profession made up mostly of Hindus and Parsee. Perhaps they were over-critical of a Muslim – who came from business stock-setting up such a standard of industry. There was no pleasure in Jinnah’s life; there were no interests beyond his work. He laboured at his briefs, day and night. I can see him now; slim as a reed, always frowning, always in a hurry. There was never a whisper of gossip about his private habits. He was a hard-working, celibate, and not very gracious young man. Much too serious to attract friend. A figure like that invites criticism, especially in the lazy East, where we find it easier to forgive a man for his faults than for his virtues.”

 

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During these years of Jinnah’s early success as a lawyer, he met Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, the first sophisticated, intelligent woman to observe his talents, to see beyond the arrogance of the young advocate. She wrote of him:

 

Never was there a nature whose outer qualities provided so complete an antithesis of its inner worth. Tall and stately, but thin to the point of emaciation, languid and luxurious of habit, Mohamed Ali Jinnah’s attenuated form is the deceptive sheath of a spirit of exceptional vitality and endurance. Somewhat formal and fastidious, a little aloof and imperious of manner, the calm hauteur of his accustomed reserve but masks – for those who know him – a naïve and eager humanity, an intuition quick and tender as a woman’s a humour gay and winning as a child’s. Preeminently rational and practical, discreet and dispassionate in his estimate and acceptance of life, the obvious sanity and serenity of his worldly wisdom effectually disguises a shy and splendid idealism which is the very essence of the man.

 

Mrs. Naidu’s warm regard for Jinnah was shared by many other young women who saw, as pride, what his lawyer friends called arrogance. Among them was an old Parsee lady, still living on Malabar Hill, who remembers Jinnah at the age of twenty-eight. She has said of him, “Oh, yes, he had charm. And he was so good looking. Mind you, I am sure he was aware of his charm: he knew his own strength. But when he came into a room, he would bother to pay a compliment – to say, ‘what a beautiful sari!’ Women will forgive pride, or even arrogance, in a man like that.”

 

Source: From Hector Bolitho, Jinnah Creator of Pakistan (London, 1954), pp. 3-5, 7-11, 14-5, 18-19, 21-22

Quaid-e-Azam and Pakistan's Foreign Policy


This paper suggests that Pakistan’s foreign policy under Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah represented a confluence of three variables: the Quaid’s world view or cosmology, the security compulsions of the new State of Pakistan and the cold war international system in which Pakistan had to conduct itself after its inception on 14 August 1947. Despite his failing health, the Quaid could find time to define the strategic parameters of Pakistan’s foreign policy according to his own predilections. Pakistan “did not have a full time Foreign Minister until December 1947” and “in practice all papers were put up to Quaid-i-Azam for information or decision.”1

The basic tenets of the foreign policy of the new State of Pakistan were outlined by Quaid-i-Azma at a press conference in Delhi on 14 July 1947. He remarked that the new state “will be most friendly to all nations. We stand for the peace of the world. We will make our contribution whatever we can.”2 These ideas were further explicated on 15 August, when as Governor-General of Pakistan, the Quaid observed:

Our objective should be peace within and peace without. We want to live peacefully and maintain cordial and friendly relations with our immediate neighbours and with world at large. We have no aggressive designs against any one. We stand by the United Nations Charter and will gladly make our contribution to the peace and prosperity of the world.3

Prefiguring the doctrine of non-alignment, the Quaid-i-Azam, in his broadcast talk to the people of the USA in February 1948 said:

Our foreign policy is one of the friendliness and goodwill towards all the nation of the world. We do not cherish aggressive designs against any country or nation. We believe in the principle of honesty and fair-play in national and international dealings, and are prepared to make our contribution to the promotion of peace and prosperity among the nations of the world. Pakistan will never be found lacking in extending its material and moral support to the oppressed and suppressed peoples of the world and in upholding the principles of the United Nations Charter.4

Quaid-i-Azam World View

World views are those core elements of human belief systems which act as organizing principles for ordering the universe of our perceptions of the social environment. They are stable but historical in nature and always reflect subjective understanding of the objective reality. World views provide fundamental assumptions about knowledge and action. World views are of two types: rationalistic and non-rationalistic. The former emphasize order, clarity, empiricism and logical analysis while the latter revolve around “novelty, incongruity, intuition and subjective awareness.”5 At the heart of the rationalistic world view is the dualistic notion that reality is both fundamentally orderly and empirically available. Thus, “all things can be completely understood and explained by means of logical analysis and empirical inquiry…..Life can be shaped and directed in accordance with human objectives and aspirations.”6

The Quaid-i-Azam’s worldview may be characterized as rationalistic. Such a characterization is warranted by the fact that “Jinnah’s appeal to religion was always ambigious, certainly it was not characteristic of his political style before 1937, and evidence suggests that his use of the communal factor was a political tactic, not an ideological commitment”. (emphasis added).7 It undoubtedly had a normative component in that it was geared towards the realization of the idea of Pakistan. What type of state did Jinnah have in mind? His address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on 11 August, 1947 offers a perspective:

If you change your past and work together in a spirit that everyone of you, no matter what community he belongs, no matter, what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his colour, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges and obligations there will be no end to the progress you will make. You should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim community because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnavas Khatris, also Bengalese, Madrasis, and so on – will vanish. Indeed if you ask me this has been the biggest hindrance in the way of India to attain freedom and independence and but for this we would have been free people long ago….. You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State. We are starting with the fundamental principle that we all are citizens and equal citizens of one State….8

The same ideas of justice, equality and fairness also informed the Quaid’s thinking and politics regarding international issues. For example, on the emotionally charged issue of the Khilafat in Turkey in 1920, Jinnah as a true constitutionalist, “derided the false and dangerous religious frenzy” of the zealots, both Hindu and Muslim” since it threatened the stability of the existing political structures and orderly progress along moderate and nationalist lines.9 In 1937, following the rejection by the Arabs of the Peel Commission proposal that Palestine should be divided into Arab and Jewish State, leaving Britain with a mandate over a reduced area which would include the holy place of Jerusalem, Quaid-i-Azam expressed strong support for the Arab position and called upon London to honour its pledge of total independence to the Arab people. In his Presidential address to the All India Muslim League delivered at Lucknow on 16 October 1937, the Quaid stated:

Great Britain has dishonored her proclamation to the Arabs which had guaranteed to them complete independence of the Arab homeland and the formation of an Arab Confederation under the stress of the Great War….May I point out to Great Britain that this question of Palestine, if not fairly and squarely met, boldy and courageously decided, is gong to be a turning point in the history of the British Empire…..The Muslims of India will stand solidly and will help the Arabs in every way they can in their brave and just struggle that they are carrying on against all odds.10

The Quaid-i-Azam vehemently opposed the partition of Palestine and the establishment of Israel in 1948. In an interview to Mr. Robert Stimson, B.B.C. correspondent on 19 December 1947, the Quaid said,”…. Our sense of justice obliges us to help the Arab cause in Palestine in every way that is open to us.”11 Similarly in his reply to a telegram from the King of Yemen on 24 December 1947, Quaid-i-Azam expressed his “surprise and shock” all the UN decision to approve of the partition of Palestine. Describing the division of Palestine as “outrageous and inherently unjust” the Quaid assured “the Arab brethren” that “Pakistan will stand by them in their opposition to the UNO decision.”12 Later, Quaid-i-Azam sent a cable to President Truman urging him to “uphold the rights of the Arabs” and thus “avoid the greatest consequences and repercussions.”13 The Quaid-i-Azam gave open and unflinching support to North African Arabs in their struggle to throw off the French yoke. He considered the Dutch attack upon Indonesia as an attack on Pakistan itself and refused transit facilities to Dutch ship and planes, carrying war material to Indonesia.”14 Similarly, Pakisan provided all possible “diplomatic and material assistance to the liberation movement in Indonesia, Malaya, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Nigeria and Algeria.”15

Pakistan’s Security Compulsions

Soon after its emergence as an independent nation on 14 August 1947 Pakistan was faced with a hostile security environment. The most serious threat to Pakistan’s security emanated from India which never reconciled itself to the idea of the partition of the subcontinent. Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah too had strong reservations about the Radcliffe award which he characterized as “unjust, incomprehensible and even perverse.”16 This was mainly because the Punjab Boundary Commission had deprived Pakistan of “territories which, by all cannons of justice, should have gone to [it] – territories the possession of which enabled India to annex the Muslims majority states of Jammu and Kashmir.”17 Notwithstanding its unjust character, Quaid-i-Azam agreed to accept the decision of the Boundary Commission since as “honourable people” the Pakistan “had agreed to abide by it.”18 After the acceptance of the partition plan, Quaid-i-Azam expressed to the new India his friendly feelings and desire for full cooperation, even to the extent of “wishing for a joint defence plan.”19 Speaking at a Press Conference in New Delhi on 14 July 1947, he said that relations between India and Pakistan “will be friendly and cordial” since “being neighbours” “we can be of use to each other, not to say the world.”20 On August 15, 1947, as the first Governor General of Pakistan, the Quaid declared: “We want to live peacefully and maintain cordial relations with our immediate neighbours and with the world at large.”21 But the Indian inablilty to accept the ineluctable reality of the partition of the British India ensured that these early Pakistani hopes for friendly ties with India were cut short giving rise to the pessimistic belief that Pakistan, in the words of Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, had “been surrounded on all sides by forces which were to destroy her.”22 That the Indian leadership harboured grave reservations about the Partition Plan was evident from Jawaharlal Nehru’s following remarks: “The proposals to allow certain parts to secede if they so will is painful for any one of us to contemplate”.23 Expressing the similar view, the resolution of the All-India Congress Committee on the Paritition Plan, adopted on 15 June 1947 stated:

Geography and the mountains and the seas fashioned India as she is, and no human agency can change the shape or come in the way of her final destiny. Economic circumstances and the insistent demands of international affairs make the unity of India still more necessary. The picture of India we have learnt to cherish will remain in our minds and hearts. The A.I.C.C. earnestly trusts that when present passions have subsided, India’s problems will be viewed in their proper perspective and the false doctrine of the two nations in India will be discredited and discarded by all.24

In October 1947, Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck reprted to the British Prime Minister Attlee: “The present Indian cabinet are implacably determined to do all in their power to prevent the establishment of the Dominion of Pakistan on a firm basis.”25 In line with the policy of implacable hostility towards the new state of Pakistan, India forcibly occupied some Princely States in Kathiawar, which had acceded to Pakistan and secured accession of the State of Jammu Kashmir by manipulation. Further, it discontinued the supply of coal and withheld a part of Pakistan’s share in the cash balances, arms and equipment. The Indian Government failed to protect the lives and properties of a large number of Muslims and there was a heavy influx of Muslim refugees into Pakistan. In 1948 Pakistan fought the kashmir war and was faced with the prospect of Indian trying to “throttle and choke” it “at birth”.26 The conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir stemmed mainly from the selective application of the principles on which partition was based. British India had 562 princely states which on the eve of the British departure were given the option to join either India or Pakistan in keeping with their geography and the will of their inhabitants. With the exception of three princely states Junagarh, Hyderabad and the State of Jammu and Kashmir the choice was a simple one as they had to simply follow the dictates of their Muslim or Hindu heritage. In each of these three states the ruling family belonged to one religious community and the great majority of the population to the other. And this anomalous situation posed special problems. In Junagadh and Hyderabad, Muslim princes rules over the Hindu majority.

Similarly, Pakistan was confronted with the security problems in the North-West also where Afghanistan had made irredentist claims. As early as November 1944, the Afghanistan Government, anticipating that the British would have to relinquish power in India, made the representation to London that the people of those areas of North-West Frontier which had been annexed to Indian during the last century should be offered option of becoming independent or rejoining Afghanistan. The Afghanistan Government was pressing for the acceptance of its demands when in 1946 the Khudai Khidmatgar Movement, which was an ally of the Indian National Congress, raised the slogan of “Pakhtunistan.” The slogan then “signified an agitation or demands for independence of the Pathans of the North-West Frontier – Independence that is from Pakistan, should such a state come into being.” The Partition Plan provided that a referendum would be held in the North–West Frontier Province to ascertain whether the population of the area wanted to join Pakistan or India. The British Government rejected the Red Shirt proposal that there should also be an option for independence in the referendum as per coordination of 3 June 1947 plan.

The referendum was held in the NWFP in July 1947 without the requested addition of independence as an option for the Pashtuns. Out of the total electorate of 572,798 the valid votes cast for union with Pakistan were 289,244 while the remaining 2,074 were for union with India.27 The NWFP became part of Pakistan, on the basis of the referendum. The frontier States of Swat, Chitral, Dir and Amb also acceded to Pakistan, and the Tribal Jirgas of the frontier region opted for “attachment of the Tribal Agencies to Pakistan.”28 Afghanistan did not accept this arrangement whereas the British had to proceed to the Pakistan Plan agreed to between the British, Indian National Congress and All-India Muslim League. As follow up of the referendum the Quaid as Pakistan’s first Governor-General sacked Dr. Khan Sahib’s Ministry in the NWFP in the first week after the independence.

Afghanistan’s non-recognition of the NWFP and the Tribal Agencies as part of Pakistan coupled with the fact that Afghanistan was the only state that cast a negative vote on Pakistan’s application for membership to the UN in September 1947, caused a sense of deep resentment in Karachi. In November 1947, Najibullah Khan, special envoy of King Zahir Shah of Afghanistan, made three demands on Pakistan: “creation of free sovereign province’ comprising the tribal region; establishment of a corridor aeries West Baluchistan to give Afghanistan an access to the sea or, alternatively, granting a ‘free Afghan Zone’ in Karachi; and conclusion of a Pakistan Afganistan treaty specifically providing that either party could remain neutral in case the other party was attacked.”29

The hopes raised by Karachi talks of an amicable settlement of the Pakistan-Afghanistan difference proved to be unfounded. In June 1948 the Government of Pakistan arrested Abdul Ghaffar Khan and a score of other Pushtun leaders as a result of their subversive activities. These arrests were followed by the “intensification of Pakistani military action in the tribal areas (including the use of the air force against their tribal opponents.”30

The dilapidated condition of Pakistan’s armed forces31 and concern for its borders in the face of territorial disputes with its neighbours, India and Afghanistan, forced Karachi to turn away from South Asia for security assistance. Several other factors induced Karachi to look in the directions of the Western block, particularly the United States First. Pakistan’s ruling elite “hailing from the feudal and to some extend, commercial classes, the bureaucracy and the military” had a liking for the West due to its Western education and cultural outlook. The Quaid-i-Azam himself represented the best of Western education, throughout, cultural values and rationality. Secondly, Pakistan’s economy was integrated with the West, particularly Britain, during the colonial era and it would not have been easy to transform it along the socialist lines. Pakistan “preferred to have trading partners in the West because they were in a position to supply consumer goods at very competitive prices for local requirements and provided almost assured markets for Pakistan’s raw materials.”32 Thirdly, Pakistan expected strong Western diplomatic and political support from the United States and Great Britain in the settlement of its disputes with India. Finally, “the transfer of power by the British in the subcontinent to the Government of India and Pakistan had not brought about any immediate change in the Soviet opinion and, since the Soviet Union had apprehensions about the role of the decolonize nations in the world affairs, its own attitude was somewhat cool.”33

Barely two weeks after its inception, Pakistan’s Finance Minister, Ghulam Mohammad, during his informal talks wit the U.S. Charge d’Affairs, Chairles W. Lewis, Jr., sought capital and technical assistance for Pakistan on the ground that funds were needed to “meet the administrative approximately $2 billion over a period of five years. Immediately thereafter Pakistan submitted to the State Department the following breakdown of Pakistan’s requirement: $700 million for industrial development, $700 million for agricultural development and $510 million for building and equipping defense services. Further breakdown of the defence expenditure showed $170 million for the Navy and $205 million to meet the anticipated deficits in Pakistan’s military budget.34

These Pakistani appeals for urgent financial aid from Washington were greeted with vague promises bordering on ‘wait an see’ attitude. Several consideration underpinned this American reluctance to assume the role of a military benefactor for Karachi. The first was a continuation of Washington’s pre-independence desire to consult with London on matters of importance in South Asia. The second was Washington’s insistence on taking a regional approach to the areas which called for an evenhanded approach vis-à-vis controversies between Pakistan and India. The third factor was the American preoccupation with the European affairs and the consequent denigration of South Asia as an important strategic region. It was not until the fall of China to the Communists in 1949 and the outbreak of the Korean War a year later that the U.S. began to pay any serious heed to the South Asian region in terms of its emergent global strategy of the containment of the Communism.

Notes and References
  1. Saeeduddin Ahmed Dar, “Foreign Policy of Pakistan: 1947-48,” in Ahmed Hasan Dani, ed., World Scholars on Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Islamabad, 1979, p. 364.
  2. Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah: Speeches and Statements As Governor General of Pakistan 1947-1948, Islamabad, 1989, p. 29.
  3. Ibid. pp. 55-56.
  4. Ibid. pp. 157-158.
  5. Miriam Steiner, “The Speech for Order in a disorderly world: Worldviews and Prescriptive decision paradigms”, International Organization, 37:3, 1983, p. 37.
  6. Ibid.
  7. Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan, Cambridge, 1948, p. 5.
  8. Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah Speeches, p.46.
  9. Jalal, pp. 8-9.
  10. Rizwan Ahmed, ed. Saying of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah (Karachi: Elite Publishers, 1947), p. 86.
  11. Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah: speeches, p. 11.
  12. Ibid.
  13. Saeeduddin Ahmed Dar, “Foreign Policy of Pakistan: 1947-48,” in Ahmed Hasan Dani, ed., p. 362.
  14. S. Raza
  15. Ibid.
  16. Quoted in G.W. Choudhry, Pakistan’s Relations with India, 1947-1966, (London: Pall Mall Press, 1968), p. 56.
  17. Ibid.
  18. Ibid.
  19. Ibid., p. 40.
  20. Saying of Quaid-i-Azam, op. cit., p. 80.
  21. Choudhry, Pakistan’s Relations with India, p. 41.
  22. Ibid., p. 41.
  23. Latif Ahmed Sherwani, ed, Pakistan Resolution to Pakistan, 1940-1947, Karachi, 1969, p. 235.
  24. Ibid., pp. 247-248.
  25. As cited in Saeeduddin Ahmad Dar, “Foreign Policy of Pakistan 1947-48,” in Ahmed Hasan Dani, ed., p. 363.
  26. 7 November 1947, Mountbatten’s Personal report as cited in Stanley Wolpert, Jinnah of Pakistan, New York, 1984, pp. 352-353.
  27. Abdul Samad Ghaus, The Fall of Afghanistan: An Insider’s Account, Washington, 1988, p. 67.
  28. Ibid., p. 68.
  29. Mahboob A Popatia, Pakistan’s Relations with the Soviet Union 1947-49; Constraints and Compulsions, Karachi, 1988, p. 27.
  30. Ibid., p. 70.
  31. Mohammad Ayub Khan, the first Muslim Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan Army (1951-1958) and later Pakistan’s president (1958-1969) recalled Pakistan’s defence capability at the time in the following words:
    “Our army was badly equipped and terribly disorganized. It was almost immediately engaged in escorting the refugees who streamed by the million into Pakistan, and not long after that it was also involved in the fighting in the Kashmir. Throughout this period we have no properly organized units, no equipment, and hardly any ammunition. Our plight desperate. But from the moment Pakistan came into being I was certain of one thing Pakistan’s survival was vitally linked with the establishment of a well-trained, well-equipped, and well-led army. I was determined to create this type of military shield for my country”. See Mohammad Ayub Khan, Friends, Not Masters: A Political Autobiography, New York, 1967, pp. 20-21.
  32. Popatia, p. 29.
  33. Ibid.
  34. M.S. Venkataramani, The American Role in Pakistan, 1947-1958, Lahore, 1984, pp. 15, 19-20.
by Syed Rifaat Hussain 
 

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