Slightly OT but in Stanley Wolpert's book on Jinnah, he said this was because of Jinnah's double minority status eg not only was he part of the minority religious community, but he was also part of the minority sect in that religion. This made him very conscious of who he was and an easy target for pigeon-holing or dismissal, so he tried appealing first on a non-religious, and then later on a non-sectarian basis to his people.
And a minority sub-sect in a minority sect.
That's not what Wolpert wrote. Neither does it make sense; playing into your minority status guarantees minority support and not playing into it does not stop you from being seen as a minority or being dismissed for it. Wolpert in fact wrote that instead of being dismissed for it or restricted by it (playing minority or sectarian politics), Jinnah rose above it using his brilliance and instead pursued secular nationalism without fear of being rejected for being a minority, at the beginning of his career. He rose above his "parochial roots" is the point Wolpert made, which can't be said for most of you here. The reason why he pursued it was because he was mentored for it by the likes of Gokhale and Naoroji. Why he moved from a non-partison to a bi-partisan and then to a partisan leader is also well documented, including by Wolpert, and has nothing to do with any fear of being dismissed. He was undismissable long before he stopped batting for secular nationalism. The man's entire life is a documentation on principled stances at his own detriment and you have reduced his stance on religion, especially sectarianism, to playing politics. There is nothing too low for you.
Secularism was also the norm for political leaders back then. We forget that political Islam is mostly a post 1970's phenomenon, following the failure of post-colonial secular movements and political parties to satisfy their people's demands.
We didn't forget anything. The formation of Muslim League in 1906 under leaders including Sir Agha Khan III for the express purpose of safeguarding Muslim rights in India, the Ali Garh movement before that, and the Khilafat Movement after it say that it wasn't. Jinnah was not secular or non-sectarian because it was "just the fashion at that time". It took the Muslim League years of dismissal and rebuke to convince him.
You don't think Stanley WOLPERT may have been biased? Look at the origin of the surname WOLPERT.
He wrote a brilliant biography of the Quaid. You should read it.
It's just Watandar soothing his insecurities again. Sucking up to Iranians and Afghans just isn't cutting it anymore. Neither did he read the book.
I don't recall that argument coming from Wolpert anyway........ The "double minority" thesis was made popular by Faisal Devji, an Oxford historian, in Muslim Zion (Harvard University Press, 2013):...
Wolpert did apply it to Jinnah but not in the way that the other member has claimed.
the League's non sectarian "general Islam" was shaped by its Shia and Ismaili leadership, who needed protection from both the Hindu and the Sunni majority.......... Vali Nasr makes similar point in "The Shia Revival" and so does Akbar S. Ahmed in "Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity"........ So the surname theory doesn't really apply here.....
What evidence did they give for that? The "general Islam" was grandfathered into the Muslim League when it emerged from the Aligarh Movement. Non-sectarianism was an explicit doctrine of the movement which was predominantly shaped by Sunni Muslims. It was then codified by Maulana Muhammad Ali Johar, who was also a Sunni, in The Green Book (The founding charter of the All India Muslim league in 1907). The league itself was also predominantly Sunni. They were educated and elitist people who weren't particularly concerned with sectarianism or even with the troubles of the common masses. It was Jinnah who turned it around in 1937.