WHY CAN’T AMU REMOVE THE PORTRAIT OF JINNAH?

Mukesh Devrari

Jinnah is a controversial man. He is controversial because he used controversial ideas to advance controversial and communal interests of the Muslim community in India at the cost of multiculturalism and secular fabric of the nation. It is madness to claim that people of two religions cannot stay together in a British style parliamentary democracy. Jinnah claimed that Muslim minority consisting of tens of million did not trust the intent of leadership of religious majority. 

Keeping religion at the centre of identity above everything else for political goals proved dangerous of South Asia. Not only Indians lost a strategic part of their country to Islamists of northern India, but it also paved the seeds of trouble in the future. Many left-leaning scholars in Pakistan today feel that even if the creation of Pakistan did not have politically correct reasons, it still has a rightful claim to exist as a normal nation without sticking to any ideology. It is not essential for Pakistan to struggle for identity and indulge in the perpetual debate about the justification of its creation. 

It is believed that Mohammad Ali Jinnah intentionally kept the concept of Pakistan completely vague. It was everything for everyone in the Muslim community. Religious fundamentalists saw the theological state in the making in a demand for Pakistan. Others saw the religious appeal of 'Islam in danger' slogan merely as a ploy to mobilize the Muslim community in India behind Jinnah and the Muslim League. For some, it was an attempt to carve out a zone which will ensure political, economic and social dominance of Muslim community.

Historians of repute claim that Jinnah was an astute lawyer. He merely used demand for a separate state of Pakistan to get a fair deal for Muslims in independent India. He was in favour of a weak union government and powerful state government. He also accepted the cabinet mission plan. His bluff was caught when Nehru and other Congress leaders decided to reject his communal politics and accept partition rather than a weak nation existing on the mercy of its constituent states.

It is extremely difficult to determine the exact motivations of Jinnah. It is futile to assume that Jinnah who campaigned for the partition of India was not determined to create Pakistan. It also seems implausible that Jinnah who popularized two nation theory and convinced Muslims that Hindus and Muslims cannot live together due to their religious and cultural differences was a secular man as he allegedly ate pork and smoked. He gave hundreds of recorded and unrecorded speeches to underline the need to create a religious nation for Muslims. He acted like a warrior. He decimated his opposition. 

After brutally defeating his opponents, he appointed lower caste Hindu Jogendra Nath Mandal as his law minister, but Muslim bureaucracy in Pakistan decided not to share details of the department with him, as he was a Hindu. Over the years, Mandal felt alienated, rejected, dejected harassed and decided to run away. He came back to India. He was never accepted as an equal citizen in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. He did not embrace Islam. Religion became the primary ground of acceptability for the ruling elite in the created state. 

Religious fundamentalists prevailed in Pakistan. All his life Jinnah bowed thorns, in the end, he got thorns. Pakistan is established on the wrong premise, until and unless that wrong basis is dismantled, it cannot function as a normal nation-state. As far as AMU controversy is concerned, Jinnah and his communal narrative must be erased from India. Communal frenzy generated by Jinnah and Muslim League let to the partition of India and death and displacement of millions of Indians. Insistence on keeping Jinnah’s portrait defies all logic. Removal of his portrait will not change anything in AMU, but the insistence on keeping his portrait will provide reasons to many to suspiciously view AMU and doubt its commitment to secular, progressive and modern India.

It must not be forgotten that Jinnah had more supporters in North India and AMU, then in territories which later on became Pakistan. Jinnah symbolizes two nation theory. He and his communal ideas cannot have any place in independent India. His one speech cannot absolve him for all his wrongs. Nor the smoke created by Pakistani scholars who try to propagate that demand for Pakistan represent more than religious demand by the followers of Islam. AMU administration should remove the portrait of Jinnah. As far as AMU brand of secularism is concerned, they should have promoted it, when Jinnah was arguing for the partitioning of India on religious basis in AMU campus amid the thunderous claps of students and their teachers.

India does not need tactical secularism of any community. People are secular and will remain secular as long as India remains strong enough to deter inimical ideas. It is important to note that fundamentalism of majority will lead to fascism and religious extremism of minorities will lead to separatism. Both ideas have no place in modern progressive democracies committed to establishing rule-based internal and external world order. Personally to this author, it makes no difference, whose portrait AMU decides to keep and remove in its galleries and halls. 

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