FREEDOM MOVEMENT
Andrew Whitehead's Profile of Jinnah
Of all those who shaped India's destiny half-a-century ago (Jinnah) remains the most elusive. A chain-smoker, gaunt, thin lipped and slightly sinister in appearance, he managed to create a new nation by perseverance and political cunning.
In Pakistan, Jinnah - the Quaid-e-Azam - is revered almost as a secular saint. He is sacrosanct. Beyond reproach. Speaking ill of the Father of the Nation is no more acceptable than insulting Gandhi has proved to be (in India)
On the other side of the partition line, Jinnah is often demonised. The Indian government propaganda films which tell the story of independence persistently paint Jinnah as the bad guy. But for him, it's suggested, all would have been well, India would have remained undivided, and whatever tension there may have been between Muslims and Hindus would have blown itself out.
Setting aside both stereotypes, what manner of man was the Quaid-e-Azam? A brilliant barrister, certainly; a gifted politician; fastidious, stubborn and a little austere What should not be overlooked is the remarkable triumph which crowned his political career. He won nationhood for Indian Muslims just seven years after he had first publicly espoused that aim. It was one of the most astonishing achievements in modern history. Jinnah may have complained about being given a "moth-eaten" Pakistan hut it was at the time of its creation the biggest independent Islamic nation in the world.
Yet when a rather smaller Pakistan (can there be any other nation which has suffered the secession of the larger part of its population?) marks its 50th birthday on August 14th, it's a fair bet that none of Jinnah's direct descendants will be gracing the celebrations. Certainly, none of them has ever opted to settle in the nation their forbear founded.
Jinnah's daughter, Dina Wadia - reluctant to speak about her famous father - lives in New York. His only grandson, Nusli Wadia, has his home in the city for which Jinnah himself had most affection: Bombay.
"Definitely I'm proud of him", says Nusli Wadia, a Parsee. "He was a man of very high integrity, a man who stood for what he believed". Not that Jinnah's grandson shares those beliefs. He says of partition "I think it would have been better avoided".
Jinnah's marriage, a love match with the much younger Ruttie Petit, turned sour. She died, some might say of a broken heart, while still in her twenties. It must have made a very private man still more reserved.
"It is a truism to say he was a rather distant person", says Sahabzada Yakub Khan, recently foreign minister of Pakistan, but in 1947 an adjutant to the last British Viceroy. "He was a great leader, an imposing personality, we knew he had stood up not only to the Indian leadership, but on many counts to the Viceroy and the establishment. It is true he did not come out as a warm, outgoing person - he generally had the reputation of being very correct, courteous but impersonal."
"He was a man of very few words", recalls the writer Khushwant Singh. "He was impeccably well dressed, and spoke very little, at least to me". But Khushwant Singh has good reason to remember the leader of the Muslim League. "He was the chief guest at our wedding, which was a grand affair in Delhi in October 1939. He came all the way from Bombay to attend our reception. And of course, nobody took any notice of me or my bride. He was the centre of attraction. One name-dropped Jinnah and I still do".
It was in the following year that Jinnah made his historic speech at the Lahore conference of the Muslim League. The word 'Pakistan' was never mentioned on that occasion, but the goal of a separate nation was made explicit.
Jinnah was a bundle of contradictions. He advocated making Urdu the official language of Pakistan (to the fury of Bengali-speakers), even though he was not comfortable speaking in it. He made religion the basis for nationhood, even though h was not himself pious. Even after he went to Karachi as Pakistan's Governor-General, he never gave up the hope - according to Nusli Wadia that he might return to the mansion he had built for himself on Bombay's Malabir Hill.
In the war years, columnist Kuldip Nayar had a chance to see Jinnah at close quarters, when the Quaid-e-Azam came to talk to law students in Lahore. "There was a tea party. And I asked him a question. Suppose Pakistan is a reality, I said, and India was to be attacked by some other power, what would the attitude of Pakistan be? He said: "young man, blood is thicker than water, we shall stand by you".
(Source: The Indian Express, 24 March, 1997)
Eminent Historical Irfan Habib On Genesis of First War of Independence, 1857
The Revolt of 1857 began as a Mutiny of the Bengal Army Sepoys, who throughout the course of the Revolt, proved themselves to be the most steadfast in its cause. The Bengal Army was much larger than the other two of the East India Company's Presidency armies (Madras and Bombay), combined; it was in fact the largest modern army operating east of Suez. By the time it broke into revolt, it had 139,807 "natives" as sepoys, officered by 26,089 "Europeans".
If his role as the cannonfodder of imperialism was at last telling on the Sepoy's morale, there was the constant reminder too of his absolutely servile position within the Army that further enflamed an inner resentment. He could rise after long service (for seniority was the only consideration) to be a "Jamadar", and then "Soubahdar" there being ten of each rank to regiment, and, finally, to the rank of "Soubahdar Major", one only for the whole regiment.
With these ranks obtainable only by a few after long years of service, the chain ended the army's recruitment zone was largely confined to the limits of the present-day UP, minus the Himalayan districts, together with Haryana and Western Bihar. This may partly have been because the English found it convenient for the Sepoys to share a common language ("Hindustanee"). The enlisted men came overwhelmingly from the class of small landowners. In the infantry comprising the bulk of the Bengal Army (Some 112,000 men), the Brahmans formed the largest segment, followed by Rajputs, other Hindus and Muslims. In the cavalry (over 19,000 men) Muslims ("Syeeds and Pathans") appear to have predominated. The much smaller artillery (less than 5,000 men) had a more mixed composition. A surprisingly large number of the Sepoys (about 40,000) were recruited from Oudh, comprising the present-day Lucknow and Faizabad divisions. this territorial affiliation of the Sepoy coincided with the area where the 1857 Rebellion flared up most strongly.
The enlistment area of the Bengal Army, if one excludes Oudh, lay under the Mahalwari system. And unlike the Permanent Settlement of Bengal and Bihar involved a constantly increasing revenue-demand. The system pressed hard on the landholdings of the families from which the Sepoys came. After the annexation the Mahalwari system was to be extended to Oudh. the sepoys began to see his own identity cast more and more in a religious colour. For his morale, the Army authorities had encouraged giving to the Bengal Army the reputation of an upper-caste army. The enlistment of lower castes was specifically discouraged by the Regulations of 1855. The Army authorities also took much care to encourage respect for caste taboos, by letting the Sepoys cook privately. Not surprisingly, the Sepoys became particularly sensitive about their caste and religious status. At the same time, the regiments were made up of diverse composition to thwart the growth of any common feeling among the Sepoys. But the result of such mixture. was the opposite: By coming together in the same companies, bonds grew between Hindu and Muslim sepoys and both came to consider each other as brothers. So when the issue of greased cartridges arose, with fear or pollution from beef and pork, they would untie as one on the single cry of the defence of their faith or "Deen".
When on March 29,1857, Mangal Pandey, the revolt's first martyr, called upon his comrades at Barracker to rise, the immediate summons proved abortive. The 19thand the 34th Infantry allowed themselves to be disarmed and disbanded. But the call spread from cantonment to cantonment, until on the 11th of May the Meerut Mutineers occupied Delhi and sent out the signal for a general uprising of the entire Bengal Army.
The signal, with some passage of time, was almost universally obeyed. In September, 1858, the India House could report only seven regiments with just 7,796 sepoys surviving in service from the Bengal Army of two years earlier, when it had a "native" strength of some 13,000 men. Number well over 100,000. They consisted the most modern force within their ranks.
The Sepoys Mutiny immediately touched a sympathetic chord in the hearts of the civil population of the large tract from Haryana to Bihar. The Mutiny took on the complexion, over large areas, of an agrarian revolt. As in very revolt or revolution, the class configuration on the ground in 1857 was not exact. There were bodies of zamindars and taluqdars who remained aloof from the Rebellion, and at the opportune moment even went over to the English; and many peasants defied the British as well as the rebel authorities. But the general situation was that over practically the entire Uttar Pradesh plains, British rule collapsed in the villages and authority passed over to rebelling zamindars and peasants, whose mutual contradictions of interest now took for them a second place. The dissatisfaction against the English was not purely rural. There was the devastation to which urban handicrafts, especially textiles, had been subjected owing to the intrusion of English competition and the disappearance of demand created by the deposed local courts and ruling classes. In his proclamation of August 1857, the rebel prince Feroz Shah underlined the fact that "the Europeans b the introduction of English articles into India have thrown the weavers, the cotton dressers, the carpenters, the blacksmiths, and the shoemakers, &c, out of employ every description of native artisan has been reduced to beggary."
The fact that the East India Company's government, partly under pressure from the missionaries, officially patronised Church activities created a situation where its aims became more and more suspect in the eyes of both Hindus and Muslims. General Hearsey Barrackpore ... attributed this to Hindu indignation in Calcutta over the recent legislation permitting the remarriage of Hindu widows. In Northern India, the "Wahabis" were already spreading the net of propaganda about the English being the enemy of the Faith, against whom jihad or holy war was enjoined. They actually contributed warriors-calld jihadis to the revolt: Many of these including persons from amongst "weavers, artisans and other wage-earners", joined Bakht Khan, the rebel commander at Delhi. It was natural that the cry of religion should be employed by the rebels so often; but it is also important to remember that they did their best not to let such sentiments create a division in their own ranks. When near the close of July, the Muslim Iduz-Zuha festival, with its customary animal sacrifices, the rebel regime took care to forbid the slaughter of cows, oxen and buffaloes in order to prevent any Hindu-Muslim dispute. In the fiery pamphlet, Fatah-i-Islam (Victory to Islam), issued from Lucknow during 1857, apparently under the aegis of the celebrated rebel leader Ahmadullah Shah, the appeal is repeatedly made that the Hindus and Muslims should both fight together to drive out the English and so unitedly protect their own respective faiths. The sense of "Hindustan" as the country whose destiny was in question, is often prominently present in rebel statements. Feroz Shah's proclamation of August 1857 begins with the following words:
It is well known to all that in this stage, the people of Hindoostan, both Hindoos and Mohammendans, are being ruined under the tyranny and oppression of the infidel and treacherous English".
In an important printed reply to Queen Victoria's proclamation, 1857, the Oudh prince Birjis Qadr asked people not to believe Queen Victoria's words, for " the wise cannot approve of [the English] punishing the whole army and people of Hindustan.
Simply the prince house of Oudh or its subjects, but all the people and princes of Hindustan were seen as the victims of English Oppression in practice much parochialism and factionalism prevailed in the rebel camp. Much of it was due to the rebel's failure to establish or accept a centralised authority. The Revolt broke out without any large political design. The natural thing for the revel Sepoys to do was to look for the rulers whom the British had dispossessed.
Until 1835 the East India Company's rupees had continued to be stuck in the name of the Mughal Emperor or Badshah; and there was a widespread feeling that 11 legitimate political authority could drive only from his grant. It was, therefore, inevitable that the 1857 Rebels should first use the name of that phantom ruler and declare their cause to be one of restoration of his authority. For this the possession of Delhi and the person of that emperor became crucial; and so long as the Rebels held Delhi from 11 May to 21 September, Delhi remained a magnet for all Sepoys-wherever there were no other local or regional authority-beckoning, like the Nana Sahib (as the proclaimed Peshwa) at Kanpur, and Rani Lakshmi Bai representing the deposed dynasty at Jhansi. It was inevitable that between such representatives of the old order, on the one hand, and the products of a modern army, like the Sepoys, there would always arise difficulties.
In Delhi the "republican" tendencies of Sepoy leaders like Bakht khan rendered them unpopular at the Fort, the seat of the court and residence of the titular Emperor. The famous constitution of the "Court (of) Administration" (so termed in Urdu) at Delhi, with its twelve articles, was an obvious attempt to establish a kind of elective military rule: of the ten members of the Court six were to be chosen(muntakhib)by the three arms (i.e. two each from infantry, cavalry and artillery)
The rebel regime made considerable effort to establish popularity for its cause by printing proclamations. In Oudh the Persian language of the Old court was replaced by Hindustani, with Hindi and Urdu texts given side by side, as illustrated by the Proclamation addressed to "the Zamindars and People of this Country Generally", issued in the name of Birjis Qadr, July, 6, 1857. The simple language used (particularly all of it is common to both the Hindi and Urdu columns) is admirable. A very detailed programme drafted to appeal to various sections of population with specific details of administrative, fiscal and financial measures to be taken, was issued by prince Firoz Shah, dated August 25.
This programme is important, both for its modern identification of classes, though its obvious effort to placate the zamindars (and to practically disenfranchise the peasantry) is disconcerting. However, whatever their limitations, documents such as these show that there were some talent and vision on the side of the Rebels; and the rebel regimes were not mere royal or princely old-older restorations.
Exaggeration of Atrocities
The Rebellion, when it broke out, was accompanied by atrocities, much exaggerated naturally by the English, and for which terrible vengeance on the innocent was wrought later. But it is best to remember that there were Rebel leaders themselves, who condemned these atrocities. Feroz Shah, in a second proclamation after the fall of Delhi, denounced the killing of women and children as wicked acts of violative of "the commands of God". No such compassion for the victims of her country's "white terror" in India appears in Queen Victoria's proclamation of 1858; and it is not to be forgotten that the English at single places butchered more ordinary people, often with bestial torture, than all the European civilians killed during the entire course of Rebellion. One also forgets that the Rebels' violence too was fed by reports of what the English were doing.
Today, at the moment of the 140th anniversary of the day when Meerut Sepoys entered Delhi. The diverse motives explain, but in no way detract from the immensity of the enterprise the rebels had begun-one that proved to be the greatest armed challenge to Imperialism the world over during the entire course of the nineteenth century. In these days when Globalisation and Hindutva dn Muslim Fundamentalism seem so much to flourish; it may look odd to some that the 1857 Rebels showed such consuming bitterness against foreign rule of Hindus and Muslims so unquestioningly shed their blood together. Perhaps, for that very reason, we need to recall 1857 as frequently as we can.
