Recently (May 2018) Hamid Ansari, the ex-Vice President of India, was invited to Aligarh Muslim University to be honoured with life membership of AMU Students Union (AMUSU). He had due security with him, yet Hindu Yuva Vahini–ABVP activists managed to come close to his place of stay. The armed protesters alleged that a portrait of Jinnah had been put up to please Ansari, and that they will not allow Jinnah’s portrait in AMU. The usual violence followed, a few Vahini volunteers were arrested, and most were later let off. This was followed by series of statements from Yogi Adityanath, who incidentally is also the founder of this Hindutva group, saying that portrait will not be allowed. Subramaniam Swami asked who will teach a lesson to AMU! The students of AMU are protesting the violence unleashed by Vahini and ABVP, and demanding that those responsible for the attack be arrested.
Many questions arise. First of all, how did the armed volunteers of Vahini and ABVP come near the place where Hamid Ansari was put up? One recalls the several attempts that have been made to humiliate this distinguished scholar and diplomat who held the high office of the Vice President of India. His photo of not saluting the Republic day parade was made viral to create the impression that he is showing disrespect, an issue that died down only went it was realised that he was following the rule book as only the President takes the salute and no one else. When he was given farewell, Modi attempted to humiliate him by hinting at his being a Muslim and being attached to issues related to Muslims. Given this background, his being targeted in AMU is just the continuation of what the BJP–RSS combine has been attempting to do to Ansari in the past.
How did it come to happen that someone recalled that Jinnah’s portrait is there on the AMU campus and on that pretext the armed volunteers sneaked into AMU campus? Has the portrait been put up yesterday? The portrait has been there since 1938, as AMU Students Union had conferred a rare honor on him by giving him life membership of AMUSU. The Hindutva activists issued the statement that Jinnah divided the country, so how could he be celebrated? The role played by Jinnah in the freedom movement is not a linear one and is not uniform. He began as a part of the movement and was part of it in the beginning. He is credited with being the Chairman of the Reception Committee which welcomed Gandhi on his return from South Africa. He was the one who fought the case in which Bal Gangadhar Tilak was given the death sentence and it is due to his legal brilliance that he could save the life of Tilak. He was also the lawyer for the young revolutionary, Sardar Bhagat Singh and to cap it all he entered into a Hindu–Muslim unity pact with Tilak (Lucknow, 1916). India’s nightingale Sarojini Naidu called Jinnah the ‘ambassador of Hindu Muslim unity’.
There is another side to the story also. He dissociated from the national movement once Gandhi launched the non-cooperation movement in 1920, in which for the first time the common people of the country participated in large numbers. This movement laid the foundation for the biggest ever mass movement in the history of the world. Jinnah was a constitutionalist and he felt that involving the common people in the struggle against the British is unwarranted. For the same reason, he opposed Gandhi’s role in the Khilafat movement. He gradually dissociated from active involvement in the freedom struggle and left for London to practice law. It was only after this that he began associating with the Muslim League and gradually become a leader of it. Muslim League was given the status of being the representative of Muslims by the British. This was basically a motivated exercise by the British as the Muslim League was founded by Muslim Nawabs and Landlords, and had feudal values inherent in it down to the core. His role as a leader of Muslim League and his Lahore resolution demanding a separate country for the Muslims—Pakistan—is what transformed him from a secular person into a communal leader.
To blame Jinnah alone for the partition of the country is a distorted presentation of the history of modern India. The roots of partition lie in the policies of the British who pursued the policy of ‘divide and rule’. They were aided in this by communalists from both Hindus and Muslims. Savarkar was the first one to articulate that there are two nations in the country, the Hindu and the Muslim. As per this understanding, the country belongs to the Hindus, so the Muslim nation will have to remain subordinate to the Hindus. This is where Jinnah falls into the communal trap. The logic he puts forward is, if there are two nations in the country, why there cannot be two countries? So why not Pakistan?
Jinnah has been the subject of various biographies and interpretations. His August 11, 1947 speech in Pakistan Constituent Assembly wherein he stated that people are free to follow their own religion and that the State will not interfere in that, elaborates his secular values. Advani, quite late in his life, after having launched the biggest attack on secular values in the country by demolishing the Babri Mosque, realised that Jinnah was secular. He called Jinnah secular and paid with his career, as the RSS combine has built its entire ideology around the slogan of ‘Hate Jinnah’, it has presented Jinnah as a symbol of Indian Muslims and as a symbol of India’s enemy, Pakistan!
With this AMU episode, Hindu nationalist politics is looking to kill many birds with a single stone. First is to once again target Hamid Ansari, whom they can’t approve of as his credentials are thoroughly secular. Second is to create yet another divisive issue in the form of the portrait of Jinnah on the AMU campus, thus adding one more emotive issue to the several they have manufactured so far. And third is to intimidate the AMU campus on lines of what they have attempted to do with JNU and Hyderabad Central University.
One can say that the Ghost of Jinnah, who can be called a ‘Secular Soul in a Communal body’, will keep visiting us again and again, what with the RSS combine seeking to keep popping up divisive issues one after the other!
Email: ram.puniyani@gmail.com
