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The Rediff Special/Akbar S Ahmed

Many critics accuse Pakistan of having killed the father of the nation

To understand Jinnah's Pakistan, we need also to examine Jinnah's attitude towards Pakistan's relations with India, a crucial area which would determine the internal politics and external foreign policy of the country. Jinnah wished for cordial relations with the state of India. He never changed his will, which left part of his estate to educational institutions in Aligarh, Bombay and Delhi. He also kept his property in India, hoping to visit his beloved Bombay. Jinnah's view of friendly relations between India and Pakistan after Partition was recorded in an interview with General Ismay, chief of the Viceroy's staff:

'Mr Jinnah said with the greatest earnestness that once Partition had been decided upon, everyone would know exactly where they were, all troubles would cease, and they would live happily ever after. He quoted me the case of two brothers who hated each other like poison as a result of the portions allotted to them under their father's will. Finally they could bear it no longer and took the case to court. Mr Jinnah defended one of them and the case was fought with the utmost venom. Two years later Mr Jinnah met his client and asked how he was getting on and how was his brother, and he said: ''oh, once the case was decided, we became the greatest friends." '

Jinnah's plan for a civilised discourse, maintaining standards, remained in his dealings with India. On his final flight from Delhi he conveyed this message:

'I bid farewell to the citizens of Delhi, amongst whom I have many friends of all communities and I earnestly appeal to everyone to live in this great and historic city with peace. The past must be buried and let us start afresh as two independent sovereign States of Hindustan (India) and Pakistan. I wish Hindustan prosperity and peace.'

H M Seervai, the Indian writer, comments on the Indian response to Jinnah's message: 'Jinnah left India for Pakistan on 7 August 1947, with an appeal to both Indians and Muslims to "bury the past" and wished India success and prosperity. The next day Vallabhbhai Patel said in Delhi, "The poison had been removed from the body of India."' Patel went on: "As for the Muslims they have their roots, their sacred places and their centres here. I do not know what they can possibly do in Pakistan. It will not be long before they return to us." 'Hardly the words', concludes Seervai, 'to promote goodwill and neighbourliness either then or in the days to come.'

As for the Hindu citizens of Pakistan, there was never any doubt in Jinnah's mind that they would be protected as citizens and given full rights. Speech after speech confirmed this. When Pakistan was created, Jinnah had seven ministers in the cabinet, one a Hindu.

On the death of Gandhi on 30 January 1948, Jinnah issued a statement that angered and disappointed many Indians because it spoke of Gandhi only as a great Hindu leader. This was unfair to Jinnah, who used the word 'great' three times in his brief message. Once again, we need to real his full statement, especially in conjunction with the one made later in which he state that the Muslims of India had lost their main support. Here is the official version:

'I am shocked to learn of the most dastardly attack on the life of Mr Gandhi, resulting in his death. There can be no controversy in the face of death. Whatever our political differences, he was one of the greatest men produced by the Hindu community, and a leader who commanded their universal confidence and respect. I wish to express my deep sorrow, and sincerely sympathise with the great Hindu community and his family in their bereavement at this momentous, historical and critical juncture so soon after the birth of freedom and freedom for Hindustan and Pakistan. The loss to the Dominion of India is irreparable, and it will be very difficult to fill the vacuum created by the passing away of such a great man at this moment.'

Just before his death, Jinnah proposed a joint defence pact with India as the Cold War started to shape the world and the world and the two power blocs began to form. Jinnah was still thinking as a South Asian nationalist. Since he had won the rights and security of his community through the creation of Pakistan, he thought the problem of national defence was over. Alas, it was not to be.

With relations souring so quickly at the creation of Pakistan, the relationship between the two countries -- and therefore the two communities in the subcontinent as a whole -- was set on a collision course and has unfortunately remained so ever since. As this conflict is rooted in history it is readily exploited by political parties who see an easy gain to be made.

Had Jinnah's vision prevailed -- and found an echo in India -- we would have seen a very different South Asia. There would have been two stable nations -- India and Pakistan, both supplementing and supporting each other. Indeed Jinnah's idea of a joint defence system against the outside world would have ensured that there would have been no crippling defence expenditures.

There would have been no reason to join one or other camp of the Cold War. There would have been open borders, free trade and regular visiting between the two countries. The lack of tension would have ensured that the minorities were not under pressure and, as both Jinnah and Congress leaders like Gandhi and Nehru wanted, lived as secure and integrated citizens. The fabric of society would have been different, and a more humane subcontinent might have emerged: a land truer to the vision of its leaders and spirit of its sages.

When Jinnah died on 11 September 1948, he was 71 years old. Perhaps he might have lived long enough to plant firm roots in Pakistan had his health permitted, had he eased off, had his lungs not collapsed, had all the woes of Pakistan's birth not become his personal burden.

Frail and ill with TB, he received the news of rape and abduction and spent his last few months an unhappy man. Fatima described the effect of the stories on her brother:

'As he discussed with me these mass killings at the breakfast table, his eye were often moist with tears. The sufferings of Muslim refugees that trekked from India into Pakistan, which to them had been the Promised Land, depressed him. Then there was the constitution of Pakistan to be framed, to which he applied his mind as often as he could find time to sit in his study, surrounded by books dealing with constitutions of various countries of the world. The problems of Kashmir Muslims, who had been betrayed by an alien and tyrannical ruler, weighed heavily on his mind.'

The last year he survived on willpower alone. At the end he was desperately sick, his lungs barely functioning, his weight down to 70 pounds. His determination to ensure that Pakistan survived had kept him going during those extra months.

Shamsul Hasan, a devoted comrade from India, was alarmed when he saw him for the first time since the creation of Pakistan:

'When I was ushered into the presence of the Quaid, I was shocked to see him. Frail and weak he always was; but during the few weeks following August 14, 1947, he had become a specter of his old self -- a picture of utter exhaustion. He enquired about the happenings in Delhi. I narrated the gruesome details. In a voice choked with emotion, he told me that he had not been able to sleep for days, and that he was doing whatever was possible to improve the situation. He was very bitter with the Indian leadership. He accused them of having accepted Partition with reservations, and denounced them for trying to destroy Pakistan at the very outset. Making visible efforts to control his emotions, he added: ‘The Musalmans of the Subcontinent cannot be destroyed by these tactics. They have now a homeland; and with hard work they shall, Insha Allah, make it powerful.’

Jinnah disguised his failing health from his followers, but during the last days in 1948 he said:

'I have been working fourteen hours a day for the last fourteen years. I have never known what sickness really is. However, for the past few years I get frequent attacks of fever and coughing. A few days’ rest enables me to get over them. Recently they have become more exacting and more frequent and they have laid me low.'

Many critics accuse Pakistan of having killed the father of the nation. Remarking that the ambulance taking the dying Jinnah from the airport to the governor-general’s house mysteriously stalled in Karachi, on that humid September day, they claim it was part of a plot. However, vehicles available to Pakistan were generally in poor condition. India had frozen all the assets that it was to give Pakistan and the administration had few resources to fall back on.

Indeed when Mountbatten and Jinnah in their Rolls-Royce – borrowed from the ruler of a state – came back from the Constituent Assembly on 14 August, after they had disembarked it caught fire because it was too old and the engine too heated. It is therefore unlikely that the ambulance broke down as a result of a conspiracy to kill Jinnah.

I thought of Karachi in the hot, sticky month of September and I thought of Jinnah old, sick and dying, so vulnerable in the capital of his own state. The broken-down ambulance was a pathetic reflection on those who had benefited the most – the Pakistanis in power. But his dignity did not desert him. When relief finally arrived and they came back to the governor-general’s house he still made an attempt to get up: he did not wish to be seen on a stretcher. Yet he was dead within a few hours.

Fatima was with him at the end: ‘I intuitively felt it was like the last brilliant flicker of the candle-flame before it has burnt itself out.’ In the silence she felt as if she was speaking to him in her mind. ‘Oh, Jin, if they could pump out all my blood, and put it in you, so that you may live. If it would will God to take away all my years and give them to you, so that you may continue to lead our nation, how grateful I would be to Him.’ Fatima describes his last moment: ‘He made one last attempt and whispered, "Fati, Khuda Hafiz…La Illaha Illa Allah…Muhammad…Rasul…Allah." His head dropped slightly to his right, his eyes closed.’

When Jinnah died, Pakistanis were devastated: about a million turned up to pay homage. They revered him as they would no other figure in their history. Today they look up to him wherever they live, from Los Angeles to Lahore. The airport in Karachi is named after him and prayers are said round the clock at his grand monument in Karachi which is now a symbol of Pakistan and first port of call for any visiting VIP.

A grateful nation built him a mausoleum, a tribute to ‘the last of the Moguls.’ The opening lines of Stanley Wolpert’s biography aptly sum up his life: ‘Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all three.’

Excerpted from Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity by Akbar S Ahmed; Oxford University Press, with the writer's permission.

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