Thinking of the Quaid
By Anwar Syed


“YOU are free, you are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan.” This is the assurance the founder of our country, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, our Quaid-i-Azam, gave all of us —Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Zoroastrians, and others — in his address to the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947.

Can there be doubt that he would have been deeply embarrassed, anguished, even incensed had he been present to see what some of his people did in Sangla Hill on November 12, 2005? A Muslim lost money to a Christian in a game of cards, went to the local prayer leader, and accused his “playmate” of blasphemy. The following morning a mob of professedly outraged Muslims attacked and broke up three churches, a convent for nuns, a missionary school, a hostel, and homes belonging to local Christians. They burned down or otherwise destroyed books, pictures, relics, and furniture.

Christian leaders have called upon General Pervez Musharraf to order a judicial inquiry and award “exemplary” punishment to the perpetrators. What could the punishments be for vandalism committed by a frenzied mob incited by the so-called “defenders” of the faith? Looking for the culprits would be like looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack. Yet the fact remains that the emotional hurt and physical damage done to a small and helpless minority is enormous and a way to right this despicable wrong must be found. Someone has to make restitution. It won’t be the culprits.

Who then? I submit that Muslims as a community must accept responsibility and comfort and compensate our grieving Christian fellow-citizens. I do not mean that the government of Pakistan, or the Punjab government, should make good the loss. Muslims, as individuals and as a community, must do it, for only then will their minds and souls be cleansed; only then will they realize that the wrong done in Sangla Hill must never be allowed again.

I should like to report that two leading women among Muslims of Pakistani origin in northern Virginia (US) have launched a vigorous, and apparently successful, campaign to raise funds for rebuilding or repairing the Christian places of worship in Sangla Hill. Their effort is commendable, but it cannot move the hearts and minds of Muslims living in Pakistan. The latter must also do something of the same order, and on a much larger scale. Let the call go out from Qazi Husain Ahmad, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, other MMA leaders, Mr Altaf Hussain, Mr Nawaz Sharif, and Ms Benazir Bhutto that Pakistani Muslims are honour bound to give funds and personal service in aid of the Christians in Sangla Hill. They owe decent respect and affection, and equal rights, to all minority groups. This is what the Quaid-i-Azam would have expected of them.

I should now like to turn, on this 129th anniversary of the Quaid-i-Azam’s birth, first to an overview of his personality, and then to certain aspects of his political ethic. Based upon several dozen recollections and analyses of his person and politics, presented at an international congress of scholars in December 1976, I am able to offer the following summation.

He was: handsome, elegant, eloquent, wealthy, shrewd, prudent, and frugal; proud, assertive, wilful; grave, disciplined, orderly, and persevering; competent organizer, skilful negotiator, able tactician, master of detail; unselfish, honest, incorruptible; rational, logical; given to the rule of law; covenant keeper; dedicated to his people’s welfare.

Most of these characterizations are self-explanatory, and not all of them are equally relevant to the making of a great leader. The people of Pakistan hold him in the highest esteem not because he was, among other things, eloquent, handsome, or elegant. He remains their ideal because of his unwavering commitment to probity in personal and public transactions, a balancing of the mutual obligations of the individual and the community, and primacy of the common good, the public interest, over the personal interests of policy-makers and influencers.

Let us begin with his view of the ends of public power. The function of the state, he believed, is not merely to maintain order that enables individuals freely to make and pursue their choices. It is also to build a good society, which is held together not only by relationships of interdependence based on contracts, but also by bonds of mutual affection and brotherhood.

All members of the Pakistani national community are brothers unto one another regardless of the religion to which they belong. This community is a historic, corporate entity that connects the present generations with those who are now gone and those who are still to come. It is an organic community whose parts are linked together in their health and well-being, and whose togetherness is enlivened by the warmth of solidarity.

As the Quaid-i-Azam saw it, brotherhood requires implementing the values of equality and social justice. In addition to equality before law and that of opportunity, it includes society’s obligation to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor, and to ensure that none would go without access to the basic necessities of life. Since brotherhood necessarily implies caring, the rich cannot say that they owe the poor nothing. Brotherhood must mean then that as one member of the community advances to a higher level of competence or prosperity, he takes others along with him on the same road. They may not all advance to the same extent, but sharing of a lifting experience has taken place, bringing all participants closer together.

In his post-independence speeches he urged his listeners in Quetta, Sibi, Peshawar, and elsewhere to subordinate their sectional interests to the larger national interest. Local attachments need not be abandoned, but what is the value of a part, he asked, except within the whole? This was a call for harmonizing local and national identities, but it did not imply that the locality would do all the giving. The national community owed obligations to regions and sections. The parts might not have value except within the whole, but the whole could not flourish if the parts languished. They must have their due and feel that justice reigned if they were to honour the whole.

The Quaid-i-Azam undertook to implement these requisites of national integrity. He told the people in Balochistan (for whose welfare he, as governor general, carried a special responsibility) that he wanted their area to have the status of a province as quickly as possible, and that in the meantime he would associate their representatives or notables with plans for their social and economic development. In the same vein he assured an audience in Peshawar that his government would want the “sons of the soil” to occupy higher-ranking posts in the provincial and central governments for which they were qualified. The people of all provinces of Pakistan must have their share of the advantages generated by public policy.

A good society must strive to be just, which meant living according to law and doing away with exploitation. Graft and “jobbery” were wicked because they involved taking something to which one was not entitled and, by the same token, depriving someone of that to which he had a right. He admonished that public officials in Pakistan were to serve the people towards whom they should be warm, kind, and befriending, not arrogant.

Civil servants, he said, must resist the pressure that politicians might bring to bear upon them to promote their personal and partisan ends. They owed loyalty to the state, not to any individual politician or party. Governments were made and unmade, ministers came and went away, but civil servants remained, which meant that they carried a heavy responsibility for safeguarding the public interest. Resistance to pressure might involve hazards to their careers, but they must do their duty fearlessly, and if sacrifices had to be made in the process, they should be willing to make them in order to make Pakistan the state of “our dreams.”

The people were entitled to a say in their governance. They could put a party in power and they could dismiss it. Their government must be responsive to their needs and aspirations. But once again he asked for a balancing of rights and obligations. The people had rights but so did the government. Both were entitled to be dealt with according to law. The “sovereign” people must learn that they had no right to act as a violent mob. Having put a government in place, they must let it govern. They should not try to impose their will on it, from one day to the next, by unlawful means.

No government worthy of the name could tolerate mob rule. He asked his people to introduce elements of moderation and balance in their lives and in their politics. Honest criticism of the government was appropriate when deserved, but the people must also understand the government’s limitations. And there would be nothing wrong with a word of appreciation and praise when their government and public officials did well.

The people of Pakistan celebrate the birthday of the Quaid-i-Azam to the point where a great many of them do not want to hear that, notwithstanding his many virtues, he was also capable of error. But they have, at the same time, chosen to ignore his advice in each one of the above-mentioned particulars. Are we then to say that his coming among us had all been in vain? I don’t think so. Gandhi in India, Thomas Jefferson in America, and the founding fathers of numerous modern states have likewise been ignored by many among their succeeding generations.

This is a fate that has befallen even some of the prophets. The optimists among us, especially those who speak in the hope of improving minds, must be grateful to God that they have someone like the Quaid-i-Azam to whose words and actions they can point as a torch that shows the right path to those who would seek it. And who is to say that such seekers will never increase?