My background and leanings |
This is part of my Jinnah pages and is meant to give you some idea of my own biases so that you may have a clearer idea of what I am up to here!
I was born and grew up in Aligarh, home of the Aligarh Muslim University, once a breeding ground for Muslim Leaguers. My family history, however, is more closely linked with the Congress. My great-grandfather Abbas Tyabji was a judge in Baroda. Although a nationalist, he was not enamoured of Gandhi's methods and goals. In 1919, however, he sat on the Jallianwalla Bagh Committee and that experience led to a complete abandonment of his old life. He devoted himself to the service of Gandhi and the Congress. His uncle, Badruddin Tyabji, had been one of the founding members of the Congress. Her occasional encounters with Gandhi remain among my grandmother Sohaila's happiest memories.
Her husband, Mohammad Habib, was also a supporter of the Congress. It caused them much consternation, therefore, when their eldest son joined the League and decided to move to Pakistan after Partition.The second son and my father, Irfan, also chose his own way - joining the Communist Party. Which is how he met my mother, Sayera, who was then the president of the local student Communist association. Her father was a member of the Indian Civil Service.
I grew up then, in a house where the patron saints were Gandhi, Nehru, Lenin and Mao. Jinnah's name was never heard. The first time I heard anything favourable said of him was when my cousins from Pakistan came visiting. But their views on religion and race and politics, in particular their outlandish fears and prejudices regarding Gandhi and Hindus, kept me from taking any serious notice of this. It has been somewhat satisfying to have observed them, in later years, growing out of their childish notions and taking a broader view of the world. In part, these pages can be seen as an attempt to make sure I myself am free from the brainwashing I once decried in them.
My family's embracing of Gandhi and Nehru makes it impossible for me to consider with any seriousness the view [K] of them as Hindu revivalists in disguise and closet Mahasabhis. I grant they were human and not divine, and therefore prone to error and even serious error. But that is all I can grant. As for Jinnah, I would like to see him in a more positive light but ultimately, I think, my disapproval of Pakistan places strong bounds on how well I can think of him.
The people around me have been a curious mix of every faith, belief and persuasion. This has made me deeply skeptical of every one who claims to have "the" right answer, or proof that someone else's position is surely false. The people I give the least credence to are the ones who delight in marking the boundaries of "us" and "them". The Muslims who call Hindus untrustworthy idolators, or the Hindus who think every Muslim secretly plans a jihad and their conquest. Kabir said it well:
