Modi and (above) Jinnah

Patna, Oct. 19: Next Sunday, when Narendra Modi delivers his hunkar (roar) at Gandhi Maidan, he would be following in the footsteps of yet another Gujarati who had chosen the green lawns 75 years ago to resuscitate a party and pitch his campaign to grab the top political job in the country.

Modi’s rally, being billed as the biggest ever in recent times, is aimed at giving the “defeat-Congress” campaign a push in the run-up to the general elections. It is also a rally that wants to send out the message that the BJP in general, and Modi specifically, is the answer to Bihar’s problems and not Nitish Kumar.

In this, Modi has unwittingly drawn a leaf out of the book of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. It was at this venue, then known as Bankipore Maidan, that Jinnah had launched his mission to revive the Muslim League whose survival was at stake following its poor performance in the 1937 provincial elections. The League, which claimed to be the sole representative of the Muslims, had failed to form a government in even one of the 11 provinces. Jinnah picked Patna as the venue for the rally in the winter of 1938. The city also hosted the Muslim League session in the last week of December of that year.

The BJP, smarting at the loss of power in Bihar after being unceremoniously dumped by the JD(U), wants to prove that Modi is a “bigger hero” than Nitish in the state.

Second, the party will try to pull enough crowds to prove that it is strong enough in Bihar to catapult Modi to the prime ministerial chair. Modi had been banished from Bihar at Nitish’s behest.

Like Modi, Jinnah too was a Gujarati whose father was a prosperous merchant in Kathiawar. Jinnah used his “sharp oratory” and “legal acumen” to convince the Muslims that they would be as unsafe as African Americans in the event of India attaining Independence under the Congress’s stewardship.

In his just published book, Tragedy of Indian Sub-continent: Power, Communalism and Partition, author Razi Ahmed has quoted the late Sarwar Ali (legal luminary and former judge of Patna High Court) who had heard Jinnah speaking at Gandhi Maidan.

Jinnah compared the plight of Muslims to that of the African Americans, who were still the victims of racial discrimination in the US. He managed to strike a chord — the crowd began shouting in chorus “Quaid-e-Azam zindabad” and pledged to do whatever he commanded. Jinnah soon sensed that he had revived the Muslim League, which went on to win 36 of the 40 seats reserved for Muslims under the Communal Award (1932) in the 1946 elections.

“His (Jinnah’s) success at the Gandhi Maidan rally went a long way in establishing him as the ‘icon’ of the Muslims and strengthening his resolve to carve out a separate nation for the community,” Ahmed told The Telegraph. “Jinnah went on to make a strident attack on the Congress for maltreating or denying the Muslims their right.”

Jinnah finally succeeded in getting a separate Pakistan and emerging as its head.

Despite the span of 75 years, the Congress survives as the common object of attack of the two leaders. While Jinnah advocated freedom for Muslims from the Congress’s leadership, Modi has stridently been pleading for a “Congress Mukt Bharat (Congress-free India)”.

The similarities don’t end there. Prior to 1938, Jinnah had never turned up at Gandhi Maidan for any big political mission. Modi too has seldom campaigned in Bihar. With the Lalu-Rabri regime in the saddle for 15 years, Modi was not seen to be tall enough to campaign in Bihar as he was still under the shadow of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L.K. Advani, who were in demand in the state. Nitish ran the NDA government on the condition that Modi would not campaign in Bihar.

Jinnah, incidentally, has been a nemesis for BJP leaders. Former president Advani earned the wrath of the Sangh parivar after describing Jinnah as “secular” in 2005 and party stalwart Jaswant Singh was ousted for praising Jinnah in his book on him.