Jinnah and the Winding Road to Pakistan

For a man who would found the only country based on religion, Jinnah drank whiskey, ate pork, and was highly Anglicized! In fact, early on, he believed in a united India. He even married his Parsi girlfriend. What made such a man become the force behind the demand and eventual creation of Pakistan? Sam Dalrymple’s Shattered Lands provides some answers and clues.

 

After his marriage, Jinnah found the Parsis would never accept him or forgive his wife. It would sow the seeds of Jinnah’s belief that (independent) India would never move past religion.

 

Gandhi bringing religion (spirituality?) into the freedom struggle annoyed Jinnah. Why? Because it induced fear that an independent India would mean Hindu rule. Lastly, as mentioned in an earlier blog, the creation of Burma on racial lines and the ethnic cleansing that followed there added to the fear about the fate of Muslims in a Hindu majority (independent) India.

 

In the Indian national elections of 1937, Jinnah proclaimed himself and his Muslim League party to be the “sole spokesman” of Indian Muslims. He was hoping that would get him/party a chance to be a coalition partner to the Congress led government. But his party failed to win a majority in any province, even the Muslim majority ones! Nehru, therefore, was dismissive of the Muslim League and saw no reason to form a coalition. Jinnah’s worst fears were coming true – (in his view) an independent India was heading to Hindu-only rule.

 

The electoral defeat should have been the political end of Jinnah and the Muslim League. Except that in 1939, World War 2 broke out. Britain was worried for multiple reasons – would they be hold onto the empire with a World War going on? How many colonies would want to align with the anti-imperialistic USSR? They were right in worrying – both in Burma and India, leaders spoke of the hypocrisy of fighting occupation of Europe by the Axis powers while simultaneously subjugating colonies elsewhere. Nehru, however, was a firm democrat and had no intention of aligning with fascist Nazis. However, he demanded India enter the war alongside Britain on “equal footing”. Britain refused these terms; upon which Nehru and his ministers resigned. The British invited Jinnah and the Muslim League to form the new government…

 

The Congress leadership, now out of power, demanded Britain help the Burmese refugees entering India. When Britain refused, Gandhi launched the Quit India movement. In response, the entire Congress leadership was thrown into prison. The now complete absence of all Congress leaders would allow the Muslim League to spread its voice and strengthen its position in the Muslim majority provinces, a very consequential event in the road to Partition. As Jinnah himself put it, “The war which nobody welcomed proved to be a blessing in disguise”.

 

In the Indian elections after the war ended, the Muslim League got 27% of the vote and a staggering 87% of the Muslim vote. The demand for a separate Pakistan was now too loud, too representative to be ignored by the British. But a last ditch attempt was made to create Pakistan as a separate entity still bound to India, like Scotland and Wales were to the United Kingdom. Jinnah actually accepted the proposal! But when Nehru and Gandhi insisted the Congress-dominated North West Frontier Province be excluded from Pakistan, Jinnah considered this a betrayal and rescinded his acceptance of the earlier proposal.

 

The last Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, muddied the waters by virtue of the kind of relationship he had with different Indian leaders – warm with Nehru, tense but functional with Gandhi and Patel, and practically non-existent with the cold and aloof Jinnah. The asymmetry (esp. wrt Nehru and Jinnah) meant Jinnah always considered the Viceroy a biased actor and never trusted him.

 

These then were the factors and events that resulted in Jinnah becoming the founder of Pakistan.