>BTW, what exactly did LKA say about Jinnah that sent the VHP and RSS
>on the warpath ? Did calling him a secular patriot amount to a
http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEH20050608042103&Page=H&Title=Top+Stories&Topic=369
Mainly this..
Jinnah: From a secularist to a communalist
Wednesday June 8 2005 14:42 IST
IANS
NEW DELHI: The raging controversy over BJP leader L K Advani's dramatic eulogy of Pakistan's founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah has put the spotlight on the conflicting persona of the man whose espousal of the two-nation theory, many believe, led to the partition of India.
It has also revived interest in this multi-faceted man who was a gifted lawyer, a consummate constitutionalist, a passionate freedom fighter, a crafty politician and a master strategist.
Praising Jinnah as "a great man who left an inerasable stamp on history," Advani cited Jinnah's address to Pakistan's Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, as a cause for his change of heart about the man in the visitors' book at the Qaid-e-Azam's mausoleum in Karachi.
This is what Jinnah said in his forceful speech that marks him out as
a secularist as opposed to his stereotype image as a communal bigot who engineered the partition of the country based on the concept of Muslims and Hindus as two separate nations.
"You are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in the state. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed... that has nothing to do with the business of the state. We are all citizens and equal citizens of the state," said Jinnah on August 11, 1947.
Jinnah added, "You will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state."
Advani's unexpected praise for Jinnah predictably created a furore within the Sangh Parivar that treats Jinnah as an anathema
and as being responsible for the partition of the country. But, more importantly, it has forced a rethink and closer look at various phases of Jinnah's politics with differing emphases on secularism.
For at least one decade since his entry into politics in 1906, Jinnah forcefully spread the message of Hindu-Muslim unity. Gopal Krishna Gokhale, the mentor of Mahatma Gandhi, had once said of Jinnah: "He has the true stuff in him and that freedom from all sectarian prejudice which will make him the best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity."
By 1917, Jinnah came to be recognized as one of India's most outstanding political leaders. However, as the chasm between the Hindus and the Muslims deepened, a failed attempt was made to bridge the gulf with the formulation of the Delhi Muslim Proposals in March 1927. Jinnah argued at the national convention in 1928: "What we want is that
Hindus and Mussalmans should march together until our object is achieved...These two communities have got to be reconciled and united and made to feel that their interests are common."
But the convention ended as a failure, which Jinnah interpreted as "the last straw" for the Muslims. From this point on, Jinnah became more vociferous about the Muslim demands and his politics acquired a distinct communal colouring.
Anand K. Verma in "Reassessing Pakistan: Role of Two-nation Theory" refers obliquely to the Congress' refusal to share power with the Muslim League in 1937 in Uttar Pradesh which accentuated ill-feeling between the Congress and the League. This compelled Jinnah to choose what Mahatma Gandhi called the "war path" and in the presence of 50,000 people pass what came to be called the Pakistan Resolution of Lahore in March 1940. Significantly, the Muslim League resolution did not contain the word Pakistan.
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