Jinnah has traditionally been seen as the opponent of Gandhi. Since Gandhi has been universally canonized as a saint, it follows that perceptions of Jinnah are generally quite negative, not only in India but in the West. Indians ascribe his change from a fervent nationalist to a Muslim separatist to an overarching personal ambition that led him away from his relatively anonymous position in the Congress (after Gandhi's "takeover" in 1920) to that of leader of the Muslim League and chief spokesman for Indian Muslims.
From Pakistan come the opposite claims. We learn that the Congress was in reality an organisation seeking Hindu domination of the Muslim "nation", under the guise of national unity. Jinnah saw through these games and used the Muslim League to fight for the interests of Muslims. He realized there was an inseparable gulf between Muslims and Hindus and advocated Pakistan so Muslims would have a safe haven. In later years, the mission of Pakistan expanded to being a beacon of true Islam to the world.
Both sides find it convenient to mark him as the man chiefly responsible for Partition. They also agree that he started out as a nationalist whose chief desire was Hindu-Muslim unity, but gave this up for the dream of Pakistan. One side does this to have a scapegoat and villain, the other to have a hero.
Granting that both these pictures must be heavily distorted due to the needs of both sides to justify themselves and their acts, it is interesting to ponder the question: What did Jinnah really want, and did he achieve it? To illustrate the difficulties of such an enterprise and the apparent contradictions it must account for, let us remember that in 1906 Jinnah opposed even separate electorates, but in 1916 he made them the cornerstone of the Lucknow Pact and finally he supported the Lahore separate nationhood (and government) for Muslims (rejecting separate electorates as being insufficient).
Jinnah and co. proposed Pakistan as the solution to India's "minority problem". Hindus and Muslims, said Jinnah, were not just followers of different religions but of different social orders and therefore it was impossible to hope for them to be ruled by the same laws. Separation was proposed as the only solution. Yet it is clearly not a solution. True separation would involve mass and complete transfers of population and no important leader ever advocated that. Anything less would leave the minorities in place and the situation essentially unchanged. The only sense in which there would be a solution is that now instead of one country with a Muslim minority, there would be one country with a Muslim minority and one with a Hindu minority! Apparently the hope was that this would lead to both minorities being well-treated due to fear of reprisals. As it turned out, of course, Pakistan was not able to keep its Hindu minority, and so we have pretty much the same situation as before. Such apparent contradictions between Jinnah's stated desires and the means proposed for getting there indicate that what he said was not what he meant, and one must dig deeper to reach the truth.
What did Jinnah want? Jalal says he wanted an India united by a strong Center. But he also wanted an effective Muslim voice at this Center, and for this he felt it necessary that there be one organisation that would speak for all Muslims (arguing that since they would be a minority voice they should at least be a united minority voice). Rather, in each Province the local Muslims could make whatever arrangements they pleased, but they should speak to the Center through one common front. Naturally, this common front would be the Muslim League under his leadership.
The problem was that this approach was not appreciated by the Muslim leaders of Punjab and Bengal, the largest provinces with Muslim majorities (but slight ones). Their local interests were better served by having a weak Center and they saw no reason to dilute their power by submitting to the League in "national" affairs. In the provincial elections of 1937, the League suffered near-total rejection in the Muslim provinces. In Punjab, it won a mere one out of eighty-four Muslim seats. In Sind and NWFP there was no League presence. In Bengal, the League won thirty-nine seats after essentially submerging into the old United Muslim party, and then formed a coalition Government with Fazlul Haq's Krishak Praja party.
The League did much better in the provinces where Muslims were a minority, though not overwhelmingly so, the best performances being in Bombay (20 of 39) and U.P. (27 of 64). This was to be expected, for the Muslims here felt a greater need for "outside" help from a Center which would be under some influence from the Muslims in other places.
Jinnah had to find a way to unite the Muslim majority provinces behind a plan that would protect the Muslims where they were a minority. Therefore he took up the "two-nation" idea. In 1940 the League adopted the Lahore resolution, later popularly known as the "Pakistan resolution". This made no mention of partition or "Pakistan" but asked that the Muslim-majority provinces be grouped into "Independent States in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign." The boundaries of the "Independent States" were to be those of the existing provinces. Nothing was said about the nature or role of the Center. On first sight this may seem a setback for Jinnah's assumed aim of a strong Center. But it can also be seen as a victory of sorts. As he was not then in a position to impose his own concept of a strong Center on the provincial leaders, the best he could do was to keep them from imposing a weak federal structure of their liking. And this he did.
The rest of Jalal's account proceeds on similar lines. Many of Jinnah's doings are explained in the context of foes stronger than himself, so that he could proceed only by obfuscation. Although he projected himself as the "sole spokesman" for the Indian Muslims, he was in reality severely constrained by the desires of other Muslim politicians. She uses the analogy of a card player with a weak hand who can only do well by misleading the other players as to the nature of his hand.
If Jinnah's desires were indeed as conjectured above, then it can safely be said he got little of what he wanted. Partition established two completely independent countries, rather than a single strong Central Government. Further, the minority Muslims in India lost whatever "protection" they had gained from the large Muslim populations of Punjab and Bengal. Nor did those Muslims enjoy greater benefits - for the partition of their provinces (a natural corollary to the partition of the country) deprived them of much of their natural resource. Punjab lost the fertile fields of its eastern part, while Bengal lost the economic hub of Calcutta and became a "rural slum".
What then of the fears of Hindu domination at the Center? With the rise of the BJP in India, at least this fear may appear to have some basis. Yet this has been something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. While the Hindutva movement feeds off pre-existing prejudices, and also works hard at spreading them, the "betrayal" of Partition has been a potent weapon in its armoury. The Muslim League itself suffered early and severe setbacks because Muslims did not vote in a block. It should have been realised that the case with Hindus would be similar. Further, in a democracy, rule is not merely a matter of who gets the most votes. Small parties often hold the balance of power between larger rivals, and this has been the case with recent coalition governments in both India and Pakistan. Jinnah was perhaps kept from seeing this due to the overwhelming success of the Congress among the non-Muslim voters and the lack of any serious rival to it. Yet he must have been aware of the factionalism within the Congress itself.
That there are (and were) conflicts between Hindus and Muslims is undeniable. Whether these conflicts should be seen as part of a struggle for supremacy between two nations is another matter. In my opinion, because of its implicit assumptions about irreconcilable different communities with conflicting aims, the question of how to protect "Muslim inteests" is itself an attempt at creation and escalation of such conflicts. From my point of view, if Jinnah did not get the Hindu-Muslim unity he wanted it was not merely because he fought forces that were stronger than himself. It was not because he made a crucial error or two in tactics or strategy. I believe he fought the wrong war. By seeking to protect "Muslim interests" at the Center through some special arrangement, he had already conceded that these interests were essentially different from those of non-Muslims. It seems inevitable that once he had started down that slippery slope, he would roll all the way to the rocky bottom.
A last word here is that all the previous discussion assumes that Jinnah did have one consistent rational underlying aim. It may well be that he did not. It is certainly true that some of his followers were chasing the most ephemeral and irrational of hopes. Perhaps their leader was no different. Or perhaps this man, acknowledged by all his contemporaries to be a master lawyer, got so caught up in the game of negotiation and making sure that the "opponent" did not win, that he failed to decide what it was he himself was fighting for.
