Similarities in their anti-India agenda
By: G. Parthasarathy
Addressing a gathering of tens of thousands of zealots at the headquarters of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (earlier calling itself the Lashkar-e-Toiba), on November 3, 2000, the Amir of the Lashkar, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, thundered: “Jihad is not about Kashmir only. About 15 years ago people might have found it ridiculous if someone had told them about the disintegration of the Soviet Union (Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics). Today, I announce the breakup of India, Inshallah. We will not rest till the whole of India is dissolved into Pakistan.”
Over the past two decades, Saeed has been publicly pronouncing a war that would encompass the whole of India. Till the terrorist outrage of 26/11 no one took him seriously. Shortly after his November 2000 speech, Saeed sent his “mujahideen” into the very heart of India’s national capital, New Delhi, to attack the historic Red Fort on December 22, 2000. Addressing a gathering of political leaders from Islamic parties shortly thereafter, Saeed proudly proclaimed that he had unfurled the green flag of Islam in the historic Red Fort.
Hafiz Saeed was and is no ordinary person. He enjoyed the patronage of former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who had sent Punjab Governor Shahid Hamid and his Information Minister Mushahid Hussein Syed to personally call on and pay their respects to Saeed in 1998. The Wahabi/Salafi school of Islam propagated by Saeed was patronised by Nawaz Sharif’s father, Mian Mohammed Sharif, through the Tablighi Jamaat. Moreover, at the grassroots level, the Lashkar is closely linked to the Pakistan Army and the ISI, which provide weapons, training and logistical support to the extremist group. But is Saeed’s talk of “disintegration” of India merely rhetoric of a demented mind, or does it reflect a wider strategic vision within Pakistan and particularly in its armed forces?
While the “idea” of Pakistan was first enunciated by Chaudhuri Rehmat Ali in 1933 and given shape in the Lahore Resolution of the Muslim League in 1940, the hope in Pakistan, ever since it was born, was that India would be a loose confederation, with units like the Nizam’s domain in Hyderabad and even a “Dravidistan” going their own separate ways. Jinnah often spoke contemptuously of upper caste Hindus while fostering separatism by emphasising on a separate linguistic and ethnic Dravidian identity, characterising the social ethos in South India.
While Mahatma Gandhi tried to address centuries of exploitation and alienation of Dalits in India together with leaders like Dr B.R. Ambedkar, Jinnah endeavoured to foment Dalit alienation. He also encouraged elements in princely states like Jodhpur and Travancore-Cochin to declare independence. His aim was to Balkanise India and ensure domination of the sub-continent by a minority of its population. Jinnah’s approach to the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 was motivated by the belief that after 10 years, a united Punjab and Sind in the west, together with Bengal and Assam in the east, would break away from a fragile and fragmented India.
Jinnah shared a common interest with the British in ensuring that there was a weak central government in India, incapable of firmly holding the country together. Jinnah’s aims regarding India were thus not very different from those of Hafiz Saeed, though he was a virtually agnostic Ismaili Muslim who, according to his biographer Stanley Wolpert, loved Scotch whisky and ham sandwiches! Saeed, however, espouses rabid Wahabi causes.
Saeed makes no secret of his contempt for parliamentary democracy based on the principle of “one man, one vote”. But was Jinnah’s demand for a disproportionate share of parliamentary seats for his community on the basis of their having been the “rulers” of India before the British arrived, also not a negation of the concept of “one man one vote,” which is the fundamental principle of parliamentary democracy? It was Jinnah’s quest for “parity” for a minority that forms the basis of Pakistan’s unrealistic yearning for parity with India — a yearning that has led Pakistan to disaster.
Jinnah’s successors, from Liaquat Ali Khan to Gen Pervez Musharraf, have all conducted relations with India in the belief that India’s unity is fragile. Ayub Khan launched the 1965 conflict with India believing that Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was a weak leader facing serious separatist problems, because of the Punjabi Suba movement in Punjab and anti-Hindu riots combined with the rise of Dravidian parties in the South, apart from continuing insurgencies in the Northeast.
Gen Zia-ul-Haq set up an elaborate network to encourage separatism within India and laid special stress on creating a Hindu-Sikh communal divide in Punjab, in much the same manner as Jinnah had sought to sow doubts in the mind of Master Tara Singh. Such efforts failed the primarily because Hindus and Sikhs alike saw through Pakistan’s game-plans. The ISI effort to “bleed” India in Jammu and Kashmir is a continuation of policies that Pakistan has followed since its birth. It is shocking when Indians, who should know better, extol Jinnah’s “virtues”. His culpability in the communal holocaust he unleashed by his call for “Direct Action” cannot be condoned.
In his book, “The Shadow of the Great Game — The Untold Story of Partition”, former diplomat Narendra Singh Sarila has revealed that well before the Cabinet Mission arrived in India in 1946 two successive British Viceroys, Lord Linlithgow and Lord Wavell, had decided to partition India by creating a Muslim-majority state in its northwest, bordering Iran, Afghanistan and Sinkiang, in order to protect British interests in the oil-rich Persian Gulf. Mohammad Ali Jinnah was coopted to further this British objective around 1939.
By: G. Parthasarathy
Addressing a gathering of tens of thousands of zealots at the headquarters of the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (earlier calling itself the Lashkar-e-Toiba), on November 3, 2000, the Amir of the Lashkar, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, thundered: “Jihad is not about Kashmir only. About 15 years ago people might have found it ridiculous if someone had told them about the disintegration of the Soviet Union (Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics). Today, I announce the breakup of India, Inshallah. We will not rest till the whole of India is dissolved into Pakistan.”
Over the past two decades, Saeed has been publicly pronouncing a war that would encompass the whole of India. Till the terrorist outrage of 26/11 no one took him seriously. Shortly after his November 2000 speech, Saeed sent his “mujahideen” into the very heart of India’s national capital, New Delhi, to attack the historic Red Fort on December 22, 2000. Addressing a gathering of political leaders from Islamic parties shortly thereafter, Saeed proudly proclaimed that he had unfurled the green flag of Islam in the historic Red Fort.
Hafiz Saeed was and is no ordinary person. He enjoyed the patronage of former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who had sent Punjab Governor Shahid Hamid and his Information Minister Mushahid Hussein Syed to personally call on and pay their respects to Saeed in 1998. The Wahabi/Salafi school of Islam propagated by Saeed was patronised by Nawaz Sharif’s father, Mian Mohammed Sharif, through the Tablighi Jamaat. Moreover, at the grassroots level, the Lashkar is closely linked to the Pakistan Army and the ISI, which provide weapons, training and logistical support to the extremist group. But is Saeed’s talk of “disintegration” of India merely rhetoric of a demented mind, or does it reflect a wider strategic vision within Pakistan and particularly in its armed forces?
While the “idea” of Pakistan was first enunciated by Chaudhuri Rehmat Ali in 1933 and given shape in the Lahore Resolution of the Muslim League in 1940, the hope in Pakistan, ever since it was born, was that India would be a loose confederation, with units like the Nizam’s domain in Hyderabad and even a “Dravidistan” going their own separate ways. Jinnah often spoke contemptuously of upper caste Hindus while fostering separatism by emphasising on a separate linguistic and ethnic Dravidian identity, characterising the social ethos in South India.
While Mahatma Gandhi tried to address centuries of exploitation and alienation of Dalits in India together with leaders like Dr B.R. Ambedkar, Jinnah endeavoured to foment Dalit alienation. He also encouraged elements in princely states like Jodhpur and Travancore-Cochin to declare independence. His aim was to Balkanise India and ensure domination of the sub-continent by a minority of its population. Jinnah’s approach to the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 was motivated by the belief that after 10 years, a united Punjab and Sind in the west, together with Bengal and Assam in the east, would break away from a fragile and fragmented India.
Jinnah shared a common interest with the British in ensuring that there was a weak central government in India, incapable of firmly holding the country together. Jinnah’s aims regarding India were thus not very different from those of Hafiz Saeed, though he was a virtually agnostic Ismaili Muslim who, according to his biographer Stanley Wolpert, loved Scotch whisky and ham sandwiches! Saeed, however, espouses rabid Wahabi causes.
Saeed makes no secret of his contempt for parliamentary democracy based on the principle of “one man, one vote”. But was Jinnah’s demand for a disproportionate share of parliamentary seats for his community on the basis of their having been the “rulers” of India before the British arrived, also not a negation of the concept of “one man one vote,” which is the fundamental principle of parliamentary democracy? It was Jinnah’s quest for “parity” for a minority that forms the basis of Pakistan’s unrealistic yearning for parity with India — a yearning that has led Pakistan to disaster.
Jinnah’s successors, from Liaquat Ali Khan to Gen Pervez Musharraf, have all conducted relations with India in the belief that India’s unity is fragile. Ayub Khan launched the 1965 conflict with India believing that Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was a weak leader facing serious separatist problems, because of the Punjabi Suba movement in Punjab and anti-Hindu riots combined with the rise of Dravidian parties in the South, apart from continuing insurgencies in the Northeast.
Gen Zia-ul-Haq set up an elaborate network to encourage separatism within India and laid special stress on creating a Hindu-Sikh communal divide in Punjab, in much the same manner as Jinnah had sought to sow doubts in the mind of Master Tara Singh. Such efforts failed the primarily because Hindus and Sikhs alike saw through Pakistan’s game-plans. The ISI effort to “bleed” India in Jammu and Kashmir is a continuation of policies that Pakistan has followed since its birth. It is shocking when Indians, who should know better, extol Jinnah’s “virtues”. His culpability in the communal holocaust he unleashed by his call for “Direct Action” cannot be condoned.
In his book, “The Shadow of the Great Game — The Untold Story of Partition”, former diplomat Narendra Singh Sarila has revealed that well before the Cabinet Mission arrived in India in 1946 two successive British Viceroys, Lord Linlithgow and Lord Wavell, had decided to partition India by creating a Muslim-majority state in its northwest, bordering Iran, Afghanistan and Sinkiang, in order to protect British interests in the oil-rich Persian Gulf. Mohammad Ali Jinnah was coopted to further this British objective around 1939.
Jinnah’s efforts to impose Urdu as Pakistan’s sole national language sowed the seeds of Bangladeshi separatism and of Pakistan’s disintegration in 1971. His assumption of office as an unelected Executive Head of State, who presided over the Cabinet, led to his successors arbitrarily dismissing Prime Ministers and staging a takeover of Pakistan by a military-dominated feudal elite — a malady the country suffers from even today.
The statesmanlike visit of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to the “Minar-e-Pakistan” in Lahore signalled that India had no intention of reversing Partition and that it wishes the people of Pakistan well. The challenges that Pakistan’s establishment poses will be overcome when the values of secularism, pluralism and inclusive democratic development are established as being more enduring than the fantasies of nationhood based exclusively on religion, which Jinnah propounded, or the hate and bigotry of Hafiz Mohammed Saeed. Banning books whose contents many may find objectionable is not the way to deal with such challenges.
The Tribune, New Delhi
October 3, 3009
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