1

WAS PAKISTAN CREATED IN

THE NAME OF ISLAM?

“I maintain that Hindu-Muslim is a condition precedent-

nay it is a sine qua non- before any constitution can be
completed for the Government of India …”
(Jinnah, Speech on Federal Structure Sub-committee on 13
January 1931)

"I must record my own belief , that any attempt to establish the
reign of Hindu numerical majority in India will never be achieved
without a civil war... The Muslims numbering 90 million.. the word
’minority has no relevance or sense when applied to masses of
human beings numbered in many scores of millions’
(Winston Churchill, December 13th 1946 at House of
Commons)

One of our most persistent national myths — put forward by

both the state and its detractors — is that Pakistan was created in
the name of Islam. It is said that Pakistan was created with the
use of the slogans “Islam in danger” and “Pakistan ka matlab
2 Jinnah: Myth and Reality

kya, La illaha ilallah”, both slogans which — ironically — were

never used by Quaid-e-Azam himself. Indeed Jinnah ruled out
“Pakistan ka matlab kiya, La illaha illallah” when he censured a
Leaguer at the last session of the All India Muslim League after
partition in these words: “Neither I nor the Muslim League
Working Committee ever passed a resolution — Pakistan ka
matlab kiya — you may have used it to catch a few votes.”
Nevertheless, the fact that Pakistan was created as a result of
a group’s nationalism, which was based — in whatever watered
down form — on common religious beliefs, has damned
Pakistan to a perpetual identity crisis that continues to sap its
vitality. That no one on top since September 11, 1948 has been
able to talk sense in this country has only aggravated our
predicament.
Fundamental to this identity crisis is the national confusion
surrounding the Two Nation Theory, which is hailed as the
ideological foundation of the state of Pakistan. It is one of the
most misunderstood ideas in modern history, both in terms of
what it claimed and how it has been applied by various currents
in our history.
Both India and Pakistan do not disagree on what they consider
the essentials of the theory, but while in India it is a symbol of
exclusivism and communalism, in Pakistan it is part of the Islamic
ideological narrative. This is the publicist’s view of history, but not
necessarily one that is accepted without question by historians.
Perhaps the time has come to turn such conventional common
(non)sense about the Two Nation Theory on its head.
The Two Nation Theory, as adopted by Jinnah and the Muslim
League in 1940, was a mere restatement of the minority problem
in national terms and not a clarion call, to use Dr Ayesha Jalal’s
vocabulary, for partition. What Jinnah was aiming for was what in
recent years has been coined as ‘consociationalism’, a power
 Was Pakistan created in the name of Islam? 3

sharing between disparate ethnic and communal groups in

multinational and multiethnic states. Though the term was coined
only a decade or so ago, consociationalism as a political system is
quite old and is tried and tested in states like the Netherlands,
Switzerland and Canada.
When the Quaid-e-Azam articulated the Two Nation Theory,
he referred to language, culture, family laws and historical
antecedents. He was, as an adroit lawyer, making the case for
changing the status of a minority to that of a nation and not for
separation of Islam from India as is alleged by his detractors.
Jinnah’s idea of Pakistan was not predicated on the partition
of India. His idea of Pakistan was a power sharing arrangement
between the Muslims and Hindus. His Two Nation Theory did
not, at least not until December 1946, suggest that the Hindus
and Muslims must be separated and even then he spoke of
Muslim India and Hindu India. Still, even in May 1947, Jinnah
was pleading against the partition of Punjab and Bengal by
arguing that a Punjabi is a Punjabi and a Bengali is a Bengali
before he is a Hindu or a Muslim.
Much of this is confirmed by one of the most extraordinary
pieces of prescience left behind by H V Hodson, who was the
Reforms Commissioner in India in 1941. Hodson wrote in clear
terms very soon after the Lahore Resolution that every Muslim
Leaguer from Jinnah down to the last one interpreted the
Pakistan idea as consistent with the idea of a confederation of
India. Hodson believed that “Pakistan” was a “revolt against
minority status” and a call for power sharing and not just
defining rules of conduct how a majority (in this case Hindu)
would govern India. He spoke of an acute realisation that the
minority status with all the safeguards could only amount to a
“Cinderella with trade union rights and radio in the kitchen but
still below the stairs.” Jinnah’s comment was that Hodson had
4 Jinnah: Myth and Reality

finally understood what the League was after, but that he could
not publicly come out with these fundamental truths, as these
were likely to be misunderstood at the time.

The origins of the Two nation theory

On the Muslim side the first articulation of the two nation

theory came from the famous Muslim modernist, Sir Syed
Ahmed Khan, who decided after the experience of Urdu-Hindi
controversy of 1867 that Muslims and Hindus were two separate
nations, and were like two eyes of India, who should have
sovereign parity. When Congress was founded by A O Hume
(1885), Sir Syed Ahmed Khan persuaded most of the Muslims
not to join the Congress Party because he felt the Muslims were
not ready educationally socially, and politically to face the Hindu
community in the mainstream of politics yet. He was supported
in these views by other Muslim modernists of the time like Syed
Ameer Ali.
The two nation theory finally reached a culmination in the
form of the separate electorates which were demanded by a
delegation of the Muslim elite, and intelligentsia in their meeting
with Viceroy Minto. Lord Curzon’s partition of Bengal was also
on the same lines. Partition of Bengal was annulled due to
Swadeshi movement.

A Brief History of the All India Muslim League

The All India Muslim League was founded in 1906 with the
express purpose of safeguarding Muslim interests in a united
India. Like the Congress Party, it started off as a party loyal to
British Government. By 1913, the League was persuaded by
Mohammed Ali Jinnah of the Congress Party to abandon its pro-
 Was Pakistan created in the name of Islam? 5

British stance and assume a stance which was more in line with
the Congress. He was unable however to budge the league on its
stance on separate electorates. In 1916 Mohammed Ali Jinnah
managed to bring together the League and the Congress on one
platform working together for the Independence of India. During
the Khilafat Movement and the non-cooperation movement, the
League became sidelined when Gandhi led Congress went over
the league and made alliances with the Khilafat Conference and
Jamiat-e-ulema-Hind, two radically Islamic organizations
agitating for the safeguard of the Islamic institution of Khilafat.
By 1928 there were two factions of the Muslim League: Pro-
British faction led by Sir Muhammad Shafi and the Pro-
Congress faction led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah. After Jinnah’s
brief exit from all India politics in 1931, the League virtually
ceased to exist. By 1935 the beleaguered leaguers were
clamouring for Jinnah to come back. In 1935 Jinnah emerged out
of his self-imposed exile to reorganize the league. With the exit
of Shafi, Jinnah had a free hand, and from 1935-1937 Jinnah and
the League were the staunchest supporters of the efforts of the
Congress Party inside and outside the central legislative body.

The Pakistan idea

In Allahabad in 1930, Dr. Muhammad Iqbal is said to have

given the idea of a Muslim state in the northwest of India within
or without the British India. Reading the address, it becomes
clear that Iqbal was talking about an autonomous Muslim
Province within the British Empire and by implication within the
Indian Union. This idea had hitherto been unarticulated, but it
was already there in many different forms. 1 The demand for

1
K K Aziz mentions 88 different schemes containing partition of India
before Iqbal finally gave his idea.
6 Jinnah: Myth and Reality

autonomy had always been there in the North West, and Iqbal
was only giving it a more concrete picture. Iqbal’s concern was
clearly the Muslim Majority areas, and not the Muslims in Hindu
majority areas. Hence Iqbal’s view was in contradiction to the
officially stated League position which was best expressed in the
Lucknow Pact.
By 1933 Rahmat Ali, a student at Cambridge University,
came out with an eccentric scheme which he called ’Pakistan :
Our Fatherland’. Later that year he tried to enlist Mohammed Ali
Jinnah, then in England, for this cause. Jinnah dismissed this
idea as a mere dream, earning forever the wrath of Ch. Rahmat
Ali.

The elections of 1937

The first elections held under the Government of India act

1935 saw Congress emerging as the majority party. It won 711
out of total of 1585 seats, and could form government in 5/11
provinces without the support of any party. Out of these 711
seats only 26 seats were Muslim seats, thereby increasing
Congress’s reliance on local Hindu leaders, which allowed for
their agenda to be imposed on the Congress.
Muslim League on the other hand did well on the Muslim
seats in the Hindu Majority provinces winning 29 out of 35 seats
in the UP. The league however couldn’t do well against the
regional parties in Muslim Majority areas.

Congress and the League

"I Sir, stand here with a clear conscience and I say that I am
a nationalist first, a nationalist second and nationalist last... I
once more appeal to this House. Whether you are a Mussalman
 Was Pakistan created in the name of Islam? 7

or a Hindu, for God's sake do not import the discussion of

communal matters into this House, and degrade this Assembly,
which we desire should become a real National Parliament. Set
an example to the outside world and our people." (Jinnah, 1925
Debate on the Indian Finance Bill.)
The Congress refused to come to an arrangement with the
Muslim League, choosing instead Jamiat-e-Ulema-Hind for
partnership through Azad. This was a death blow to the League
and its leadership who were at this point decidedly pro-Congress.
On 22nd December 1939, League and its allies, the Scheduled
Caste Federation and Justice Party of the Tamil Nadu, celebrated
the day of deliverance from Congress rule.
Nehru-Jinnah Correspondence is especially vital in this
regard. Nehru had mocked the League as an elitist organization
and asked Jinnah to ’depend on the league’s inherent strength’.
Jinnah had responded in kind informing Nehru that from now on
he would only depend on his inherent strength. As a Historian
rightly observed:
"More than Iqbal, it was Nehru who charted a new mass
strategy for the League, prodding and challenging Jinnah to
leave the drawing rooms of politics to reach down to the hundred
million Muslims... There was of course only one possible way
for the league to stir that mass, to awaken it and lure it to march
behind Muslim leadership."

Muslim League and the Muslim Majority Areas

The League leadership had realized through experience with

Congress, that in order to make good on its claim of
representation of South Asian Muslims, it would need to rally the
Muslim Majority areas behind it. In order to do that it required a
slogan which would be vague enough to bring an overwhelming
8 Jinnah: Myth and Reality

mass of the Muslim majority areas behind the league. Jinnah

started by luring the regional politicians into his fold. First came
Sikandar Hayat of Punjab, and soon to follow him was
FazlulHaq of Bengal. Soon the regional parties who had defeated
the league in the elections were ready to come under the league’s
banner.

The Lahore Resolution

League’s transformation was complete in 1940 when it

adopted Iqbal’s slogan of separate Muslim majority state(s). The
two men who moved this resolution were the new entrants into
the League, Sikandar Hayat and FazlulHaq. The Lahore
Resolution presented a vague demand which did not specify the
nature of the Muslim majority state(s). No references were made
to Islam, and the issue presented was a cultural one instead of a
religious one. Needless to say this resolution was in
contradiction to the stated objective of the league as it did not
aspire to solve the problems of League’s real constituents, the
Muslims in Hindu Majority areas.
The name Pakistan was imposed on the League by the
Congress press, and the League leadership after initial
protestations accepted it.
C R Gopalachari’s formula which virtually gave Muslim
League Pakistan was rejected by the League leadership. This
seemed to suggest that League’s interest lay elsewhere, and not
in the creation of Pakistan. Elections of 1945-1946 saw Muslim
League sweep the Muslim vote. The turn around was miracle in
the Muslim Majority areas. In Sindh and Bengal the league had
enough seats to form ministries of their own. In NWFP and
Punjab it still turned out to be the largest single party, but was
upstaged in the assembly by coalition ministries of
 Was Pakistan created in the name of Islam? 9

Congress/Khudai khidmatgars in NWFP, and the Unionist Party

in Punjab. Having won 445 out of a total 490 Muslim seats, the
League was now able to lay exclusive claim to speaking for the
Muslims of India.

Lahore Resolution envisaged a federal and inclusive state

Every child in Pakistan is taught about the symbolic

significance of the Lahore Resolution but hardly anyone in the
country has ever bothered to read the words that are cited as
nothing less than a founding document for the country. In many
ways, the Lahore Resolution is Pakistan’s equivalent of the US’s
Declaration of Independence, though perhaps less eloquent.
Indeed, much like the American declaration of independence,
there is an original draft with handwritten corrections by
Pakistan’s founders, which lends us clues as to what it was that
they were after on that momentous occasion.
Yet the Lahore Resolution is much more than that because it
is a live document laying out not so much a blueprint but more
an eternal guideline on how we were to shape the new state.
Arguably, at the time it was presented it was intended to be little
more than an alternative to the existing constitutional thesis
forwarded by both the British and Congress. Increasingly
dependent on Muslim support for the war effort in the wake of
Congress’ refusal to be forthcoming, Lord Linlithgow had
pressed Jinnah to come up with an alternative to the Government
of India Act, 1935, and had also asked British India’s foremost
constitutional expert, Sir Zafarullah Khan, to draft a
memorandum on the idea of two dominion states. It was
Zafarullah’s memorandum that was finally adopted by the
League in its Lahore session as the ‘Lahore Resolution’.
10 Jinnah: Myth and Reality

The Lahore Resolution did not envisage a partition of India

per se. It remained vague in so much as it used both
“autonomous” and “sovereign” for constituent units with
contiguous Muslim majorities. Thus the issue really was of
sovereignty for Muslim majority areas, which itself went against
the grain of the interests of the Muslim League’s core
constituency, i.e. the Muslim salaried classes of UP and Bombay
— indeed nothing less than a reversal of the famed Lucknow
Pact that Jinnah had engineered 24 years prior. It was what the
resolution implied that was most significant, i.e. an extended
period of time where foreign affairs, defence and customs would
remain the domain of a centre. This was the bargaining counter
that Jinnah wanted the League to have.
Documents of fundamental national importance and
constitutional nature however take on a life of their own,
unconnected with the political realities that brought them about.
The Lahore Resolution is therefore to be taken as more than a
mere resolution of a political party or, in the League’s case, a big
tent political grouping. There are certain undeniable
fundamentals of the new state that have been laid down by it,
most important being the idea that constituent units are sovereign
entities delegating their sovereignty to a Pakistan centre. This
means that the centralised state that has been in existence for
over 63 years is ultra vires the letter and spirit of the Lahore
Resolution. When stripped of the history and baggage of
partition and honestly applied to our present condition, the
Lahore Resolution envisages a “nation of nations”. The Two-
Nation Theory itself was not so much a statement of exclusive
nationalism but a connecting bridge between what the
Communist Party of India described at the time as submerged
Muslim nationalities. To this end even Gandhi very shrewdly
 Was Pakistan created in the name of Islam? 11

pointed out to Jinnah in their discussions that the Lahore

Resolution contained no reference to the Two-Nation Theory.
Given the debate on the role of religion in Pakistan, the
Lahore Resolution lays down a clear rule on how this proposed
nation of nations would deal with its religious minorities. Not
only does the resolution contain no reference to Islam per se — a
gaping hole for those who say Pakistan was created in the name
of religion — but it goes on to say that “adequate, effective and
mandatory safeguards shall be specifically provided in the
constitution for minorities in the units and in the regions for the
protection of religious, cultural, economic, political,
administrative and other rights of the minorities, with their
consultation.” Notice the word ‘consultation’, which has been
defined to mean effective consultation in other cases in our
jurisprudence. The minority view then would have to be the
binding view unless there were good reasons to the contrary.
Now compare this situation to how the notorious Objectives
Resolution was passed in 1949. The voting pattern shows that all
Muslim members of the constituent assembly save one voted in
favour and all non-Muslims voted without exception against it.
There were several amendments proposed by the non-Muslim
members, which were rejected by the majority. In essence, the
spirit of the Lahore Resolution was thus betrayed at the very
outset of the constitution making process. Pakistan thus voted in
as its ‘grundnorm’ a document that went against the very spirit of
the basic document on which the country claimed to be based.
Similarly, the main crux of the sovereignty thesis forwarded
by the Lahore Resolution was negated when Pakistan chose to
ignore Mujibur Rehman’s six points, which were, in essence, the
elaboration of the Lahore Resolution. That led to the separation
of Bangladesh.
12 Jinnah: Myth and Reality

With the separation of Bangladesh in 1971 and the

worldwide conservative Islamic revival of the 1970s and 1980s,
Pakistan chose to underline its Islamic identity and in doing so
became a state intolerant of diversity. Just as multiculturalism is
the consequence of secularism, shrinking of dissent and
tolerance is the consequence of theocracy. The most devastating
impact of a deliberate detour from normality that our leaders
took from 1949 and the consummation of the marriage of
religion and state in 1973 has been a breakdown of civil
discourse in our society. In our quixotic quest of fusing the
temporal with the eternal, we have denigrated the faith and
destroyed our government.

Cabinet Mission Plan

In view of the election results of 1946 the British

Government dispatched a high level Cabinet Mission to look into
a workable plan which was acceptable to the two major parties
of India i.e. Congress and the League. After its deliberations with
the League and the Congress it presented a series of proposals
which included the ’grouping scheme’. The grouping scheme
allowed for a three tiered federation between Hindu and Muslim
provinces, with the center only keeping issues of
Defence/Foreign, Currency and communication with itself.
Salient Points of the Cabinet Mission Plan were:
Union Legislature and Union Executive.
Three subjects as aforesaid
No parity- this was a critical element. The Cabinet Mission
Plan did not provide any parity for Hindus and Muslims at the
centre. The representation remained as before according to the
Communal Award.
 Was Pakistan created in the name of Islam? 13

Grouping Scheme: This envisaged Muslim majority provinces

in the West and East forming groups with a group legislature and a
group constitution. These were organized as Sections A, B and C.
Residuary Powers: Residuary powers were vested in the
provinces. The provinces could – and this became the main
pincher later- opt out under 19(V) of the Cabinet Mission Plan.
This plan was accepted by the Muslim League at Jinnah’s
insistence, and provisionally accepted by the Congress Party.
However in July of 1946 Nehru dropped a bombshell when he
declared that the Congress was not bound by any agreements and
that it would decide the fate of India in the constituent assembly
itself. Perhaps more importantly Nehru interpreted – as did
Gandhi- 19(v) differently from the way Cabinet Mission Plan
intended it and how Jinnah accepted it. They read it to mean that
provinces were free to remain out of the Sections ab initio. The
correct interpretation as legal advice from His Majesty’s
Government also affirmed was that the provinces would form
groups and each province, after the elections, would have the
right to opt out of a group. Thus Nehru sought to deny what was
the main attraction of the plan for the Muslim League and
Jinnah. This forced Jinnah to back out of his earlier agreement
on the basis of the Cabinet Mission plan.

Wavell’s letter to Pethick Lawrence is revealing:

"The strong reaction by Gandhi to my suggestion that

Congress should make their assurance about the grouping
categorical shows how well justified Jinnah was to doubt their
previous assurances on the subject. It is to my mind convincing
evidence that Congress always meant to use their position in the
interim Government to break up the Muslim League and in the
14 Jinnah: Myth and Reality

constituent assembly to destroy the grouping scheme which was

the one effective safeguard for the Muslims’2
For the first time in an uncharacteristic move, Jinnah called
for a nationwide civil disobedience by the Muslim League. The
league had till then never resorted to unconstitutional means, but
as Jinnah put it, the British and the Congress had long held the
gun to their head, and now they had forged a pistol too. For a law
abiding constitutionalist like Jinnah, the civil disobedience was
in of itself a pistol as is apparent by his statement which clearly
calls for a non-violent peaceful mass civil disobedience
movement. Some historians have tried to liken the analogy to
physical violence, but their claim is unfounded. For the most of
the cities, especially where Jinnah was physically present, the
direct action day on 16th August 1946, remained peaceful, but in
Calcutta horrible violence broke out between Hindus and
Muslims. The Congress Press tried to blame this on the League
and its Bengali leader Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy.
Wavell’s letter to Pethick Lawrence suggested that there was
’no satisfactory evidence to that effect’ and that ’appreciably
more Muslims were killed than Hindus’ in the Calcutta riots. Had
it been organized on purpose by the Muslim league ministry
clearly, that wouldn’t have been the case. There is much about
the Calcutta killings that exists in the Indian consciousness that
is just plain untrue. For one thing, the Indian version of events is
as inverted as the official accounts of that blighted day that exist
in Pakistan. Contrary to what the Indians hold, all historians now
agree that the massacre in Calcutta was primarily of Muslims
and not Hindus.

2
(Mansergh) Wavell to Pethick Lawrence, Mansergh, Transfer of
power Page 323
 Was Pakistan created in the name of Islam? 15

Perhaps, revisiting this seeping wound will help heal other

wounds that exist in the fractured polity of the subcontinent. The
official Indian nationalist mythology conjures up two villains of
the Direct Action Day fiasco — Mahomed Ali Jinnah and
Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy — ironically two of the most
liberal leaders thrown up by Muslim India. It is forgotten that in
the good work Gandhi is rightly credited with in Calcutta and
other places, he was aided by Suhrawardy, and yet Suhrawardy is
directly blamed by Indian nationalist authors for planning and
executing violence. Similarly, if Gandhi was the great non-
violent agitator, Jinnah was constitutionally non-violent and
incapable of violence.
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had famously buried the Cabinet
Mission Plan with his statement that Congress would go into the
Constituent Assembly unfettered by agreements. Nehru had,
during the course of his discussions earlier in the year, told the
British that the Muslim League was not progressive enough to
carry out ‘direct action’. He had calculated along with other
Congress leaders that as a party committed to constitutional
politics, the Muslim League did not have the organisation or the
manpower to carry out a civil disobedience movement. Nehru
was right of course except that it was precisely this fact that led
to an otherwise peaceful civil disobedience movement
degenerating into total communal breakdown in Calcutta. The
Congress remained convinced that if they were firm, Jinnah
would back down from the brink. Jinnah, on his part, seems to
have been convinced that if he threatened civil disobedience, the
Congress would reconsider. Thus, when Jinnah and Nehru met
on the evening of August 15, 1946, both men expected the other
to back down. Each made a terrible error by underestimating the
other’s resolve.
16 Jinnah: Myth and Reality

Jinnah left the program for the day vague in the hope that
Congress and the British would relent. This view is corroborated
by Maulana Azad who also wondered — in hindsight — how a
constitutional politician like Jinnah resorted to mass politics and
concluded that Jinnah was driven along a course that he was
reluctant to and, at any rate, understood little of. On August 14,
explaining that direct action did not mean direct action in any
form but a peaceful hartal, Jinnah said, “I enjoin upon the
Muslims to carry out the instructions and abide by them strictly
and conduct themselves peacefully and in a disciplined manner.”
H V Hodson, the British Reforms Commissioner and a student of
Indian politics, wrote in his book The Great Divide that “the
working committee followed up by calling on Muslims
throughout India to observe August 16th as Direct Action Day.
On that day, a meeting would be held all over the country to
explain the League’s resolution. These meetings and processions
passed off — as was manifestly the central League leaders’
intention — without more than commonplace and limited
disturbance with one vast and tragic exception. What happened
was more than anyone could have foreseen.” 3
The customary Indian accusation that the Muslim League
planned and executed the massacre of innocents in Calcutta does
not stand the test of facts. Lord Wavell wrote on August 21 that
“the estimate of casualties is 3,000 dead and 17,000 injured. The
Bengal Congress is convinced that all the trouble was
deliberately engineered by the Muslim League ministry but no
satisfactory evidence to that effect has reached me yet. It is said
that the decision to have a public holiday on August 16 was the
cause of trouble, but I think this is very farfetched. There was a
public holiday in Sindh and there was no trouble there. At any
rate, whatever the causes of the outbreak, when it started, the
3
(Hodson, 1997) Page 166
 Was Pakistan created in the name of Islam? 17

Hindus and Sikhs were every bit as fierce as the Muslims. The
present estimate is that appreciably more Muslims were killed
than the Hindus”4
This was confirmed by Sardar Patel’s letter, where he
gloated about more, many times more, Muslim casualties than
Hindus. This letter is quoted by renowned Indian historian Sumit
Sarkar on page 432 of his book Modern India: 1885-1947. One
of the big gaping holes in the Indian nationalist version of
history is that while all accounts seem to indicate that Muslims
were armed with sticks, according to Sir Francis Tuker, “buses
and taxis were charging about loaded with Sikhs and Hindus
armed with swords, iron bars and firearms”. Who then was
arming the Hindus and Sikhs?
The truth is that the Muslim League could not afford mass-
scale Hindu-Muslim violence in Calcutta or in India.
Suhrawardy was in power through a cross-communal ministry,
which depended as much on Hindu support as it did on Muslim
support. At the national level, after the collapse of the Cabinet
Mission Plan, Jinnah’s strategy was to hold out from the interim
government by pitching extreme demands. After being tainted
with the same brush as Congress, Jinnah could no longer hold
onto his earlier demand of Congress-League parity in the interim
government or that, having swept Muslim seats, League alone
had the right to nominate Muslims to the interim cabinet. Wavell
— who absolved the League privately of the blame for Calcutta
killings — used the killings as an excuse to go ahead with the
transfer of power to a Congress-only cabinet .5
Ironically, for all the later propaganda against the Muslim
League on account of Direct Action Day blitz, the Congress
mouthpiece in Bombay, declared a week later:

4
(Mansergh) page 274, Volume VIII, Transfer of Power Papers
5
18 Jinnah: Myth and Reality

“The worst enemies of the Muslim League cannot help

envying the leadership of Mr. Jinnah...cataclysmic
transformation of the League from the reactionary racket of the
Muslim Nawabs, Noons, and Knights into a revolutionary mass
organisation dedicated, by word if not be deed, to an anti-
Imperialist struggle, compels us to express the sneaking national
wish that a diplomat and strategist of Jinnah’s proven calibre
were at the helm of the Indian National Congress. There is no
denying the fact that by his latest master-stroke of diplomacy,
Jinnah has outbid, outwitted and outmanoeuvred the British and
Congress alike and confounded the common national indictment
that the Muslim League is a parasite of British Imperialism.”
In fact, the opposite was true. Jinnah had been outwitted by
both Congress and the British in Calcutta who had managed to
sully the pristine reputation of a politician who throughout his
life had been known for his secular and constitutional approach
to politics. A G Noorani writes that Jinnah gambled twice over;
first in imagining that Congress would share power and thus
avert partition… and next in not reckoning with the predictable
consequences of partition.6
He was now branded a communalist, hate-monger and a
mass murderer. Unsourced lines like “we shall have India
divided or destroyed” are attributed to him even though there is
no record of him saying any kind of it. Reliance instead is placed
on the highly partisan account given by Margaret Bourke-White
who was a devotee of Mahatma Gandhi and whose account fails
verification not the least because she was actually not where she
claimed to be that day. Thus a caricature.
In this, however, Jinnah only had himself to blame. He had
tragically miscalculated the power of mob hysteria. As a much

6
(Noorani, 2010) Page 158
 Was Pakistan created in the name of Islam? 19

younger man, Jinnah had been prophetic in his predictions about the
consequences of mob hysteria when he warned Gandhi in his letter:
“I thank you for your kind suggestion offering me ‘to take
my share in the new life that has opened up before the country’.
If by ‘new life’ you mean your methods and your programme, I
am afraid I cannot accept them, for I am fully convinced that it
must lead to disaster. But the actual new life that has opened up
before the country is that we are faced with a government that
pays no heed to the grievances, feelings and sentiments of the
people; that our own countrymen are divided; the moderate party
is still going wrong; that your methods have already caused split
and division in almost every institution that you have approached
hitherto, and in the public life of the country not only amongst
Hindus and Muslims but between Hindus and Hindus and
Muslims and Muslims and even between fathers and sons;
people generally are desperate all over the country and your
extreme programme has for the moment struck the imagination
mostly of the inexperienced youth and the ignorant and the
illiterate. All this means complete disorganisation and chaos.
What the consequence of this may be, I shudder to contemplate;
but I, for one, am convinced that the present policy of the
government is the primary cause of it all and unless that cause is
removed, the effects must continue. I have no voice or power to
remove the cause; but at the same time I do not wish my
countrymen to be dragged to the brink of a precipice in order to
be shattered. The only way for the nationalists is to unite and
work for a programme, which is universally acceptable for the
early attainment of complete responsible government. Such a
programme cannot be dictated by any single individual, but must
have the approval and support of all the prominent nationalist
leaders in the country; and to achieve this end I am sure my
colleagues and myself shall continue to work.”
20 Jinnah: Myth and Reality

The real tragedy that unfolded on August 16, 1946 was that
Jinnah had transformed into precisely the kind of politician he
had warned his old friend Gandhi against becoming. He gave up
the fine wisdom of the old ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity
and chose instead to walk the perilous course of disorder and
chaos, the world that he did not and could not understand. The
British, of course, took full advantage of his predicament. The
events that followed showed what happens when gentlemen
accustomed to constitutional advance threaten to fight in the
streets like rabble. Their bluff is called with terrible
consequences for all.
Muslim League and its leadership had hoped that by keeping
the Pakistan demand vague, and by using the veto, the League
will be able to bring Congress to accede to their demands at the
center, thereby coming to a final settlement with the League with
respect to the future of the Muslims within the Indian Union.
Pakistan did not fulfill Muslim League’s agenda. Its real
constituents were the Indian Muslims, whose problems Pakistan
didn’t solve. Hence Muslim League’s strategy failed, and Jinnah
was handed a Pakistan he never wanted.

Not an ideological position

‘’Muslim League cannot agree to the partition of Bengal and

the Punjab. It cannot be justified historically, economically,
geographically, politically or morally. These provinces have
built up their respective lives for nearly a century’
(M.A. Jinnah, the President of the Muslim League, Mid May
1947, in a letter to Lord Mountbatten)

India and Pakistan do not disagree on what they consider the

essentials of the two nation theory, but while in India it is a
 Was Pakistan created in the name of Islam? 21

symbol of exclusivism and communalism, in Pakistan it is part of

the Islamic ideological narrative. The Two Nation Theory, as
adopted by Jinnah and the Muslim League in 1940, was a mere
restatement of the minority problem in national terms and not a
clarion call, to use Dr Ayesha Jalal’s vocabulary, for partition.
What Jinnah was aiming for was what in recent years has been
coined as ‘consociationalism’, a power sharing between disparate
ethnic and communal groups in multinational and multiethnic
states. Though the term was coined only a decade or so ago,
consociationalism as a political system is quite old and is tried and
tested in states like The Netherlands, Switzerland and Canada.
When the Quaid-e-Azam articulated the Two Nation Theory,
he referred to language, culture, family laws and historical
antecedents. He was, as an adroit lawyer, making the case for
changing the status of a minority to that of a nation and not for
separation of Islam from India as is alleged by his detractors. On
the Muslim side the first articulation of the Two Nation Theory
came from the famous Muslim modernist, Sir Syed Ahmed
Khan, who decided after the experience of Urdu-Hindi
controversy of 1867 that Muslims and Hindus were two separate
nations, and were like two eyes of India, who should have
sovereign parity. When Congress was founded by A O Hume
(1885), Sir Syed Ahmed Khan persuaded most of the Muslims
not to join the Congress Party because he felt the Muslims were
not ready educationally socially, and politically to face the Hindu
community in the mainstream of politics yet. He was supported
in these views by other Muslim modernists of the time like Syed
Ameer Ali. The two nation theory finally reached a culmination
in the form of the separate electorates which were demanded by
a delegation of the Muslim elite, and intelligentsia in their
meeting with Viceroy Minto. Lord Curzon’s partition of Bengal
22 Jinnah: Myth and Reality

was also on the same lines. Partition of Bengal was annulled due
to Swadeshi movement.
The All India Muslim League was founded with the express
purpose of safeguarding Muslim interests in a united India. Like
the Congress Party, it started off as a party loyal to British
Government. By 1913, the League was persuaded by Mahomed
Ali Jinnah of the Congress Party to abandon its pro-British
stance and assume a stance which was more in line with the
Congress. He was unable however to budge the league on its
stance on separate electorates. In 1916 Mahomed Ali Jinnah
managed to bring together the League and the Congress on one
platform working together for the Independence of India. During
the Khilafat Movement and the non-cooperation movement, the
League became sidelined when Gandhi led Congress went over
the league and made alliances with the Khilafat Conference and
Jamiat-e-ulema-Hind, two radically Islamic organizations
agitating for the safeguard of the Islamic institution of Khilafat.
By 1928 there were two factions of the Muslim League…
Pro-British faction lead by Sir Muhammad Shafi and the Pro-
Congress faction led by Mahomed Ali Jinnah. After Jinnah’s
brief exit from all India politics in 1931, the League virtually
ceased to exist. By 1935 the beleaguered leaguers were
clamouring for Jinnah to come back. In 1935 Jinnah emerged out
of his self-imposed exile to reorganize the league. With the exit
of Shafi, Jinnah had a free hand, and from 1935-1937 Jinnah and
the League were the staunchest supporters of the efforts of the
Congress Party inside and outside the central legislative body.
As mentioned above in1930 in Allahabad, Dr. Muhammad
Iqbal presiding over the league session, first gave the idea of a
Muslim state in the northwest of India within or without the
British India. He was clearly talking about an autonomous
Muslim Province within the union. This idea had hitherto been
 Was Pakistan created in the name of Islam? 23

unarticulated, but it was already there in many different forms.

The demand for autonomy had always been there in the North
West, and Iqbal was only giving it a more concrete picture.
Iqbal’s concern was clearly the Muslim Majority areas, and not
the muslims in Hindu majority areas. Hence Iqbal’s view was in
contradiction to the officially stated League position.
The first elections held under the Government of India act
1935 saw Congress emerging as the majority party. It won 711
out of total of 1585 seats, and could form government in 5/11
provinces without the support of any party. Out of these 711
seats only 26 seats were Muslim seats, thereby increasing
Congress’s reliance on local Hindu leaders, which allowed for
their agenda to be imposed on the Congress.
Muslim League on the other hand did well on the Muslim
seats in the Hindu Majority provinces winning 29 out of 35 seats
in the UP. The league however couldn’t do well against the
regional parties in Muslim Majority areas. The Congress refused
to come to an arrangement with the Muslim League, choosing
instead Jamiat-e-Ulema-Hind for partnership through Azad. This
was a death blow to the League and its leadership who were at
this point decidedly pro-Congress. On 22nd December 1939,
League and its allies, the Scheduled Caste Federation and Justice
Party of the Tamil Nadu, celebrated the day of deliverance from
Congress rule.
Nehru-Jinnah Correspondence is especially vital in this
regard. Nehru had mocked the League as an elitist organization
and asked Jinnah to ’depend on the league’s inherent strength’.
Jinnah had responded in kind informing Nehru that from now on
he would only depend on his inherent strength.
The League leadership had realized through experience with
Congress, that in order to make good on its claim of
representation of South Asian Muslims, it would need to rally the
24 Jinnah: Myth and Reality

Muslim Majority areas behind it. In order to do that it required a

slogan which would be vague enough to bring an overwhelming
mass of the Muslim majority areas behind the league. Jinnah
started by luring the regional politicians into his fold. First came
Sikandar Hayat of Punjab, and soon to follow him was
FazlulHaq of Bengal. Soon the regional parties who had defeated
the league in the elections were ready to come under the league’s
banner.
League’s transformation was complete in 1940 when it
adopted Iqbal’s slogan of separate Muslim majority state(s). The
two men who moved this resolution were the new entrants into
the League, Sikandar Hayat and FazlulHaq. The Lahore
Resolution presented a vague demand which did not specify the
nature of the Muslim majority state(s). No references were made
to Islam, and the issue presented was a cultural one instead of a
religious one. Needless to say this resolution was in
contradiction to the stated objective of the League as it did not
aspire to solve the problems of League’s real constituents, the
Muslims in Hindu Majority areas.
The name Pakistan was imposed on the League by the
Congress press, and the League leadership after initial protestations
accepted it. Elections of 1945-1946 saw Muslim League sweep the
Muslim vote. The turn around was miracle in the Muslim Majority
areas. In Sindh and Bengal the league had enough seats to form
ministries of their own. In NWFP and Punjab it still turned out to be
the largest single party, but was upstaged in the assembly by
coalition ministries of Congress/Khudai khidmatgars in NWFP, and
the Unionist Party in Punjab.
Having won 445 out of a total 490 Muslim seats, the League was
now able to lay exclusive claim to speaking for the Muslims of India.
Much of what Jinnah actually wanted is confirmed by one of
the most extraordinary pieces of prescience left behind by H V
 Was Pakistan created in the name of Islam? 25

Hodson, who was the Reforms Commissioner in India in 1941.

Hodson wrote in clear terms very soon after the Lahore
Resolution that every Muslim Leaguer from Jinnah down to the
last one interpreted the Pakistan idea as consistent with the idea
of a confederation of India. Hodson believed that “Pakistan” was
a “revolt against minority status” and a call for power sharing
and not just defining rules of conduct how a majority (in this
case Hindu) would govern India. He spoke of an acute
realisation that the minority status with all the safeguards could
only amount to a “Cinderella with trade union rights and radio in
the kitchen but still below the stairs.” Jinnah’s comment was that
Hodson had finally understood what the League was after, but
that he could not publicly come out with these fundamental
truths, as these were likely to be misunderstood at the time .7
It is important, however, to note that Jinnah’s August 11
speech and all his pronouncements thereafter made it absolutely
clear that the Two Nation Theory would have no role to play in
the principles of citizenship of the new state. Significantly, after
partition, Jinnah went back to using the word ‘community’ for
Hindus and Muslims instead of nations.
The concept of citizenship to Jinnah the liberal — a keen
student of British history — could not be fettered by issues of
identity. He wanted Pakistan to be an impartial inclusive democracy
rather than an exclusivist theocracy, which regrettably Pakistan has
become increasingly over the last 30 odd years.
Jaswant Singh's 670-page book8 in 2009 on Pakistan's
founding father reignited the debate on Partition. From an
academic point of view, however, he doesn't seem to have said
anything out of the ordinary. Much of this was first stated by
Maulana Azad in his "India Wins Freedom". In the intervening

7
(Jalal, 1985)
8
(Singh, 2009)
26 Jinnah: Myth and Reality

years between Azad and Jaswant Singh, several perceptive

historians and authors, many from India, also presented a similar
view of history, chief amongst them H M Seervai with his classic
"Partition of India: Legend and Reality". However, there is a new
angle in Singh's biography that is as much an indication of where
things are moving in India as much as it is a historical context.
India today with its rising middle-class, secular constitution
and a strong capitalist economy was Jinnah's India not Gandhi's
or Nehru's, whether Indians cared to admit as much or not. Karan
Thapar had written as much in an article back in the beginning of
this decade. It wasn't a surprise then that Thapar was the first one
to interview Jaswant Singh after his book was released. My
feeling is that India – with its economic gains and a confident
new middle-class -- is looking for an alternative founding father
and more appropriately the founding father it lost. In the 1930s
and the 1940s, the Hindu bourgeoisie was not nearly as mature –
though much more so than its Muslim counterpart -- to look up
to a successful and secular barrister from the minority
community as its leader. Things are different today though. The
new middle-class in India finds itself alienated from its heroes –
if only subconsciously.
Gandhi just doesn't cut it – his rejection of materialism, his
village philosophy, his glorification of poverty and his
idealisation of ancient Hindu society, things that made him so
popular in his time are exactly what are alienating him from this
class. He can be revered but never emulated. Pandit Jawaharlal
Nehru, though secular, has two major drawbacks: he was born to
considerable wealth and he was a socialist. For many Nehru
represents – despite his secularism and role as a global statesman
-- the wrong kind of politician, a politician who has never had to
work a day and therefore holds those who do work for a living in
contempt. The ironman, Sardar Patel, has been played up as an
 Was Pakistan created in the name of Islam? 27

alternative but he has been appropriated by the Hindu nationalist

crowd and the havoc Hindu nationalists wreak on not only
minorities but most things western (for example, their opposition
to Valentine's Day) automatically distances this new class from
Patel. Maulana Azad couldn't possibly be an idol for this class
because he was from the clerical Muslim class and represents in
the Indian mind all the stereotypes associated with a Muslim.
Jinnah stands in contrast to all of the traditional founders of
India. He was from the middle-class and was entirely self-made.
Through sheer hard work and some luck he reached the top of
his game both as a lawyer and a politician. Though a Muslim, he
was entirely westernised – perhaps more modern in every sense
of the word than most Indians and Pakistanis even today -- and
knew the ways of the world. He carved out his space in
cosmopolitan Bombay through his own efforts and this is
something that most in the Indian bourgeoisie have always
admired about him even if they disagreed with his post-1937
politics. He was part of the Congress when Gandhi was still in
South Africa and when Nehru was in boarding school in
England. His legislative contributions to India are second to
none. He might well have been the founding father of an
independent India -- as Sarojini Naidu had predicted -- had
Gandhi not arrived on the scene and pulled the rug from under
him. Jinnah's support for Bhagat Singh is also increasingly
underlined. The latter is seen -- despite his Marxism -- as an icon
of a new Indian youth. Now free men and finally successful, the
Indian middle-class is doing what free men are known to do –
questioning officially sanctioned views of history. It is to this
class that Jaswant Singh has spoken.
This also indicates an internal struggle within the Bharatiya
Janata Party. The BJP has been successful in the past by bringing
together the various anti-Congress elements in India. The party
28 Jinnah: Myth and Reality

itself has two or more distinct groups -- one of which is led by the
RSS-inspired Hindutvist ideologues. Their vision of the BJP is that
of a party of the Hindu right and this is the wing that champions
crazies like Varun Gandhi – ironically a great grandson of
Jawaharlal Nehru. The other group consists of those like Jaswant
Singh who realise that for the BJP to remain relevant it needs to
become a party of the centre or the centre-right. They have correctly
analysed that in the 21st-century India it needs to pose an alternative
to the Congress that is secular and business-friendly. It is they who
want to re-package Pakistan's founding father – hitherto abused,
demonised and denigrated as communal -- as a secular founding-
father of India who was lost to bad policies. This is a prospect that
needs to be welcomed by all. India is too big a country to have one
or two visions alone. That it is now welcoming back into its fold its
prodigal son and one of its most successful patriots can mean good
things for the future. 9
But where does it leave us Pakistanis? After all Jinnah of
Pakistan did happen. And he did create our country. It certainly
can't be that we agree with Jaswant Singh's biography and yet
hold on to our bankrupt conception of Pakistan and Nazaria-e-
Pakistan based on some undefined 'ideology' which our
lawmakers take oath on. It is now time to dismantle the lies and
build Pakistan on Jinnah's vision. It would require taking back
the ground given to those opponents of Jinnah, the maulanas and
the ulema of South Asian Islam. The good news is that here too
we have a bourgeoisie that is increasingly dictated by the global
world and the more they realise the dividend that peace and
modernity holds, the more they will underscore the vision given
by Mahomed Ali Jinnah on August 11, 1947, and in several other
speeches of a Pakistan that is inclusive, tolerant, secular and at

9
Jaswant Singh’s book is not the first one reconsidering Jinnah’s role.
See Asiananda’s Book (Asiananda, 2005)
 Was Pakistan created in the name of Islam? 29

peace within and without. There is no other way and the future
belongs to Jinnah.

Islamic Nationalism

Unfortunately, those who make the creation of Pakistan

controversial rely on arguments favoured by the religious right-
wing in the country, i.e. Pakistan was a millennial dream of
Muslims to establish their exclusive hegemony in the name of
Islam. This is a lie that shows itself as a lie the more our
ideologues insist on it. Pakistan, like any other state on the
world’s map, is an accident of history, determined by forces and
events that had little to do with a poet dreaming a millennial
dream about Muslims. Pakistan was not founded in the name of
Islam or religion. The surest test for this is if we substitute
Buddhist for Muslim in the equation, it would have made little
difference. In fact, to unite a community divided horizontally and
vertically into Shias, Sunnis, Deobandis, Ahmedis, Ismailis and
irreligious Muslims, the demand had to be sufficiently general
and devoid of religious dogma — for that would lead to the
obvious question: “Whose Islam”? Partition happened because
the second largest communal group, numbering no less than 90
million, in India formed majorities in four provinces of British
India and, on the basis of this majority, they wanted a federal
constitution that gave these provinces a uniform measure of
autonomy and residuary powers in a constitution with an
effective but limited centre. Ultimately, the final shape of the
compromise, i.e. the Cabinet Mission Plan, was rejected by the
majority Congress leadership. In retrospect, this was a good idea
for all concerned. It is argued by some sections amongst Indian
Muslims that India’s partition was actually the partition of
India’s Muslims who were divided first in two and then three.
30 Jinnah: Myth and Reality

Without commenting on the explicit irony in this statement, it

would have been disastrous for both India and Pakistan had India
stayed together in any form. For India, it would have meant
perpetual constitutional and political conflict between 60 percent
Hindus and 30 percent Muslims and between Hindu-majority
and Muslim-majority provinces.
The success that India has had in creating a secular
democracy has been largely because it has manageable Muslim
numbers, hence Nehru and Patel’s insistence on partition.
Indeed, the only Muslim-majority region of Kashmir in India is
one where India’s unity is tested. Similarly, the rigours of state
building have forced the lower peasantry of West Punjab to fill in
those professions that were, till 1947, considered Hindu
vocations such as banking or commerce, which have helped —
in Sumit Sarkar’s words — to create a real Muslim bourgeoisie
in the subcontinent. Some in this class now decry Pakistan
unable to appreciate the benefit they have gotten from partition.
The searing irony of course is that certain half-educated, self-
proclaimed pseudo-liberals who question today a process that
had roots in history would have been employed as little more
than peons in the local seth’s little ginning mill had it not been
for Pakistan. Of course, had Pakistan and India reconciled with
each other and not made a hatch job of the Kashmir issue, the
advantages of partition would have been manifold more and both
countries would have evolved towards each other instead of
away from it. Pakistan is a legal nation state, one of the two
successor states to erstwhile British India and duly recognised by
all countries of the world. A legal nation state does not need to
construct ideological frontiers, which, for the most part, are a
fallacy and not based on anything concrete.
Ironically, however, this view cuts against the grain of the
rationale for Pakistan that was given by its founding father,
 Was Pakistan created in the name of Islam? 31

Quaid-e-Azam Mahomed Ali Jinnah, who repeatedly described

Pakistan as a Hindu-Muslim settlement and necessary for peace,
tranquility and harmony for all people in the subcontinent. Far
from imagining India as an ideological enemy, Jinnah spoke of a
South Asian Monroe Doctrine, which would allow India and
Pakistan to stand together against external threats. At least till
December 1946, Jinnah was still pleading for a judicial
commission to resolve disputes between Congress and the
League to revive the Cabinet Mission Plan. Jinnah always had a
sense of South Asian unity above the successor states. After
Pakistan was created, Jinnah chose a Hindu, Jagannath Azad, to
write Pakistan’s first national anthem, indicating the inclusive
and pluralistic nature of the new state.
At the very least, he was not concerned about Pakistan’s
ideological frontiers when he agreed to Gandhi spending his last
days in Pakistan. Gandhi would have had he not been so tragically
assassinated. Incidentally, 64 years to this day, Jinnah sent Gandhi’s
son a message of condolence describing his loss to be the “loss of
humanity”. For three days, Radio Pakistan’s programming was
completely dedicated to the life and times of Mahatma Gandhi. Yet,
there was not even a whimper of protest from the founding fathers
about the invasion of ideological frontiers. Indeed, Pakistan’s flag
flew half-mast for three days in mourning.
The great irony of this ideological debate is that the self-styled
champions of Pakistan’s ideological frontiers are those who were
the staunchest opponents of the creation of Pakistan. One need not
remind the reader that Maulana Maududi proudly described the
idea of Pakistan as “Na-Pakistan” and slandered the Quaid-e-
Azam many times in public. Maulana Mufti Mahmud, the father
of Maulana Fazlur Rehman, declared in 1971, “Thank God we
were not part of the sin of making Pakistan.” Yet another self-
proclaimed champion of Pakistan’s ideological frontiers was Agha
32 Jinnah: Myth and Reality

Shorish Kashmiri, who belonged to the Majlis-e-Ahrar, which

opposed the creation of Pakistan tooth and nail and after partition
created the whole anti-Ahmeddiya sentiment to destabilise
Pakistan. The role of the ulema and parties like Majlis-e-Ahrar is
well documented in the Munir Report.

What was Jinnah after?

The crucial point in understanding where Jinnah was coming from

is his famous 14 points which deserve a reproduction as a whole:

1. The form of the future constitution should be federal with the

residuary powers vested in the provinces.

2. A uniform measure of autonomy shall be granted to all

provinces.

3. All legislatures in the country and other elected bodies shall be

constituted on the definite principle of adequate and effective
representation of minorities in every province without reducing
the majority in any province to a minority or even equality.

4. In the Central Legislative, Muslim representation shall not be

less than one-third.

5. Representation of communal groups shall continue to be by

means of separate electorate as at present, provided it shall be
open to any community at any time to abandon its separate
electorate in favor of a joint electorate.

6. Any territorial distribution that might at any time be necessary

shall not in any way affect the Muslim majority in the Punjab,
Bengal and the North West Frontier Province.
 Was Pakistan created in the name of Islam? 33

7. Full religious liberty, i.e. liberty of belief, worship and

observance, propaganda, association and education, shall be
guaranteed to all communities.

8. No bill or any resolution or any part thereof shall be passed in

any legislature or any other elected body if three-fourth of the
members of any community in that particular body oppose such
a bill resolution or part thereof on the ground that it would be
injurious to the interests of that community or in the alternative,
such other method is devised as may be found feasible and
practicable to deal with such cases.

9. Sindh should be separated from the Bombay presidency.

10. Reforms should be introduced in the North West Frontier

Province and Baluchistan on the same footing as in the other
provinces.

11. Provision should be made in the constitution giving Muslims

an adequate share, along with the other Indians, in all the
services of the state and in local self-governing bodies having
due regard to the requirements of efficiency.

12. The constitution should embody adequate safeguards for the

protection of Muslim culture and for the protection and
promotion of Muslim education, language, religion, personal
laws and Muslim charitable institution and for their due share in
the grants-in-aid given by the state and by local self-governing
bodies.

13. No cabinet, either central or provincial, should be formed

without there being a proportion of at least one-third Muslim
ministers.

14. No change shall be made in the constitution by the Central

Legislature except with the concurrence of the State's
contribution of the Indian Federation.
34 Jinnah: Myth and Reality

Points 1, 2, 3, 7, 8 and 14 represent Jinnah’s own views on what

the constitution of India should look like. The reference to
separate electorates was to rope in the pro-British Muslim League
faction led by Sir Muhammad Shafi but was amended by Jinnah to
include a room for eventual adoption of joint electorates. Jinnah
was looking for truly federal constitution for India where the
religion of its citizens would no longer be a bar in real terms
against them contributing in full measure. In this the most
important point was the reservation of residuary powers with the
provinces. All subsequent actions – including the adoption of
Lahore Resolution- have to be seen in the light of these 14 points
which represented the sine qua non and the irreducible minimum
that Jinnah had brought Muslims to concede on in order to achieve
Hindu Muslim Unity.