Jinnah with Mahatma Gandhi. File picture

New Delhi, June 7: A majority of historians believe Mohammed Ali Jinnah was a man of contradictions.

He was not communal from the outset. In fact, he was an active participant in the mainstream nationalist movement. What changed his political mindset was the rush of events that took place after the 1937 elections when the Congress formed ministries. The Muslim League leader felt that he was left high and dry.

The consensus among historians seems to be that Jinnah at best was an opportunist ? shifting his stance as circumstances changed. “Jinnah was a nationalist for a long time, if one looks at his history. He was active in the anti-Simon Commission movement. However, his call for a separate state was communal,” said Professor Sumit Sarkar, one of the foremost historians of the country.

“I regard him as an extremely enigmatic personality. He was someone who shifted his stance on the most important issues of the day,” said Professor Mushirul Hasan, who has done substantial work on the role of Muslim leadership in the Partition. Others like Sarkar and Professor Mridula Mukherjee echoed him.

Mentioning the days when Jinnah was secretary to then Congress president Dadabhai Nauroji, Mukherjee emphasised the need to differentiate between the various phases of his life. “When he was young, he was a nationalist and an idealist. We must remember that in those days, he opposed the Muslim League. By 1937-38, however, he had started the new Muslim League that was very different from its earlier form. This was a communal and fascistic kind of organisation. No one can run away from that,” said Mukherjee.

But the same man who insisted on the Partition was never in favour of Pakistan being an Islamic state, Mukherjee added. “Jinnah, once he had achieved the leadership of Pakistan, might well have wanted to establish the state of Pakistan on fresh foundations.”

Historians feel it is not inconceivable for communal people to go hand in hand with democratic secular politicians and vice versa. They feel V.D. Savarkar and Jinnah were both cut from the same political cloth. Jinnah was not the first to propound the two-nation theory. Lala Lajpat Rai, V.D. Savarkar and Bhai Veer Singh had done so before him. It was not the Muslim League which invented the two-nation theory, according to historians.

Jinnah, according to some, was more of a wheelchair politician. The British, since the late 1930s, needed to prop up leaders like him. Jinnah constantly bargained hard for as much political clout as he could manage for the Muslims.

“The Partition was not really at the back of his mind,” feels Professor Dilip Simeon.

“It was only as the circumstances unfolded that he realised that Partition was his best chance for grabbing power.”

This, however, does not make Jinnah secular according to the historians. “Though up to 1937 he was regarded as the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, I fail to understand how a man who was responsible for the horrible events around Partition can be called secular,” said Professor Hasan.

Historians feel it was impossible for events to have panned out any other way. “Once you take a mob out for rioting, you can’t very well tell them to go back home and become secular,” Mukherjee said.

Historian Purshottam Agarwal also believes Jinnah to be responsible for the way Pakistan developed. “He created Pakistan on the basis of religious segregation. Whatever he wanted from thereon, there was no way Pakistan could have developed into a liberal democratic state. His speech in the Constituent Assembly was like trying to get to the south pole by going to the north pole,” Agarwal said.