Unity, Faith & Discipline
These are the words that the founder of the nation left us with, giving us the guidelines for how to behave and act within the newfound country of Pakistan as a consolidated entity and as a brotherhood of Muslims and minorities living in harmony amongst each other. As the Quaid’s 146th birth anniversary comes upon us, we are reminded once again of these principles and where we stand in regards to following them. It is both a period of joyous celebration, of a man who gave us all we have, and also of solemn recollection as well as introspection regarding our position as a country and as a nation.
Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah was born on December 25th, 1876 ( although school records provide a date of 20th October, 1875) to a Muslim convert family and was educated first in the Sind Madrasatul Islam in order to inculcate religious teachings, and later in Christian Missionary High School Society from where he completed his matriculation. His father wanted him to join him in the family business, however he had made up his mind to become a barrister and went to London and studied in Lincoln’s Inn (a legal society which prepared students for the bar).
At the age of 20, Jinnah returned to Karachi in the year 1896 and found that his father’s business had suffered much loss and had put him on the verge of bankruptcy and so Jinnah was now forced to depend on himself. For the next 10 years, he was involved in setting up his law practice in the city of Bombay (presently Mumbai, India) before ultimately moving his attention towards politics owing to the growing discontent between the Hindu Muslim groups in India at the time.
Firstly, in his start to politics, he joined the Indian National Congress in the year 1906 at Calcutta (presently Kolkata) and was proudly held as an eminent member within the party. He was enamoured and held in high esteem the British parliamentary and political institutions and wanted to promote India in the international sphere to a higher status through applying the philosophies provided by the British. He was a great advocate of Hindu-Muslim solidarity against the British imperial system and wanted the United India to be free from British rule. He was offered a seat in the All-India Muslim League around his most outspoken years in the Congress but held back from joining in order to make a decisive judgment regarding the party’s ideology.
Both disheartened by the Congress’s internal strife and their lack of solidarity with the Muslims of India, Quaid-e-Azam joined the Muslim League in the year 1913 and later on became the president in the year 1916. In the very same year, the Founder acted as the mediator between the two parties and signed the Lucknow Pact that offered an avenue of joint cooperation and promised separate electorates for the Muslims of India, which were already legislated by the British government in 1909 but were reprimanded by the Congress up till now.
With the already neutral to semi-oppositional stance that the Congress had taken towards the Muslims of British India, the arrival of a new actor only made this situation even worse. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, a Hindu nationalist joined the party and became a outspoken member of it around the years 1919-1920 and set up the movement of non-cooperation and peddled the rise of Arya Samaj.
Jinnah, owing to this very Hindu version of Indian politics, left the Congress party for good and shifted all his focus to the All India Muslim League and in providing the Muslims with their much needed rights and privileges. The Hindus, under the guidance of Jawaharlal Nehru and Gandhi, set up many obstacles for Jinnah and the League however those problems were tactfully overcome with grace and then, after many decades of political striving Jinnah provided us with a separate state that we still cherish and call our own.
With the provision of such a state that was won by repeated strivings, overcoming obstacles, and persevering in the face of almost insurmountable odds, the Founder left us with many important guidelines for running this state so that it may be held in the international spheres of the world as a great beacon of civilized living. Seven decades later and we are still not completely in line with what Jinnah thought out for us. In his words:
“Corruption is a curse in India and amongst Muslims, especially the so-called educated and intelligentsia. Unfortunately, it is this class that it selfish and morally and intellectually corrupt. No doubt this disease is common, but amongst this particular class of Muslims it is rampant.”
If we look around and see in the present day, there is still a plethora of corruption, nepotism, bribery, and the like within both the civil bureaucracy and the establishment, however the times are changing as more and more people come to the know about these things and resist the attempts of these wrongdoers to conform the public into giving into these unjust practices. With political awareness, economic knowledge, ethical uprightness, and a strong sense of duty the present-day Pakistani nation is more attuned to dealing with these evils than ever before and the state that the country finds itself in now will not be for long.
Although we have already come a long way from where we started, half of our country ripped away from us and after having fought 3 wars against our most closely linked neighbor, the way ahead is tumultuous still. However, the Pakistani nation is persevering, resilient and increasingly getting more knowledgeable and educated which will undoubtedly create a more progressive environment in the years ahead. Until then, we will remember our Founder in the greatest of terms and follow his principles as best we can. As he said. In his own words:
“We have undoubtedly achieved Pakistan, and that too without a bloody war, practically peacefully, by moral and intellectual force, and with the power of the pen, which is no less mighty than that of the sword and so our righteous cause has triumphed. Are we now going to besmear and tarnish this greatest achievement for which there is no parallel in the history of the world? Pakistan is now a fait accompli and it can never be undone, besides, it was the only just, honorable, and practical solution of the most complex constitutional problem of this great subcontinent. Let us now plan to build and reconstruct and regenerate our great nation…”
The writer is currently studying at International Islamic University, Islamabad.
