“Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the world map. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation. Md. Ali Jinnah did all the three”, wrote Jinnah’s biographer Stanley Wolpert, describing life of history’s one of the greatest statesman.
Although we all seem to credit (or rather say discredit) Jinnah for partitioning India and creating the state of Pakistan out of it, this may not be the truth. On a different and yet novel perspective, Nehru and not Jinnah is the real father of Pakistan. The man who is frequently blamed for breaking India was once known as the brand ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity. In accepting the Cabinet Mission Plan, it can be argued that Jinnah tried to keep India united (although it favoured his vested interests too). The man, who scoffed at Muslims as a separate nation and mulishly insisted that all were Indians, was the man who, when push came to shove, gave India that one last push towards partition by rejecting the plan. It is true that if Pt. Nehru had accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan, India would have remained united.
Nehru most probably thought of Jinnah and his Muslims as headache and the only solution he thought of was to rather cut off the head. He didn’t like Jinnah, to put it mildly. He wanted him out so that he could rule India unchallenged. When Lord Mountbatten took Gandhi’s proposal to Nehru that Jinnah be made independent India’s first Prime Minister, he couldn’t accept the notion of subordination to Jinnah and remarked,” the old man has lost it all.” In a land where it takes long stretches in prison to cut one’s political teeth, there wasn’t any single arrest warrant against Jinnah. He fought and won all his battles on the intellectual plane. He spoke to the Muslim masses in English, an alien language they didn’t understand, and yet he galvanized them. In a way, Jinnah was incredible.
There are striking coincidences too- Jawaharlal broke the Indian Subcontinent into two. Twenty-four years later, his daughter divided it into three. Nehru was a competent leader who changed the course of history for good or for bad. He had electrifying and yet, double personality. There was the westernized Nehru; Harrow and Cambridge,’ Fabian –Socialist’ and there was the Hindu Nehru that always came to the fore during crunch times, using the argument of secularism to deny Muslims their separate identity, insisting all were Indians only and could be represented by Congress alone. Today, his secularism lies in tatters, proving Jinnah and his two-nation theory right.
Great soldier Mountbatten might have been, but a great leader he certainly wasn’t, just a mediocre dictator whom Nehru played like harp. Though Nehru had a chance, he preferred partition rather than having a superior Jinnah and the Muslim ‘headache’ as constant irritants.
