It cannot be emphasized enough that Jinnah unequivocally and unwaveringly stood for a Pakistan which would be impartial to religion i.e. it would be a state that would not impose religion top down and would instead be a state where every citizen of whatever creed would be first and foremost an equal citizen of the state.
This was not stated in the famous 11 August speech alone but in 30 odd other speeches he made during that crucial first year of our life as an independent state.
Significantly Jinnah did not countenance discrimination at the top. On 10 August 1947, Jinnah made the all important change to the oaths of office by dropping the reference to God and changing the words “solemnly swear” to “solemnly affirm” thereby indicating as clearly as possible that even an atheist could be the head of state, government or a minister in Pakistan. “Affirmation” of oaths is a secular mode. In English courts, witnesses are asked to swear in oath according to their own creed and if a witness indicates that he is an atheist, he affirms on his own conscience.
Jinnah as a London trained barrister knew only too well the difference between affirm and swear.
Jinnah was trying to convince his listeners of the Muslim modernist argument that a modern democratic state that treats its citizens equally and that does not discriminate against Non-Muslims is not against Islam.
Crucially the All India Muslim League under Jinnah’s leadership never passed a single resolution asking for an Islamic state or for Islamic principles. In 1943 when a group of Leaguers tried to pass a resolution to commit Pakistan to principles of Hukumat e Illahaya and the rightly guided Caliphs, Jinnah demurred calling such a resolution a censure on every Leaguer. The resolution was withdrawn at Jinnah’s request.
About ‘Pakistan ka matlab kiya’ slogan, Jinnah was blunt when he told his listeners that he had never endorsed such a slogan and that the Muslim League had never passed a resolution to that effect.
Significantly Jinnah never quoted the scripture or the Islamic canon during his lifetime despite championing Muslim nationalism. He ruled out the idea of ever allowing a priestly class to determine what Pakistan’s laws and constitution, stating that Pakistan shall not be a theocratic state to be run by priests with a divine mission.
Those who want to commit Pakistan to an exclusively Islamic polity marshal some quotes, few and far between, where Jinnah refers to Islamic principles of equality, justice and fair play. They refer especially to Jinnah’s speech on 25 January 1948 where he said that the future constitution of Pakistan would not be in conflict with Shariat because Islam stood for democracy and equality of mankind.
Jinnah was trying to convince his listeners of the Muslim modernist argument that a modern democratic state that treats its citizens equally and that does not discriminate against Non-Muslims is not against Islam.
It is understandable why as a politician would be forced to refer to Islam in these terms but this one speech and Jinnah’s other references to Islamic principles, which he qualified as equality for mankind and justice for all, few and far between meant that he wanted an exclusively Islamic state.
Before Jinnah, Kemal Ataturk during the war of independence had vociferously appealed to Islam to justify the push for republicanism by arguing that Islam was the most rational religion and he explained this in detail during his famous six-day speech. Kemal Ataturk had initially even made Islam the state religion of the Turkish republic in 1923 something, which it must be stated that Jinnah refused to do in Pakistan.
Both Ataturk and Jinnah, as fathers of their respective nations, recognised that Islam had a potent appeal for their Muslim followers and tasked with forming a nation out of a Muslim multitude, appeals to Islam were necessary to buttress their often secular agenda. Crucially though Ataturk lived long enough to undo the effects of that earlier rhetoric and in 1928 Turkey became a completely secular state.
These references to Islamic principles, few and far between, however have become a cautionary tale. Even though Jinnah very deliberately made sure no resolutions were passed either by the League or the Pakistan Constituent Assembly committing Pakistan to Islam, the ideologues seized upon Jinnah’s references to Islam and claimed that Jinnah always stood for an Islamic state.
Of course this flies in the face of reality, which is that right from 1910 when Jinnah became a member of the Indian legislature he consistently argued that religious dogma should be relegated to state policy most notably when he argued for interreligious marriages and the legal sanction for them and when he fought against child marriage.
In early 1948 when the West Punjab government tried to introduce Shariat i.e. Muslim personal law in the assembly, Jinnah was furious. The law was quietly withdrawn.
Jinnah’s modernist rhetoric on Islam was alluring but in the long run proved untenable. In his interview to Weldon James of Collier’s weekly on 25 August 1947, Jinnah told that Purdah was not mandated by the Quran. He said:
“The position of women is already equal in law to that of men... the institution of purdah, which is the result of tradition and not of the teachings of the Qur’an, will gradually disappear. In the modern state such a precaution is not necessary, and it is already on the way out.”
This is the problem when an avowedly secular politician makes a religious argument. It is entirely possible that Jinnah earnestly believed in the argument that Quran does not mandate Purdah but a significant percentage of Muslim religious clerics in Pakistan equally earnestly believe that Quran does mandate Purdah and seclusion of women. On a purely religious plane, Jinnah’s modernist idea of Islam was always going to lose out to the religious orthodoxy.
In retrospect Jinnah, who had earlier been so careful in keeping religious doctrine out of politics and had indeed been the harshest critic of Gandhi’s use of religion in politics, should not have made religious arguments because these were bound to be misinterpreted and misused.
Within six months of his death, his successors, who should have known better, passed the Objectives Resolution where they abandoned Jinnah’s long standing commitment to state impartiality and gave the same priests with a divine mission a foothold. The cautionary tale for secular politicians is to stay as far away from religious arguments to buttress their progressive politics as possible.