Pakistani are going to celebrate their 75th anniversary of independence on the 14th of August 2021. Have we lived up as per the expectation of Mr. Jinnah Or It is just a ritual of spending a holiday praising the freedom fighters & leaders? Have we told or ever tried to discover what the objectives behind struggling for a new country were?
Some people think the creation of Pakistan
is Mr. Jinnah's unfinished business as things didn't put in place as per his
plan after Pakistan got freedom however the fact of the matter is Mr. Jinnah
didn’t create Pakistan all alone but other forces helped him to fulfill his
goal. Mr. Jinnah was a politician he was neither a thinker nor a
philosopher. In his early days of politics, he worked for Indian freedom
through Hindu-Muslim Unity against British Raj. As he strongly believed in a
united Indian nation where Hindus & Muslims being co-sharer of the Indian
dispensation of the future.
But as the objectives of the Indian national congress went through a radical change by the influence of Hindu extremists, Mr. Jinnah changed his priorities that congress agenda was very well represented at the All parties national convention deliberations on the Nehru report in 1928. Where Muslims demand federalism that ensures power to them in their majority provinces that opposed by Hindu & they insisted on a unitary form of a highly centralized government of the majority. That precise reason Mr. Jinnah envisioned all power to the Hindu-dominated center & only marginal power to the provinces.
But Question raises after independence what kind of Pakistan Mr.
Jinnah wanted to see?
Did he want to make a theocratic country? Where the state is run by God’s guidance through the group of people who are regarded as divinely guided Like Iran But Mr. Jinnah never said Pakistan was being created in the name of Islam but for Muslim people of the subcontinent neither he ever approved the term as a religious leader or Islamic rather he always called himself a political leader of Muslims. So he wanted to see Pakistan as a Secular state in which there should not be any state religion or equivalent, & people have the right to be free in their beliefs & Government is neutral in matters of beliefs. But Mr. Jinnah’s freedom struggled didn’t reflect in support of secularism either, however, Alama Iqbal was a renowned advocator of secularism. Whereas, democracy is the way of governing where Authority is derived from the people either through the selected representative of people or by direct referendum that doesn’t separate people from their religions but forms a more pluralistic & inclusive society
Mr. Jinnah never labeled himself as a religious, atheist, or secular person he was indeed a democrat & parliamentarian his speech on the constituent assembly of Pakistan on 11th of August 1947 is the hallmark of his political ideology where he clearly stated “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or 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" In course of time, Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State”
In other words, if we want to
make Pakistan be a great & prosperous state we should only focus on the
well-being of the people so anyone could easily understand what he wanted in
the state of Pakistan especially for the poor & masses. Since the demand of
Pakistan was in response to the expected dictatorship of the Hindu majority
that would be imposed on Muslims by the Indian national congress.
That was also testified by former Indian minister in his book he made this revelation that “If the Congress had accepted a decentralized federal state the dream of Mr. Gandhi of the United, Indian could have been achieved” But some top-notch leaders of Congress along with Nehru wanted a highly centralized India to be. Nehru once claimed Pakistan couldn’t survive in 30 days & it would be reverted to India. However, Mr. Jinnah wanted a federal system where all units should be autonomous instead of the concentration of power in the center that even Gandhi accepted but some senior leaders of National Congress didn’t as they were firm in a unitary form of a highly centralized government
Mr. Jinnah was a visionary
leader who worked tirelessly for years for the independence of Hindu &
Muslims that was his ultimate goal but when the policy of the majority ruling
exposed where the prosperity of the minority would be on hand of the majority.
So Mr. Jinnah had no option besides changing his course of actions He learned
that if the goal of freedom couldn’t be achieved by Hindu, Muslim unity it must
be achieved through Hindu-Muslim separation.
Mr. Jinnah & his associates' greatest achievement was the creation of Pakistan. He was a visionary leader who worked tirelessly for years for the independence of Hindu & Muslims that was his ultimate goal but when the policy of the majority ruling exposed in which the dependency of the minority would be on the hand of the majority. Hence Mr. Jinnah had no option besides changing his course of actions He learned that if the goal of freedom couldn’t be achieved by Hindu, Muslim unity it must be achieved through Hindu-Muslim separation.
If it couldn’t be secured through United India then through the partition. The creation of Pakistan is Mr. Jinnah & his associates' greatest achievement. All Pakistanis will always be highly grateful to Mr. Jinnah that he gave up his idea of United India & insisted that Hindus & Muslims should have their homeland.
