[Reader-list] Re: reader-list Digest, Vol 23, Issue 27, Re: when he was called Pandit Jinnah (Peeyush Bajpai)

[Tarangini Sriraman]

I couldn't agree more with Peeyush on that.
And i was also going to write saying that in jinnah's case
a lot of people simply confuse his private atheism with
secularism, a strictly public definition.
Partha Chatterjee once wrote that there are all kinds of
religious and secular types, ones that believe in religion in the 
public and the private sphere, ones that believe in religion in 
the private but in not in the public sphere and those who believe in
the public but not in the private sphere. The last category Partha 
identifies as the most insidious, as these people themselves dont believe yet 
can make others believe, Jinnah belongs to this category, Chatterjee says.
So Jinnah's ignorance of a religious text not only does not make him secular but
makes suspect his later convictions about the two-nation theory. (How can a man who professed atheism suddenly believe that Muslims as a religious community would get a raw deal in what he conceived as  HIndu India, when he did not believe in religion, let alone religious distinctions?
My point is that fundamentalism cannot be transcendental, there can be nothing self-evident
or incontrovertible about it. Jinnah did not seem to have proved his relgious or his secular credentials.Nor has Advani in any real sense, and certainly not by his volte-face recently.
 
Tarangini Sriraman

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Today's Topics:

1. Re:Reader-list] When he was called Pandit Jinnah (Peeyush Bajpai)


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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 14:14:48 +0530
From: Peeyush Bajpai 

Subject: [Reader-list] Re:Reader-list] When he was called Pandit
Jinnah
To: reader-list at sarai.net
Message-ID: <220f752b05061601446e0b4ba3 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"

Ingonrance of his (Jinnha) own religion or religious text do not make
him secular. But utilizing religion to fragment or create discord can
only be entitled as communalism.

In this context, Advani is as communal as Jinnha, or read backwards
both equally secular.

Hence Advani did not say anything wrong as he belives himself to be
secular too!.

peeyush


Message: 1
Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 19:36:59 +0530
From: "mihir25" (by way of Monica Narula)
Subject: [Reader-list] When he was called Pandit Jinnah
To: reader-list at sarai.net
Message-ID: 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed

When he was called Pandit Jinnah RAJNISH Sharma
Lucknow, June 5 Hindustan Times
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/5922_1389389,0015002500000000.htm
When the former Deputy PM L K Advani described
Muhammad Ali Jinnah as a secular man during his
early days, he wasn't quite off the mark as it is
now a part of recorded history. Though his
comments have raised a furore back home, few
would know that this man was even referred to as
Pandit Jinnah once. And if indifference to
religion is any indicator of secularism, the
Qaid-e-Azam was probably the biggest of all
secular fundamentalists. There are two incidents
hitherto not found in any history book which
highlight this aspect of his character in a
rather comical way which were narrated by none
other than the eminent jurist and statesman, Sir
Tej Bahadur Sapru. It was told by Sir Tej to his
granddaughter's husband Dr IM Chak, Retired Dy
Director of CDRI during a meeting with his
grandfather Pt. Prithvi Nath Chak, another legal
giant of that time under whom Motilal Nehru
learnt to practise law. A contemporary of Sir
Sapru, Jinnah along with him once visited Egypt
during the month of Ramzaan. The Muslim porters
there refused to carry their luggage saying they
would only carry the luggage of a fellow Muslim.
When Jinnah told them to go ahead, the porters
decided to test them. They were asked to recite
the kalma. While Sir Tej happily recited it with
Èlan, he had Jinnah looking sheepishly at him for
the wine loving brown sahib didn't know a word of
it! Sir Tej had a hard time convincing the
porters that Jinnah, who was to later create a
separate Islamic State, was indeed a Muslim! The
other incident saw these two friends sparring in
the court of law in a case that involved elements
of religion. The case saw Sir Tej quoting
innumerable ayats from Quran in support of his
arguments. Jinnah, though a formidable lawyer
himself, drew a blank once again on this account.
The next day local newspaper headlines screamed
Pandit Jinnah vs Maulana Sapru!



-- 
Peeyush Bajpai
www.indicus.net


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