JINNAH, MUHAMMAD ALI
|
IQBAL, SIR MUHAMMAD
|
Liaquat Ali Khan
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Jinnah, Muhammad Ali
(1876-1948), politician and statesman of the Indian subcontinent, long-time
leader of the Muslim League
in British India,
who articulated Indian Muslim demands for a separate Muslim state, before becoming
the founding father of Pakistan and its first Governor-General (1947-1948).
Jinnah’s precise place and date of birth, normally
given as Karachi on December 25, 1876, are disputed. One of eight children, he was
educated in the Sindh Madrassah and the Christian Missionary High School, Karachi. At the age of 17 he went to England and studied law at Lincoln’s
Inn, London. He returned to India in 1896 and started a law practice in Bombay
(now Mumbai),
as the only Muslim barrister practising there.
Turning to politics, Jinnah joined the Indian National Congress in 1906, and in 1910,
already a highly regarded Congress member, he was elected to the Indian
Legislative Council in Delhi. He only joined the Muslim League in 1913, becoming its president for
the first time in 1916. That year marked the highpoint of his efforts to
establish a common Congress-Muslim League platform.
Jinnah resigned from Congress in 1920 when he became
disillusioned with the violence and communal passions associated with the non-cooperation
campaigns of Mohandas Gandhi,
despite Gandhi’s own staunch advocacy of non-violence. Jinnah was still
committed to settling Hindu-Muslim differences, but the divisions widened in
1928 when the Nehru Report rejected his 14-point constitutional compromise
proposal. However, he attended three round-table conferences (1930-1932) in
London.
Frustrated in his efforts, Jinnah remained in London
to practise law, only returning permanently to India in October 1935, when
elected permanent President of the Muslim League. The League lost heavily in
the provincial elections of 1937, while Congress, led by Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, won a majority in 7 of
the 11 provinces. Congress’s refusal to form coalition governments with the
Muslim League, particularly in the United Provinces, proved to be the final
Hindu-Muslim break. From 1940 onwards, Jinnah propounded the demand for a
separate Muslim state, which had been raised in the Lahore Resolution of that
year. He also exerted an unquestioned moral authority over the fractious
politics of the Muslim League. Simultaneously, he deployed his legal skills in
the complex constitutional negotiations with the British and Congress.
Jinnah’s claim to be the sole speaker for Muslim India
at the Simla Conference of July 1945 was recognized unquestioningly, greatly
strengthening the demand for a state of Pakistan. Nevertheless, Jinnah accepted
the British Cabinet plan of 1946, which envisaged regional autonomy for Muslims
within a territorially united India. The breakdown of this proposal resulted in
communal riots that threatened civil war. The partition of the Indian
subcontinent was finally agreed on June 3, 1947. Pakistan emerged as a state
physically divided into two unconnected halves, one of which later split off to
become Bangladesh.
Recent revisionist scholarship has controversially speculated that partition
was the unintended result of Jinnah’s use of the demand for an independent
Pakistan as a bargaining counter in the negotiations for the final
constitutional form of a united India.
Jinnah became both Governor-General and President of
the Constituent Assembly of the new state of Pakistan, and assumed much of the
burden of laying its foundations. His death in Karachi on September 7, 1948, robbed Pakistan of its leading political
figure.
Iqbal, Sir Muhammad (1873-1938), Pakistani philosopher, poet, and political leader, born in
Sialkot, India (now Pakistan). In 1927 he was elected to the Punjab provincial legislature and in 1930 became
president of the Muslim League. Initially a supporter of Hindu-Muslim unity in
a single Indian state, Iqbal later became an advocate of Pakistani
independence. In addition to his political activism, Iqbal was considered the
foremost Muslim thinker of his day. His poetry and philosophy, written in Urdu
and Persian, stress the rebirth of Islamic and spiritual redemption through
self-development, moral integrity, and individual freedom. His many works
include Asar-ekhudi (The Secrets of the Self, 1915), a long poem; Payam-e
Mashriq (A Message from the East, 1923); and The Reconstruction of
Religious Thought in Islam (1934). Although Iqbal did not live to see the
creation of an independent Pakistan in 1947, he is nevertheless regarded as the
symbolic father of that nation, where the date of his death, A
Liaquat Ali Khan
(1895-1951), Pakistani politician and first prime minister of Pakistan after independence. Born into a
wealthy family in 1895, Liaquat Ali Khan was educated at the MAO College, and
also studied at Allahabad
and Oxford universities before becoming a barrister in London in 1922. In 1923
he returned to India and joined the All-India Muslim
League, which became the main political party
representing Muslims in India before independence. From 1926 to 1940 Liaquat
held a variety of positions in local politics, working closely with Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the
League. He helped persuade Jinnah to return to India from London in 1933 and
was acknowledged as Jinnah's “right hand” from 1943. From 1940 onwards he
worked to popularize the “Pakistan Resolution” around India and to build
support for an independent Pakistan, separate from India. He was closely
involved in the negotiations over the form of independence to be granted to
India after World War II and was finance minister in the Interim Government of
1946-1947. Liaquat was the obvious choice to become prime minister of
independent Pakistan in 1947 and became the country's senior leader after
Jinnah's death in 1948. His period in office was marked by difficult relations
with India, following the Indo-Pakistan War of 1947-1948, but also did much to define and consolidate the new state
both internationally and domestically. It was Liaquat who drafted the
“Objectives Resolution” of 1949 that charted a course for the country. He did
not, however, go far enough in satisfying religious extremists who wanted to
base laws on the Koran
and was assassinated in 1951, in circumstances which are still obscure.
Appril 21, is
a national holiday.