JINNAH’S PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS TO THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY On 11 August 1947, Jinnah delivered his presidential address to the constituent assembly in Karachi, It was amemorable speech which furnished the answer to many questions. It also shed light on some of the multifarious problems which the nascent state faced, but on the other hand it also created ambiguity and left many questions unanswered. Dealing with the issue of where exactly the sovereignty lay, Jinnah made it unequivocally clear that sovereignty does not lay with a single person or that he as a president was not the sovereign rather he referred to the constituent assembly as a sovereign body which was entrusted with full powers. So Jinnah declared the constituent assembly as the ultimate authority which according to him had to perform two vital functions namely the strenuous task of framing the constitution of Pakistan and functioning as a sovereign body as a federal legislature of Pakistan. Therefore it was upon the constituent assembly to decide what kind of state Pakistan would be. Thus Jinnah 2 its decisions in a reposed his complete faith in the competency of assembly to ex judicious manner. Of the many problems plaguing India at that time, Jinnah made mention of few ‘but crucial ones in nature, He denounced bribery and corruption as a curse which sap the very vitality of nation to work with honesty and devotion. He described these vices as poison which should be curbed and do away with immediately. Another rampant malpractice was black marketing which according to Jinnah was a hideous crime against the society as it brought about starvation and shortage of essential commodities of life He laid stress on the fact that these criminals should not escape punishment as in the pastthey had been carrying out their heinous crime with impunity. He emphasized that these criminals should be brought to book: as they disrupt the entire system of control and cause privation and death. The next evil practice which Jinnah said that they inherited as a legacy was nepotism and jobbery. He expressed his extreme abhorrence for these two evils and said that he would not put up with such a practice in vogue as it hampers the growth of a true democratic state. ‘The last part of the speech concerns Jinnah’s vision of the new state which has evoked a great debate. However, Jinnah was unequivocal about his vision of state which advocated the separation of religious influence from state in which Muslims and non Muslims could live together having the equal rights and privileges of citizenship and that religion was the personal matter of the individual having no bearing on state as he said “you are free to go to your temples, Ithas nothing to do with the business of the state.” He was of the belief that it was these differences on the basis of caste, color and creed which hampered the growth of independence movement and that much of the bloodshed and violence was caused by it Thus in a nutshell, he wanted a democratic secularist state where all communities had the right to live peacefully no matter which sect or religion they belonged to.