[Reader-list] utopias? mistake to equate demand for Pk w partition

[yasir ~يا سر]

has anyone managed to actually evade the enlightenment project on any side.

just wondering if anyone has managed elucidate something which i am at a
loss to recall at the moment . it could be me but no one strikes me as being
able to get up and feel very healthy after all that... well criticism  :D

realistically most things are versions, bad versions mostly.

there are utopias.

have we discussed those on the list ?
would be nice to make a list....

best

يا سر




On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 3:53 PM, Inder Salim <indersalim at gmail.com> wrote:

> it was a game played by two or three or four lawyers,...
> interestingly, they all learned this art from those masters who were
> occuping their homes back in India.  Have these lawyers actually
> outwitted those colonial masters, i doubt, they always had an axe to
> grind, and one can see that axe in action, even now.
>
> Gandhi narrowly managed to exonerate himself as a devil player of
> Partition.
> but he was there all the time. and so one can say he also  unwittingly
> contributed to Muslim alineation. I dont see Hindus love Gandhi
> anymore, Nehru is almost fogotten...
>
> was Jinnah  the most deserving representative of muslim masses, i again
> doubt,
>
> i too dont doubt his secular credentials, but his faith in democracy
> was negligible. and that was the reason he saw no futture for muslims
> in a Hindu majority India. that does not mean that congress were
> democratic, Nehru impressed masses, but he always protected the elite
> of his times,
>
> I gues, it Jinnahs miscalculation, imagine, Pakistan Bangladesh as
> part of India, in the present,
> Muslims with that added proportion, obviously would have been always
> the deciding factors to form a government  in any election., Mulsims
> would have preserved the past more meaningfully, which they were not
> able to do with the mass migrationn of people from cities, which were
> occupied by muslims.  The direct action, which killed millions was by
> no means a dream, it was the outcome of the endless   and failed
> series of discussions held by these egoistis lawyers. how to praise,
> Jinnah, or Nehur, or Patel or Gandhi for that,
>
> Here, i must say, that Sheikh Mohd Abudullah was a real hero of the
> hour of partitiion, Not a single hindu was killed in kashmir. yes,
> many muslims were killed in Jammu province, because of Maharaja Hari
> singh.
>
> iwhat Jinnah dreamt actually ?  i think patition was a nightmere
>
> both jaswant singh and Ayesha jalal should think of  the murder of
> millions of humans beings, rather than these few personalities who
> should be discussed as briefly as possible
>
> with love
> regards
> inder salim
>
> On Wed, Sep 9, 2009 at 3:25 AM, yasir ~يا سر <yasir.media at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > fwd
> >
> > http://www.tehelka.com/dotnet/mainheadline.asp?id=1
> >
> > “It is a mistake to equate the demand for Pakistan with the partition of
> > India” *
> >
> > *Ayesha Jalal, Pakistani historian and author of "The Sole Spokesman",
> picks
> > through the tangle of the Jinnah controversy
> >
> > By Shoma Chaudhury
> >
> > *What strikes you, personally, as the sharpest irony of the Jinnah-
> Jaswant
> > Singh controversy and its fallout in India?*
> >
> > What strikes me as most ironic is the extent to which the '''secular'
> > Congress and the 'communal' BJP end up subscribing to the same common
> idioms
> > of Indian nationalism when it comes to Pakistan and its most potent
> symbol,
> > Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
> >
> >  Jinnah of the 1916 Lucknow Pact where Sarojini Naidu hailed him as the
> > “ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity”; Jinnah of the 1940 Lahore Declaration
> > and two-nation theory; Jinnah who wanted Pakistan to be a “laboratory of
> > Islam”; the secular Jinnah of the August 11 1947 address. And the Jinnah
> of
> > the personal domain: a Parsi wife, smoking, drinking. How is one to
> > reconcile all these? Were these all stages in the evolution of Jinnah’s
> > political thinking, or were they expedient positions?
> >
> > Like any other successful politician, Jinnah changed tactics without
> losing
> > sight of his ultimate strategic objectives in response to shifting
> political
> > dynamics during a career spanning several decades. Only a most
> superficial
> > and politically tainted understanding of Jinnah can lead to the
> conclusion
> > that there was an irreconcilable contradiction between his early career
> when
> > he was hailed as the ‘ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity’ and his later
> years
> > when he orchestrated the demand for a Pakistan in order to win an
> equitable
> > share of power for Muslims in an independent India.
> >
> >  As for the presumed contradiction between his personal lifestyle and
> > championing of a Pakistan in which Islam would play a role, the problem
> > again lies with an insufficient understanding of what Jinnah meant by
> Islam.
> > The Islam he advocated was neither bigoted nor narrow-minded, but one
> based
> > on principles of equity, justice and fairplay for all, regardless of
> caste
> > or creed. Jinnah never abandoned his secular and liberal vision for
> purposes
> > of expediency. This is amply in evidence from the speeches he gave in the
> > aftermath of partition on the place of religion and the minorities in the
> > Muslim state of Pakistan.
> >
> >
> >
> > *Your own book "The Sole Spokesman" argues that Partition was a  gross
> > miscalculation and Jinnah never wanted it till the end. How is one to
> read
> > his demand for two nations then? And what, according to you, did Jinnah
> > really want?*
> >
> > What I argued in The Sole Spokesman was that it was a mistake to equate
> the
> > demand for Pakistan with the partition of India as it took place in 1947.
> > After 1940, the demand for Pakistan was intended by Jinnah as a means to
> > stake a claim for the Muslim share of power in India once the British
> quit.
> > He argued that the unitary centre of the raj was a British construction
> and
> > would stand dissolved at the moment of decolonization. Any reconstitution
> of
> > the centre would have to be based on the premise that there were ‘two
> > nations’ in India – the Muslim nation represented by the Muslim-majority
> > provinces in the north-west and north-east (Pakistan) and the Hindu
> nation
> > represented by the Hindu-majority provinces (Hindustan). Once the
> Congress
> > and the British conceded the principle of a Pakistan, Jinnah left it an
> open
> > question whether the two parts of India would arrive at treaty
> arrangements
> > on matters of common concern as two sovereign states or enter into a
> > confederal arrangement on the basis of equality. Jinnah always insisted
> that
> > ‘Pakistan’ had to be based on undivided Punjab and Bengal and resolutely
> > opposed the partition of these two provinces along ostensibly religious
> > lines until the bitter end. By insisting on a wresting power at a strong
> > center with only the most nominal concessions to the provincial autonomy
> > demanded by the Muslim-majority provinces, by endorsing the Hindu
> > Mahasabha’s call to partition Punjab and Bengal and, above all, by
> refusing
> > to grant Muslims the share of power at the all-India level demanded by
> > Jinnah, the Congress led by Nehru and Patel foreclosed the possibility of
> > keeping India united. Jinnah did miscalculate in believing Gandhi’s voice
> > was still dominant in the Congress.
> >
> >
> >
> > *Was the idea of an eminent Muslim domain within a sovereign Indian Union
> a
> > tenable idea? Indian states were in any case carved along linguistic
> lines,
> > would a Muslim State have been in keeping with this principle? And if so,
> > why were the Congress stalwarts so against it? *
> >
> > This is a counterfactual question. However, the irony is that it was
> Jinnah
> > and the Muslim League who wanted undivided Punjab and Bengal and the
> > Mahasabha-Congress combine that insisted on their division along lines of
> > religion. The Congress stalwarts were against such a Muslim state because
> it
> > entailed diluting their control over the centre and gave far too much
> power
> > to Jinnah and the Muslim League. Linguistic states in a federal union was
> > not incompatible with Jinnah’s vision.
> >
> >
> >
> > *In your reading of history, who would you hold most culpable for the
> > Partition, and why? Jaswant Singh seems to suggest that Patel and Nehru
> were
> > most responsible, would you agree?*
> >
> > Mr Jaswant Singh has basically endorsed the main lines of my thesis in
> The
> > Sole Spokesman as far as apportioning responsibility for the partition of
> > India is concerned. Patel and Nehru were more responsible because, as
> > leaders of the larger party, they had to find the terms for an
> accommodation
> > with Jinnah and the Muslim League so that the unity of India could have
> been
> > preserved. In opting to seize power at British India’s unitary center
> rather
> > than striking a compromise with the Muslim League based on a genuinely
> > federal arrangement, these politicians of the Congress paved the way for
> > partition.
> >
> >
> > *
> > In India we don’t want to acknowledge that Jinnah never really wanted
> > Pakistan; in Pakistan it must be a kind of anathema to suggest the
> founder
> > of the nation never wanted the nation. Why is Jinnah, in particular,
> subject
> > to such historical ambiguity?*
> >
> > It is wrongly presumed that Pakistan as it emerged in 1947 is what Mr
> Jinnah
> > was after all along. The demand for Pakistan, as I have explained above,
> was
> > intended to renegotiate the power sharing arrangements at the all-India
> > centre on the basis that there were two nations in India, both of which
> had
> > to be treated on an equal footing regardless of their population
> > proportions. An understanding of the difference between ‘Pakistan’ and
> > partition, particularly the partition of the two main Muslim-majority
> > provinces, will go some way to clearing the fog surrounding the reasons
> for
> > the division of the subcontinent and, in the process, resolve the
> > ‘historical ambiguity’.
> >
> >
> >
> > *What would you count as the real turning point that made Partition
> > inevitable? Is it the Cabinet Mission plan of 1946? Or do you think there
> > was some other catalytic moment?*
> >
> > The Congress’s refusal to agree to the grouping of provinces – even
> Gandhi
> > called grouping worse than partition - and Nehru’s public assertions
> against
> > a centre restricted to three main subjects (defence, foreign affairs and
> > communications), made it impossible for Jinnah to stick to the Muslim
> > League’s acceptance of the Cabinet Mission three tiered plan for a
> federal
> > India instead of a fully sovereign Pakistan. The outbreak of violence in
> > Calcutta in August 1946 and, subsequently, in other parts of India
> narrowed
> > the options available to the all-India leaders and made a painful
> division
> > rather than a negotiated accommodation seem more feasible. However, the
> > partition of Punjab was not inevitable until the Congress called for it
> in
> > early March 1947 and efforts continued to be made to avoid the partition
> of
> > Bengal until the end of May 1947.
> >
> >
> >
> > *What would you say are the inconvenient or uncomfortable facts of
> history
> > that India papers over in its construction of Jinnah? In turn, what does
> > Pakistan paper over?*
> >
> >
> >
> > Despite the available scholarship, the nationalist self-projections of
> both
> > countries have not managed to attain the requisite level of maturity. The
> > exclusive focus on the ‘religious causes’ of partition in the public
> > discourse on both sides of the divide obscures the powerful regional
> > dynamics that played such a decisive role in the final denouement of
> 1947.
> > The other associated reason is the insistence on writing history by
> focusing
> > on the ‘great men’, whether Jinnah, Nehru, Patel or Gandhi. This makes it
> > impossible for people to fully understand the complex historical factors
> > that shaped the politics of these individuals. The Indian state and
> > political elite find it hard to acknowledge that Congress leaders did not
> in
> > the end stand for the unity of India. Their Pakistani counterparts are
> loath
> > to accept that Jinnah was handed the maimed, mutilated and moth-eaten
> > Pakistan in 1947 that he had categorically rejected in 1944 and 1946.
> >
> >
> >
> > *If Jinnah was indeed a secular and constitutional giant, why has
> Pakistan
> > slid so easily towards a theocracy or dictatorship at different points in
> > its history? Is it hobbled in any way by discrepancies in the life of its
> > founding father?*
> >
> >
> >
> > Jinnah articulated a clear vision for Pakistan as a modern nation-state
> > where all citizens, irrespective of their religious affiliations, would
> have
> > equal rights of citizenship. He ruled out a theocracy at the very outset.
> > His successors stuck to this vision when it came to keeping the religious
> > divines in place well into the early 1970s. They were less successful in
> > avoiding dictatorship in the context of the Cold War and chronic tensions
> > with India over Kashmir. The emergence of the military as the dominant
> > institution and the derailing of democratic processes after 1958 set the
> > ball rolling in the gradual erosion of Jinnah’s vision for a moderate and
> > democratic Pakistan. Yet, it was not until the Soviet invasion of
> > Afghanistan that Pakistan under Zia-ul-Haq made the fatal decision to
> turn a
> > narrowly construed brand of Islam into an instrument of state policy,
> both
> > internally and externally. What plagues Pakistan today are more a result
> of
> > the legacies of the Zia era than any specific discrepancies (other than
> > partition) in the life of its founding father.
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>
> --
>
> http://indersalim.livejournal.com
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