Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: The Search for Saladin

337 Pages·1997·22.41 MB·English

by  Akbar Ahmed

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Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic identity
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2 ‘I hugely enjoyed the book…a welcome and much needed reassessment of
t Jinnah’s reputation after decades of ill-informed propaganda and
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g criticism.’
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A Andrew Roberts, author of Eminent Churchillians
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4 ‘A courageous book, based on careful and original research. Professor
0 Ahmed has rendered all persons of goodwill an extremely important
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0 service.’
at Dr Julius Lipner, Director of the Dharam Hinduja Institute of Indic
e] Research, University of Cambridge
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Ce ‘Every generation needs to reinterpret its great men of the past. Akbar
T Ahmed, by revealing Jinnah’s human face alongside his heroic
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achievement, both makes this statesman accessible to the current age and
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B renders his greatness even clearer than before.’
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L Professor Francis Robinson, University of London
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I ‘A Mahabharata…readable, human orientated, multi-dimensional.
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y Unique. Superb.’
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d Professor Sharif al Mujahid, founder Director of Quaid-i-Azam Academy,
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d Karachi
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n Four men shaped the end of British rule in India: Nehru, Gandhi, Mountbatten
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o and Jinnah. We know a great deal about the first three, but Mohammed Ali
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Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, has mostly either been ignored or in the case of
Richard Attenborough’s hugely successful film, Gandhi, portrayed as a cold
megalomaniac, bent on the bloody partition of India.
Akbar Ahmed’s major study tells a different story of heroism and tragedy and of
backstage manoeuvring among the governing élite of the Raj, and argues for
Jinnah’s continuing relevance as contemporary Islam debates its future direction.
Akbar S.Ahmed is a Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge, and the author of
many books, including Discovering Islam (1988), Postmodernism and Islam
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(1992), and Living Islam (1993). He is the executive producer of a feature film
and a documentary on Jinnah.
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Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic
Identity
The search for Saladin
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London and New York
First published 1997
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of
thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
2 Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
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0 by Routledge
2 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
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u © 1997 Akbar S.Ahmed
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u All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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8 reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
2 mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
4 invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
0 information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
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6 writing from the publishers.
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at British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
] A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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nt Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Ce Ahmed, Akbar S.
T Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic identity: the search for Saladin/Akbar S.Ahmed.
E p. cm.
N Includes bibliographical references and index.
B 1. Jinnah, Mohammed Ali, 1876–1948. 2. India—Politics and
LI government—1919–1947. 3. Pakistan—History—1947– 4. Islam and
F state—Pakistan. 5. Statesmen—Pakistan—Biography. I. Title.
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DS385.J5A69 1997
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[ 954.03′5′092–dc21 97–10613
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b CIP
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e ISBN 0-203-99099-4 Master e-book ISBN
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ISBN 0-415-14965-7 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-14966-5 (pbk)
For Mina, Amineh and Arsallah
with love
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Contents
List of plates viii
2 Preface x
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2 Introduction: Seeking Saladin xv
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us List of maps xxvi
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2 Part I: Who’s Afraid of Mr Jinnah?
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0 1 Understanding Jinnah 2
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t Jinnah: a life 2
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e] The role of Jinnah’s family 11
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n Imagining Jinnah: why different people see different Jinnahs 19
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E Part II: Divide and Quit: The Road to the Partition and
N Independence of India
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Constructing the past 37
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y Hierarchy and purity: the clash of civilizations 49
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e Muslim awakening 58
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o 3 Jinnah’s Conversion 66
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w The causes of Jinnah’s conversion 66
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The passing of the flame: Iqbal and Jinnah 77
Crossing the Rubicon 85
4 Jinnah and the Pakistan Movement 94
Seeing Saladin: what Muslims saw in Jinnah 94
Gandhi and Ram Raj 109
The path to Pakistan 119
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5 Mountbatten: Last Viceroy and First Paki-Basher 128
Mountbatten’s mission 129
The clash of the titans 139
Paki-bashing 147
6 Partition: In the Heat of Passion 158
Romancing the Vicereine 158
Shielding the Vicereine 171
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us Part III: A Tryst with Destiny?
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A 7 Pakistan: Ethnic versus Religious Identity 188
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2 Jinnah’s Pakistan: the rising of the moon 189
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0 Jinnah’s passing: growing crisis 202
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t Jinnah as metaphor: ‘secularist’ or ‘fundamentalist’? 212
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n From crisis to crisis: sidelining Jinnah in Pakistan 223
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T From Anandamath to Ayodhya: Muslim fate in India 240
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N Bangladesh: the struggle for identity 258
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N Epilogue: Preparing for the Next Millennium 270
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d Index 296
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Plates
1 Jinnah as a young barrister 4
2 Jinnah with his sister Fatima, on his right, and Dina, his daughter, on 12
2 his left
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0 3 Photograph of Ruttie, wife of Jinnah 15
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t 4 Fatima (to the right) and Dina (on the extreme left) weep at the grave 19
us of Jinnah, 12 September 1948
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u 5 Jinnah in Delhi with the central Mughal mosque in the background, 103
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April 1943; photograph courtesy of Yahya Bakhtiar
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2 6 Jinnah being received at Jullundur railway station; photograph 105
4 courtesy of Yahya Bakhtiar
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6: 7 Close-up photograph at Jullundur station showing Jinnah 106
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t uncomfortable when surrounded by an unruly mob; photograph
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r 8 Jinnah arriving on the soil of Pakistan for the first time with Fatima 109
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n Jinnah, Karachi, 7 August 1947; photograph courtesy of Douglas
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Crook
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E 9 Map of a projected Pakistan in the mid-1940s which includes Punjab 123
N and Bengal as full provinces in Pakistan
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I 10 The author with Countess Mountbatten and Lady Pamela Hicks in 134
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11 Nehru with the Mountbattens in a photograph which hints at their 164
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b 12 Jinnah replying to the address by Lord Mountbatten in the Constituent 191
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e Assembly in Karachi, August 1947
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a 13 Refugees coming to Pakistan in trains, summer 1947 199
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personnel, on its last journey in Karachi in September 1948
16 A cartoon in the Friday Times (30 May to 5 June 1996) of a 1,000-rupee 235
note with Jinnah crying at the condition of his Pakistan
17 A cartoon in the Friday Times (16–22 May 1996) depicting an India 279
obsessed with Pakistan
18 A cartoon in the Jang (26 May 1996) showing the corruption in 280
Pakistan, with politicians fighting each other for plots of land while
ignoring the Hindu menace
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