Home Page >> Fascism & Question of Religious Minorities >> The Jinnah Controversy
The Jinnah Controversy
In Print Version: July 2005
After a long time gap the late Mohammed Ali Jinnah is very much in the limelight now, courtesy, Lal Krishna Advani. Advani's song of praise for Jinnah's secularism during his tour of Pakistan has raised a storm in the Sangha parivar has been vociferous in condemning Advani for this praise of Jinnah, which is rather expected, but also the leaders of the congress party and some leader of the parliamentary left parties have found Advani's characterisation of Jinnah to be extremely astonishing and wrong. In all those opposition to Advani's depiction of Jinnah as secular, Jinnah is projected as the main ‘culprit' behind the partition of the country. As a matter of fact this is the major voice that being heard in this controversy .Of course, a minority voice is also being heard which have questioned the validity of this analysis and is expressing the view that the Congress have been equally, if not more, responsible for the partition of the country.
The attempt to project Jinnah and the Muslim league as the main ‘culprits' behind the partition and the congress and the predeccesors of other parties of the ruling classes operating now in India as ‘innocent lambs' is undoubtedly a conspiracy – a conspiracy to hide the truth. But at the same time the view that holds both the Congress and the Muslim League equally responsible for the partition also does not reflect the truth in its totality.
In fact, the partition of India is the product of an conspiracy of the British Imperialism in which both the congress and the Muslim League colluded. A division between the Hindu and Muslim population along the religious line existed in India before the Britishers came here. It was quite natural in the then conditions of feudal India . But this division was more market and antagonistic among the higher-ups in the society—among the feudal lords, high officials of the courts, etc. than among the lower rungs—among the common peasants. Both the common Hindu and Muslim peasants bore the inhuman burden of feudal exploitation and the recurring peasant revolts united them in the common struggle against imperialist and feudal exploitation and repression. Many of such peasants revolts. Like the ‘sannyasi revolt' of Bengal in the 1770s had been led by Muslim peasant. So the division along the religious line could not create such bickering and antogonism as was evident among the upper strata of the feudal social stucture.
The British imperialists used this existing communal division for their own benefit and played one against the other in order to keep them disunited. Irrespective of the desires or wishes of the imperialist masters and as a matter of fact against their desires the objective dynamics of the imperialist economy diod create a class of India bourgeois with inevitable competition among the member of the class. The existing condition of market communal division among the higher sections of the society this competition among the newly born Indian bourgeoisie did tent to take a communal hue from an early period. The British imperialist masters were cunning enough to seize this chance and followed a policy of actively instigating and thereby intensifying the communal division by planfully playing one against the other. Along with aclass of Indian bourgeoisie the British imperialists also created a petty-bourgeois section mainly for the running of their administrative machinery. The majority of this section the petty- bourgeoisie were locked in an intense competition among themselves for jobs, for crumbs of fevours from the imperialist masters and in the existing condions it was comparatable easy for the British
Imperialists to channelise this intense competition along communal lines. This policy of the British imperialists, commonly knowa as ‘divide and rule policy'. Created the fertile ground for the growth and spread of the communal politics in politics in which both the congress and the Muslim League thrived.
In this period of thriving of the communal politics actively fostered and instigated by the British imperialism the lower strata of the society, specially the peasants were again seen to be least affected by the spread of communal politics with the Congress and the Muslim League acting as agents. It had been a distinctive feature of the Indian objectivity that the flames of communal riots very rarely touched the India rural scene in conditions when such riots had been ravaging many cities of India . Hence from the objective conditions it could be deduced that only a peasant revolution could have united the vast majority of the common masses of India and cleared the Indian soil of the muck of the muck of communal division and politics. But as political representatives of two sections of the Indian big bourgeoisie and big landlords both the Congress and the Muslim League had neither the desire nor the capacity for carrying on a peasant revolution. They colluded with the conspiracy of the British imperialists to keep alive the Hindu-Muslim divide and abort the growing peasant revolution, the pivot of the Indian revolution against imperialism which brought about the partition of the country.
Hence the truth is that the partition of the country is a product of the conspiracy of the British imperialists in which both the Congress and the Muslim League actively colluded. This has kept the whole of the Indian sub-continent tied to imperialism and deeply entrenched in the mucks of communal politics.
Home Page >> Fascism & Question of Religious Minorities >> The Jinnah Controversy