OFF THE SHELF
Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan and Partition
V. N. Datta
Dear Mr Jinnah: Selected Correspondence and Speeches of Liaquat Ali Khan, 1937-1947
edited by Professor Roger D. Long with a foreword by Stanely Wolpert. Oxford University Press, Karachi. Pages 328. Price not stated.
This compilation of selected correspondence and speeches of Liaquat Ali Khan, that comes with a foreword by Stanely Wolpert, well-known Jinnah biographer, focuses on highly significant issues and events which proved crucial in the creation of Pakistan. Of special interest to the reader is the author’s prefatory notes.
The period (1937-1947) chosen by Professor Long is momentous in the making of Pakistan. In the pre-1937 period, the Muslim League was a weak and inert organisation, destitute of leadership, funds and the press. It was seen as a coterie of toadies and sycophants basking in the sunshine of British patronage, passing stereotyped, mild resolutions for the protection of Muslims interests and making speeches in the Assemblies and at the Muslim League annual sessions. Mohammad Ali Jinnah then counted nowhere. He was rebuffed by the stalwart Muslim leader, Fazl-I-Husain in Punjab, and distrusted by the Congress. The British ignored him.
By 1939, the Muslim League became a strong and spirited organisation,
and in March 1940, it demanded a separate homeland, an independent, sovereign Pakistan State, and by 1945, Jinnah emerged as the sole spokesman of the Muslims, who made high bids and vetoed all constitutional proposals suggested by the Congress and the British government. He scuttled the Simla conference in June-July 1945 and asked for parity with the Congress in the Viceroy’s executive council.
Jinnah met Mahatma Gandhi on equal terms for negotiation to resolve the political stalemate at home on Malabar Hill in Bombay from September 9 to 29, 1945, and rejected his formula. He took to task the three Premieres, Sikander Hayat Khan of Punjab, Fazl-ul-Haq of Bengal, and Saadullah of Assam, for joining the National Defence Council by subverting the Muslim League resolution of September 29, 1940.
By 1945, the Muslim League succeeded in setting up its party ministry in four of the provinces, and in the fifth, it held a strong position by putting pressure on the dispirited and shrinking Unionists party in Punjab.
This work is more an exchange between Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan on matters
relating to the radicalisation of Muslim politics when both were engaged in a life-and-death struggle for the creation of Pakistan. It throws more light on Jinnah than on Liaquat Ali Khan.
There is nothing personal in these letters, despite Liaquat Ali Khan’s efforts to engage Jinnah in it. Jinnah was a hard nut to crack, icy cold, reserved, taciturn, who praised or complimented none, and yet showed no tension. He was secretive. Even though he drew up his will in 1939 and appointed Liaquat Ali Khan his trustee for it, he never told him so, and it was only after his death that the latter learnt of it.
An utterly lonely man, Jinnah was incapable of maintaining a loving relationship with anyone. It would have been a treasure trove to read Jinnah’s love letters to his wife Rattenbai Petet or to anyone, but such a document nowhere exits.
Jinnah’s relationship with his colleagues was not the kind that the Mahatma shared with his party workers. He chose no heir, though he regarded Liaquat Ali Khan as his right hand. The correspondence shows that Jinnah lived like an Englishman.
He was fabulously rich and invested a great deal of money in shares and property. On several occasions, the Muslim Legaue borrowed money from his personal coffers. It is incredible that by addressing his huge audience in English who did not understand what he was saying, he captured their hearts and imagination and fired them with a passion to throw in their lot with him.
Belonging to the well-known aristocratic family of Punjab and being son of the Nawab of Karnal, Liaquat Ali Khan inherited a huge property in Meerut. After taking BA from Oxford and Bar-at-law, he returned to India at the end of 1922 and joined the Muslim League in 1923. As an Independent, he served as Deputy Speaker in the UP Council in 1931. As a member of the United Provinces National Agricultural Party, he represented the landed interests and opposed the separate electorate before the Joint Statutory Commission which came out of the Round Table Conference in the early 1930s.
He became the General-Secretary of the Muslim League in 1936 and held this office till 1947 and slaved for the success of its mission. He became the Finance Member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council in 1946 and the first Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1947. Scrupulously honest, he refused to accept property in Pakistan in exchange for his land holdings in India, and after his death, his son and his wife, a Christian, Ranana Sheila Irene Pant, had to live in a house donated by the government.
This work projects Liaquat Ali Khan as a mild, well-meaning man of moderate disposition who shunned controversies. Mediocre in intellect, his sincerity of purpose and dedication made it easier for him to inspire confidence among his party workers. This work shows how the Muslims felt threatened by Hindu majoritarianism and feared that the Federation as envisaged under the Government of India Act (1935) would complete their disaster.
By mobilising the Muslim mass support, Jinnah widened his political base to fight the Congress. One is tempted to conclude from this work that the Congress was outmanoeuvred by Jinnah’s brilliant strategy and leadership, and Liaquat Ali Khan’s famous budget speech on February 28, 1947, in the Legislative Assembly, which hit the business magnets supporting the Congress, turned the tide in the Congress in favour of Partition. On March 3, 1947, Khizar Hayat Khan was forced to resign as Chief Minister due to Muslim League pressure, and the way was clear for the creation of Pakistan.
The editing and annotation of Long’s work is superb and the explanatory notes are suavely perceptive. However, Long’s praise of Stanely Wolport’s studies of Nehru and Jinnah is unjustified; he completely ignores S. Gopal’s comprehensive biography of Nehru. He also tends to ignore the Congress viewpoint on important political situations.
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2004/20041205/spectrum/book1.htm
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