Jinnah

In the book Jinnah India – Partition – Independence Jaswant Singh analyses “Jinnah’s public life and his political journey from being the ‘ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity’ to the Quaid-i-Azam of Pakistan”.

Jaswant Singh attempts to investigate whether the partitioning of India in 1947 was inevitable or not. He endeavours to explain the roles of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Mahatma Gandhi, and Viceroy Mountbatten, many others in the tragedy that unfolded. He questions the theory of Muslims being a separate nation, traces the evolution of this thought, and Jinnah’s persistent utilisation of it to obtain, “for the Muslims a voice in Indian politics which the straight arithmetic of numbers could have never given them”. Jaswant Singh rejects the official Indian and Pakistani historiography and states the need to correct the Indian At the time impression that Jinnah was the principal “villain” of partition. of publication of this book, he earned the wrath of many for making this assertion.

In the first chapter, Singh takes the reader back in time to the initial contact between India and Islam and describes how Muslims came to be part of the country. He argues that even though Islam is not indigenous to India, it is an inseparable layer of its foundation. So how can it be that Muslims constitute a separate nation, “why in India alone?” asks Singh. I found this section to be one of the most thought-provoking in the book. Many of his arguments shredding the idea of a separate Muslim nation are expanded in the last chapter. Singh makes a nuanced argument that a community starts to identify itself as a minority only when its notion of social justice or opportunity for advancement is adversely skewed. If Muslims are a minority and they are to be treated accordingly, when were they ever a majority? Is this question purely rhetorical? As a percentage of the society they were in a similar position to where they were at the time even when the Mughals ruled, so when and how did they become a minority?

In the second chapter, he leaps through time to trace Jinnah’s emergence as a successful barrister and nationalist in pre-partition India of the 1920s. Chapters 3-10 relate a chronological account of the events leading up to 1947 and a little beyond, the Hindu-Muslim relation being a recurring theme alongside Jinnah’s political evolution. He covers the principal developments such as the Lucknow Pact of 1916, the Communal Award, the elections in 1937, the Lahore Resolution of 1940, the Cripps Mission Plan of 1942, the Cabinet Mission Plan, the elections in 1946 and the 3rd June Statement of 1947. His description is not strictly chronological however it is engaging enough.

Jaswant Singh explains themes thoroughly and does not overload his descriptions with detail. How he illustrates the “secularism debate” is representative of his approach. Singh discusses all the Indian perspectives, pointing to misinterpretations and false assumptions. He argues that the European socio-political idea of secularism does not apply to the “Indian societal fabric”. He displays that the Indian National Congress, by imposing their ideas of secularism and majoritarian democracy in particular during their two-year rule in the late 1930s, carried a “damaging message for the future of united India”.

He then demonstrates how the creation of separate electorates failed to secure the Muslim interests and made them replace the concept of weightage with the more effective concept of parity. This caused Jinnah to claim that the Muslims of India were a separate nation, rejecting their status as a minority, and giving Jinnah a clearer task to build “up the Muslim League as the ‘sole spokesman’ of the Muslims”. This turn of events ended the debate on secularism, as it was no longer a question of faith but of nationhood.

He captures the mood that must have prevailed around the efforts Jinnah and Gandhi put into settling the Indian National Congress – Muslim League disagreement, and the ensuing frustration of being rejected time and again by the opposing side. In the end, after all these years of debating, events flew by without pause, leaving no time to grasp their entire meaning: “Events now led men, not the other way around”. The 10th chapter is less than ten pages. Therein Jaswant Singh only briefly clarifies that Jinnah leaves for Pakistan on the 13th of August 1947, and dies soon after in September 1948. Gandhi is assassinated in January 1948. Surprisingly, a rather abrupt ending.

In the final chapter titled “In Retrospect,” Singh looks back and attempts to summarise: “So in all this what have we resolved?” He carefully identifies and comments on the main factors that led to the Partition. Beginning with separate electorates and the Two-Nation theory, he moves on to the Congress’s lack of realism, the British wish to escape from India, all of the parties being in a hurry, and ends by commenting on the tense relations between the main political figures demonstrating that partition was an evitable consequence. In his final explanation, he attempts an “interpretive account” that would have been better placed if it were within the narrative of the first ten chapters instead of being summarised at the very end.

The author assumes that the reader is well acquainted with the official Indian historiography. The book is therefore for those readers who have some elementary knowledge of the topic. Readers looking for an introduction to the subject may read it but will need to read other books alongside to be able to understand some of his arguments.

Jaswant Singh’s portrayal enriches the discourse on Jinnah, especially from the perspective of an Indian politician. However, his sketch of Jinnah and his treatment of Jinnah after the creation of two nations is greatly deficient. The reader must be cautioned that this is not a biographical account of Jinnah, and in that sense the title is misleading. His conclusions in the last chapter also appear to be deficient in capturing the perspectives of Patel, Nehru, and Gandhi. Arguably, Stanley Wolpert’s, ‘Jinnah of Pakistan’ published in 1984 and, Ayesha Jalal’s ‘The Sole Spokesman Jinnah ’ published in 1985 offer a more nuanced reinterpretation of Jinnah’s aims, and the impact of his legacy on Pakistan’s later political history, which are seemingly deficient in Jaswant Singh’s work. Wolpert’s work in particular deserves a reading if one seeks to better understand Jinnah.

Overall, not an easy read, but maybe worth the time for those who seek a perspective on the partition of India that departs from the standard Indian historiography of Jinnah and his role in the vivisection of India in 1947.