The controversy sparked by BJP prez Lal Krishna Advaniís comments about Muhammad Ali Jinnah in Karachi earlier this month raises forcefully, once more, questions of the deeply politicized nature of historical memory ñ especially when it comes to major events and figures of colonial South Asia and the nationalist movement. In an uncharacteristic sentimental moment, Advani praised Jinnah as a secular leader and echoed Sarojini Naiduís famous characterization of the man as ìan ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unityî. Responding to a firestorm of condemnations from Sangh Parivar hardliners, Advani tendered his resignation to the BJP, though it was rejected and Advani retained his post around despite refusing to retract his statements about Jinnah.
Since all of this has gone down, numerous commentators have weighed in on the situation (Jinnah is seemingly on everyoneís mind lately). In many cases, people have objected that it is absurd to dub Jinnah a secularist, thus reifying the conventional view of Jinnah in both India and Pakistan as a fervent advocate of Hindu-Muslim separatism and the sly, calculating architect of the foundation of Pakistan as a separate and sovereign nation-state at the moment of the dissolution of British India. The Congress narrative of Indian nationalism defines Jinnah as a separatist who foiled Nehruís high-minded plans to create a democratic and secular India. From this perspective Jinnah cannot possibly be secular since then the Partition would never have happened. Jinnah has been assimilated to dominant Pakistani national narratives in much the same way ñ only his alleged resistance to secularism is portrayed as a charter for a state founded on Islamic principles. So Jinnah is portrayed in both of these pervasive narratives as an Islamist (some of you may not like this term, but see my points in this debate for how and why I use it).
The major scholarly refutation of the Jinnah-as-separatist-Islamist perspective came from Ayesha Jalal in her major 1985 book The Sole Spokesman. Therein, Jalal argued that Jinnah was in fact a secularist enlisting strategic means for protecting the Muslim minority population in India, and sought to obtain this by the creation of two separate national units ñ Hindustan and Pakistan ñ within a unified nation-state of India. The casting of Jinnah as nationalist icon by a postcolonial Pakistani state increasingly emphasizing its Islamic character over and against its secular democratic origins appears, if we take Jalalís argument, as a disingenuous plundering of the past. For obvious reasons, a great number of people objected to Jalalís seditious line of argument, which is probably the fate of most thinkers who start from a healthy skepticism with regards to received and ëofficialí knowledges. (Reasonable objections have also been voiced on other grounds, most significantly perhaps her emphasis on high politics; but a thoroughgoing examination of reactions to Jalalís book is not my concern here.)
All histories in one way or another engage with the present in their rendering of the past, and to narrate a history of Pakistan in which its founder is a man deeply committed to secularism and democracy is to suggest that something is awry if Pakistan is a religious nationalist state dominated by a long succession of military dictators. As AG Noorani notes, the very speech that Advani cited in his original comments on Jinnah is one that has been a touchstone of Pakistani secularists, but also had recently been disavowed by one of the major Pakistani Islamist parties, the Jamaat-i Islami, as being a red herring. This whole episode raises a couple of compelling questions for me as a historian deeply concerned with the fate of secularism and democracy in South Asia.
Firstly, if there is some submerged critique of the Pakistani nation-state in Jalalís recasting of Jinnah (as well as those of Pakistani secularists more directly involved in party politics), then what could be the strategic intent of similar claims made by Advani? I think we can put aside the possibility that Advani is seeking to advance the cause of Pakistani secularists as totally out of character, and we can probably also put aside the ISI conspiracy claims of some Pakistani regionalists as equally unlikely. Do his statements constitute, as Praful Bidwai has suggested, a misguided attempt on the part of Advani to sanctify the use of ìethno-religious mobilization as a valid political strategyî (Bidwai obviously has a low opinion of what ësecularismí means when invoked by Advani, or Jinnah for that matter)? Or, as Bidwai also contemplates, is this an attempt to strike a new path for the BJP less given to the fear-mongering politics of Islamophobia upon which the party has depended up until now?
While there is solace to be found in the predictable unpredictability of a global mediascape in which all historical data can be spun in any direction towards any possible end, perhaps Advaniís move ñ which has done nothing but alienate him and weaken his partyís position ñ can be taken to demonstrate the limits the public sphere exerts upon politicized historical revisionism. Two major figures in Sangh Parivar history (Veer Savarkar, who coined the term ëHindutvaí, and Narendra Modi, who orchestrated the 2003 genocide in Gujarat) have made political capital out of recasting Adolf Hitler as an ally of their cause; but the historical image of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, has proven to resist positive incorporation into Indian political rhetoric. Certainly the materials at hand and their contexts are wildly different, but I wonder if this can be taken to signal the persistent centrality of the idea of the nation-state in the South Asian political imagination (notwithstanding claims of some that we have entered the ëpostnationalí stage of history). I do not wish to suggest that South Asia is locked into a historical moment that has passed in the rest of the world (on the contrary, I think a strong argument can be made for how ëpostnationalismí is an inadequate construct for describing even the new Europe), but I think there is something to be gleaned from the fact that invoking Jinnah in India (as no doubt invoking Nahru in Pakistan would be) is the political equivalent of walking face first into an electric fence.
Second, this incident provides occasion for thinking through specific ways the telling of history disfigures its object. What is lost in the process of narrating the past in the changed political contexts of the present? It is quite a significant transformation indeed to take a living, breathing human with shifting wants, needs and strategies for obtaining them into a stable and fixed icon. Jinnah is made into a pole star and unswerving standard-bearer of Muslim religious nationalism for a nation with precious few shared ideological founts beyond Islam (which of course is an extremely diverse formation to begin with). I cannot help but think of a piece by another luminary of Pakistan, Saadat Hasan Manto, about the idiosyncracies of Jinnah himself entitled Mera Sahib. Manto was a man who himself had a very ambivalent relationship with Pakistan. Often seen by outsiders as the major literary figure of Pakistan (challenged by only the poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz, who had an equally vexed relationship to his country), Manto in fact only reluctantly departed from his beloved adoptive home of Bombay several years after Partition, was brought up on obscenity charges several times upon migrating back to what had become the Pakistani Punjab, lived a life of poverty devoid of patronage or a lucrative market for his writings, and eventually drank himself to an early death while watching with disgust as Pakistan became a client state of the US in their urge to become Indiaís military equal. In Mantoís piece (of which I was pleasantly surprised to find a decent English translation online; others too) the high politics of decolonization and loaded questions of Jinnahís ësecularismí are tangential at best, and the author effectively renders its subject from the perspective of his servants in Bombay as by turns enigmatic, charismatic, sensitive, generous, brilliant, moody, homoerotic, austere, meticulous and unapologetic man. It is hard to imagine how all of these characteristics might be assimilated into anything like a coherent national narrative, so perhaps we might treat Jinnah (or all subjects of history for that matter) to the same indulgences as Ashis Nandy prescribes for Advani, and acknowledge his capacity to live multiple lives.
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Jinnah continues to be a chimera to postcolonial historians. They want him to be as larger than life as Gandhi or Nehru but he doesn’t fit any discernable pattern of “people’s leader” or “intellectual visionary” or “secularist” or “communal”. His biography continously throws hurdles to any attempt at a unified reading. I am not partial to any particular take on Jinnah [Jalal's, while well-intentional, makes me irate]. The attempt is, again and again, to fit the man into the teleology of the nation-state; into the inexorable charge to freedom; to the unity of vision and passion. By whatever contortions necessary.
The future is not looking too bright either. Faisal Devji is working on a Jinnah book and from the two readings I attended, he is not out to break new grounds.
The problem, of course, is not that the state can never allow a narrative that is complex but that historians, who should know better, continuously fail to see the complexity in Jinnah.
Why does Jalal’s point of view make you irate, Sepoy?
purobi: Let me be flippant and point to the writing. More seriously, on the whole, I consider her book the best attempt so far. Yet, I do have problems w/it . Unfortunately, now is not the time to do a book review.
If you put any two south asianists in a room with these issues, you’ll get 20 strong opinions. Give them half and hour and you’ll get a good fist fight. Especially true for SA historians.
With that in mind: Where is the mention of partition? I would love to “let Jinnah live his multiple lives” (or any historico-political figure for that matter), if it were not for the awesome responsibilities and consequences these figures deliberately take on and administer and invoke and evoke, in their work. No, I’m not blaming Jinnah for partition; I’m pointing out that we CANNOT let any of these historical figures live out their multiple lives without responsibility to the present. That goes for politicians on both sides of the border. Advani or Jinnah.
So historians *better* disfigure their subject. If they dont, history becomes a rambling description of disconnected moments (rather like, dare I say?, some recent subalternist historical prose) and thereby history loses its relevance to the politics of the present. (That itself is a political move, some argue. Like apathy, it is a move that allows present politics to merely leave behind those who dropped out, and move on with its business. And then these ‘resisters’ wonder why they have been so politically impotent.)
Perhaps in an ideal world there would be no politics of the present (an anarchist utopia?) and thus history-of-the-present wouldnt be needed at all. I’m not holding my breath though. Till then: We had better hold politicians to coherency and unified self-narratives (let alone unified historical narratives post-event). Unless you want to erase the fact of institutional heirarchies and their responsibilities to the the states and populations they work within. Like I said – that would sound like an anarchist utopia – or a free-traders’ utopia – or an evangelist’s utopia. No accountability, only persuasion. History as a discipline is in need of a makeover, to be sure, but I hope our imaginations are not so impoverished that we think it should become advertising. That would be no better than its claims to be Truth. In some ways, it would be worse.
So lets not let Jinnah – or anyone else – have his ‘resistive’ multiple selves. Not because they dont exist; but because by letting them have it we would relinquish holding them responsible to the present. Some of them develop ‘resistive’ multiple selves – precisely for that reason – to be unaccountable. (My take on Advani). Resistive multiple selves is also a weapon, lets not ‘naturalize’ it away. As much of a weapon as ‘apathy’. Remember non-dualism? Polytheism can perhaps still teach post-modernity a thing or two. There is no outside when it comes to meaning. Not even for postmodern ‘complexity’.
Besides – sometimes ‘complexity’ is merely ‘confusion’. Lets not reify those moments beyond what they can hold. Neither Jinnah nor Advani are so clueless that they dont realize the advantages of throwing their enemies off-guard.
sepoy: Thanks for the Ram Guha link, a particularly acute example of the narrow vision of many historians. As for the overall comment, you crystalize what seems to me the fundamental problem far more eloquently than I could, so thanks for that also.
Along with purobi, I am curious to hear more about how Jalal’s Jinnah infuriates (aside from the prose that renders him), but I suppose we can leave that conversation for another time.
jak: Thanks for the lengthy and engaged response, and I echo your concerns regarding the responsibility of historians to the politics of the present. I could not agree with you more that we need to be especially watchful of the ‘resistive multiple selves’ the sly Advani puts up for public consumption, and I would apply a similar logic to Jinnah (though we might have different takes on what I see as the complexity – and confusion – of the negotiations leading up to the Partition). My desire here was not to anoint Jinnah with a postmodern crown of complexity and ambivalence and minimize the enormous damage religious nationalism has done to contemporary South Asia, and I sincerely hope it did not come off that way. Jinnah certainly made extensive and deliberate use of the rhetoric of religious-as-political community to advance his agendas (and I am in agreement with Jalal here in that neither the transfer of power settlement nor what has become of Pakistan since correspond very closely to his vision), and we need to understand that for what it was then and what it has come to be now. Particularly striking to me about the incident and response is the fact that nearly everyone responded with renewed efforts to shove Jinnah right back into the intricate pigeonhole that had already been devised for him in various national narratives. As someone who is often called upon to teach this history and Jinnah’s role in it, my feeling is that these attempts to write Jinnah into particular visions of the politics of the present are extremely limited as historical narratives. To call him a secularist who was a victim of circumstance is about as useful as calling his a fervent Muslim nationalist. These are the Jinnahs that populate many of our history books, and public historical understandings as well apparently. To teach and understand this figure responsibly, and perhaps more importantly to understand what political possibilities can come out of these assessments, we need more – and hopefully some sort of narrative that captures elements of the man, such as those Manto dwelled upon, that are not ‘political’ merely in the conventional governments’n'elections sense.
In order to conceive of the kind of history of Jinnah one might write, I think a far better parallel to think of than Advani would be Mohandas Gandhi (contemporary too). There is a striking similarity as well between the extent to which the two leaders turned to the rhetoric of religious community as political unit to generate mass political movements (crafty lawyers, no?), and an awareness of this fact does not preclude recognizing the roles they played in advancing democratic and secular ideals in late colonial political discourse. Obviously they are very different figures – Gandhi was sidelined from politics when the cards were on the table so we can never know what direction he would have gone, and the whole non-violence/civil disobedience aspect of the Mahatma gives him a far broader international relevance, but the two are nearly inviolable figures when it comes to national politics in India or Pakistan, respectively (severe criticism of Gandhi in India is a one-way ticket to the political fringe).
Here in the present one is always going to disfigure any past (or present) subject that is represented, whether in an academic history or at a paan-stall palaver. This does not necessitate, however, taking all complexity as confusion-inducing smoke screen – Jinnah’s secularism is no more an isolated strategic ‘moment’ than Gandhi’s Hindu nationalism. A good history should be able to countenance all of these ‘selves’and more without losing coherence (though that is probably a bit of a tall order for politicians).
Well said and perhaps we agree more than not, in which case take my comment as emphasis rather than as intervention.
Just one more bone to pick though.
Did Jinnah and Gandhi use religion in similar ways? I suspect we will disagree a great deal on that one.
Was Gandhi a hindu nationalist? Strange hindu nationalist who died fighting for religious tolerance. Do we no longer care to differentiate him from Hindutva? Or we think its just a matter of degree? “Religion is religion,” right?
Some problems there, maybe just a matter of defining our terms, but maybe not.
Also maybe best to meet in print on this one, since I think a wider array of differences – too much for a blog – might emerge if we pull on this string.
I know the authors who indeed see Gandhi as merely a hindu nationalist. I find that reading simplistic in the *extreme*. Just so you know where I’m coming from. I think its actually intellectually dishonest to make that elision. But I’d rather fight this one out in print, because I know there’s a much larger group out there that needs to be confronted with this; not just those on this blog.
As for Gandhi’s revered status in India, I don’t see it anymore, not in practice or in politics and not even as a point of reference.
I find that we are complicating issues unnecessarily. Jinnah’s Muslim nationalism was not necessarily incompatible with secularism. He had started off as an Indian nationalist but actual experience of mass politics post 1937 especially in the Muslim majority areas convinced him of Muslim nationalism.
Ayesha Jalal’s thesis is fascinating in so much as it distinguishes between the creation of Pakistan and the partition of India ..the former being the ideal and the latter the tragedy.
All this has nothing to do with the fact that Jinnah as the founding head of state wanted equal rights and equal opportunities for the members of his new state regardless of religion or caste or creed.
As for Gandhi and Hindu nationalism. He was not just a Hindu nationalist but also a racist, a casteist and a hindu fascist in many ways in addition to his deified role as Mahatma gandhi.
And yes the use of religion was very different. Gandhi used religion as a stick to keep people in line. Gandhi was dogmatic and medievalist in his religiousity.
Jinnah did not use religion as much as religious identity. He could not afford to use dogma because he had so many diverse sects to contend with. Hence religion was always somewhere in the background and real practical issues took precedence.
“Gandhi was dogmatic and medievalist in his religiousity.”
This is true, he was very dogmatic.
“As for Gandhi and Hindu nationalism. He was not just a Hindu nationalist but also a racist, a casteist and a hindu fascist in many ways in addition to his deified role as Mahatma gandhi.”
Ok, I am all down for criticizing Gandhi, but the above– explanation?
“Jinnah did not use religion as much as religious identity. He could not afford to use dogma because he had so many diverse sects to contend with.”
Yes, and Gandhi did not have to contend with one of the most disorganized religions out there, with all of those castes, sects, regional practices, etc.
Mr Hamdani,
Sepoy might come to San Francisco to kill me for starting a blogwar on his blog, but if you are the same Yasser Latif Hamdani that wrote the post on Jinnah’s vision on All Things Pakistan,
http://pakistaniat.com/2007/08/11/quaid-azam-jinnah-pakistan-vision-august-speech-minorities-religion-riots/
I’d like to point out that you re-edited your post without so much as mentioning that you took out the following lines on Partition, which generated most of my comments, and caused you to call me all sorts of names:
“I know there are people who do not quite agree with the division of India and the partition of the Punjab and Bengal. Much has been said against it, but now that it has been accepted, …..”
These lines are now no longer in your post.
Whitewashing history, eh?
Actually, Mr. Hamdani, I found those lines in Jinnah’s text in the speech. So sincerest apologies on my part!
I am glad you’ve recognized your mistake dear boy.
As for explanation about gandhi comments, try reading gandhi’s collected works or search gandhi racist on google.
YLH:
“I am glad you’ve recognized your mistake dear boy.”
Yes, I did, my dearest, fair lady.
“As for explanation about gandhi comments, try reading gandhi’s collected works or search gandhi racist on google.”
I have read Gandhi’s collected works, and your comments about him being a Hindu fascist and a racist are so off base. Gandhi did much was wreaked havoc, but your characterization of him is based on your own biased views (which, interestingly, you also have on Jinnah, ie absolutely no critical take on Jinnah) rather than anything grounded in research.
And googling Gandhi and racism…? You don’t rely on Googling for all of your research, do you? ;)
Gandhi’s racism is a fact of history. Hindu fundamentalists like you can go on denying it but facts will be facts. Rest of your post is not worth responding to.
You may search Gandhi + yasser latif hamdani. I have written several sourced articles which have gandhi on the record calling black people an inferior race and speaking of the superiority of “indo-aryan” stock. This is from the collected works of mahatma gandhi.
If this is not racist then even Adolf Hitler is not racist.
You’re “Quaid-e-Azam” referred to my South Indian people by the pejorative ‘Madrasi’. Should we call him racist?
No, people used terms then that are unacceptable today. And consider the time context, Gandhi was young, still believing in the British Empire. He had to appeal to them to get equal rights for Indians. After all, British anthropologists considered Indians to be “Aryans” and kindred to Europeans, so he used that logic to question European discrimination against Indians, working within their logic to question their practices. It was like saying “ok, fine, blacks or “kaffirs” are inferior but you know what, we’re supposedly Aryan according to your experts so for that matter, we should be equals to you”.
That is the context of Gandhi’s usages.
I’ve seen your posts in several forums, including amazon, not to mention, that I’ve read your own articles, and I have to say you truly lack a valid and informed historical perspective on this material.
Furthermore, Yasser Latif Hamdani,
your flaw is no different from the flaw of other well-intentioned secular Indians and Pakistanis. You try to uphold the best among your own, yet you are woefully ignorant of the best of the other.
I did not know madrasi was a pejorative term nor have I come across Quaid’s use of it.
Gandhi’s collected works spoke of
1.Subhuman nature of black people and their natural savagery.
2. The superiority of the indo-germanic and indo-aryan stock. This is there in his letters and part of the collected works ie collected works of mahatma gandhi.
Gandhi was not fighting for equality for the Indians with white people but simply that Indians were better than black people.
You accuse me of a lack of historical perspective …how about you inform us of the context as Gandhi put it in. Gandhi extolled the virtues of indo-germanic race and of racial purity. To try and spin it as some sort of attempt to show Gandhi as merely using the white argument flies in the face of reality ie Gandhi used Hindu scriptures and his personal ideas to prove that he too believed in the same racial purity and superiority that was associated with the indo-germanic stock and that caste Hindus were like white europeans.
“Gandhi’s collected works spoke of
1.Subhuman nature of black people and their natural savagery.
2. The superiority of the indo-germanic and indo-aryan stock. This is there in his letters and part of the collected works ie collected works of mahatma gandhi.
Gandhi was not fighting for equality for the Indians with white people but simply that Indians were better than black people.
You accuse me of a lack of historical perspective …how about you inform us of the context as Gandhi put it in. Gandhi extolled the virtues of indo-germanic race and of racial purity. To try and spin it as some sort of attempt to show Gandhi as merely using the white argument flies in the face of reality ie Gandhi used Hindu scriptures and his personal ideas to prove that he too believed in the same racial purity and superiority that was associated with the indo-germanic stock and that caste Hindus were like white europeans.”
For your information, I’ve read most of Gandhi’s collected works and I’ve seen these so-called pejorative statements you so gleefully mention.
I will say what I’ve said before and what is mentioned by almost all credible historians on the subject (and these people are not partisan to India, nor are they the writers of Freedom at Midnight):
1.) Gandhi was a man of his time, much like Jinnah was.
2.) Gandhi was a young man at the time he wrote or said those statements. Like many other Indians at the time, he utilized the then very common concept of the Aryan-European relationship to prove that since Indians were scientifically supposedly akin to Europeans, they should therefore have the same rights as said Europeans. Think about it logically. All of what he said regarding the white race, Indo-Germanic ties, etc, was directed in this fashion. This tendency that existed in Indians in those days was very common and has been documented by several anthropologists. Heck, forget Gandhi, this concept of an Indian-European kinship via Indo-Germanic brotherhood was invoked by the lawyers of Indian-American immigrant Bhagat Singh Think in his 1923 case for citizenship in the US. He claimed in court that since he was of Aryan stock and thus by anthropological grounds a “Caucasian”, he was entitled to citizenship rights granted to other “Caucasians” as per law at the time. Unfortunately, the judges were able to pull out another convoluted explanation to keep him from his prize.
All of what you accused Gandhi of writing was written regarding his South African experience, and at a time when he still believed that the Empire was essential. I don’t have any reason to spin or whitewash anything, any more than you do regarding Jinnah.
I hold nothing against Jinnah and I don’t consider Gandhi an angel, unlike most of my fellow Indians. In fact, I’ll tell you from my heart that I think Jinnah was a better leader than Gandhi’s second-hand man, Jawaharlal Nehru and that if anything, his thought complements rather than contradicts the thought of Gandhi. But I do believe in telling the truth, not creating fancy pseudo-nationalist hagiographies as people such as yourselves are interested in. Nor do I believe in grinding an axe in the name of a non-existent God.
Correction,
“Bhagat Singh Thind”, not “Bhagat Singh Think”.
My mistake.
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