The most important part of Jinnah’s 11 August speech are the lines that follow and they are often the ones not quoted because they are seen as contradictory to the national narrative that is based on a deliberate misreading of the two nation theory. Jinnah said:
“You will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.”
Preceding these lines was this exhortation:
“You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State. As you know, history shows that in England, conditions, some time ago, were much worse than those prevailing in India today.
The Roman Catholics and the Protestants persecuted each other. Even now there are some States in existence where there are discriminations made and bars imposed against a particular class. Thank God, we are not starting in those days. We are starting in the days where there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State.
The people of England in course of time had to face the realities of the situation and had to discharge the responsibilities and burdens placed upon them by the government of their country and they went through that fire step by step. Today, you might say with justice that Roman Catholics and Protestants do not exist; what exists now is that every man is a citizen, an equal citizen of Great Britain and they are all members of the Nation.”
Jinnah harked back to the Catholic Protestant conflict in Great Britain as an example. He may well have also reflected on the conflict in Northern Ireland and the partition there. His most sanguine hope was the evolution of a completely secular Pakistani identity where a person’s faith would be his personal business and not the business of the state. While recognizing the Hindu Muslim discord that had necessitated the partition of British India, Jinnah hoped for a future where such differences would not matter.
Unfortunately this did not come to be. The truth is that Pakistan does discriminate on the basis of religion and a person’s faith is very often the business of the state. An example of this the National Identity Card form which forces every citizen to mandatorily list down their faith. It does not stop there. The state is not just content with having a Hindu or a Christian state their faith but requires a negative declaration from them as well i.e. “I am not a Muslim”.
Three and a half years ago my client, Mr Har Lal of Karachi, challenged this negative declaration before the Sindh High Court through me and my co-counsel Abdullah Nizamani, highlighting its contradiction with the Constitution's commitment to equality and protection of religious minorities. The case went on for three years and was finally decided in June of this year.
Our case was based in Constitution’s protection of religious minorities and freedom of religion. The current Pakistani constitution emphasises the rights of religious minorities. The Objectives Resolution – substantive part of the Constitution under Article 2A- says:
“Wherein adequate provision shall be made for the minorities to freely profess and practice their religions and develop their cultures.”
Article 20 of the Constitution reads:
Freedom to profess religion and to manage religious institutions.
Subject to law, public order and morality:-
(a) every citizen shall have the right to profess, practice and propagate his religion; and
(b) every religious denomination and every sect thereof shall have the right to establish, maintain and manage its religious institutions.
Accordingly the the Sindh High Court struck down the negative declaration for being in violation of the Constitution’s affirmation of equality.
Pakistan belongs to all citizens of Pakistan regardless of their faith.
It held:
Whilst Islam may be the State religion in terms of Article 2 of the Constitution and whilst Article 260(3) (a)&(b) thereof sets out the definition of a “Muslim” and clarifies that any person who does not fall within that definition is a “non-Muslim” while going on to include persons belonging to certain other faiths forming part of the religious minorities of the country within that fold for further clarity, that is not to say that the Constitution regards other religions to be lesser or non-Muslims to be less than equal citizens. Nor does it presume all citizens to be Muslims and envisage that non-Muslims be required to firstly deny an affiliation to Islam through a declaration that they are not Muslims for purpose of stating their own faith.
On the contrary, it is axiomatic that just as people practicing Islam identify as Muslim, people who profess the religion of Hinduism identify themselves as Hindus and people professing the religion of Christianity identify themselves as Christians, and so on, with each separate identification being mutually exclusive of others, and it thus being sufficient for adherents to any particular religion to simply state that they are followers of such faith… we would direct the Ministry of Interior and NADRA to redesign the Form set out in Schedule II of the Regulations so as to harmonise the declaration to be made by all citizens so that they may simply state their own faith without having to disavow an affiliation or association with any other religion.
This was an important restatement of what should have been commonsense. Pakistan belongs to all citizens of Pakistan regardless of their faith. That was spirit of Jinnah’s August 11 speech and the Sindh High Court’s decision will go a long way in realizing this.
The point is that Pakistan does not belong to Muslim citizens alone. The Constitution accords protection to all religious minorities but this so-called constitutional protection is practically non est on the ground. The court's verdict serves as a pivotal step toward realizing Jinnah's vision of an inclusive Pakistan, a nation where all citizens coexist as equal members of the same society, regardless of their religious beliefs.