To: ratan lal who wrote (8321 ) 10/13/1999 12:28:00 PM From: Mohan Marette Read Replies (3) | Respond to
Questioning Jinnah's 'wisdom'- Two Nations and a Pakistan!Pakistani reappraisal of Jinnah But sceptical voices have been heard in even the general chorus of obeisance to his memory. "is neither Islamic nor democratic. Then what did Jinnah create fifty years ago?" But he is not alone in his reassessment of the achievement of Jinnah. Supporters of the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan claim it was opposed to the creation of Pakistan at the time even of the 1940 Pakistan resolution because it would divide the Muslims of the subcontinent. Newspaper reports say a senior Jamaat leader, Syed Izatullah Shah, addressed a gathering last month in Baluchistan in which he described Jinnah as "treacherous" for leaving behind over half the sub-continent's Muslim population. The framework of Izatullah Shah's criticism is of course "Islamic" fundamentalism - hardly commendable. Abdul Ghaffar Khan and secular leader of Pakistan's Awami National Party, was also reported saying that all Jinnah achieved by creating Pakistan was a three-part division of the sub-continent's Muslims . The reference apparently includes now separated East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh. Actually, the reason why East Pakistan was compelled to separate seems connected with the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's known reluctance to let a Bangla majority dominate Pakistan politically and culturally, which would have been inevitable in a democratic dispensation given Pakistan?s pre-1971 demographic map. The puzzle about why Jinnah demanded Pakistan is further confounded by his initial parliamentary address in which he called upon people to forget they were Muslims, Hindus, Christians and others, and to consider themselves first and last as Pakistanis . If this was his real mind and attitude, why all the ballyhoo about "two nations" and a Pakistan? Aware of the contradiction involved, his successors deleted the passage from his address before enshrining it for posterity . Though they falsified history, they were logical. But the passage will remain available to those who assess in history the tragic events accompanying the Partition of 1947 - carnage, destruction, uprootment. History will not easily forgive leaders such as Mountbatten, Jinnah, Nehru and others who participated positively in partitioning India . Two-nation-theory-based Pakistan remains culturally a part of the pre-1947 sub-continent, with a sense of national identify still elusive. Pakistani hostility towards India is perhaps the only way in which a 'sense of nation' has in the last fifty years been evocable in that country . But now voices are beginning to be heard which seem to question a past two easily and too long revered - voices such as Mohammad Anwar Khan's. Hopefully, they signal the advent of a new era in South Asia. hindustantimes.com
