Mr Jinnah’s speech

Lahore, Saturday, October 18, 1924

WE have ventured to ask Mr. Jinnah how he proposes to reconcile his view that religion must be divorced from politics with his advocacy of special representation of his community from top to bottom-not only in the Legislatures and local bodies but also in the Services. To ordinary minds, it is not at all clear how religion can be divorced from politics by a process the only tangible office of which is to make religion the very basis of politics. The nearest approximation to an answer to the question that one finds in Mr Jinnah's recent speech is contained in his statement that before the conception of citizenship can be realised "the nation has to undergo, first, the process of education, training, experience, travail and suffering, and it is difficult to predict at the present moment as to how long it would take to achieve these conditions." Only a moment's reflection, however, suffices to show that this is not only a council of despair, but an impossible counsel. It is not merely the case that no one can predict at the present moment how long the nation would take to achieve the conception of citizenship, but is as certain as anything can be in human affairs that on the plan advocated by Mr. Jinnah it never will, never can achieve these conditions. You cannot sow the seeds of disunity and then hope in the fullness of time to reap a harvest of unity. To divide a people into water tight compartments on the basis of the religions which its several components parts profess, and then expect that some day these parts will re-unite on the basis of "religion divorced from politics," through the operation of a deus ex machina is to look for a miracle.