JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE: THE UNHEEDED ADVICE OF PAKISTAN'S QUAID-I-AZAM

Asian Affairs ISSN: 0306-8374 (Print) 1477-1500 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/raaf20 JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE: THE UNHEEDED ADVICE OF PAKISTAN’S QUAID-I-AZAM Ilhan Niaz To cite this article: Ilhan Niaz (2016) JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE: THE UNHEEDED ADVICE OF PAKISTAN’S QUAID-I-AZAM, Asian Affairs, 47:3, 406-427, DOI: 10.1080/03068374.2016.1225902 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03068374.2016.1225902 Published online: 24 Oct 2016. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=raaf20 Download by: [Ilhan Niaz] Date: 24 October 2016, At: 05:55 Asian Affairs, 2016 Vol. XLVII, no. III, 406–427, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03068374.2016.1225902 JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE: THE UNHEEDED ADVICE OF PAKISTAN’S QUAID-I-AZAM ILHAN NIAZ Ilhan Niaz is Assistant Professor of History at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, and most recently the author of Old World Empires: Cultures of Power and Governance in Eurasia (New York: Routledge, 2014; India-Pakistan edition by Oxford University Press). His earlier works include The Culture of Power and Governance of Pakistan, 1947–2008 and An Inquiry into the Culture of Power of the Subcontinent. Email: [email protected] Introduction M.A. Jinnah, Pakistan’s founder and Quaid-i-Azam (Supreme Leader), passed away on 11 September 1948, some 13 months after Pakistan gained independence.1 Jinnah’s legacy is a contested one as liberals, conservatives, religious fundamentalists and others seek to define his vision and warp it to suit their own prejudices.2 Thus, while there is broad agreement within Pakistan that Jinnah’s vision has not been translated into reality there is equally broad disagreement about what that vision was. The desire to define Jinnah as one type of leader has, in the pursuit of simplicity, prevented Pakistan from engaging with and learning from the complexity inherent in the behaviour of historical actors as they cope with circumstances that are often beyond their control. The fact that Jinnah never dictated a political or ideological testament has added to the potential for confusion – one can, for example, selectively quote his statements from Eid messages and religious occasions to make him out to be a religious conservative. What is most troubling is that Pakistani scholars and public intellectuals seem to have little interest in Jinnah’s comprehension of state power, how power ought to be used, and what real-world objectives were worth pursuing. This foray into Jinnah’s views on governance reveals that he was not a theoretician interested in scoring debating points. For Jinnah, power demanded responsibility, long-term planning, discretion and, above all else, pragmatism. In the Pakistani context it also meant wisely keeping in place those aspects of British India’s institutional development conducive to achieving the desired objectives. © 2016 The Royal Society for Asian Affairs JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE 407 Engaging with Jinnah’s opinions on state organization and orientation can be uncomfortable for many of Pakistan’s present-day constituencies. Apologists for Pakistan’s politically interventionist military have a hard time digesting Jinnah’s views on parliamentary sovereignty and civilian supremacy. American-inspired advocates of development jargon would find Jinnah’s stance on the civilian bureaucracy (which they regard as a “colonial” institution) to be appallingly conservative. Socialists and leftists cannot abide Jinnah’s strong commitment to industrialization in a capitalist framework. Religious fundamentalists simply cannot accept Jinnah’s enlightened views on religion and the state, his commitment to women’s emancipation, or his earnest desire to protect minorities in Pakistan. Ethno-nationalists, traditionalists and many liberals would reject Jinnah’s centralizing state-centric approach to many of Pakistan’s problems as well as his adamantine refusal to accord legitimacy to primordial identities once Pakistan had come into existence. As Pakistan heads into its eighth decade of existence as an independent country there is a great need to inject Jinnah’s actual views on the state into its national discourse. Politically unstable, economically under-achieving, demographically disastrous and ecologically ruinous, Pakistan’s present circumstances call for greater and more effective governance at all levels. Reconnecting with what Pakistan’s revered (though largely ignored) founder had to say on practical matters likely to face the country might help move the debate in a more informed and meaningful direction. Identifying the ‘sovereign’ in Pakistan Jinnah’s address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on 11 August 1947 is one of his most widely referred to public statements.3 This is due to Jinnah’s exposition of liberal views on the question of minorities and the relationship between the state and religion.4 The most important part of the address, however, is not Jinnah’s advice to the Constituent Assembly, sound as that advice has proved in the decades that followed. The cornerstone of the speech is that Jinnah is addressing soon-to-be-independent Pakistan’s ‘sovereign’ institution – the Constituent Assembly: I cordially thank you, with the utmost sincerity, for the honour you have conferred upon me – the greatest honour that is possible for this sovereign Assembly to confer – by electing me as your first President … . The Constituent Assembly has got two main functions to perform. The first is the very onerous and responsible 408 JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE task of framing our future constitution of Pakistan and the second of functioning as a full and complete sovereign body as the Federal Legislature of Pakistan … remember that you are now a sovereign legislative body and you have got all the powers. It, therefore, places on you the gravest responsibility as to how you should take your decisions.5 To Jinnah, the Constituent Assembly was Pakistan’s indivisible and absolute sovereign – all other agencies and institutions, including the office of the governor-general, stood subordinated to its law-making function. While a new constitution was being formulated by the Constituent Assembly an interim constitution (a modified version of the 1935 India Act) would remain in place. Under the interim set-up the governor-general did enjoy considerable executive power but this was clearly a transitional arrangement that did not diminish the fact that the sovereignty of British India had, through the British Parliament, been transferred to the constituent assemblies of India and Pakistan. As governor-general, Jinnah could advise the Constituent Assembly, as could the prime minister (Liaquat Ali Khan) and members of the cabinet, but only the assembly could decide what will be, and won’t be, part of Pakistan’s sovereign law. Jinnah was clear that sovereignty entailed responsibility. The Constituent Assembly was answerable for the performance of the state and for its own performance in terms of preparing a new constitution and passing such laws as were necessary. If the assembly failed to govern, and if it failed to live up to the reasonable expectation that it would draft a new constitution before it had sat for five years, then it would face accountability one way or the other. It simply wasn’t good enough to cast blame on circumstances or on individuals. As sovereign, the Constituent Assembly had to perform and Jinnah devotes much of his 11 August 1947 address to practical problems of administration and socioeconomic malpractices. In a parliamentary democracy the separation between the executive and the legislature is a constitutional fiction as the government is chosen directly from the members of the assembly. This has the effect of making the assembly directly responsible for the executive function in a manner fundamentally different from an American-style democracy with three distinct branches of government. Given Jinnah’s prestige and popularity, as well as the considerable authority he exercised as governor-general under the interim constitution, the government and the Constituent Assembly sought to co-opt him as much as possible.6 Jinnah’s focus remained on rehabilitating the state machinery and doing so in a manner as consistent as possible with the JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE 409 sovereignty of the Constituent Assembly. Jinnah wanted to ensure that Pakistan’s parliament would have a state to exercise sovereignty over and this meant restoring the executive function throughout Pakistan. Civilian supremacy The partition of India created a chaotic situation and betrayed failures at the planning and implementation stages of what should have been a fairly predictable exercise. Partition had an institutional aspect, as it required that administrative and military personnel be divided between the successor states alongside economic and financial assets. The bloody and forced exchange of populations, with more than 10 million uprooted and 1 million killed in communal violence, represented a potentially mortal danger to Pakistan given its smaller size and proportionately greater suffering.7 Squabbles with India on the accession of some of the princely states (Kashmir, Hyderabad, Junagadh) led to the first India-Pakistan war over Kashmir (1947–1949). India refused to transfer to Pakistan the share of military assets and withheld financial assets until February 1948. Under the circumstances, Jinnah attached top-most priority to rebuilding the Pakistan armed services and pushed ahead with important policy decisions. These included the allocation of some two-thirds of Pakistan’s budget to defence, moving towards rapid nationalization of the armed forces personnel so that the British officers retained could be dismissed at the earliest possible opportunity, and organizing the evacuation of Pakistan administrative and defence personnel from India by sea and air after the overland routes became unsafe.8 These measures were implemented rapidly, on the authority of the civilian leadership, and led to some grumbling in the officer corps about how decisions were being made. Jinnah unequivocally threw his weight behind the government on 14 June 1948 while addressing officers at the Staff College in Quetta: I have no doubt in my mind, from what I have seen and from what I have gathered, that the spirit of the Army is splendid, the morale is very high, and what is very encouraging is that every officer and soldier, no matter what race or community to which he belongs, is working as a true Pakistani. If you all continue in that spirit and work as comrades, as true Pakistanis, selflessly, Pakistan has nothing to fear. One thing more. I am persuaded to say this because during my talks with one or two very high-ranking officers I discovered that they did not know the implications of the Oath taken by the troops of Pakistan. Of course, an oath is only a matter of form; what is more important is the true spirit and the heart. 410 JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE But it is an important form and I would like to take the opportunity of refreshing your memory by reading the prescribed oath to you: “I solemnly affirm, in the presence of Almighty God, that I owe allegiance to the Constitution and the Dominion of Pakistan (mark the words Constitution and the Government of the Dominion of Pakistan) and that I will as in duty bound, honestly and faithfully serve in the Dominion of Pakistan Forces and go within the terms of my enrolment wherever I may be ordered by air, land or sea … .” As I have said just now, the spirit is what really matters. I should like you to study the Constitution which is in force in Pakistan at present and understand its true constitutional and legal implications when you say that you will be faithful to the Constitution of the Dominion. I want you to remember and if you have time enough you should study the Government of India Act, as adapted for use in Pakistan, which is our present Constitution, that the executive authority flows from the Head of the Government of Pakistan, who is the Governor-General and, therefore, any command or orders that may come to you cannot come without the sanction of the Executive Head. This is the legal position.9 Jinnah had addressed the armed services on other occasions since Pakistan’s independence. In British India, Jinnah had been a leading advocate of recruiting more Indians to the officer corps of the armed services.10 As a member of the Indian Legislative Assembly, Jinnah had also spoken on legislation and matters pertaining to the armed services in British India.11 During his four decades of engagement with issues related to the armed services in India, Jinnah had always assumed that the British Indian configuration of decision-making characterized by civilian supremacy was unshakeable. Three months before his death, however, Jinnah seems to have been sufficiently worried by the turn of events to remind officers of their oath and assert that it was their duty to uphold the constitution. Had Jinnah lived longer, it is likely that Pakistan would have managed its transition to national armed forces without the loss of civilian supremacy. For Jinnah, the constitutional superiority of the civilian leadership was sacrosanct and had to be maintained if Pakistan was to realize its potential. Jinnah also understood that ultimately it was the quality and authenticity of the civilian state apparatus that would determine how well the political leadership performed and building the bureaucracy was essential to consolidating Pakistan. A merit-based, apolitical and professional civil service Jinnah had enormous respect, bordering on reverence, for the British Indian administrative legacy and valued the apolitical meritocracy of the All-India Services (AIS) that had officered the civilian bureaucracy JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE 411 during the Raj. This respect had deep roots in Jinnah’s experience of politics and law. In 1912, a nine-member Royal Commission on the Public Services in India was appointed by Parliament (in England). This Commission travelled to India and interviewed Jinnah on 11 March 1913. Jinnah was asked a number of questions that revealed his thinking on the civil service structure of British India. Asked by the Commission what he thought of open competitive recruitment through examinations, Jinnah replied: The system in my opinion is the best that can be thought of to test the fitness of men who are to be placed in different branches of the service. A man who passes the competitive test must be ordinarily a man above the average abilities and character … though it may not be perfect and certainly it is not free from shortcomings and defects which are more matters of details. I think it is the best test of a man’s abilities or character and the least blamable septum one can imagine to elect men for service.12 Asked to elaborate upon the faults of the system as it existed at the time, Jinnah deplored the fact that promises of fair play had not been kept and due to the expense of travelling to England to participate in the examinations only about 65 out of the 1,200 strong corps of Indian Civil Service (ICS) officers were Indian. Jinnah asserted that this de facto racial discrimination had deprived the civil service of a broader pool of qualified recruits and demanded that simultaneous examinations should be held in India and England.13 Jinnah was also asked what he thought of alternative systems of recruitment to public service and this elicited a vehement response: I approve of the open competitive examination in principle. In my opinion, any other method such as selection or nomination would be most fatal to the efficient working of the administration of India and will certainly lend itself to nepotism and jobbery of the worst kind. In a service like the Civil Service of India, which means the highest posts of the greatest responsibilities, no other criterion should be introduced except the fitness, and in my opinion there is none other that human ingenuity can invent for the present to beat the competitive test … . There should be one test and one kind of examination for all, to recruit to the highest service in the land, irrespective of the question of caste, creed, or race or province.14 After independence, Jinnah saw to it that the Central Superior Services (CSS) were rapidly reconstituted and recruitment commenced through combined open competitive examinations, a practice that Pakistan still retains. True to his word, once in power, Jinnah practically abolished quotas for recruitment with exceptions granted only to the Scheduled Castes.15 Under Jinnah, the approved recruitment policy was to recruit 412 JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE 15 per cent from eligible candidates that did not yet maintain domicile in Pakistan, six per cent of seats were reserved for Scheduled Castes, and the rest (79 per cent) were to be filled on the basis of open competition amongst candidates within Pakistan.16 In spite of Pakistan’s precarious financial situation, successful candidates who joined the Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS) and Pakistan Foreign Service (PFS) were sent abroad to Oxford/Cambridge and Fletchers (Boston), respectively, for one year of academic education and training on top of their two years of training within Pakistan. The foreign training component of Pakistan’s administrative elite was abandoned by the Ayub Khan military regime (1958–1969), which replaced it with a multitude of short-term trips and courses that were on offer from the United States – these basically became junkets. The strict adherence to merit was abandoned in the mid-50s to placate provincial sentiments and formalized in the 1973 constitution as a democratic consensus.17 Meritocracy in recruitment and rigorous training needed to be accompanied by impartiality and neutrality on the part of the administrative elite. Jinnah understood neutrality to comprise three essential qualities. First, it meant that civil servants, while entitled to a private political opinion, were not entitled to political affiliation or membership of any political party or any organization that could dilute their loyalty to the state. Such political, religious or ideological orientations compromised the objectivity of state servants in assessing and responding to situations. Second, neutrality meant that even if a civil servant disagreed with a policy or a decision they would do their duty and implement it to the best of their ability provided that it was in accordance with the constitution. Thus, civil servants were bound (somewhat like military officers) to obey lawful directives even if they disagreed with the decision in question. The responsibility for making decisions belonged solely to the sovereign (i.e. parliament / central or provincial cabinets / prime minister or chief ministers). The electorate would undertake the accountability of the sovereign at the appropriate intervals through the ballot box. Third, it was the duty of civil servants to provide their honest advice to each other and to the government. Here, neutrality demanded that civil servants display moral courage and speak their minds so that they furnish the best advice they were capable of providing. The sovereign might well overrule them or not accept their advice in full but that was not the civil servant’s problem. On 14 April 1948, Jinnah addressed civil service officers in Peshawar and spelled out what he meant by impartiality: JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE 413 The first thing that I want to tell you is this, that you should not be influenced by any political pressure, by any political party or individual politician. If you want to raise the prestige and greatness of Pakistan, you must not fall a victim to any pressure, but do your duty as servants to the people and the State, fearlessly and honestly. Service is the backbone of the State. Governments are formed, Governments are defeated, Prime Ministers come and go, Ministers come and go, but you stay on, and, therefore, there is a very great responsibility placed on your shoulders. You should have no hand in supporting this political party or that political party, this political leader or that political leader – this is not your business. Whichever Government is formed according to the constitution, and whoever happens to be the Prime Minister or Minister coming into power in the ordinary constitutional course, your duty is not only to serve that Government loyally and faithfully, but at the same time, fearlessly, maintaining your high reputation, your prestige, your honour, and the integrity of your service … . While impressing this upon you on your side, I wish also to take the opportunity of impressing upon our leaders and politicians in the same way that if they ever try to interfere with you and bring political pressure to bear upon you, which leads to nothing but corruption, bribery and nepotism … they are doing nothing but disservice to Pakistan.18 A few weeks earlier, speaking to officers in East Bengal, Jinnah impressed upon his audience the need for impartiality and service: Those days are gone when the country was ruled by the bureaucracy … . You have to do your duty as servants; you are not concerned with this political party or that political party; that is not your business. It is a business of politicians to fight out their case under the present constitution or the future constitution that may ultimately be framed. You, therefore, have nothing to do with this party or that party … it is up to you now to act as true servants of the people even at the risk of any Minister or Ministry trying to interfere with you in the discharge of your duties as civil servants. I hope it will not be so but even if some of you have to suffer as a victim – I hope it will not happen – I expect you to do so readily. We shall of course see to it that there is security for you and safeguards … . You do not belong to the ruling class; you belong to the servants. Make the people feel that you are their servants and friends, maintain the highest standard of honour, integrity, justice and fair-play.19 Jinnah also conveyed to civil servants “both Central and Provincial” that they had “a great responsibility” and a “magnificent opportunity” to help build the state services in Pakistan.20 This responsibility would only be discharged if the civil service remained neutral in political conflicts and focused on cultivating professionalism and integrity. Pakistan needed a civil service that manifested these qualities in much greater abundance than the AIS of the British Raj. This was because Jinnah envisioned an industrial revolution in Pakistan that would create a modern society. The state in Pakistan would thus take up tasks that the Raj had never 414 JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE contemplated nor prepared for in the technical or operational sense. If state power in Pakistan expanded while state competence and integrity diminished then the modernizing project would never be able to succeed. After Jinnah’s death, the bureaucracy became increasingly involved in politics and the Muslim League leadership sought to use it to stay in power. That the Constituent Assembly lost legitimacy and popular support after it failed to finish the task of approving a new constitution in 1951 (it had been constituted in 1947 on basis of the 1946 elections held in British India) and was still debating basic principles in 1952 further eroded its moral authority. Once the civil service elite (and military) openly intervened in politics with the overthrow of the Prime Minister Khwaja Nazimuddin in April 1953 and the dissolution of the first Constituent Assembly it became difficult to maintain even the appearance of neutrality. With the advent of the Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP) government in December 1971, the backlash ended up politicizing the bureaucracy even further as purges combined with thousands of political appointments and mass confiscations of private industrial and commercial assets created a more powerful and far less disciplined bureaucracy. To this day, Pakistan’s state apparatus has not recovered from the change in mentality that the late-1960s and 1970s brought about. Industrial revolution Jinnah had engaged with the problem of Muslim socioeconomic backwardness for decades in British India.21 For the most part, Jinnah felt that the Muslims had failed to rise to the challenge of modernity and that after they lost their political and military position to the British they retreated into the delusional world of traditionalism, which, in turn, reinforced their backwardness with each passing generation. Jinnah sought to revive the temporal power of the Muslims of South Asia and eventually realized that the desired renaissance necessitated the creation of a separate sovereign state.22 With the emergence of Pakistan, the question of what ‘should’ be done was replaced with the more serious and sobering matter of figuring out how to achieve the desired objective.23 In 1945, the Muslim League had drawn up plans for economic development after the British exit from South Asia but these plans were predicated on a smooth transition and assumed that India and Pakistan would not get locked in an antagonistic relationship. The communal holocaust of 1947, the flight of the property-owning Hindu and Sikh communities from West Pakistan, and the realization that JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE 415 relations with India were unlikely to become cooperative any time soon forced a serious rethink. Six weeks after independence, Jinnah restated the original goal: If Pakistan is to play its proper role in the world to which its size, manpower and resources entitle it, it must develop industrial potential side by side with its agriculture and give its economy an industrial bias. By industrializing our State, we shall decrease our dependence on the outside world for necessities of life, we will give more employment to our people and will also increase the revenues of the State.24 In order to prepare a new plan for achieving this goal under existing conditions, Jinnah and the central government took up the task of developing an industrial policy with the advice and input of commercial and business leaders. On 2 April 1948, the new policy was ready and it received Jinnah’s approval and had the support of the business community and bureaucracy, which helped ensure its longevity until 1972, when Pakistan decided to experiment with socialism and derailed its breathtakingly fast industrial revolution.25 The main points of the policy were: The policy called for the adoption of a mixed economy with emphasis on rapid industrialization. It was decided that the Government would invest in heavy industry and would only manufacture arms and ammunitions of war, start generation of hydro-electric power, and build railway cars, telephones, telegraphs and wireless apparatus. All the other industries were to be set up by the private sector. Foreign investments were welcome provided Pakistani citizens were to have at least 51 per cent share in all the projects. The private sector was encouraged to prepare goods from the raw material available in the country and with guaranteed markets at home and abroad. To sum up, the main targets were expansion of production, especially of consumer goods industries, maximum promotion of private sector, and enhancing export earnings. Concession in Income Tax and exploration of new industrial enterprises were also introduced in the policy.26 The emergency situation created by the partition of South Asia helped the government centralize revenue collection and assume control over the disposal of evacuees’ property, including the small-scale manufacturing units abandoned by the thousands by Hindu and Sikh owners. The first central attempts at economic planning were also made in 1948 and 1949 so that, for instance, in 1948, the Sindh government received sanction for Rs. 130 million to be spent on industrialization.27 By April 1949, the Ministry of Economic Affairs had nearly 200 projects in the process of approval or examination and would formalize its planning functions with the creation of an Economic Policy Branch.28 Jinnah also authorized the expansion of the port at Chittagong in East Bengal and personally outlined Pakistan’s commercial development policy. These were impressive 416 JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE efforts by any standard but they truly stand out when viewed in the context of the terrible violence and dislocation of Pakistan’s first two years. Sustaining and improving this momentum would only be possible if Pakistan was internally stable and at peace.29 While perfect peace and stability were unattainable, one thing that was clear to Jinnah was that Pakistan needed to remain a substantively secular state and avoid pandering to religious conservatives who had, for the most part, opposed Pakistan’s creation but were now keen to reinvent themselves as its ideological and spiritual guardians. Substantive secularism Jinnah wasn’t particularly interested in labels and greatly appreciated that British India had been a secular state that had served as an incubator for a range of institutions and political practices necessary for constitutional democracy. Without any fanfare, Pakistan (like India) could remain a secular state that aspired to become an industrialized democracy with a free-market (unlike India) orientation, administered by an apolitical merit-based civil service, and defended by a powerful military that was loyal to the constitution and subordinate to the political and bureaucratic civilian leadership. Secularism would help inoculate Pakistan from the virus of sectarianism that had long plagued Muslim polities. It would also preserve Pakistan from the cynical and self-serving manipulations of parties like the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) or fundamentalist movements like the Majlis-i-Ahrar who had opposed the Pakistan Movement and now sought to redeem themselves as the standard bearers of ‘Islamic ideology’ in the newly independent country. The horrors of partition further underscored the need to put the communal genie back in the bottle. Jinnah comprehended with absolute clarity the dangers inherent in mixing religion with the state and advised the Constituent Assembly accordingly in his capacity as its President and the governor-general designate of Pakistan on 11 August 1947: I know there are people who do not quite agree with the division of India and the partition of the Punjab and Bengal. Much has been said against it, but now that it has been accepted, it is the duty of every one of us to loyally abide by it and honourably act according to the agreement which is now final and binding on all. But you must remember, as I have said, that this mighty revolution that has taken place is unprecedented. One can quite understand the feeling that exists between the two communities wherever one community is in majority and the other is in minority. But the question is, whether it was possible or practicable to act otherwise than what has been done. A division had to take place. On both sides, in Hindustan JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE 417 and Pakistan, there are sections of people who may not agree with it, who may not like it, but in my judgement there was no other solution and I am sure future history will record its verdict in favour of it. And what is more, it will be proved by actual experience as we go on that was the only solution of India’s constitutional problem. Any idea of a united India could never have worked and in my judgement it would have led us to terrific disaster. Maybe that view is correct; maybe it is not; that remains to be seen. All the same, in this division it was impossible to avoid the question of minorities being in one Dominion or the other. Now that was unavoidable. There is no other solution. Now what shall we do? Now, if we want to make this great State of Pakistan happy and prosperous, we should wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of the people, and especially of the masses and the poor. If you will work in co-operation, forgetting the past, burying the hatchet, you are bound to succeed. If you change your past and work together in a spirit that every one of you, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what is his colour, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges, and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make. I cannot emphasize it too much. We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim community, because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on, and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnavas, Khatris, also Bengalis, Madrasis and so on, will vanish. Indeed if you ask me, this has been the biggest hindrance in the way of India to attain the freedom and independence and but for this we would have been free people long long ago. No power can hold another nation, and specially a nation of 400 million souls in subjection; nobody could have conquered you, and even if it had happened, nobody could have continued its hold on you for any length of time, but for this. Therefore, we must learn a lesson from this. 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. 418 JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal and 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.30 Jinnah’s position as Pakistan’s governor-general designate was clear. Religion was a private matter.31 The state was to remain separate from religion. All Pakistanis would have equal rights and be equal citizens – something that was not possible in a state with an official religion. The Muslims of South Asia had not escaped from the clutches of a pseudosecular Hindu Raj in order to impose a religious or sectarian order in their new homeland. Such an order, even if contemplated by some, was not practical given Pakistan’s own diversity. Pakistan’s democracy would draw moral and psychological inspiration from Islam and Islamic principles, but beyond that religion would have no practical or institutional role to play in the organization and governance of the state: The constitution of Pakistan has yet to be framed by the Pakistan Constituent Assembly. I do not know what the ultimate shape of this constitution is going to be, but I am sure that it will be of a democratic type, embodying the essential principles of Islam. Today, they are as applicable in actual life as they were 1,300 years ago. Islam and its idealism have taught us democracy. It has taught equality of men, justice and fair-play to everybody. We are the inheritors of these glorious traditions and are fully alive to our responsibilities and obligations as framers of the future constitution of Pakistan. In any case Pakistan is not going to be a theocratic State – to be ruled by priests with a divine mission. We have many nonMuslims – Hindus, Christians, and Parsis – but they are all Pakistanis. They will enjoy the same rights and privileges as any other citizens and will play their rightful part in the affairs of Pakistan.32 While according Islam an inspirational role, much as Judeo-Christian values are said to inspire Western democracy or the Protestant ethic allegedly animates modern capitalism, Jinnah ruled out the possibility of Pakistan becoming a theocracy and/or being ruled by priests. That Pakistan was a Muslim-majority country meant that Islam would inevitably play a role in society and politics, providing guidance and ideals, but the state would not internalize Islam in the constitutional or organizational sense: The great majority of us are Muslims. We follow the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). We are members of the brotherhood of Islam in which all are equal in right, dignity and self-respect. Consequently, we have a special and a very deep sense of unity. But make no mistake: Pakistan is not a theocracy or anything like it. Islam demands from us the tolerance of other creeds, and we welcome in closest association with us all those who, of whatever creed, are themselves willing and ready to play their part as true and loyal citizens of Pakistan.33 JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE 419 Whether addressing an internal or external audience, Jinnah’s position on religion and the state is unambiguously in favour of keeping the two at a safe distance from each other. Adopting a state religion, empowering the priestly class, transferring sovereignty to God, or requiring governance to conform to scripture and religious traditions, were not, in Jinnah’s view, serious options for a society as complex as Pakistan. But, there was a catch, one that perhaps eluded Jinnah at the time but came to haunt Pakistan just six months after his death when, in March 1949, the Constituent Assembly passed the Objectives Resolution, which serves as the preamble to Pakistan’s present constitution: Whereas sovereignty over the entire Universe belongs to Almighty Allah alone, and the authority to be exercised by the people of Pakistan within the limits prescribed by Him is a sacred trust; And whereas it is the will of the people of Pakistan to establish an order – Wherein the state shall exercise its powers and authority through the chosen representatives of the people; Wherein the principles of democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance and social justice, as enunciated by Islam, shall be fully observed; Wherein the Muslims shall be enabled to order their lives in the individual and collective spheres in accordance with the teaching and requirements of Islam as set out in the Holy Quran and Sunnah; Wherein adequate provisions shall be made for minorities freely to profess and practice their religions and develop their cultures; Wherein the territories now included in or in accession with Pakistan and such other territories as may hereafter be included in or accede to Pakistan shall form a Federation wherein the units will be autonomous with such boundaries and limitations on their powers and authority as may be prescribed; Wherein shall be guaranteed fundamental rights, including equality of status, of opportunity and before law, social, economic and political justice, and freedom of thought, expression, belief, faith, worship and association, subject to law and public morality; Wherein adequate provision shall be made to safeguard the legitimate interests of minorities and backward and depressed classes; Wherein the independence of the judiciary shall be fully secured; Wherein the integrity of the territories of the Federation, its independence all its rights, including its sovereign rights on lands, sea and air, shall be safeguarded; So that the people of Pakistan may prosper and attain their rightful and honoured place amongst the nations of the World and make their full contribution towards international peace and progress and happiness of humanity.34 The catch was that, as Jinnah himself had taken care to emphasize, the Constituent Assembly was the sovereign body. Jinnah had advised the sovereign body to the best of his ability, to the effect that Pakistan’s political system, law and governance should not be squeezed into a 420 JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE theocratic box. Pakistan, if Jinnah’s advice were accepted, would remain a substantively secular state. However, if the Constituent Assembly decided to reject Jinnah’s advice and move in the opposite direction then that was its prerogative for which it would then assume responsibility once the dire consequences started to materialize. Jinnah’s position on this, and many other matters, seems similar to Solon’s in ancient Athens for when the latter was asked by a friend if he had given the Athenians the best laws possible he replied “the best that they would accept”.35 The Constituent Assembly opted to reject Jinnah’s views on religion and the state and injected a perilous confusion into the country’s constitutional process – one that has steadily narrowed the space for religious tolerance, led to the Islamization of the state, law and society, and plunged Pakistan into an apparently interminable cycle of religious extremism, terrorism and sectarian violence. A powerful centre Pakistan came into existence as a federation of provinces and princely states that had either voted to join the new country or had acceded to it. Jinnah had been a vocal and effective proponent of provincial autonomy during British rule and, reference the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946, which would have kept India united as a loose confederation, the Muslim League had accepted the proposal. Jinnah’s views on the question of provincial autonomy changed considerably after he became governor-general. The task of state-building amidst a crisis situation necessitated greater centralization and Jinnah was exasperated by the provincial political leaderships’ refusal to abandon their petty rivalries and intrigues even in a national emergency.36 For Pakistan, Jinnah argued, provincialism was a “curse”: While, however, one must love one’s own town and work for its welfare – indeed because of it – one must love better one’s country and work more devotedly for it. Local attachments have their value but what is the value and strength of a ‘part’ except within the ‘whole’. Yet this is a truth people so easily seem to forget and begin to prize local, sectional or provincial interests above and regardless of the national interests. It naturally pains me to find the curse of provincialism holding sway over any section of Pakistanis. Pakistan must be rid of this evil. It is a relic of the old administration when you clung to provincial autonomy and local liberty of action to avoid control – which meant British control. But with your own Central Government and its power, it is a folly to continue to think in the same terms, especially at a time when your State is so new and faces such tremendous problems internal and external. At this juncture subordination of the larger JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE 421 interest of the State to the provincial or local or personal interest would be suicidal … . These whisperings of mulki and non-mulki are neither profitable for the land nor worthy of it. We are now all Pakistanis – not Baluchis, Pathans, Sindhis, Bengalis, Punjabi and so on … .37 Jinnah freely employed the constitutional authority of the governor-general’s office as well as the coercive and military power of the new state to deal with what he considered anti-state forces with an iron hand.38 Jinnah was prepared to negotiate but only from a position of strength in which the adversary would first concede acceptance of Pakistan and its government. The ambitious project of industrializing Pakistan while defending it from internal and external enemies, keeping it stable and relatively peaceful, all pointed to the centralization of financial, administrative and political power for the foreseeable future. Speaking in East Bengal on 21 March 1948, Jinnah asserted: About language, as I have already said, this is in order to create disruption amongst the Musalmans. Your Prime Minister has rightly pointed this out in a recent statement and I am glad that his Government have decided to put down firmly any attempt to disturb the peace of this Province by political saboteurs or their agents. Whether Bengali [will be] the official language of this Province is a matter for the elected representatives of the people of this Province to decide. I have no doubt that this question shall be decided solely in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants of this Province at the appropriate time. Let me tell you in the clearest language that there is no truth that your normal life is going to be touched or disturbed so far as your Bengali language is concerned. But ultimately it is for you, the people of this Province, to decide what shall be the language of your Province. But let me make it very clear to you that the State language of Pakistan is going to be Urdu and no other language. Any one who tries to mislead you is really the enemy of Pakistan. Without one State language, no nation can remain tied up solidly together and function. Look at the history of other countries. Therefore, so far as the State language is concerned, Pakistan’s language shall be Urdu. But as I have said, it will come in time.39 One might accuse of Jinnah of not being sensitive and that would be a fair assessment in a number of instances. At the same time, Jinnah had no interest in pandering to the delusions or prejudices of local or provincial elites and was unwilling to let Pakistan become hostage to such forces. Conclusion If Jinnah were to examine Pakistan today he would find a militarized, quasi-theocratic state with a criminalized and barely functional democracy 422 JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE grappling unsuccessfully with national problems through a depleted and politicized civil service that lacked the ability to implement policies that could pull Pakistan out of semi-industrialized stagnation, bring peace to its violent society, or begin correcting the effects of a dangerously imbalanced demographic profile. While some of these problems were probably inescapable, all of them could have been better managed had Pakistan’s rulers comprehended the wisdom inherent in Jinnah’s advice. The Constituent Assembly not only failed to formulate a constitution in time but also got embroiled in needless and destructive controversies on the matter of the relationship between religion and the state. These twin failures set the stage for the discrediting of democracy and constitutionalism and enabled the seizure of power by civil servants and military officers in 1953. Once in power, the civil service and military did a much better job of managing the economy and industrializing the country but the subversion of democracy fuelled opposition to Pakistan in East Bengal and helped left-wing demagogues gain popularity in both wings. The result was that Pakistan broke up in 1971, while society, politics and the economy in both Pakistan and Bangladesh rapidly broke down as the demagogues had no answer to any of the real problems faced by their societies, which, in turn, set the stage for violent agitation and overthrow of the populists and the advent of more brutal and conservative military regimes. The state machinery, bloated in size by nepotism and jobbery on a grand scale, became unresponsive. Meritocracy was subordinated to regional and political considerations with the result that in Pakistan (since 1973) only 20 per cent of seats in the Central Superior Services are filled on open merit. Jinnah greatly admired Mustafa Kemal Ataturk but, unlike the Turkish leader, he did not seek to institutionalize a cult of personality or weave an ideological programme around his personal worldview.40 Thus, there is no ‘Jinnahism’ in Pakistan even remotely comparable to Kemalism in Turkey,41 which is sustained by powerful state and ideological structures that punish and limit deviation from the original Kemalist programme. Indeed, most of Jinnah’s views would be anathema to Pakistan’s present power elite. The fact that there is no coherent ideology built around Jinnah has proved to be a disadvantage for it has allowed tremendous distortions to creep into the national public’s perception of the founder of their country. It has led to a situation in which Jinnah is venerated at a symbolic level and utterly ignored when it comes to anything practical that might affect the governance of Pakistan. JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE 423 A Pakistan governed in accordance with Jinnah’s thinking would have been a very different place from what it is today. First, the state would have been secular and all citizens would be equal in the eyes of the constitution and the law. Second, the political system would be democratic with a strong federal bias that might have verged on a kind of constitutional authoritarianism in terms of the powers of the central government. Third, meritocracy would have been extended to as many administrative departments as possible with constitutional guarantees for civil servants and a robust regulatory framework administered by the Federal Public Services Commission (FPSC). Fourth, on the economic front, a regulated but essentially free-market economy with limited strategic interventions by the state designed to push through an industrial revolution, accompanied by a welfare regime concentrated on mass literacy and perhaps basic health coverage would have prevailed. Socialist, populist and statist economics would not have been accepted except, perhaps, very selectively in specific instances. Fifth, on the military front, Pakistan would have powerful defence services but subordinate to the constitution and the civilian political and bureaucratic leadership. Sixth, on national integration, the state would invest heavily in indoctrinating the population to be loyal to the state of Pakistan as opposed to religion (which is transnational) or ethnicity (which is parochial). Seventh, in terms of social policy, the state would promote emancipation from traditionalism and push for functional equality of citizenship. Pakistan and its people have paid a high price for rejecting or ignoring Jinnah’s advice, most of which has proven sound and stood the test of time. Viewed in historical context, an honest engagement with Jinnah’s ideas, some of which have been discussed above, might well help legitimize and spur efforts to pull Pakistan out of its multifaceted crisis of governance. NOTES 1. 2. Mohammad Ali Jinnah was born on 25 December 1876, studied law in England, and returned to India and began a successful law practice in Bombay. For Jinnah’s role as the leader of the All-India Muslim League (AIML) see Rafique Afzal, A History of the All-India Muslim League 1906–1947. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2013. At nearly 800 pages, Afzal’s history is perhaps the most exhaustive and detailed one-volume study of the Muslim League up to to the creation of Pakistan. The second part of the book is particularly instructive in terms of how Jinnah reorganized the Muslim League after 1937 and helped turn it into the sole representative party of the Indian Muslims by 1946. 424 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE Jinnah, ‘Presidential Address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan at Karachi, August 11, 1947’, in S.M. Burke (Ed.), Jinnah: Speeches and Statements 1947– 1948. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 25. Ibid., p. 27. Ibid., pp. 25–26. Emphases mine. This arrangement was formalized on 30 December 1947, when the federal cabinet passed a convention that said that “no question of policy or principle should be determined and decided except at a meeting of the Cabinet to be presided over the by Quaid-i-Azam”. In the event of disagreement between Jinnah and the cabinet, Jinnah’s opinion would prevail. Jinnah reacted with restraint to this proposal that the cabinet alone would decide what matters it wanted to bring to his notice, that only major policy issues ought to be discussed with him, and that he would not take decisions on his own. 1947, File No. 21/CF/48, Government of Pakistan, ‘Adoption of Convention by the Cabinet’, pp. 1–5. The population of West Pakistan was about 30 million on the eve of partition and it received 7 million refugees from India (4.4 million in the Punjab alone) with about 5 million Sikhs and Hindus fleeing to India. 1949, File No. 20/CF/49, Government of Pakistan, Cabinet Secretariat, Cabinet Branch. ‘General Summary of the Policy and Progress of Resettlement of Muslim Refugees on Evacuee Lands in West Pakistan’, p. 6. Seven thousand Pakistan government employees and their families were evacuated by air from New Delhi and 17,000 people were evacuated by sea from Bombay and Karachi. By December 1947, the evacuation had been completed. Farooq Ahmad Dar, Jinnah’s Pakistan: Formation and Challenges of a State. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 73. Jinnah’s, ‘Address to the Officers of the Staff College, Quetta’, 14 June 1948, in Burke (Ed.), Jinnah: Speeches and Statements 1947–1948, pp. 224–225. Jinnah was a member of the 1926 Indian Military Committee, which recommended Indianization of the armed services and the establishment of an Indian Military Academy at Dehradun to facilitate this process. Report of the Indian Sandhurst Committee, 14 November 1926. London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1927. Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Speeches: Indian Legislative Assembly, 1935–1947, ed. Waheed Ahmad. Karachi: Quaid-i-Azam Academy, 1991, esp. pp. 111–128, 393– 398, 406–412 and 546–552. Jinnah spoke at length on a range of military-related issues including the defence budget and defence policy. M.A. Jinnah, ‘Written Answers before the Royal Commission on the Public Services in India’, in Riaz Ahmed (Ed.), Quaid-i-Azam as Magistrate. Rawalpindi: Alvi Publishers, 1984, pp. 122–123. Ibid., pp. 124–125. Ibid., p. 125. Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel would do the same in India, providing for direct open competition for more than 80 per cent of seats in a combined examination with reservations for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Dar, Jinnah’s Pakistan, p. 75. JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE 425 17. Pakistan’s armed services, however, remained exempt from the provincial quota system and still do not adhere it to – a fact that turned the Pakistani military into the most meritocratic institution in Pakistan. 18. Jinnah’s, ‘Address to Civil Officers at Government House, Peshawar’, 14 April 1948, in Burke (Ed.), Jinnah: Speeches and Statements 1947–1948, pp. 192–193. 19. Jinnah’s, ‘Address to the Gazetted Officers at Chittagong’, 25 March 1948, in ibid., pp. 162–163. 20. Jinnah, ‘Special Broadcast from Radio Pakistan, Dacca’, 28 March 1948, in ibid., pp. 174–175. 21. K.H. Khurshid, Jinnah’s Private Secretary, interviewed Qazi Isa, a prominent Muslim League leader from Balochistan, on 30 December 1951. He asked Qazi Isa if he thought Jinnah had “any obsessions, prejudices or phobias?” Qazi Isa replied: I never had the impression that Mr. Jinnah had any deep-seated prejudices. On the other hand, Mr. Jinnah’s attitude was so realistic that sometimes when he would hear or read about the past glory of the Muslims, he would say “Glorious past! Let’s not talk about the past! The fact remains that at present we are nothing!” 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. K.H. Khurshid, Memories of Jinnah, ed. Khalid Hasan. Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, 2001, pp. 129–130. Sikandar Hayat, The Charismatic Leader: Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and the Creation of Pakistan. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2014, esp. pp. 302–354. For Jinnah, Pakistan meant modernization and this was the objective for which power was being sought by the Muslim League. Ibid., p. 331. Jinnah, ‘Towards Rapid Industrialization’, in Burke (Ed.), Jinnah: Speeches and Statements 1947–1948, p. 49. Pakistan’s manufacturing grew at an annual average rate of 10.30 per cent between 1950 and 1955, slowing to 5.16 per cent between 1955 and 1960, before picking up to 11.73 per cent between 1960 and 1965, and experiencing a slight slowdown between 1965 and 1970 with an annual average growth rate of 8.10 per cent. Between 1970 and 1980 the manufacturing sector grew at 5.50 per cent, before picking up with privatization in the 1980s to an average of 8.21 per cent, and then falling to 4.8 per cent in the 1990s. S. Akbar Zaidi, Issues in Pakistan’s Economy. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012. Dar, Jinnah’s Pakistan, p. 282. Dar, Jinnah’s Pakistan, p. 283. File No. 150/CF/48, 1948, Government of Pakistan, Cabinet Secretariat, Cabinet Branch, ‘Half-Yearly Summary of the Ministry of Economic Affairs’, No. 69 (5).EA/Admin/49, November 1948–April 1949, pp. 1–2. Jinnah practically overruled the advice he received from Archibald Rowlands, a British adviser to the Finance Ministry. Rowlands had advised Jinnah in a ‘Top Secret’ report that Pakistan would have to abandon economic development for at 426 JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE least five years and focus on macroeconomic stabilization (which is substantially the same advice the International Monetary Fund has consistently given Pakistan since the late-1980s!). Rowlands said: The deficit is relatively a very high one, but in absolute terms is not unmanageable, provided that certain conditions are fulfilled. The conditions are unpleasant. They involve inter alia the most ruthless economy, the postponement for at least five years both by the Centre and the Provinces of most of the schemes of social betterment about which there has been so much talk in the last two or three years; and the imposition of additional taxation. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. Archibald Rowlands, ‘Report on the Finances and Economics of Pakistan’, 12 November 1947, Z.H. Zaidi, ed., Jinnah Papers, Vol. VI, Pakistan: Battling against Odds. Islamabad: Printing Corporation of Pakistan Press, 2001, p. 751. Jinnah was not an economist, nor was Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, but both seem to have intuitively grasped that one could not shrink one’s way out of economic contraction and that reasons of political economy demanded growth and were more important than balancing the books in the short term. Jinnah, ‘Presidential Address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan at Karachi’, 11 August 1947, in Burke (Ed.), Jinnah: Speeches and Statements 1947–1948, pp. 27–29. Emphases mine. Jinnah, ‘Always Kept His Belief in God and His Opinion of Theological Matters to Himself.’ K.H. Khurshid, interview with Sunder Kabadi, 11 December 1951, Memories of Jinnah, p. 142. Jinnah, ‘Talk on Pakistan Broadcast to the People of the United States of America’, February, 1948, in ibid., p. 125. Jinnah, ‘Talk Broadcast to the People of Australia’, February, 1948, in ibid., p. 118. The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (1973; as amended by the Eighteenth Amendment Act, Act X of 2010) ‘Preamble’, pp. 1–2. Plutarch, The Rise and Fall of Athens, trans. Ian Scott-Kilvert. London: Penguin Classics, 1960, p. 57. Relations with the Punjab government, for example, were strained on account of refugee rehabilitation and the evident non-seriousness of the local leaders who were more interested in taking advantage of evacuee property than attending to the life-and-death struggle raging all around them. See, for instance, National Documentation Wing, Islamabad. Folder Six, 1949. File No. 2(2)-PMS/49, Government of Pakistan, Prime Minister’s Secretariat, ‘Correspondence with the Governor, West Punjab’. Jinnah, ‘Speech in Reply to the Civic Address Presented by the Quetta Municipality’, 15 June 1948, in Burke (Ed.), Jinnah: Speeches and Statements 1947–1948, p. 227. The dismissal of the Congress-Khudai Khidmatgar government in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) a week after independence, the army action in Kalat in Balochistan in June 1948, the arrest of the Jamaat-i-Islami leader Maulana Maudoodi for his opposition to pro-Kashmiri separatist position of the Government of Pakistan and the arrest of the Pashtun nationalist leader Abdul Ghaffar Khan (also JINNAH ON GOVERNANCE 427 in June 1948) are just some of the most notable steps taken by Jinnah to assert the strength of the central government. The Government of Pakistan also deployed the airforce against the troublesome Fakir of Ipi in the NWFP and had no compunctions about bombing both sides of the Durand Line. Successful negotiations with the Pashtun tribes of the NWFP allowed Pakistan to redeploy its forces on the border with India. This particular arrangement with the Pashtun tribes broke down after 2004 and has yet to be repaired. For a few samples of what Jinnah had to contend with on this issue see Z.H. Zaidi (Ed.), Jinnah Papers Vol. VII, Pakistan: Struggling for Surival, 1 January-30 September, 1948. Islamabad: Printing Corporation of Pakistan Press, 2002, esp. pp. 120–124, 341–345 and 602–609. 39. Jinnah, ‘Speech at a Public Meeting at Dacca’, 21 March 1948, in Burke (Ed.), Jinnah: Speeches and Statements 1947–1948, pp. 149–150. 40. M. Naeem Qureshi asserts in his award-winning book that for Jinnah, Mustafa Kemal was an inspiration worthy of being emulated in terms of the reforms introduced in Turkey: This affinity took two forms: a strong will and strength of character; and an essentially westernized outlook. Jinnah, therefore, did not have to translate Mustafa Kemal’s experience in terms of categories that were familiar to him; he had merely to acquire the inspiration that this experience entailed. In terms of basic assumptions, Jinnah was closer to Kemal than Iqbal could ever be. Finally, it is significant that the relevance of Ataturk’s achievements was two-fold: the first step was the regaining of national sovereignty; the second was that of nation-building. If Mustafa Kemal’s experience was at all relevant to Jinnah, it is clear that it should have been relevant in both of its dimensions. M. Naeem Qureshi, Ottoman Turkey: Ataturk, and Muslim South Asia: Perspectives, Perceptions, and Responses. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 157. 41. Though there are a handful of social media pages that claim to represent ‘Jinnahism’ their tone and tenor is a far cry from what Jinnah stood for. For example see https:// www.facebook.com/jinnahism (accessed 6 February 2016).