ANOTHER RESPONSE TO CHANDER K. AZAD’S ARTICLE ON JINNAH
Daya Varma
While I fully share the sentiments expressed above by Kaleem Kawaja, I would like to add just two points. Personal convictions of Jinnah do not matter; his actions do.
The first point is of a general nature. No one, especially a political leader, should be judged by a scrutiny of personalities; rather they should be judged by the impact of their actions, which, in this specific case, affect a whole country and its people. It is irrelevant whether Jinnah was a secular nonreligious person or not. What is relevant is that Jinnah and his rivals created a country which weakened the status of Muslims of pre-partition India? How can one found a nation on the basis of religion and want it to become secular?
The second point is that there now is Pakistan; what then should be the attitude of the two countries towards each other and towards respective religious minorities to undo as much as possible the adverse consequences of the partition? L.K. Advani and Jaswant Singh have no love for Jinnah. They raise this issue not as an analysis of history but to defame their rival party, the Congress.