12-30-2004, 02:26 AM
Jinnah in memory
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->KR Phanda
Qaid-e-Azam Jinnah, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru will always be remembered, though for different reasons. Jinnah is the only leader who single-handedly created a new country for Muslims. No wonder, Beverley Nichols, a distinguished British journalist, wrote about him: "The most important man in Asia is 67, tall, thin and elegant, with a monocle on a grey silk cord, and a stiff white collar which he wears in the hottest weather.
He suggests a gentleman of Spain, a diplomat of the old school, one used to see his like sitting in the window of St James's Club, sipping Contrexeville while he read Le Temps, which was propped up against a Queen Anne toast rack stacked with the toast Melba.. He can sway the battle this way or that as he chooses. His 100 million Muslims will march to the left, to the right, to the front, to the rear at his bidding, and at nobody else's. It is not the same in the Hindu ranks" (Verdict On India).
Mahatma Gandhi, on the contrary, will be remembered mostly for resowing the seeds of an Islamic state in independent India. He neither studied history, nor learnt from it, nor did he listen to his contemporaries. At the Round Table Conference held in London in 1931, Gandhi blamed the British for Hindu-Muslim disorders. He asserted: "The quarrel is not old. I dare to say that it is coeval with the British advent" (The Constitutional Problem of India, Sir R Coupland). This statement was not only contrary to facts of history but also amounted to saying that once the British leave India, Hindus and Muslims would live peacefully thereafter. Jinnah, in sharp contrast, declared: "The Hindus and Muslims belong to two religious philosophies, social customs, literature. They neither intermarry nor interdine and, indeed, they belong to two different civilisations which are based on conflicting ideas and conceptions" (Speeches and Writings of Jinnah, Jamiluddin Ahmad).
Jinnah, on being asked by Nichols as to how he would describe the vital principles of the demand for Pakistan, replied in five words: "The Muslims are a nation." Nichols goes on to say that "the difference between Jinnah and the typical Hindu politician was the difference between a surgeon and a witch doctor. Moreover, he was a surgeon you could trust, even though his verdict was harsh".
BR Ambedkar was the only Hindu who, like Jinnah, was fully convinced that Muslims could not live peacefully with Hindus (kafirs). In his words, "According to Muslim Canon Law, the world is divided in two camps - Dar-ul Islam (abode of Islam) and Dar-ul Harb (abode of war). That being the canon law of the Muslims, India cannot be the common motherland of the Hindus and the Musalmans. It can be the land of the Musalmans but it cannot be the land of the Hindus and the Musalmans living as equals" (Thoughts on Pakistan).
Only a few leaders in the Muslim world, like Jinnah and Kemal Ataturk, were bestowed the title of "Qaid-e-Azam". The goddess of history would always remember the singular contribution that Jinnah made for the cause of Muslims. History would also not forget that with a view to solving the Hindu-Muslim problems for good, the British rulers agreed to the division of India on religious basis in 1947. Mahatma Gandhi, with his blinkered vision, brought it back. Hindus everywhere will continue to pay the price for Gandhi's fads, whims and fancies for generations to come.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->KR Phanda
Qaid-e-Azam Jinnah, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru will always be remembered, though for different reasons. Jinnah is the only leader who single-handedly created a new country for Muslims. No wonder, Beverley Nichols, a distinguished British journalist, wrote about him: "The most important man in Asia is 67, tall, thin and elegant, with a monocle on a grey silk cord, and a stiff white collar which he wears in the hottest weather.
He suggests a gentleman of Spain, a diplomat of the old school, one used to see his like sitting in the window of St James's Club, sipping Contrexeville while he read Le Temps, which was propped up against a Queen Anne toast rack stacked with the toast Melba.. He can sway the battle this way or that as he chooses. His 100 million Muslims will march to the left, to the right, to the front, to the rear at his bidding, and at nobody else's. It is not the same in the Hindu ranks" (Verdict On India).
Mahatma Gandhi, on the contrary, will be remembered mostly for resowing the seeds of an Islamic state in independent India. He neither studied history, nor learnt from it, nor did he listen to his contemporaries. At the Round Table Conference held in London in 1931, Gandhi blamed the British for Hindu-Muslim disorders. He asserted: "The quarrel is not old. I dare to say that it is coeval with the British advent" (The Constitutional Problem of India, Sir R Coupland). This statement was not only contrary to facts of history but also amounted to saying that once the British leave India, Hindus and Muslims would live peacefully thereafter. Jinnah, in sharp contrast, declared: "The Hindus and Muslims belong to two religious philosophies, social customs, literature. They neither intermarry nor interdine and, indeed, they belong to two different civilisations which are based on conflicting ideas and conceptions" (Speeches and Writings of Jinnah, Jamiluddin Ahmad).
Jinnah, on being asked by Nichols as to how he would describe the vital principles of the demand for Pakistan, replied in five words: "The Muslims are a nation." Nichols goes on to say that "the difference between Jinnah and the typical Hindu politician was the difference between a surgeon and a witch doctor. Moreover, he was a surgeon you could trust, even though his verdict was harsh".
BR Ambedkar was the only Hindu who, like Jinnah, was fully convinced that Muslims could not live peacefully with Hindus (kafirs). In his words, "According to Muslim Canon Law, the world is divided in two camps - Dar-ul Islam (abode of Islam) and Dar-ul Harb (abode of war). That being the canon law of the Muslims, India cannot be the common motherland of the Hindus and the Musalmans. It can be the land of the Musalmans but it cannot be the land of the Hindus and the Musalmans living as equals" (Thoughts on Pakistan).
Only a few leaders in the Muslim world, like Jinnah and Kemal Ataturk, were bestowed the title of "Qaid-e-Azam". The goddess of history would always remember the singular contribution that Jinnah made for the cause of Muslims. History would also not forget that with a view to solving the Hindu-Muslim problems for good, the British rulers agreed to the division of India on religious basis in 1947. Mahatma Gandhi, with his blinkered vision, brought it back. Hindus everywhere will continue to pay the price for Gandhi's fads, whims and fancies for generations to come.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->