Customer Reviews

Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: The Search for Saladin

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

First of all: I am a hindu. Even today it is painfull for me to see that our Mother India is divided. I used to detest Mr. Jinnah, like most other hindus. However, I reached a point when I realised that I had only read the hindu version of South Asian history. I needed to view our history through the eyes of a muslim. Jinnah cannot be blamed for his security measure i.e. his decision to demand a separate muslim state. Had the Congress treated Jinnah in a more civilized manner, Pakistan could have been avoided. But Nehru, clinging to his illusions, viewing himself as the new "Kaiser-E-Hind" did not make room for people who would threaten his position in the Congress Party. Just as he squeezed Netaji Bose out of the leadership, he saw to that Jinnah was shoved into to the darkness as well. I regret the creation of Pakistan, as would Jinnah. But one should not ignore the fact that Jinnah was the greatest Indian politician of the twentieth century. I don't agree with Mr. Akbar Ahmed on all issues, but there is no doubt that he has done a magnificent job. I really enjoyed the book.

The author asks two basic questions: (1) was Jinnah justified in demanding a 2-state solution (India and Pakistan as separate nations) upon the demise of British imperial control? (2) in view of chaotic conditions in Pakistan, including ethnic rivalries, corruption, periodic resort to military rule, and the threat of Islamic fundamentalism--is Jinnah relevant today (other than as a George Washington-type national icon)?

The author answers "yes" on both counts, i.e. that in demanding the establishment of Pakistan, Jinnah responded to the legitimate needs and aspirations of Muslims on the Indian subcontinent; and, secondly, that Jinnah's vision for Pakistan is relevant today. While not quite a "secular Moslem", Jinnah nonetheless definitely rejected the idea of theocracy or the overly zealous imposition of Islam on others. As a constitutional lawyer trained in Britain, he argued for a broad interpretation of community, in which the rights and interest of minorities and non-Muslims would be respected within the framework of a Moslem Pakistan.

The author laments that Jinnah died shortly after the foundation of Pakistan, and was not able to lead his nation through its formative years, but feels nonetheless that Pakistanis today could see the way to solutions to their many problems if they adhered to Jinnah's sense of moderation, tolerance, and wisdom.

While definitely sympathetic to Jinnah and Pakistan, the author's treatment of his subject is generally even-handed and fair-minded.

An interesting book, no doubt. The author is trying trying to convince us that the odds were stacked up against Pakistan from the beginning, and it never really had a chance. He talks about the ideals of Jinnah - clearly a good man, but was he misguided? I was unconvinced even after reading this book of the real need for Pakistan. There has been such a lot of blood split in both India, Pakistan and Kashmir and for what benefit? I believe tht much of this could have been avoided with a united sub-continent. The author finally outlines some of Pakistan's disasterous history since 1947 - just reinforcing my belief that Jinnah made one big mistake. Daniel Green 16/3/98 ddg@markimp.co.uk

There appears to be a great deal of angst attached to the cult of personality and the legend of Jinnah. He is an enigmatic figure portrayed by historians as both pragmatic and erratic. Prof. Ahmed seems to have decided to discuss Jinnah as the main driving force behind the formation of Pakistan. The reasons for the creation of this state are mixed and can be argued from many perspectives. As a reviewer noted below much of Pakistan's population is not Indian at all, but speaks Iranian languages and was separated by the British from Afghanistan and Iran during the late 19th and early 20th century. The western Panjab and Sind were both predominantly Muslim regions along the periphery of Indian civilization, but Sind and parts of the Panjab have had divergent histories from that of most of India. The invasions of Cyrus and Darius' Persian empire annexed the area that is now Pakistan and then Alexander the Great did the same. The empires of India's golden age, the Mauryans and the Guptas did not directly rule the area of Pakistan, but did exact tribute. Buddhism gained a major foothold in Pakistan before Islam and a large minority of Zoroastrians can be traced through the many ruins found mostly in the Afghani province of the Northwest Frontier and other areas. Kashmir is also part of this divergent region and analysis of the past helps to better understand why Muslim leaders of British India chose to band together and call for a Muslim state in the northwest. Many appear to have been Panjabis, while Muslims throughout thought it a good idea to establish a homeland for all the Muslims of British India. This was not a very realistic goal since Hindus were and are the majority in areas outside of Pakistan and Kashmir. Bangladesh is the one unusual exception as most of its inhabitants were converts to Islam. Political reality seems to have shaped the actions of Jinnah, who indeed played all the big players against each other. He sided with the British when it suited his purpose and then sided with Gandhi when necessary. All of it was done for a movement spearheaded by Mr. Jinnah, but not exclusively his. Prof. Ahmed points out that the actions of Muslims outside of Pakistan were major contributing factors to the formation of Pakistan. This appears to have been an example of Muslim solidarity that projected unrealistic goals and promises. Prof. Ahmed examines the many varied dimensions of Islam's role in Panjab, Sind, Kashmir, the Northwest Frontier, and Baluchistan and delineates the many varied factions and ethnic groups that have continued to argue amongst themselves in-spite of a common religion (that can be sub-divided into Sunni and Shi'i sects). The residue of Indian resentment is pervasive. Indian historical views favor an equally unrealistic vision of British India as being reborn into a new Indian juggernaut with a population greater than China's. Unfortunately Indian acknowledgement of facts and figures about Pakistan aren't always accurate. Few know about Pakistan's varied ethnic mosaic or its contensious religious factions. Old claims by Afghanistan that western Pakistan should be returned to Afghan sovreignity are also absent in the minds of Indians, who seem to view Pakistan as an Urdu-speaking Indo-Muslim breakaway region that has left a legacy of war and hatred. Without a full view of Pakistan's origins all that can be understood is that it is time to look to the future rather than to a past that cannot be changed.

Akbar Ahmad's approach is fairly unique and provides an interesting perspective on Jinnah and the Pakistan movement. Although he fails to check his own biases in favor of Pakistan and Jinnah, this is a much more honest account of history than otherwise available. It appears that Ahmad had the Pakistani audience in mind as he wrote this work; some of the metaphors and linguistic style are clear indications of that. The book is well written and places the life of Jinnah and the Pakistan movement within a larger context which helps to explain many events and ideas, both in history and in the present. At times, one feels the text to be repetitious; it can certainly be condensed to make it more reader-friendly. I enjoyed reading this book and learnt many things about the Indian sub-continent, the British colonial rule, Jinnah, Gandhi, Nehru, Mountbatten, the Muslim League, the Indian Congress, and about many other events and ideas of relevance to Muslims and particularly to the Pakistanis. My gratitude to Mr. Ahmad for an excellent effort.

What I enjoyed about this book is the depth to which the author has researched existing literature and has been very independent in his analysis. He has given a human face to Jinnah and detailed his struggles and his obstacles in a very enlightening way.

Mr. Ahmed's masterful effort is a breath of fresh air (along with Stanley Wolpert's biography, "Jinnah of Pakistan") in helping delineate the truth on one of the world's great leaders. Too often, Jinnah has been defamed, or his importance marginalized, by writers and movie makers. Thanks to some powerful propaganda, due in large part to the likes of Attenborough and Mountbatten, Mr. Jinnah was depicted as being a haughty, cold and stubborn man. The reality was considerably different. Jinnah was a man of incredible intelligence and foresight. He realized that the British and the Hindu leadership, led by Nehru, Patel and even Gandhi, could not be trusted to care for the welfare of India's Muslim population. No better evidence of this could be the fact that the princely state of Hyderabad was attacked from seventeen sides the day Jinnah died. Mountbatten had clearly demonstrated his bias toward Nehru and the Hindus, facilitated by his own wife, Edwina, having a torrid affair with Nehru. Jinnah, being a man of principle, pragmatism and prescience, provided for freedom, a home and safe haven for hundreds of millions of people.

The author for the first time shows Jinnah as a person--not as the cold, and calculating robot that many others have depicted him to be. His strengths and weakness are laid out for everyone to see. Ahmed's thesis is that Jinnah is as significant to Muslims today as Saladin was to Muslims almost a millennium ago.

Many interesting subjects that are topics of dispute regarding Jinnah are covered in this work. Why is Jinnah relevant to Pakistan today? What were Jinnah's motives in pushing for Pakistan? How did Jinnah convert from being the most avid supporter of Hindu-Muslim unity to the strongest opponent of it? Was Jinnah secular? Was his plan for Pakistan a secular one, or one based on Islamic Law? All of these questions are answered satisfactorily. A must read for anyone who wishes to know anything regarding modern history of the Indian subcontinent!

Much of the historical discourse and social analysis in Pakistan is based on negative methodologies which seek to justify Pakistan's failures and shortcomings by pointing out similar problems that also exist in neighboring India. Instead of focusing their academic lens on the Pakistani situation, and be the view positive or negative, analyzing what is seen within their nation, scholars repeatedly use the tact of dismissing problems in Pakistan by discussions of parallel problems in India. Within this paradigm, Pakistani scholarship is defined by placing the country's problems in a less negative light in comparison to India's problems. This could be called the theory of self justification, but more aptly results in self negation. A vivid example of this methodology can be found in the book by Akbar S. Ahmed, "Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: the Search for Saladin". It is one of a great number of books published in Pakistan during 1997. Many of these books published in honor of Pakistan's fiftieth anniversary, such as Feroz Ahmed's "Ethnicity and Politics in Pakistan," and others such as the work by the linguist, Dr. Tariq Rehman, represent an effort to look objectively at topics such as Pakistani nation-building, society, cultural myths, domestic and foreign policy. Prior to this golden jubilee moment of self analysis, most books that graced the OUP or Vanguard shelves were basically biased and very much situated in the straight jacket of the two nation theory. This is not to criticize their nationalist orientation, all nations write nationalist histories, but an observation that historical discourse in Pakistan is dominated by negative images of India and Hinduism. In general, the majority of books in the field of the social sciences written in Pakistan have lacked theoretical basis and are short on angst and verve. Dr. Rahat, an intellectual in Karachi joked, "In Pakistan social scientists are more social than scientific!" However, since 1997, there have been several books written about the Bangladesh experience and other previously taboo and controversial issue, such as the recent book by Ahmad Saleem, "Blood Beaten Track", which does not lay the blame squarely in Indira Gandhi's lap, for conspiring to "Sink the Two Nation theory in the Bay of Bengal".

In Akbar S. Ahmed's book, "Search for Saladin", if judged by its cover, the fairly post modern title gives the impression that perhaps the book would be theoretically based and hopefully less biased than the standard fare offered up as state sponsored Pakistani scholarship. In this regard the book was a disappointment. Ahmed is a well know Pakistani scholar, and though a civil servant and therefore perhaps prone to rubbery research results stretching to accommodate the reigning regime, he is a fellow at Selwyn College, Cambridge and would probably get a wider reading audience in the West. Unfortunately, in this book he has fallen once again into the prevailing discourse of Pakistani historians who define their nation in the negative, in terms of what it is not. "We are not Hindus. We are not Indians. We will not be ruled by the Hindus. We do not practice the evil caste system. We do not mistreat our minorities. We do not attack our neighbors." Through the decades Pakistani writers have used this discourse of negation consistently describing their nation in contrast to Hindu India's other. There have been far too few examples of reflexivity, inward looking analysis.

In this book by Ahmed much of the discussion centers on communalism in India. He refers to books by Veena Das, Asghar Ali Engineer, Sarvepalli Gopal, Kumari Jayawardena, T.N. Madan, Ashish Nandy, Khushwant Singh, etc. He uses these Indian authors' work to prove his points about the sufferings of minorities in India, couched in the usual anti-Indian Pakistani-centric rhetoric. He never pauses to question why there are so many open and frank books about the plight of minorities in India and there are very few such books about the problems faced by minorities in Pakistan. He doesn't mention the bishop who blew his brains out on the city hall steps to protest continuing officially sanctioned harassment of the Christian community in Pakistan and the death sentence handed down to a young Christian boy. He fails to mention that Hindus and other minorities are delegated to second class citizens through their prejudicial voting system and blasphemy laws. Or that women are also second class citizens living under the burden of Hudood laws. He can not see the problems in his own nation, for he is too busy looking for problems in India. Once again, Pakistan is not looking at Pakistan for its own meaning, it is looking to India to justify its own failings. Akbar dwells extensively on rape during the Bombay riots of 1993, citing the suffering in several pages, but he dismisses rape by Pakistani soldiers in Bangladesh with less than one sentence. These types of examples are to be found throughout the book. It must be said that some of the most exciting and theoretically based and insightful scholarship in Pakistan is coming from the small group of feminist intellectuals associated with such centers as Simorgh, ASR, and Sahe in Lahore. In books purporting to be more objective and intellectual, such as, "Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: the Search for Saladin," the author though appearing to be sympathetic to the Bengalis and regretting the racism dealt out to them during their 24 years under West Pakistani domination, still does not mask his inherent bias, as can be seen in the following quote in which he relates a conversation he had with General Yaqub Khan, who "summed up the situation he faced before the military crackdown. Pakistan is like a Ming vase, priceless and delicate, he said. Mujib-ur-Rehman, leading the Bengali nationalist party the Awami League and later President of Bangladesh, is like a fly sitting on it. We have to smack the fly but make sure the vase does not break [said Yaqub]. Only a few months later his colleagues would use a hammer to swat the fly; they would smash the vase and the fly would be unharmed." (end quote)

Bangladesh's most famous hero of their liberation struggle, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the father of the nation, is unapologetically reduced to an insect in this 1997 Pakistani account.

In the entire narrative as presented by Akbar S. Ahmed, there is only one passing mention of the general elections called by Yahya Khan, but nothing about the cancellation of the National Assembly; nothing about Bhutto's political machinations. The creation of Bangladesh is blamed on Indian cunning and a incipient Bengali irredentialism. Ahmed ends his discussion of Bangladesh with numerous excerpts from newspapers about crime and violence in Dhaka and notes from Bengalis who complain about RAW's influence and the failure of the state. . . as if to say that the problems of East Pakistan were not solved by the creation of Bangladesh. This book is a good example of typical Pakistani apologist scholarship, where M.A. Jinnah is standing near the gates of heaven. . . it is the same old story with a fancy title.

The book is clearly wonderful as noted through the interest of the other readers. However I would like to point somethings out. Jinnah a)Never wished bloodshed b)Wanted a secular state. Pakistan's history maybe chaotic and others may regret it's existence but I for one feel, as do many others(Ihope), that Pakistan is not a failed state...it is a new state; still emerging...and Jinnah, as Akbar Ahmed points out in his book...for all his eccentricities..was and still is the greatest player of the great game that British India ever produced. He was not a god, he was not a villain, he was not wrong. He was just a human being doing what he felt was right and who are we to judge him wrong on that.