I read the articles of Syed Shahabuddin on partition of India with interest and the subsequent letters to the editors. A lot has been said about the partition, however unfortunately, so many facts were concealed, highlighting just one side of the picture. In the threepart series, Mohammad Ali Jinnah was wrongly blamed for the partition and the author conveniently glossed over the harsh realties that forced Jinnah and millions of Muslims all over India to take this path.
First and foremost, Jinnah formally entered politics in 1905 from the platform of the Indian National Congress and not the Muslim League. A year later, he served as secretary to Dadabhai Noaroji (1825-1917) the then president of the Congress. Gopal Krishna Gokhale called Jinnah the “ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity” because of the latter’s untiring initiatives for the unity of the two communities. A similar great effort of Jinnah has been mentioned by Jaswant Singh in his book.
In order to bridge Hindu-Muslim differences on the constitutional plan, Jinnah proposed to waive the Muslim right to separate electorate, the most basic Muslim demand since 1906, which was recognized by the Congress in the Lucknow Pact, but later became a source of friction between the two communities. Surprisingly though, the Nehru Report (1928) which represented the Congress-sponsored proposals for the future constitution of India negated the minimum Muslim demands embodied in the Delhi Muslim proposals.
The convention’s blunt refusal to accept Muslim demands gave the most devastating setback to Jinnah and his efforts to bring about Hindu-Muslim unity. Very briefly, this was the background that led to the demand for creation of Pakistan and the ultimate partition of India. Jinnah (formally the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity) quit the Congress and joined the Muslim League.
Last but not the least, in the Constituent Assembly elections of 1946, the All India Muslim League under the leadership of Jinnah won 425 out of 496 seats, reserved for Muslims all over India, with about 89.2 percent of Muslim votes, on the issue of creating an independent state of Pakistan. So Pakistan emerged on the world map after a democratically fought and massively won elections. — Babar Mumtaz, By e-mail
