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OFF THE SHELF Jinnah: A Corrective
Reading of Indian History
The book is dedicated to the "hollowed memory of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi". The author has included laudatory comments on his work from the leading public men, diplomats and educationists, including one from the young MP Rahul Gandhi. The book is essentially about Jinnah and Gandhi. He thinks that a new understanding of Jinnah is needed, which is indeed true. Despite Ayesha Jalah’s scholarly work, Jinnah still awaits a historian. K. K. Aziz, Pakistan’s leading historian, said recently in Delhi that due to the inaccessibility of Indian source-material to Pakistan historians, it was not possible to produce an objective study of Jinnah. Of course, hero worship of Jinnah is a common feature of the Pakistan historiography. In India we are biased against what Jinnah had accomplished, hence his candid appraisal is out of question. In view of these difficulties, let us see what is Prof Asiananda’s understanding of Jinnah. The author flits from one subject to another, hence thought is diffused. Ex-cathedra pronouncements are made on crucial issues and hardly any explanation is offered on the situations that develop in the vicissitudes of human affairs. To the author, the whole story of Partition is a clash of personalities of two leaders, Gandhi and Jinnah. I think the idea of Great Men in History and their decisive role in shaping the course of history is dead meat now. History is not the story of individuals alone; there are social, political and economic forces that operate in it. In the whole text, a running theme is that of comparing and contrasting Jinnah with Gandhi, to the latter’s disadvantage. His account of Gandhi is the most iconoclastic. The author waxes lyrical over the Lucknow Pact of 1916, which was a negotiated settlement of the communal question through the meditation of Jinnah. According to him, the Lucknow Pact was Jinnah’s finest hour, his tour de force. But the author does not tell what was the Lucknow Pact, what were its provisions, and how did it settle the communal problem: Besides giving weightage and safeguards to Muslims in the Hindu majority provinces and Bengal, the Lucknow Pact included recognition of separate electorate, wherein lay the seeds of future discord between the Hindus and the Muslims. The author forgets that momentous political changes were taking place during the First World War period. History is not a still film, but a cinematograph. Throughout the study, the Lucknow Pact remains essentially for the author a reference Point, which he regards as the progenitor of subsequent constitutional developments in the country such as Jinnah’s Fourteen Points, the Nehru Report, the Government of India Act, (1935), the Cripps’ Proposals (1942), the Cabinet Mission Proposals (1946) and the Mountbaten Plan (1947). Such a linear view of history does not fit in with the fluidity of events. The author maintains that Gandhi by launching the Non-Cooperation Movement thwarted the possibility of resolving the communal problem. On the non-cooperation issue, Gandhi and Jinnah came into open clash. Gandhi had emerged by then a leader of national status. But Jinnah did not matter much. Asiananda sympathies entirely lie with Jinnah who, he thinks, was humbled and humiliated by the Mahatma. Even in religious matters, the author maintains that Gandhi could never reach out to the "dharmic—the advaidic, so he had to remain a caste Hindu, not really the Indian" (191). The author could not be unaware of such views that are derived from Aurobindo Ghosh’s perception of Gandhi. Asiananda regards Gandhi’s Quit India Movement a sinister move designed to destroy the Muslim League and to seize power. I think that the author sees too much here. Before the movement was launched, the British government arrested the Congress leaders and bundled them off to the Ahmednagar Fort. The whole venture here is
an exercise in futility, leading nowhere. The vision of a "New
World Order" is utopian. After reading this "big book",
one may sigh and remember T.S. Eliot—"Where is the knowledge we
have lost in information?" |
The
title of the book under review gives the impression that it contains a
full-scale biography of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan,
but that is not to be. The subtitle of the book suggests that the author’s
intention, seemingly laudable, is to set right the distortions that have
vitiated and polluted the contents of historical studies. Further, the
author claims to offer a vision of the "building up India of our
dreams with non-violence" and nuclear weapons-free South-East Asia.
Peace and stability, he considers, necessary and he thinks that they can
only be ensured if nations follow the principles laid down by the United
Nations Charter.