Signalian
THINK TANK: CONSULTANT
- Aug 18, 2015
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Few leaders, both then and now, can lay claim to possessing the remarkable traits exhibited throughout Jinnah's political journey. Despite facing considerable challenges, including not hailing from a Muslim-majority province and lacking affiliation with the dominant feudal class, which held significant sociopolitical influence at the time, Jinnah's self-made journey as a lawyer propelled him to become the unquestioned leader of Muslim India.
Political leadership is a function of both ‘personality’ and ‘situation', with personality often the ultimate determinant. It is difficult to understand, let alone explain, a political leader unless you examine their personality, particularly his dominant political traits. These traits play a major role in his rise, fall, success, failure, and political life and career.
In an earlier study of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, The Charismatic Leader, I highlighted some of the political traits that helped him become a leader of Indian Muslims, indeed their charismatic leader. These traits helped him further in the making of Pakistan against all odds. I did not try to diminish, much less deny, the importance of situational factors. I stressed their importance in two chapters, exclusively devoted to ‘The Muslim Situation’, discussing at length the distressful situation of Muslim India, particularly in the wake of the Second World War, as the Hindu majority community of India, led by the Indian National Congress (INC) and its majoritarian leadership, advanced towards self-government and freedom, and the Muslims being at a loss. But the point I made and would like to reiterate and expand here is that Jinnah’s political traits were critical and thus went on to help his political leadership in successfully pursuing his Pakistan demand and its ultimate realization in the new nation state of Pakistan on August 14, 1947.
Jinnah’s political traits were many and particularly included traits such as openness, initiative, self-confidence, adaptability, patience and tactfulness, creativity, perseverance, rationality, realism, strategic foresight, organization, articulation, single-mindedness, flexibility and compromise, capacity and, above all, integrity both regarding his person and principles. Although some of these traits tend to be overlapping, inconsistent, or contradictory, it is primarily because of seeing them in isolation and for their own sake. Different circumstances and different objectives bring other traits into the fore and action. Indeed, if a leader does not respond to the events of the situation, as it keeps changing for whatever reason, he would be left out. He would lose his position and power. Leadership is a dynamic process as it evolves and develops over time. This was true for Jinnah, too. He had to supplant one trait by another to make the most of the ever-changing situation. In the end, of course, all his traits complemented and combined to help him pursue his goal of Pakistan successfully as a political leader. Let us begin with the traits one by one. Due to the limitation of the space, for there are many, and to cover them all, each trait would be illustrated by using one significant example.
Openness. Jinnah always had an open mind, open to ideas, and eventualities. This was true in his entire political career. Indeed, this trait helped him progress from an ‘Ambassador of Unity’ to the Quaid-i-Azam of Muslim India and Pakistan. The earliest sign of his openness to political eventualities was his response to the ‘separate electorates' for the Muslims (along with some other Indian communities). He vehemently opposed the demand for a separate electorates raised by the Simla Deputation on October 1, 1906, and indeed signed a memorandum sponsored by the Bombay Presidency Association and sent it to the Viceroy ‘opposing separate electorates for Muslims’. He felt that Muslims and other communities were ‘equal’, and thus, ‘there should be no reservation for any class or community…’. However, after he realized that the community ‘felt keenly on the subject’, he changed his mind. As explained to his Hindu colleagues, ‘the demand for separate electorates is not a matter of policy but a matter of necessity’ to help Muslims play an active role in the political struggle for self-government and freedom. Later, of course, he helped the All-India Muslim League (AIML) that he joined in 1913 (while still being a member of the Congress, there was no bar on multiple memberships then), and the Congress accepted the Muslim demand for separate electorates in the now famous Lucknow Pact of 1916. As one writer put it, the purpose was ‘to remove the danger of Hindu and Congress opposition to separate Muslim electorates so that the government… would be convinced that on the issue of Muslim representation, there was no opposition from anyone in India’. While the British Government granted the right of separate electorates under the 1909 Act, the upcoming 1919 Act reaffirmed it. It made it an essential feature of the political system through its more expanded 1935 Act, which remained in force until the partition and end of British rule in India.
Initiative. Jinnah’s political life was full of initiatives. It was well reflected through the various political organizations he joined, such as the Bombay Presidency Association (of Pherozeshah Mehta), the INC, the AIML or, indeed, the Home Rule League (founded by Annie Besant), from time to time. Ultimately, he remained with the Muslim League and served as its President several times, especially during the critical 1940-47 period. The purpose was to keep the political initiatives in his hands while responding to changed situations as they came about. His major political initiatives, as far as the Muslim community was concerned, included, among others, the Lucknow Pact of 1916, mentioned earlier, the Delhi Muslim Proposal of 1927, and most important of them all, as they came to be known, Jinnah’s ‘Fourteen Points’ (1929). The Fourteen Points indeed were a ‘comprehensive charter of Muslim demands for constitutional safeguards, which incorporated every possible demand that could be made on the [Hindu] majority community and could satisfy every section of the Muslim community.’ The basic thrust of these points was to create five Muslim-majority provinces to balance six Hindu-majority provinces under a genuinely federal constitution and provincial autonomy for the benefit of all. As aptly put, the idea was ‘to ensure the “unity of India” at the top while providing the Muslims with a sense of participation and belonging’. But then, both Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha were not interested, forcing Jinnah ultimately, in March 1940, to insist that the Muslims ‘are a nation according to any definition of a nation, and they must have their homelands, their territory, and state'. Partition of India and the creation of a separate state of Pakistan followed.
Jinnah’s political traits were many and particularly included traits such as openness, initiative, self-confidence, adaptability, patience and tactfulness, creativity, perseverance, rationality, realism, strategic foresight, organization, articulation, single-mindedness, flexibility and compromise, capacity and, above all, integrity both regarding his person and principles.
Self-Confidence. Jinnah was a supremely self-confident person. Indeed, he was so confident that, according to one British Governor, it never occurred to him ‘that he might be wrong'. Because of this incredible confidence, ' he never courted popularity. As he told one of his political rivals:
'You try to find what will please people, then act accordingly. My way of action is quite different. I first decide what is right, and I do it.’ This self-confidence was evident as early as 1900, at the young age of twenty-four, as after having joined as Presidency Magistrate and serving for a couple of months in this desirable position, he did not hesitate to reject the offer of its renewal on a permanent basis. He was offered 1,500 rupees a month, a handsome amount at the time for any young, promising lawyer. But Jinnah refused the good offer, saying that he expected to make that much every day in time. Indeed, in 1936, he charged a fee of 1,500 rupees per day, becoming, in the process, one of the wealthiest lawyers in India.
Adaptability. Jinnah was always adaptable, ready to adjust to new conditions, and willing to learn new strategies and skills to better understand the changed settings and situations. While examples abound, I will confine myself to the most telling adaptability in his political career, adapting mass politics to mobilize and organize Muslims in the making of Pakistan. Essentially an elitist in politics and catering primarily to the small Muslim educated, urban middle classes, Jinnah, by the late 1930s, came to realize that all his struggle for the Muslim cause, for promoting and securing Muslim interests, would not work till he reached down to the masses, the bulk of the Muslim population and won them over. That's exactly what his political adversary and the proponent of so-called Indian nationalism, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, had successfully tried and achieved to the benefit of his Hindu majority community. Thus, in October 1937, at the Lucknow session of the Muslim League, he made his first significant attempt to reach the Muslim masses at large. Dressed in sherwani, shalwar, and karakul cap, hereafter called the Jinnah cap, he urged the Muslims to unite and organize themselves at the grassroots level for politics. He declared, 'means power and not relying only on cries of justice, fair play, or goodwill’. The Lucknow session not only saw ‘the declaration of a new faith’ but, indeed, the ushering of a new era in his long political career. As one critical analyst noted, it was ‘the transformation of the proud, logician and lawyer into the charismatic Muslim leader of the nineteen-forties’. His charismatic appeal and enthusiastic response were evident in the subsequent years, especially after the Lahore Resolution and the Pakistan demand in 1940. He ‘drew even larger crowds than those seen at the height of the Khilafat campaign as he traveled the length and breadth of the subcontinent popularizing the League’s demands. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims joined processions, demonstrations, and strikes as the Pakistan Movement gained momentum.’ Indeed, Jinnah showed ‘remarkable qualities of mass leadership', surprising his supporters and opponents in the political arena.
Patience and Tactfulness. Mindful of the weak, vulnerable position of the Muslim community as a minority in India as a whole and even vulnerable in the Muslim majority provinces, including the Punjab and Bengal, with significant and influential non-Muslim communities, Jinnah always remained patient and tactful in dealing with his opponents, whether British, Hindus, or even Muslims for that matter. He waited for the opportune time to advance his cause without diminishing or letting it go at any stage. The classic example was the case of Pakistan's demand and the reorganization of the Muslim League for that purpose in the Punjab.
His major political initiatives, as far as the Muslim community was concerned, included, among others, the Lucknow Pact of 1916, the Delhi Muslim Proposal of 1927, and most important of them all, as they came to be known, Jinnah’s ‘Fourteen Points’ (1929).
Given the almost non-existent presence of the League in the provincial assembly, having won only two seats in the 1937 elections (with one member deserting soon enough), Jinnah tactfully entered a legislative pact with the Unionist Muslim Chief Minister of Punjab, Sikandar Hayat Khan (having joined the League in the 1937 Lucknow session), better known as ‘Jinnah-Sikandar Pact'. All Muslim members of the Unionist party could join the League. But then, that did not happen, ‘the Unionists remained precisely as they had been before', with Sikandar Hayat Khan telling his Hindu and Sikh colleagues in his coalition government that ‘Jinnah was now in his pocket, not the other way around’. And, of course, the old Leaguers were not happy with the pact itself, convinced that Sikandar Hayat Khan was not sincere to the League. But Jinnah knew better. He was carefully executing a plan to reorganize the Muslim League in the country and badly needed support in the Punjab, ‘the cornerstone of Pakistan’. He needed to engage the ruling coalition in the province to facilitate the reorganization campaign without any hindrance or challenge. He recommended patience. He explained to Malik Barkat Ali, the only Leaguer in the provincial assembly: ‘I assure you that if you people have a little patience these small matters of detail will be adjusted fairly and justly and mainly in the interest of the cause for which we stand'. It was only a matter of time before the League, in the 1945-46 elections, had won all thirty Muslim seats in the Central Legislative Assembly, with 75 out of 86 Muslim seats in the provincial assembly of Punjab. And when Sikandar Hayat Khan’s successor, Khizar Hayat Khan Tiwana, tried to revive the pact, Jinnah retorted: ‘How could there be a pact between a leader and a follower?’ Indeed, the Punjab now belonged to the Muslim League. Jinnah’s patience and tactfulness had paid off big.
Creativity. The demand for Pakistan, through the Lahore Resolution of March 23-24, 1940, was the most telling proof of Jinnah’s trait of creativity and needs no further argument. Though there were several schemes–zonal schemes, partition schemes–to free the Muslims out of the stranglehold of the Hindu majority community in India, including ‘the Confederacy of India’, ‘the Aligarh Professors’ scheme’, ‘Outline of a Scheme of Indian Federation’, and more known Chaudhri Rahmat Ali’s ‘Now or Never, Are We to Live or Perish Forever?’ and ‘the Millat of Islam and the Menace of “Indianism”’, and of course, Allama Muhammad Iqbal’s famous Allahabad Address of 1930, demanding a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State’, comprising North-West Frontier Province (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Sind (Sindh), and Baluchistan (Balochistan). In his letters to Jinnah in 1936-37, he added Bengal later. But while Iqbal was still asking Jinnah (letter of March 20, 1937) to declare ‘as clearly as possible the political objective of the Indian Moslems as a distinct political unit in the country', Jinnah demanded a separate country altogether. He ordered a ‘safe and inalienable’ destiny for the Muslims. He wanted a complete break, a separate sovereign state of Pakistan. That’s what Gandhi found to his dismay in his correspondence with Jinnah during their September 1944 talks: ‘But if it [Pakistan] means utterly independent sovereignty so that there is to be nothing in common between the two [Pakistan and India], I hold it as an impossible proposition’, though, much to his chagrin, eventually, through the Partition Plan of June 3, 1947, India was partitioned on August 14, and Jinnah was ‘capped by a lasting achievement, namely the creation of Pakistan’.
The demand for Pakistan, through the Lahore Resolution of March 23-24, 1940, was the most telling proof of Jinnah’s trait of creativity and needs no further argument.
Perseverance. Jinnah’s perseverance could be gauged from the simple fact that throughout his political career, and a long one, he persistently pursued Muslim interests and demands under all circumstances. At no stage, whether he belonged to the Congress and the Muslim League later, he appeared willing to abandon them. Whether he opposed or supported the separate electorates, whether he joined the Congress in 1906 or left it in 1920, whether he organized the League in support of it or opposition and separately, for its own sake, whether he helped formulate the Lucknow Pact of 1916 or the ‘Lucknow Pact’ of 1937 bringing together all representative Muslim political leadership, including the chief ministers of the Muslim-majority provinces, Sikandar Hayat Khan of the Punjab included, whether he advanced the Delhi Muslim Proposals of 1927 or offered his ‘Fourteen Points’ of 1929, or whether he castigated the Congress during its provincial rule of 1937-39 years or entered into negotiations with its leadership to settle the perennial Hindu-Muslim problem, or, indeed, pursued the Pakistan demand in the crucial 1940-47 years, the aim and objective was to preserve, promote, and project Muslim rights and interest. He never wavered or faltered in the pursuit of this objective. This perseverance remained with him even during his lean period, when he was sidelined during the Khilafat-Non-cooperation Movement in the early 1920s or again during the early 1930s when he was disappointed with the attitude of Muslim and Hindu delegates at the Round Table Conference in London. He decided to settle down in London. He remained ‘in touch with India’. He could not disassociate himself from the fate of the Muslims. In a couple of years, he returned, and as he succinctly summed up his feelings years later: ‘I found that the Musalmans were in the greatest danger. I decided to come back to India, as I could not do any good from London’. He came back to secure for the Muslims their ‘proper and effective share' in the polity, which was being denied to them.
Rationality. Jinnah was a sober, rational leader, distinct and different from so many Muslim leaders who were emotional rabble-rousers, indeed demagogues. But Jinnah ‘was never the demagogue', certainly was ‘averse to the politics of symbolism’, and utterly ‘avoided the display of emotions in public'. What distinguished Jinnah from his great political contemporaries, Hindu and Muslim leaders, is that he was ‘quite self-consciously, a modern man’ and ‘valued’ and practiced ‘reason’ and rationality. This is not to suggest that he had no passions. Indeed, he had, and he believed passionately in his cause, and, as one writer aptly remarked, ‘in the end, he was to hasten his death in a cause to which he gave his will and logic, as passionately as Gandhi led his disciples, with his zeal and intuition’. The cause, obviously, was his Pakistan. All his passions were geared towards its realization. But then, he was always willing and prepared to temper his passions by reason. That explained why, ultimately, he accepted what he, himself, called ‘a truncated and moth-eaten Pakistan’ (given the forced division of the Punjab and Bengal) rather than have no Pakistan at all.
Jinnah’s perseverance could be gauged from the simple fact that throughout his political career, and a long one, he persistently pursued Muslim interests and demands under all circumstances. At no stage, whether he belonged to the Congress and the Muslim League later, he appeared willing to abandon them.
Realism. Jinnah was a realist in politics from the day he formally joined politics in 1906, accepting the realities involved and dealing with them accordingly. Whether it was the nature of British rule in India, the Hindu-Muslim communal problem, the Hindu majority-Muslim minority syndrome, or the constitutional advance in India, he accepted the situation as it was. He assessed it realistically and objectively and tried to make the most of it for the benefit of the Muslims. For example, take the case of the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946, a plan that denied him his demand for a larger and ‘sovereign Pakistan'. However, before the high-ranking Cabinet Mission, he had 'made a fairly good case for Pakistan on cultural and linguistic grounds’. On top of it, the Muslim League had overwhelmingly won the 1945-46 elections on the demand for a sovereign Pakistan. Thus, as one writer saw it, the Cabinet Mission Plan passed a 'sentence of death on Mr. Jinnah’s Pakistan’. Obviously, Jinnah was most upset with the verdict. As he confided in his confidant, M. A. H. Ispahani, ‘Naturally, I have slept very little during the last week. My brain worked incessantly. I have tossed in bed from one side to the other, thinking and worrying about what we should do?’ And what did Jinnah do and how?
The idea of a separate homeland for the Muslims, or for that matter, the very idea of two ‘nations' in India, Muslims and Hindus, was not new when Jinnah articulated it. But Jinnah’s articulation of the demand for the separate nation-state of Pakistan was more explicit, tangible, and concrete and insisted upon the complete partition of India, which made all the difference.
He fell back upon realism, his realistic attitude to politics, no matter the situation. He, much to the chagrin of some prominent Leaguers, accepted the plan and for good, realistic reasons. First, the war (Second World War) was over, and it was no longer possible to reject the British proposals at will. The British were not obliged to woo the League anymore. In addition, the Congress had re-entered mainstream politics by now, with a warm relationship with the British Labor Government of Prime Minister Attlee. As it transpired, the British Government was hoping that Jinnah, given his demand for a sovereign Pakistan, would reject the Cabinet Mission Plan, clearing the way for the Congress to form an interim government in India independently, independent of the League. Secondly, Jinnah felt that ‘the basis of Pakistan’ was in the plan already. Sections B and C, comprising the Muslim-majority areas, with the entire Punjab and Bengal provinces, ensured that they could ‘reach our goal and establish Pakistan'. Finally, Jinnah was convinced that the Congress would not be willing to work the plan in its true letter and spirit, especially regarding the essential ‘grouping’ clause. Gandhi was ‘frontally opposed to Assam and Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP)’ being included in the ‘Pakistan area’. Indeed, that is exactly what happened, with the Congress leadership, both Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, opposing the grouping and thus subverting the plan from within. Jinnah’s realistic and bold response to the Cabinet Mission Plan saved the day for him and Pakistan. After the failure of the plan, there was no stopping Pakistan, with Jinnah’s extraordinary call for ‘Direct Action’ to wrest Pakistan.
After adopting the Lahore (Pakistan) Resolution in March 1940, Jinnah had only one aim or goal: Pakistan. He pursued this goal with incredible determination and dedication. Nothing explained more the failure of his opponents to thwart his pursuit than to grasp his ‘single-minded dedication to the cause he made his own', Pakistan.
Strategic Foresight. As one of his severest critics grudgingly acknowledged, Jinnah was ‘one of the cleverest strategists among Indian politicians’. This was most evident during the war years of 1939-45 in India. While he fully grasped the significance and value of the war for the British, other politicians, especially in the Congress, were clueless. Gandhi, for instance, a protagonist of ‘non-violence’, suggested that ‘the best way to counter Hitlerism was for Great Britain to disarm and welcome the German invaders as Vichy France had done.’ Indeed, he told the ‘bewildered’ Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, 'The best thing for the British to do was to “fight Nazism without arms… invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of… your possessions. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered.”
Jinnah, of course, understood what the war meant and what it meant to the British rulers, who would do whatever they could to win it. They sought India's support, especially its main political parties, the Congress and the Muslim League. But, given the poor understanding of its leadership and influenced by their early setbacks, the Congress declared a sort of war on the British in India. First, they resigned from their ministries all over India. Secondly, they refused to help with the British war effort and launched their civil disobedience, later agitational ‘Quit India' movement. And, finally, when Stafford Cripps, a minister and one of their old friends, came to India and offered them conciliatory ‘proposals’ leading to a new Indian Union’ after the war, indeed a ‘Dominion’ status, they turned them down as ‘a post-dated cheque’, advising him to take the ‘first plane home’.
On the contrary, Jinnah decided to cooperate with the British subtly, that is, cooperation in the provinces, but not at the center, unless the British agreed to his Pakistan demand. Cooperation in the provinces helped the British recruit Muslims in the military and, eventually, deployed abroad in various war theatres. The Muslim League, of course, went on to form ministries in all the Muslim-majority provinces, helping them with the support for the Pakistan demand. Eventually, the British were affected by the turn of events, acknowledging the demand through the August Offer (1940) and the Cripps Proposals (1942), indeed conceding that Pakistan was ‘the first and foremost issue' in Indian politics. This, of course, did not mean that they had accepted the Pakistan demand.
On the contrary, they felt that a considerable amount of work would be done on the Muslims if they were to be weaned away from Pakistan's idea'. But then, by the time the war was over, Jinnah had reorganized the Muslim League and mobilized the Muslims for Pakistan to an amazing extent, as duly reflected in the League’s overwhelming victory in the 1945-46 elections immediately after the war ended. Incredibly, Jinnah had predicted in 1943 that ‘the War would last another three years or so', and, in the end, the British would be ‘in a state of exhaustion’, and, thus, all they had to do was ‘to wrest our ideal’ from the ‘unwilling hands’. That is precisely what Jinnah did after the end of the War, wresting Pakistan. According to a noted political scientist, this was ‘one of the greatest triumphs that Jinnah had achieved through his brilliant strategy’ during the war years.
Organization. Jinnah was an organization-man. A host of contemporary observers, colleagues, and friends have vouched for it. In private and public life, he 'was always consistent in his methodical, business-like handling of affairs'. Everything had to be carefully planned and executed. In politics, he once claimed, ‘one has to play one’s game as on the chessboard’. Nothing could be taken for granted. His ‘camp’, always, was a political party, an organization. He never worked outside the party routine and discipline. His entire political life and career revolved around party activity, whether as a member of the Congress, Home Rule League, or indeed, the Muslim League. While some of his critics charged that he ‘never belonged to a party unless he was the party’, the fact of the matter was that elected its ‘Permanent President in 1919, he stayed with the League to the very end, however fitful and adverse were its fortunes’. The result of this long and abiding commitment was that, in his efforts to mobilize the Muslim masses around the League, ‘he emerged as a legendary organization-man keeping communications open between Muslim minority and majority provinces, between feudal lords, commercial interests and urban middle classes, and between constitutional debates and ideological standpoints. Only because of his knack for organization was the League transformed into a new kind of party with one foot in the countryside and the other in the town. This, of course, helped the League win overwhelmingly in the 1945-46 elections, setting the stage for the achievement of Pakistan.
Articulation. Jinnah was a past master at articulating his ideas, communicating them concisely and effortlessly. One of his contemporaries indeed claimed that he was the only Muslim leader who ‘knew how to express the stirrings of their minds in the form of concrete propositions’. His greatest strength, another writer insisted, ‘lay in orchestrating the common anxieties of desperately divided groups and parties hitherto engaged in parochial and local politics, and to give them an overriding sense of direction’. This largely explains why the traditional Muslim leaders were ‘hard put to presenting an alternative programme’ to Pakistan, and some of them had no choice but ‘to swear by [the] Pakistan goal’, in public, at least. Even the so-called ‘nationalist’ Muslims who were pro-Congress were forced to water down ‘their opposition to the Lahore Resolution and qualified their support for the Congress by demanding protection from Hindu domination’. In the end, ‘the siren call of the Pakistan slogan drew the pro-Congress Muslims closer to the League until there was very little to differentiate them’. The idea of a separate homeland for the Muslims, or for that matter, the very idea of two ‘nations' in India, Muslims and Hindus, was not new when Jinnah articulated it. But Jinnah’s articulation of the demand for the separate nation-state of Pakistan was more explicit, tangible, and concrete and insisted upon the complete partition of India, which made all the difference.
Single-mindedness. After adopting the Lahore (Pakistan) Resolution in March 1940, Jinnah had only one aim or goal: Pakistan. He pursued this goal with incredible determination and dedication. Nothing explained more the failure of his opponents to thwart his pursuit than to grasp his ‘single-minded dedication to the cause he made his own', Pakistan. In this 'single-minded dedication', he was helped by a related invaluable quality for the success of a leader, ‘concentration’. His power to concentrate saved him from ‘ignoble strife' between individual leaders and groups among the Muslims, particularly in the Muslim-majority provinces, which would have cost another leader dearly. He could stay above the fray and concentrate on his Pakistan demand, especially in his intricate negotiations with his opponents, both Hindus and British, whether Gandhi, Nehru or Linlithgow, Wavell or Mountbatten, the successive Viceroys of India in the end. Mountbatten was so frustrated with him that he called him hell-bent on his Pakistan' as he reflected upon his first meeting with him after assuming the office of the Viceroy. Though a highly inappropriate and uncalled-for remark, it affirmed, beyond any doubt, Jinnah’s single-minded dedication to Pakistan. Earlier, he had heard Nehru blaming Jinnah and his ‘complete singleness of purpose’ for all the difficulties in India. Years later, of course, in 1975, when Mountbatten came to know of Jinnah’s grave illness at the time, he went on to lament that it was a horrifying thought that we were never told (about his illness)… that I was not told was almost criminal since, as long as he was alive, nothing could be done… because he was the only, I repeat, the only stumbling block’. Indeed, Pakistan came into being because of this ‘stumbling block’, this single-mindedness of Jinnah.
Jinnah was well qualified for a constitutional role from the start, having done his Bar-at-Law from London (Lincoln’s Inn) and then trained in constitutionalism at the hands of political mentors such as Naoroji, Gokhale, and Mehta, among others. He was fully convinced that the constitutional way was the only way to reach the goal of freedom.
Flexibility and Compromise. Political leaders often challenged their powerful, authoritarian rulers in British colonies like India. But they had no instruments of power at hand, given the very nature of the colonial state. Thus, they treaded weary paths in compelling their rulers to concede their demands. And when they succeeded through whatever means, constitutional, extra-constitutional or agitational, invariably, the actual gains fell short. This was the case with the Indian leadership, including Jinnah. He could not always get what he wanted. He had to be flexible and compromise to save the situation for his party, the Muslim League, and his cause for Pakistan. However, what was apparent in his case was to remain flexible with tactics and not the strategy overall. This, as pointed out earlier, was evident in the acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan (within the Indian Union) without conceding the strategic goal of Pakistan. Indeed, as soon as he found out that the plan was a non-starter, thanks to Gandhi's intransigence over the grouping clause, he not only rejected it outright but hastened to seek the attainment of his strategic goal of Pakistan, with full force through his ‘Direct Action’ campaign.
But then, Jinnah also made one significant compromise, though it was a compromise on some details, not on principles. He agreed to the division of Muslim-majority provinces of the Punjab and Bengal to save his larger, more important goal of Pakistan for the Muslims of India. This division was meant to be a red herring' to frighten Jinnah from the demand for Pakistan. The idea was ‘to convince the Muslims that they could only get a truncated and moth-eaten Pakistan which would not be worthwhile'. Jinnah, of course, did his best to woo the Sikhs to stay in united Punjab. He even agreed to the idea of a ‘United Independent Bengal'. But the Congress leadership, in connivance with Mountbatten, subverted all such efforts. Mountbatten charged: ‘I simply could not visualize being so inconsistent as to agree to the partition of India without also agreeing to partition within any province in which the same problem arose'. The division of Punjab and Bengal, thus, was made an integral part of the June 3, 1947 Partition Plan. Knowing that his ultimate goal of Pakistan was there, no matter, how much ‘truncated’, Jinnah accepted the plan as ‘a compromise’, not a ‘settlement'. The Congress leadership, notably Sardar Patel, protested this notion of compromise (and not settlement) and wrote to Mountbatten about it, but to no avail. The plan remained a compromise. In the process, Jinnah had a Pakistan.
Capacity. Jinnah had the right, relevant, and realistic capacity for political struggle against the British rulers. The British had introduced a constitutional order in India, though not quite like the system at home in Britain. The game's rules were constitutional, based on the elective principle and representative system of government. Of course, the Congress, especially after being led by Gandhi, often resorted to extra-constitutional, agitational, and non-cooperation methods to press for their demands. But then, it represented the majority Hindu community and thus, could afford to bear the cost. The case of Muslims, a minority community, could not be the same. They were most vulnerable in the three-party contest. Their loss could have been a loss beyond redemption.
Both Hindu leaders and nationalist Muslims who opposed his Pakistan demand agreed that Jinnah had no personal axe to grind in the struggle for Pakistan. A contemporary Hindu writer described Jinnah’s character as ‘impeccable’. He argued: ‘None can wheedle him into acquiescence by holding out bait. Title, rank, designation, he will simply brush aside and will not let them interfere with the line of action he has marked out for himself.
Fortunately, the Muslims had a leader in Jinnah, a keen constitutionalist endowed with a superb legal mind to help them secure their rights and interests in their struggle for self-government and freedom, eventually from the British and the Hindu majority community led by the Congress. In fact, Jinnah was well qualified for a constitutional role from the start, having done his Bar-at-Law from London (Lincoln’s Inn) and then trained in constitutionalism at the hands of political mentors such as Naoroji, Gokhale, and Mehta, among others. He was fully convinced that the constitutional way was the only way to reach the goal of freedom. His experience also suggested that the 'armed revolution was impossible, while non-cooperation had been tried and found a failure’.
In following the constitutional way, Jinnah was helped by his immense knowledge of law and legal practice. Unlike Gandhi, who, despite being a barrister, had no interest in constitutional matters confessing, in 1942, to a shocked Viceroy (Linlithgow) that he had not read the 1935 Act and who was never a member of any Indian legislature, Jinnah was a part of almost all constitutional deliberations whether inside the assembly or outside, whether between the League and the Congress or between the League, Congress, and the British all together. His knack for legal-constitutional details made him a demanding and shrewd negotiator’ with the British leaders. One British writer acknowledged: ‘His lengthy and successful legal career suited him for this task, as did his dogged determination, which so exasperated British officials from Lord Mountbatten downwards’ in the transfer of power negotiations in its final phase in 1947. The Muslims couldn’t have asked for more.
Integrity. Jinnah's friends, foes, supporters, detractors, and haters agreed on his innocence. He could ‘neither be bought nor cajoled, neither be influenced nor trapped in any position that he had not himself decided upon’. Having once decided upon Pakistan, nothing deterred him.
Both Hindu leaders and nationalist Muslims who opposed his Pakistan demand agreed that Jinnah had no personal axe to grind in the struggle for Pakistan. A contemporary Hindu writer described Jinnah’s character as ‘impeccable’. He argued: ‘None can wheedle him into acquiescence by holding out bait. Title, rank, designation, he will simply brush aside and will not let them interfere with the line of action he has marked out for himself. In a similar vein, Dr Syed Hussain, a nationalist Muslim, swore publicly: ‘Though I am opposed to Pakistan, I must say that Mr. Jinnah is the only man in public life whose public record is most incorruptible. You cannot buy him by money or by offer of post. He has not gained anything from the British. He is not that kind of man... The Muslim masses know that Mr. Jinnah is the only man who is not in need of money and who has no lust for power. As for the money, there is no gainsaying that he was one of the wealthiest political leaders in India. His ’fortune' in 1947, on the eve of the independence of Pakistan, was around 6-7 million rupees, ‘a fabulous sum' those days, mostly earned from the legal practice. One immediate instance of his integrity post-independence was that, after becoming Governor General of Pakistan, he resigned from the presidency of the Muslim League, saying that ‘as a constitutional Governor General, he had to maintain fairness among the political parties’. Such was the extent of his integrity.
All these political traits, together, in tandem or separately, contributed to Jinnah's personality in making Pakistan; some may have helped more than others. But, indeed, all did, as the above discussion would bear out. Very few leaders then or even today could claim these traits in their political lives and processes. These traits helped Jinnah, despite all the significant handicaps of not leading from a Muslim-majority province, not much conversant with Urdu, lingua franca of the Muslims, and not belonging to the feudal class, the dominant sociopolitical class then, but essentially a self-made man, a briefless lawyer to begin with, to become the undisputed leader of Muslim India, maker of Pakistan, and indeed its first Governor-General, officially declared by its Constituent Assembly as the Quaid-i-Azam (Great Leader).
The author is a Distinguished History and Public Policy Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at FC College University, Lahore. His book, The Charismatic Leader: Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and the Creation of Pakistan (OUP), is the recipient of the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan’s ‘Best Book Publication Award’ in Social Sciences.
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www.hilal.gov.pk
Political leadership is a function of both ‘personality’ and ‘situation', with personality often the ultimate determinant. It is difficult to understand, let alone explain, a political leader unless you examine their personality, particularly his dominant political traits. These traits play a major role in his rise, fall, success, failure, and political life and career.
In an earlier study of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, The Charismatic Leader, I highlighted some of the political traits that helped him become a leader of Indian Muslims, indeed their charismatic leader. These traits helped him further in the making of Pakistan against all odds. I did not try to diminish, much less deny, the importance of situational factors. I stressed their importance in two chapters, exclusively devoted to ‘The Muslim Situation’, discussing at length the distressful situation of Muslim India, particularly in the wake of the Second World War, as the Hindu majority community of India, led by the Indian National Congress (INC) and its majoritarian leadership, advanced towards self-government and freedom, and the Muslims being at a loss. But the point I made and would like to reiterate and expand here is that Jinnah’s political traits were critical and thus went on to help his political leadership in successfully pursuing his Pakistan demand and its ultimate realization in the new nation state of Pakistan on August 14, 1947.
Jinnah’s political traits were many and particularly included traits such as openness, initiative, self-confidence, adaptability, patience and tactfulness, creativity, perseverance, rationality, realism, strategic foresight, organization, articulation, single-mindedness, flexibility and compromise, capacity and, above all, integrity both regarding his person and principles. Although some of these traits tend to be overlapping, inconsistent, or contradictory, it is primarily because of seeing them in isolation and for their own sake. Different circumstances and different objectives bring other traits into the fore and action. Indeed, if a leader does not respond to the events of the situation, as it keeps changing for whatever reason, he would be left out. He would lose his position and power. Leadership is a dynamic process as it evolves and develops over time. This was true for Jinnah, too. He had to supplant one trait by another to make the most of the ever-changing situation. In the end, of course, all his traits complemented and combined to help him pursue his goal of Pakistan successfully as a political leader. Let us begin with the traits one by one. Due to the limitation of the space, for there are many, and to cover them all, each trait would be illustrated by using one significant example.
Openness. Jinnah always had an open mind, open to ideas, and eventualities. This was true in his entire political career. Indeed, this trait helped him progress from an ‘Ambassador of Unity’ to the Quaid-i-Azam of Muslim India and Pakistan. The earliest sign of his openness to political eventualities was his response to the ‘separate electorates' for the Muslims (along with some other Indian communities). He vehemently opposed the demand for a separate electorates raised by the Simla Deputation on October 1, 1906, and indeed signed a memorandum sponsored by the Bombay Presidency Association and sent it to the Viceroy ‘opposing separate electorates for Muslims’. He felt that Muslims and other communities were ‘equal’, and thus, ‘there should be no reservation for any class or community…’. However, after he realized that the community ‘felt keenly on the subject’, he changed his mind. As explained to his Hindu colleagues, ‘the demand for separate electorates is not a matter of policy but a matter of necessity’ to help Muslims play an active role in the political struggle for self-government and freedom. Later, of course, he helped the All-India Muslim League (AIML) that he joined in 1913 (while still being a member of the Congress, there was no bar on multiple memberships then), and the Congress accepted the Muslim demand for separate electorates in the now famous Lucknow Pact of 1916. As one writer put it, the purpose was ‘to remove the danger of Hindu and Congress opposition to separate Muslim electorates so that the government… would be convinced that on the issue of Muslim representation, there was no opposition from anyone in India’. While the British Government granted the right of separate electorates under the 1909 Act, the upcoming 1919 Act reaffirmed it. It made it an essential feature of the political system through its more expanded 1935 Act, which remained in force until the partition and end of British rule in India.
Initiative. Jinnah’s political life was full of initiatives. It was well reflected through the various political organizations he joined, such as the Bombay Presidency Association (of Pherozeshah Mehta), the INC, the AIML or, indeed, the Home Rule League (founded by Annie Besant), from time to time. Ultimately, he remained with the Muslim League and served as its President several times, especially during the critical 1940-47 period. The purpose was to keep the political initiatives in his hands while responding to changed situations as they came about. His major political initiatives, as far as the Muslim community was concerned, included, among others, the Lucknow Pact of 1916, mentioned earlier, the Delhi Muslim Proposal of 1927, and most important of them all, as they came to be known, Jinnah’s ‘Fourteen Points’ (1929). The Fourteen Points indeed were a ‘comprehensive charter of Muslim demands for constitutional safeguards, which incorporated every possible demand that could be made on the [Hindu] majority community and could satisfy every section of the Muslim community.’ The basic thrust of these points was to create five Muslim-majority provinces to balance six Hindu-majority provinces under a genuinely federal constitution and provincial autonomy for the benefit of all. As aptly put, the idea was ‘to ensure the “unity of India” at the top while providing the Muslims with a sense of participation and belonging’. But then, both Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha were not interested, forcing Jinnah ultimately, in March 1940, to insist that the Muslims ‘are a nation according to any definition of a nation, and they must have their homelands, their territory, and state'. Partition of India and the creation of a separate state of Pakistan followed.
Jinnah’s political traits were many and particularly included traits such as openness, initiative, self-confidence, adaptability, patience and tactfulness, creativity, perseverance, rationality, realism, strategic foresight, organization, articulation, single-mindedness, flexibility and compromise, capacity and, above all, integrity both regarding his person and principles.
Self-Confidence. Jinnah was a supremely self-confident person. Indeed, he was so confident that, according to one British Governor, it never occurred to him ‘that he might be wrong'. Because of this incredible confidence, ' he never courted popularity. As he told one of his political rivals:
'You try to find what will please people, then act accordingly. My way of action is quite different. I first decide what is right, and I do it.’ This self-confidence was evident as early as 1900, at the young age of twenty-four, as after having joined as Presidency Magistrate and serving for a couple of months in this desirable position, he did not hesitate to reject the offer of its renewal on a permanent basis. He was offered 1,500 rupees a month, a handsome amount at the time for any young, promising lawyer. But Jinnah refused the good offer, saying that he expected to make that much every day in time. Indeed, in 1936, he charged a fee of 1,500 rupees per day, becoming, in the process, one of the wealthiest lawyers in India.
Adaptability. Jinnah was always adaptable, ready to adjust to new conditions, and willing to learn new strategies and skills to better understand the changed settings and situations. While examples abound, I will confine myself to the most telling adaptability in his political career, adapting mass politics to mobilize and organize Muslims in the making of Pakistan. Essentially an elitist in politics and catering primarily to the small Muslim educated, urban middle classes, Jinnah, by the late 1930s, came to realize that all his struggle for the Muslim cause, for promoting and securing Muslim interests, would not work till he reached down to the masses, the bulk of the Muslim population and won them over. That's exactly what his political adversary and the proponent of so-called Indian nationalism, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, had successfully tried and achieved to the benefit of his Hindu majority community. Thus, in October 1937, at the Lucknow session of the Muslim League, he made his first significant attempt to reach the Muslim masses at large. Dressed in sherwani, shalwar, and karakul cap, hereafter called the Jinnah cap, he urged the Muslims to unite and organize themselves at the grassroots level for politics. He declared, 'means power and not relying only on cries of justice, fair play, or goodwill’. The Lucknow session not only saw ‘the declaration of a new faith’ but, indeed, the ushering of a new era in his long political career. As one critical analyst noted, it was ‘the transformation of the proud, logician and lawyer into the charismatic Muslim leader of the nineteen-forties’. His charismatic appeal and enthusiastic response were evident in the subsequent years, especially after the Lahore Resolution and the Pakistan demand in 1940. He ‘drew even larger crowds than those seen at the height of the Khilafat campaign as he traveled the length and breadth of the subcontinent popularizing the League’s demands. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims joined processions, demonstrations, and strikes as the Pakistan Movement gained momentum.’ Indeed, Jinnah showed ‘remarkable qualities of mass leadership', surprising his supporters and opponents in the political arena.
Patience and Tactfulness. Mindful of the weak, vulnerable position of the Muslim community as a minority in India as a whole and even vulnerable in the Muslim majority provinces, including the Punjab and Bengal, with significant and influential non-Muslim communities, Jinnah always remained patient and tactful in dealing with his opponents, whether British, Hindus, or even Muslims for that matter. He waited for the opportune time to advance his cause without diminishing or letting it go at any stage. The classic example was the case of Pakistan's demand and the reorganization of the Muslim League for that purpose in the Punjab.
His major political initiatives, as far as the Muslim community was concerned, included, among others, the Lucknow Pact of 1916, the Delhi Muslim Proposal of 1927, and most important of them all, as they came to be known, Jinnah’s ‘Fourteen Points’ (1929).
Given the almost non-existent presence of the League in the provincial assembly, having won only two seats in the 1937 elections (with one member deserting soon enough), Jinnah tactfully entered a legislative pact with the Unionist Muslim Chief Minister of Punjab, Sikandar Hayat Khan (having joined the League in the 1937 Lucknow session), better known as ‘Jinnah-Sikandar Pact'. All Muslim members of the Unionist party could join the League. But then, that did not happen, ‘the Unionists remained precisely as they had been before', with Sikandar Hayat Khan telling his Hindu and Sikh colleagues in his coalition government that ‘Jinnah was now in his pocket, not the other way around’. And, of course, the old Leaguers were not happy with the pact itself, convinced that Sikandar Hayat Khan was not sincere to the League. But Jinnah knew better. He was carefully executing a plan to reorganize the Muslim League in the country and badly needed support in the Punjab, ‘the cornerstone of Pakistan’. He needed to engage the ruling coalition in the province to facilitate the reorganization campaign without any hindrance or challenge. He recommended patience. He explained to Malik Barkat Ali, the only Leaguer in the provincial assembly: ‘I assure you that if you people have a little patience these small matters of detail will be adjusted fairly and justly and mainly in the interest of the cause for which we stand'. It was only a matter of time before the League, in the 1945-46 elections, had won all thirty Muslim seats in the Central Legislative Assembly, with 75 out of 86 Muslim seats in the provincial assembly of Punjab. And when Sikandar Hayat Khan’s successor, Khizar Hayat Khan Tiwana, tried to revive the pact, Jinnah retorted: ‘How could there be a pact between a leader and a follower?’ Indeed, the Punjab now belonged to the Muslim League. Jinnah’s patience and tactfulness had paid off big.
Creativity. The demand for Pakistan, through the Lahore Resolution of March 23-24, 1940, was the most telling proof of Jinnah’s trait of creativity and needs no further argument. Though there were several schemes–zonal schemes, partition schemes–to free the Muslims out of the stranglehold of the Hindu majority community in India, including ‘the Confederacy of India’, ‘the Aligarh Professors’ scheme’, ‘Outline of a Scheme of Indian Federation’, and more known Chaudhri Rahmat Ali’s ‘Now or Never, Are We to Live or Perish Forever?’ and ‘the Millat of Islam and the Menace of “Indianism”’, and of course, Allama Muhammad Iqbal’s famous Allahabad Address of 1930, demanding a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State’, comprising North-West Frontier Province (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Sind (Sindh), and Baluchistan (Balochistan). In his letters to Jinnah in 1936-37, he added Bengal later. But while Iqbal was still asking Jinnah (letter of March 20, 1937) to declare ‘as clearly as possible the political objective of the Indian Moslems as a distinct political unit in the country', Jinnah demanded a separate country altogether. He ordered a ‘safe and inalienable’ destiny for the Muslims. He wanted a complete break, a separate sovereign state of Pakistan. That’s what Gandhi found to his dismay in his correspondence with Jinnah during their September 1944 talks: ‘But if it [Pakistan] means utterly independent sovereignty so that there is to be nothing in common between the two [Pakistan and India], I hold it as an impossible proposition’, though, much to his chagrin, eventually, through the Partition Plan of June 3, 1947, India was partitioned on August 14, and Jinnah was ‘capped by a lasting achievement, namely the creation of Pakistan’.
The demand for Pakistan, through the Lahore Resolution of March 23-24, 1940, was the most telling proof of Jinnah’s trait of creativity and needs no further argument.
Perseverance. Jinnah’s perseverance could be gauged from the simple fact that throughout his political career, and a long one, he persistently pursued Muslim interests and demands under all circumstances. At no stage, whether he belonged to the Congress and the Muslim League later, he appeared willing to abandon them. Whether he opposed or supported the separate electorates, whether he joined the Congress in 1906 or left it in 1920, whether he organized the League in support of it or opposition and separately, for its own sake, whether he helped formulate the Lucknow Pact of 1916 or the ‘Lucknow Pact’ of 1937 bringing together all representative Muslim political leadership, including the chief ministers of the Muslim-majority provinces, Sikandar Hayat Khan of the Punjab included, whether he advanced the Delhi Muslim Proposals of 1927 or offered his ‘Fourteen Points’ of 1929, or whether he castigated the Congress during its provincial rule of 1937-39 years or entered into negotiations with its leadership to settle the perennial Hindu-Muslim problem, or, indeed, pursued the Pakistan demand in the crucial 1940-47 years, the aim and objective was to preserve, promote, and project Muslim rights and interest. He never wavered or faltered in the pursuit of this objective. This perseverance remained with him even during his lean period, when he was sidelined during the Khilafat-Non-cooperation Movement in the early 1920s or again during the early 1930s when he was disappointed with the attitude of Muslim and Hindu delegates at the Round Table Conference in London. He decided to settle down in London. He remained ‘in touch with India’. He could not disassociate himself from the fate of the Muslims. In a couple of years, he returned, and as he succinctly summed up his feelings years later: ‘I found that the Musalmans were in the greatest danger. I decided to come back to India, as I could not do any good from London’. He came back to secure for the Muslims their ‘proper and effective share' in the polity, which was being denied to them.
Rationality. Jinnah was a sober, rational leader, distinct and different from so many Muslim leaders who were emotional rabble-rousers, indeed demagogues. But Jinnah ‘was never the demagogue', certainly was ‘averse to the politics of symbolism’, and utterly ‘avoided the display of emotions in public'. What distinguished Jinnah from his great political contemporaries, Hindu and Muslim leaders, is that he was ‘quite self-consciously, a modern man’ and ‘valued’ and practiced ‘reason’ and rationality. This is not to suggest that he had no passions. Indeed, he had, and he believed passionately in his cause, and, as one writer aptly remarked, ‘in the end, he was to hasten his death in a cause to which he gave his will and logic, as passionately as Gandhi led his disciples, with his zeal and intuition’. The cause, obviously, was his Pakistan. All his passions were geared towards its realization. But then, he was always willing and prepared to temper his passions by reason. That explained why, ultimately, he accepted what he, himself, called ‘a truncated and moth-eaten Pakistan’ (given the forced division of the Punjab and Bengal) rather than have no Pakistan at all.
Jinnah’s perseverance could be gauged from the simple fact that throughout his political career, and a long one, he persistently pursued Muslim interests and demands under all circumstances. At no stage, whether he belonged to the Congress and the Muslim League later, he appeared willing to abandon them.
Realism. Jinnah was a realist in politics from the day he formally joined politics in 1906, accepting the realities involved and dealing with them accordingly. Whether it was the nature of British rule in India, the Hindu-Muslim communal problem, the Hindu majority-Muslim minority syndrome, or the constitutional advance in India, he accepted the situation as it was. He assessed it realistically and objectively and tried to make the most of it for the benefit of the Muslims. For example, take the case of the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946, a plan that denied him his demand for a larger and ‘sovereign Pakistan'. However, before the high-ranking Cabinet Mission, he had 'made a fairly good case for Pakistan on cultural and linguistic grounds’. On top of it, the Muslim League had overwhelmingly won the 1945-46 elections on the demand for a sovereign Pakistan. Thus, as one writer saw it, the Cabinet Mission Plan passed a 'sentence of death on Mr. Jinnah’s Pakistan’. Obviously, Jinnah was most upset with the verdict. As he confided in his confidant, M. A. H. Ispahani, ‘Naturally, I have slept very little during the last week. My brain worked incessantly. I have tossed in bed from one side to the other, thinking and worrying about what we should do?’ And what did Jinnah do and how?
The idea of a separate homeland for the Muslims, or for that matter, the very idea of two ‘nations' in India, Muslims and Hindus, was not new when Jinnah articulated it. But Jinnah’s articulation of the demand for the separate nation-state of Pakistan was more explicit, tangible, and concrete and insisted upon the complete partition of India, which made all the difference.
He fell back upon realism, his realistic attitude to politics, no matter the situation. He, much to the chagrin of some prominent Leaguers, accepted the plan and for good, realistic reasons. First, the war (Second World War) was over, and it was no longer possible to reject the British proposals at will. The British were not obliged to woo the League anymore. In addition, the Congress had re-entered mainstream politics by now, with a warm relationship with the British Labor Government of Prime Minister Attlee. As it transpired, the British Government was hoping that Jinnah, given his demand for a sovereign Pakistan, would reject the Cabinet Mission Plan, clearing the way for the Congress to form an interim government in India independently, independent of the League. Secondly, Jinnah felt that ‘the basis of Pakistan’ was in the plan already. Sections B and C, comprising the Muslim-majority areas, with the entire Punjab and Bengal provinces, ensured that they could ‘reach our goal and establish Pakistan'. Finally, Jinnah was convinced that the Congress would not be willing to work the plan in its true letter and spirit, especially regarding the essential ‘grouping’ clause. Gandhi was ‘frontally opposed to Assam and Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP)’ being included in the ‘Pakistan area’. Indeed, that is exactly what happened, with the Congress leadership, both Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, opposing the grouping and thus subverting the plan from within. Jinnah’s realistic and bold response to the Cabinet Mission Plan saved the day for him and Pakistan. After the failure of the plan, there was no stopping Pakistan, with Jinnah’s extraordinary call for ‘Direct Action’ to wrest Pakistan.
After adopting the Lahore (Pakistan) Resolution in March 1940, Jinnah had only one aim or goal: Pakistan. He pursued this goal with incredible determination and dedication. Nothing explained more the failure of his opponents to thwart his pursuit than to grasp his ‘single-minded dedication to the cause he made his own', Pakistan.
Strategic Foresight. As one of his severest critics grudgingly acknowledged, Jinnah was ‘one of the cleverest strategists among Indian politicians’. This was most evident during the war years of 1939-45 in India. While he fully grasped the significance and value of the war for the British, other politicians, especially in the Congress, were clueless. Gandhi, for instance, a protagonist of ‘non-violence’, suggested that ‘the best way to counter Hitlerism was for Great Britain to disarm and welcome the German invaders as Vichy France had done.’ Indeed, he told the ‘bewildered’ Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, 'The best thing for the British to do was to “fight Nazism without arms… invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of… your possessions. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself, man, woman, and child, to be slaughtered.”
Jinnah, of course, understood what the war meant and what it meant to the British rulers, who would do whatever they could to win it. They sought India's support, especially its main political parties, the Congress and the Muslim League. But, given the poor understanding of its leadership and influenced by their early setbacks, the Congress declared a sort of war on the British in India. First, they resigned from their ministries all over India. Secondly, they refused to help with the British war effort and launched their civil disobedience, later agitational ‘Quit India' movement. And, finally, when Stafford Cripps, a minister and one of their old friends, came to India and offered them conciliatory ‘proposals’ leading to a new Indian Union’ after the war, indeed a ‘Dominion’ status, they turned them down as ‘a post-dated cheque’, advising him to take the ‘first plane home’.
On the contrary, Jinnah decided to cooperate with the British subtly, that is, cooperation in the provinces, but not at the center, unless the British agreed to his Pakistan demand. Cooperation in the provinces helped the British recruit Muslims in the military and, eventually, deployed abroad in various war theatres. The Muslim League, of course, went on to form ministries in all the Muslim-majority provinces, helping them with the support for the Pakistan demand. Eventually, the British were affected by the turn of events, acknowledging the demand through the August Offer (1940) and the Cripps Proposals (1942), indeed conceding that Pakistan was ‘the first and foremost issue' in Indian politics. This, of course, did not mean that they had accepted the Pakistan demand.
On the contrary, they felt that a considerable amount of work would be done on the Muslims if they were to be weaned away from Pakistan's idea'. But then, by the time the war was over, Jinnah had reorganized the Muslim League and mobilized the Muslims for Pakistan to an amazing extent, as duly reflected in the League’s overwhelming victory in the 1945-46 elections immediately after the war ended. Incredibly, Jinnah had predicted in 1943 that ‘the War would last another three years or so', and, in the end, the British would be ‘in a state of exhaustion’, and, thus, all they had to do was ‘to wrest our ideal’ from the ‘unwilling hands’. That is precisely what Jinnah did after the end of the War, wresting Pakistan. According to a noted political scientist, this was ‘one of the greatest triumphs that Jinnah had achieved through his brilliant strategy’ during the war years.
Organization. Jinnah was an organization-man. A host of contemporary observers, colleagues, and friends have vouched for it. In private and public life, he 'was always consistent in his methodical, business-like handling of affairs'. Everything had to be carefully planned and executed. In politics, he once claimed, ‘one has to play one’s game as on the chessboard’. Nothing could be taken for granted. His ‘camp’, always, was a political party, an organization. He never worked outside the party routine and discipline. His entire political life and career revolved around party activity, whether as a member of the Congress, Home Rule League, or indeed, the Muslim League. While some of his critics charged that he ‘never belonged to a party unless he was the party’, the fact of the matter was that elected its ‘Permanent President in 1919, he stayed with the League to the very end, however fitful and adverse were its fortunes’. The result of this long and abiding commitment was that, in his efforts to mobilize the Muslim masses around the League, ‘he emerged as a legendary organization-man keeping communications open between Muslim minority and majority provinces, between feudal lords, commercial interests and urban middle classes, and between constitutional debates and ideological standpoints. Only because of his knack for organization was the League transformed into a new kind of party with one foot in the countryside and the other in the town. This, of course, helped the League win overwhelmingly in the 1945-46 elections, setting the stage for the achievement of Pakistan.
Articulation. Jinnah was a past master at articulating his ideas, communicating them concisely and effortlessly. One of his contemporaries indeed claimed that he was the only Muslim leader who ‘knew how to express the stirrings of their minds in the form of concrete propositions’. His greatest strength, another writer insisted, ‘lay in orchestrating the common anxieties of desperately divided groups and parties hitherto engaged in parochial and local politics, and to give them an overriding sense of direction’. This largely explains why the traditional Muslim leaders were ‘hard put to presenting an alternative programme’ to Pakistan, and some of them had no choice but ‘to swear by [the] Pakistan goal’, in public, at least. Even the so-called ‘nationalist’ Muslims who were pro-Congress were forced to water down ‘their opposition to the Lahore Resolution and qualified their support for the Congress by demanding protection from Hindu domination’. In the end, ‘the siren call of the Pakistan slogan drew the pro-Congress Muslims closer to the League until there was very little to differentiate them’. The idea of a separate homeland for the Muslims, or for that matter, the very idea of two ‘nations' in India, Muslims and Hindus, was not new when Jinnah articulated it. But Jinnah’s articulation of the demand for the separate nation-state of Pakistan was more explicit, tangible, and concrete and insisted upon the complete partition of India, which made all the difference.
Single-mindedness. After adopting the Lahore (Pakistan) Resolution in March 1940, Jinnah had only one aim or goal: Pakistan. He pursued this goal with incredible determination and dedication. Nothing explained more the failure of his opponents to thwart his pursuit than to grasp his ‘single-minded dedication to the cause he made his own', Pakistan. In this 'single-minded dedication', he was helped by a related invaluable quality for the success of a leader, ‘concentration’. His power to concentrate saved him from ‘ignoble strife' between individual leaders and groups among the Muslims, particularly in the Muslim-majority provinces, which would have cost another leader dearly. He could stay above the fray and concentrate on his Pakistan demand, especially in his intricate negotiations with his opponents, both Hindus and British, whether Gandhi, Nehru or Linlithgow, Wavell or Mountbatten, the successive Viceroys of India in the end. Mountbatten was so frustrated with him that he called him hell-bent on his Pakistan' as he reflected upon his first meeting with him after assuming the office of the Viceroy. Though a highly inappropriate and uncalled-for remark, it affirmed, beyond any doubt, Jinnah’s single-minded dedication to Pakistan. Earlier, he had heard Nehru blaming Jinnah and his ‘complete singleness of purpose’ for all the difficulties in India. Years later, of course, in 1975, when Mountbatten came to know of Jinnah’s grave illness at the time, he went on to lament that it was a horrifying thought that we were never told (about his illness)… that I was not told was almost criminal since, as long as he was alive, nothing could be done… because he was the only, I repeat, the only stumbling block’. Indeed, Pakistan came into being because of this ‘stumbling block’, this single-mindedness of Jinnah.
Jinnah was well qualified for a constitutional role from the start, having done his Bar-at-Law from London (Lincoln’s Inn) and then trained in constitutionalism at the hands of political mentors such as Naoroji, Gokhale, and Mehta, among others. He was fully convinced that the constitutional way was the only way to reach the goal of freedom.
Flexibility and Compromise. Political leaders often challenged their powerful, authoritarian rulers in British colonies like India. But they had no instruments of power at hand, given the very nature of the colonial state. Thus, they treaded weary paths in compelling their rulers to concede their demands. And when they succeeded through whatever means, constitutional, extra-constitutional or agitational, invariably, the actual gains fell short. This was the case with the Indian leadership, including Jinnah. He could not always get what he wanted. He had to be flexible and compromise to save the situation for his party, the Muslim League, and his cause for Pakistan. However, what was apparent in his case was to remain flexible with tactics and not the strategy overall. This, as pointed out earlier, was evident in the acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan (within the Indian Union) without conceding the strategic goal of Pakistan. Indeed, as soon as he found out that the plan was a non-starter, thanks to Gandhi's intransigence over the grouping clause, he not only rejected it outright but hastened to seek the attainment of his strategic goal of Pakistan, with full force through his ‘Direct Action’ campaign.
But then, Jinnah also made one significant compromise, though it was a compromise on some details, not on principles. He agreed to the division of Muslim-majority provinces of the Punjab and Bengal to save his larger, more important goal of Pakistan for the Muslims of India. This division was meant to be a red herring' to frighten Jinnah from the demand for Pakistan. The idea was ‘to convince the Muslims that they could only get a truncated and moth-eaten Pakistan which would not be worthwhile'. Jinnah, of course, did his best to woo the Sikhs to stay in united Punjab. He even agreed to the idea of a ‘United Independent Bengal'. But the Congress leadership, in connivance with Mountbatten, subverted all such efforts. Mountbatten charged: ‘I simply could not visualize being so inconsistent as to agree to the partition of India without also agreeing to partition within any province in which the same problem arose'. The division of Punjab and Bengal, thus, was made an integral part of the June 3, 1947 Partition Plan. Knowing that his ultimate goal of Pakistan was there, no matter, how much ‘truncated’, Jinnah accepted the plan as ‘a compromise’, not a ‘settlement'. The Congress leadership, notably Sardar Patel, protested this notion of compromise (and not settlement) and wrote to Mountbatten about it, but to no avail. The plan remained a compromise. In the process, Jinnah had a Pakistan.
Capacity. Jinnah had the right, relevant, and realistic capacity for political struggle against the British rulers. The British had introduced a constitutional order in India, though not quite like the system at home in Britain. The game's rules were constitutional, based on the elective principle and representative system of government. Of course, the Congress, especially after being led by Gandhi, often resorted to extra-constitutional, agitational, and non-cooperation methods to press for their demands. But then, it represented the majority Hindu community and thus, could afford to bear the cost. The case of Muslims, a minority community, could not be the same. They were most vulnerable in the three-party contest. Their loss could have been a loss beyond redemption.
Both Hindu leaders and nationalist Muslims who opposed his Pakistan demand agreed that Jinnah had no personal axe to grind in the struggle for Pakistan. A contemporary Hindu writer described Jinnah’s character as ‘impeccable’. He argued: ‘None can wheedle him into acquiescence by holding out bait. Title, rank, designation, he will simply brush aside and will not let them interfere with the line of action he has marked out for himself.
Fortunately, the Muslims had a leader in Jinnah, a keen constitutionalist endowed with a superb legal mind to help them secure their rights and interests in their struggle for self-government and freedom, eventually from the British and the Hindu majority community led by the Congress. In fact, Jinnah was well qualified for a constitutional role from the start, having done his Bar-at-Law from London (Lincoln’s Inn) and then trained in constitutionalism at the hands of political mentors such as Naoroji, Gokhale, and Mehta, among others. He was fully convinced that the constitutional way was the only way to reach the goal of freedom. His experience also suggested that the 'armed revolution was impossible, while non-cooperation had been tried and found a failure’.
In following the constitutional way, Jinnah was helped by his immense knowledge of law and legal practice. Unlike Gandhi, who, despite being a barrister, had no interest in constitutional matters confessing, in 1942, to a shocked Viceroy (Linlithgow) that he had not read the 1935 Act and who was never a member of any Indian legislature, Jinnah was a part of almost all constitutional deliberations whether inside the assembly or outside, whether between the League and the Congress or between the League, Congress, and the British all together. His knack for legal-constitutional details made him a demanding and shrewd negotiator’ with the British leaders. One British writer acknowledged: ‘His lengthy and successful legal career suited him for this task, as did his dogged determination, which so exasperated British officials from Lord Mountbatten downwards’ in the transfer of power negotiations in its final phase in 1947. The Muslims couldn’t have asked for more.
Integrity. Jinnah's friends, foes, supporters, detractors, and haters agreed on his innocence. He could ‘neither be bought nor cajoled, neither be influenced nor trapped in any position that he had not himself decided upon’. Having once decided upon Pakistan, nothing deterred him.
Both Hindu leaders and nationalist Muslims who opposed his Pakistan demand agreed that Jinnah had no personal axe to grind in the struggle for Pakistan. A contemporary Hindu writer described Jinnah’s character as ‘impeccable’. He argued: ‘None can wheedle him into acquiescence by holding out bait. Title, rank, designation, he will simply brush aside and will not let them interfere with the line of action he has marked out for himself. In a similar vein, Dr Syed Hussain, a nationalist Muslim, swore publicly: ‘Though I am opposed to Pakistan, I must say that Mr. Jinnah is the only man in public life whose public record is most incorruptible. You cannot buy him by money or by offer of post. He has not gained anything from the British. He is not that kind of man... The Muslim masses know that Mr. Jinnah is the only man who is not in need of money and who has no lust for power. As for the money, there is no gainsaying that he was one of the wealthiest political leaders in India. His ’fortune' in 1947, on the eve of the independence of Pakistan, was around 6-7 million rupees, ‘a fabulous sum' those days, mostly earned from the legal practice. One immediate instance of his integrity post-independence was that, after becoming Governor General of Pakistan, he resigned from the presidency of the Muslim League, saying that ‘as a constitutional Governor General, he had to maintain fairness among the political parties’. Such was the extent of his integrity.
All these political traits, together, in tandem or separately, contributed to Jinnah's personality in making Pakistan; some may have helped more than others. But, indeed, all did, as the above discussion would bear out. Very few leaders then or even today could claim these traits in their political lives and processes. These traits helped Jinnah, despite all the significant handicaps of not leading from a Muslim-majority province, not much conversant with Urdu, lingua franca of the Muslims, and not belonging to the feudal class, the dominant sociopolitical class then, but essentially a self-made man, a briefless lawyer to begin with, to become the undisputed leader of Muslim India, maker of Pakistan, and indeed its first Governor-General, officially declared by its Constituent Assembly as the Quaid-i-Azam (Great Leader).
The author is a Distinguished History and Public Policy Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at FC College University, Lahore. His book, The Charismatic Leader: Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and the Creation of Pakistan (OUP), is the recipient of the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan’s ‘Best Book Publication Award’ in Social Sciences.
E-mail: [email protected]
Quaid’s Personality Traits in the Making of Pakistan
Few leaders, both then and now, can lay claim to possessing the remarkable traits exhibited throughout Jinnah's political journey. Despite facing considerable challenges, including not hailing from a Muslim-majority province and lacking affiliation with the dominant feudal class, which held...
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