Bhopal, June 7: If BJP leader L.K. Advani’s praise for Mohammed Ali Jinnah was aimed at softening his image among Muslims in India, he should have a rethink.
A cross-section of Muslims seems less than enthusiastic about Advani’s “secularspeak” in Pakistan.
Members of the community view Advani’s remark as a typical case of “doublespeak”, which is carefully aimed at projecting him as a liberal. The change of image, according to the Muslims, was necessary due to the changed political scene in the country, particularly after the NDA’s defeat.
Moreover, Muslims in India do not have high regard for Jinnah. First, Jinnah’s role as the architect of Pakistan and a votary of the “two-nation theory” is seen as detrimental to the Muslim cause in India. Second, his image as an irreligious person puts Jinnah out of favour.
In fact, Jinnah’s personality has remained an enigma till date. His aristocratic English lifestyle, Victorian manners and his reported consumption of pork rendered him a most unlikely leader of a conservative Muslim society.
Jinnah came from the minority Shia community. He was the prototype of a westernised Indian who was tutored at Lincoln’s Inn and got his clothes tailored at Savile Row. In his youth, Jinnah was a Shakespearean actor. He also married a Parsi woman.
He was anathema to an overwhelming majority of the Ulema in the Indian subcontinent then, including grand figures like Maulana Husain Ahmed Madani and Jamiat-e-Islami founder and ideologue Abul Ala Maudoodi.
In the 1940s, Maudoodi would refer to Jinnah in speeches as the “Kafir-e-Azam” (supreme atheist) and mocking the idea of Pakistan as “Paleedistan” (the word paleed means dirt). It is another matter that Maudoodi opted for Pakistan after Partition.
Noted historian Rafiq Zakaria described Jinnah as one who not only destroyed united India but also divided the Muslims in undivided India into Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi Muslims.
Reflecting on the Indian Muslims’ sense of anguish and pain in his book, Insight into Jinnah’s Leadership and its Aftermath, Zakaria wrote: “Today, all Indian Muslims wish that India had remained united. There would then have been five important states (Punjab, Sindh, the Frontier, Assam and Bengal) under Muslim majority rule; consequently they would have exercised considerable influence at the Centre. Today, they hardly have a voice in Delhi.”
Abdul Hameed Nomani, the spokesman of Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, said Advani’s praise for Jinnah was meaningless because the BJP leader has not changed. “He is still an RSS man. He has been giving such statements (on the Babri Masjid) regularly. There is nothing new in it,” Nomani said.
“Advani has merely repeated a view expressed by Sarojini Naidu in front of the media. I do not see it as a change. He gave this statement looking at the bonhomie with Pakistan.”
Former Delhi Haj committee chief Anis Durrani said even if the BJP goes to the extent of installing a statue of Jinnah in Delhi, it would not cut any ice with Muslims. “It must be remembered that those Muslims who stayed back in India had actually rejected his two-nation theory. We are followers of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, not Jinnah.”
Durrani rejected Advani’s view that Jinnah was secular. “He was a rank communalist. His two-nation theory was so destructive that Muslims in the subcontinent are still bearing the brunt of it.”
In Bhopal, Maulana Sajjad, a teacher, said Advani was desperately trying to step into the shoes of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who had a liberal image and thus became the consensus candidate to lead the NDA.
