Mohammad Ali Jinnah: Encyclopedia II - Mohammad Ali Jinnah - Political Career

Mohammad Ali Jinnah - Political Career

Jinnah joined the Indian National Congress and soon became its most prominent Muslim leader. At the time, the Congress Party was a collection of well-educated Indians who espoused moderate views and sought discussions and negotiations as a way to obtain increased self-government for Indians within the British Empire.

On January 25, 1910, Jinnah became the "Muslim member from Bombay" on the 60-man Legislative Council of India, which many contemporary historians criticize as a rubber-stamp of the Viceroy of India. In 1913, Jinnah joined the Muslim League and, in 1914, would support Indian participation in World War I. In 1916, Jinnah became the president of the Lucknow Muslim League session and again in 1920; and later, from 1920-30 and from 1937-47, would serve as the League's president.

Jinnah was the chief architect of the 1916 Lucknow Pact between the Congress Party and the League to cooperate on all national issues, and became the president of the All India Home Rule League founded with Annie Besant and Bal Gangadhar Tilak and other prominent Indian nationalists. Known to be an ardent admirer of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Jinnah strived to become the Muslim Gokhale, as he himself termed it. Indian poet and nationalist Sarojini Naidu penned the first-ever biography of Jinnah: An Advocate of Hindu-Muslim Unity, in 1916.

Jinnah's alienation from the Congress began with the ascent of Mohandas Gandhi in 1918, who espoused non-violent civil disobedience as the best means to obtain Swaraj (independence, or self-rule) for all Indians. Jinnah differed saying that only constitutional struggle could lead to independence. Gandhi was unlike most Congress leaders - he did not wear western-style clothes, did his best to use an Indian language instead of English, and was deeply spiritual and religious. Gandhi's Indianized style of leadership appealed to rank and file Congressmen, and gained extreme popularity with the Indian people. By 1920, he and thousands of his fans and disciples were dominating the Congress Party.

Jinnah's conflict with Gandhi's leadership was not unusual for that time. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Annie Besant, Bipin Chandra Pal and other prominent nationalists had all opposed and criticized Gandhi's ideas on mass, non-violent civil resistance. Even the prominent Muslim Khilafat leaders like Maulana Mohammad Ali and Maulana Shaukat Ali would soon be estranged from Gandhi. However, Gandhi had the backing of the Indian people, numbering over 300 million, and a new generation of young, red-blooded nationalists.

By 1920, Jinnah had resigned from the Indian National Congress warning that Gandhi's method of mass struggle would lead to division amongst the ranks not just of Hindus and Muslims but within in the two communities. He still did not voice his support for separate Muslim negotiations with Britain over the future of India. From 1924 onwards he formed an in-house party of moderates that played a bridge between the Congress and the government. Later he was elected president of the Muslim League but the Muslim League itself was divided into two factions i.e. the Pro-Congress Jinnah faction and pro-British Shafi faction.

In 1927 Jinnah led a successful demonstration against Simon Commission's exclusion of Indians. Later he entered into negotiations with Muslim and Hindu leaders on the issue of a future Indian constitution. The Muslim opinion wanted to continue with the separate electorates while the majority Hindu opinion was in favour of the joint electorates. Jinnah personally had opposed the separate electorates. He then charted a middle course between the Hindu position and the Muslim position and put forth a set of demands that he thought would satisfy both positions. These became known as the 14 points of Mr Jinnah.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah - Fourteen Points of Mr Jinnah

1. The form of the future constitution should be federal with the residuary powers vested in the provinces.
2. A uniform measure of autonomy shall be granted to all provinces.
3. All legislatures in the country and other elected bodies shall be constituted on the definite principle of adequate and effective representation of minorities in every province without reducing the majority in any province to a minority or even equality.
4. In the Central Legislature, Muslim representation shall not be less than one-third.
5. Representation of communal groups shall continue to be by means of separate electorate as at present, provided it shall be open to any community at any time to abandon its separate electorate in favor of a joint electorate.
6. Any territorial distribution that might at any time be necessary shall not in any way affect the Muslim majority in the Punjab, Bengal and the North West Frontier Province.
7. Full religious liberty, i.e. liberty of belief, worship and observance, propaganda, association and education, shall be guaranteed to all communities.
8. No bill or any resolution or any part thereof shall be passed in any legislature or any other elected body if three-fourth of the members of any community in that particular body oppose such a bill resolution or part thereof on the ground that it would be injurious to the interests of that community or in the alternative, such other method is devised as may be found feasible and practicable to deal with such cases.
9. Sindh should be separated from the Bombay presidency.
10. Reforms should be introduced in the North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan on the same footing as in the other provinces.
11. Provision should be made in the constitution giving Muslims an adequate share, along with the other Indians, in all the services of the state and in local self-governing bodies having due regard to the requirements of efficiency.
12. The constitution should embody adequate safeguards for the protection of Muslim culture and for the protection and promotion of Muslim education, language, religion, personal laws and Muslim charitable institution and for their due share in the grants-in-aid given by the state and by local self-governing bodies.
13. No cabinet, either central or provincial, should be formed without there being a proportion of at least one-third Muslim ministers.
14. No change shall be made in the constitution by the Central Legislature except with the concurrence of the State's contribution of the Indian Federation.

One newspaper headline described the 14 points as Muslims' irreducible minimum. These demands were rejected by the Congress Party, leaving Jinnah an isolated man even amongst the Muslims, who he had convinced to scale down their demands. He was then invited to attend the round table conferences, where he forwarded the Muslims' point of view as he understood it. However neither the nationalists nor the pro-British Muslim nobility were willing to listen to him. Years later he would remark to his Hindu friend Dalmiya of how he was able to finally bring the British lackeys, "Jee Huzoors"(yes men) and "nawabs" into line. But not in 1930-31 when his political career seemed all but over.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah - Exile in England

Dejected, Jinnah, also frustrated with the disunity of the All India Muslim League, decided to quit politics and practise law in England. Soon he was able to establish a successful practice in London. He thought that he could better serve India abroad, so for a while he also tried his hands at British politics and joined the Fabian Society. The Labour Party found him too aristocratic for their liking and refused him a party ticket. Later, convinced by a few of his conservative friends, he tried his hand at the Tories, who rejected him for being too liberal. Therefore feeling a misfit, Jinnah retired from politics altogether.

Then a series of events led to his re-emergence into Indian politics. In 1932, writes Stanley Wolpert, Jinnah picked up a book called "Grey Wolf", the autobiography of Ghazi Mustapha Kemal Pasha Ataturk, and was said to be greatly moved. For a long time this was all he spoke about at home, prompting his daughter to call him "Greywolf" affectionately. He is said to have remarked to his sister that if he achieved the same kind of power, he would modernise the Muslims. The next year prominent Muslims like the Aga Khan, Choudhary Rahmat Ali and Allama Iqbal started making efforts to convince of him to take charge of a now-reunited Muslim League party.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah - Return

In 1934 Jinnah returned and began to re-organise the Muslim League. Meanwhile the two other major contenders for Muslim Leadership Sir Fazl-e-Hussain and Sir Muhammad Shafi passed away, leaving the space wide open for Jinnah. From 1935-1937 Jinnah once again sought to bring the Muslim League closer to the Congress Party. Indeed the manifesto that Muslim League adopted was identical to the Congress with a few minor adjustments. The 1937 elections was a mixed bag for the League. It won the Muslim seats in Hindu Majority areas but lost Muslim majority areas altogether. The Muslim League approached the Congress for coalition ministries in Hindu Majority areas but the Congress demanded that the League merge with the Congress. The chief thorn between the League and the Congress was traditional suspicion of each other and the League contention that only it could be the representative of India's Muslims. Nehru told Jinnah to depend on the League's inherent strength, to which Jinnah famously replied that it was inherent strength that Muslim League would depend on from then on. Adopting what some have interpreted as a "divide and conquer" policy, the British initially supported Jinnah, hoping that he would be a powerful counterbalance to the Indian National Congress. Jinnah supported Indian participation in World War II while the Indian National Congress opposed the war. This obviously raised Jinnah's stock. His personal equation with Winston Churchill was also quite cordial as the two men exchanged several letters during those crucial years in the 1940s

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Political Career", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki