Pakistan - Jinnah’s vision distorted

On August 11, 1947, the man who more than any other was responsible for bringing the state of Pakistan into being spoke these 52 words: “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the state.””  the nation celebrates the birthday of the man who uttered those historic words, Muhammed Ali Jinnah  but it remains conflicted about the vision that Jinnah had for Pakistan. For much of our existence as a state, Pakistanis have been taught that Jinnah wanted to create a theocratic state, but there is another view — that he sought a country that was Muslim-majority but secular, forward-looking and progressive. The former perception is currently dominant, the latter often buried or otherwise hidden from view by those for whom such a vision is anathema.

To the shrinking liberal strata of society the August 11 speech is a touchstone. Jinnah speaks with clarity of a state that is tolerant, inclusive and above all secular, but it was a vision that quickly was deliberately clouded by those who came after him and then metamorphosed over decades into the creature that the state has become today — riven by sectarian conflict, at the mercy of terrorists who roam at will and butcher our children with seeming impunity. A state where those who carried out the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar on December 16 spent the night before staying in a mosque close by according to the initial police report on the attack. A state that is not failed — nor is likely to despite what the Cassandra’s may say — but is deeply flawed and performs far below where it should, given the plenitude of human and natural resources at its disposal.

It is clear that those who succeeded Jinnah in the corridors of power were distinctly unimpressed by what he said in his August 11 speech, and we are the worse off for it. They were powerful religious ideologues — to say nothing of vaultingly ambitious at a time when real power was close to hand — and they did what they could to suppress the speech in newspapers and it was virtually erased from the record.

Only of late, has there been some kind of attempt by progressive segments of society to demand that this important speech by the Quaid be given the importance in the national imagination that it merits.

Pakistan stumbled into the late 1960s, through the 1970s and on into the early 1980s via a steady process of Islamisation and the enactment of discriminatory laws targeted at minorities. The parts of that historic speech that did not chime well with our leaders and those who educated successive generations of our children — became lost. Deliberately lost. Jinnah himself was rebranded, shaped by a distorting mirror.

The secular, Westernised man that he was for the majority of his adult life was morphed into someone he was clearly not. Jinnah was portrayed by successive ruling regimes in a manner that suited their own perverse agenda for the country and his liberal leanings were completely ignored. If he were alive today, Jinnah would have been shocked at the way he has been portrayed in our history books.

History does not come with an ‘auto-correct’ button. The Pakistan of today is what its people, and particularly several generations of politicians — have made it. Such visionaries that we have border on the delusional on occasion, and a broad streak of mediocrity runs through most of the political cadre. When a state chooses second-best to lead it, then it is no surprise that the state itself becomes second best. Jinnah may not have been perfect, but any flaws he may have had were by far outweighed by the clarity and discipline of the vision that drove him. We shall not see his like again.