Jinnah’s Communalism Sieving Facts from Fiction

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Jinnah’s Communalism: Sieving Facts from Fiction

Dr Vijay Rana, 20 August 2009, London How can Jinnah, the lifelong campaigner for separate communal electorate, the advocate of two-nations theory, the opponent of 'Hindu Tyranny' and the initiator of India’s first mass violence campaign, the Direct Action Day, be described as a secular leader? Dr Vijay Rana tells the true story of Jinnah. The Indian admirers of Muhammad Ali Jinnah have long tried to put him at par with Gandhi and Nehru. Recently, the pro-Jinnah chorus has grown into such a crescendo that many Indians are genuinely confused and think that partition was really the fault of Nehru and Patel. Gandhi and Nehru were secular. They believed in communal harmony. Despite our numerous differences and mind-boggling diversities they managed to lay the foundations of a secular and democratic India. On the other hand Jinnah’s vision was narrow and tactics uncompromising. He used both religion and violence to achieve his sectarian state of Pakistan. How can any leader who uses religion and violence to divide a people be either secular or democrat? When we make Nehru and Gandhi villain and Jinnah a hero, that’s where problem begins – the problem of an inverted and politicised history. We Indians need to understand what Jinnah did to us and had we followed his path where we could have ended. The Indian admirers of Jinnah need to answer, how could they respect a man without respecting his legacy and life work. And what was Jinnah’s legacy – that ‘Hindus and Muslims are two nations’. And what was his life’s work – the creation of ‘the Islamic Republic of Pakistan’. The supporters of Jinnah’s secularism also need to be reminded that Jinnah’s speeches and writings are not written in undecipherable


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