z:\ ambedkar\vol 08\vol8 05.indd MK SJ+YS 28 9 2013/YS 13 11 2013 407
PAKISTAN : EPILOGUE
407
India is not the only country faced with the issue of partition or shifting of frontiers based on natural and historical factors to those based on the national factors. Poland has been partitioned three times and no one can be sure that there will be no more partition of Poland. There are very few countries in Europe which have not undergone partition during the last 150 years. This shows that the partition of a country is neither moral nor immoral. It is unmoral. It is a social, political or militay question. Sin has no place in it.
As a second refuge Mr. Gandhi started by protesting that the Muslim League did not represent the Muslims and that Pakistan was only a fancy of Mr. Jinnah. It is difficult to understand how Mr. Gandhi could be so blind as not to see how Mr. Jinnah’s ... influence over the Muslim masses has been growing day by day and how he has engaged himself in mobilizing all his forces for battle. Never before was Mr. Jinnah a man for the masses. He distrusted them.* To exclude them from political power he was always for a high franchise. Mr. Jinnah was never known to be a very devout, pious or a professing Muslim. Besides kissing the Holy Koran as and when he was sworn in as an M.L.A., he does not appear to have bothered much about its contents or its special tenets. It is doubtful if he frequented any mosque either out of curiosity or religious fervour. Mr. Jinnah was never found in the midst of Muslim mass congregations, religious or political. Today one finds a complete change in Mr. Jinnah. He has become a man of the masses. He is no longer above them. He is among them. Now they have raised him above themselves and call him their Qaid-e-Azam. He has not only become a believer in Islam, but is prepared to die for Islam. Today, he knows more of Islam than mere Kalama. Today, he goes to the mosque to hear Khutba and takes delight in joining the Id congregational prayers. Dongri and Null Bazaar once knew Mr. Jinnah by name. Today they know him by his presence. No Muslim meeting in Bombay begins or ends without Allah-ho-Akbar and Long Live Qaid-eAzam. In this Mr. Jinnah has merely followed King Henry IV of France—the unhappy father-in-law of the English
- Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in his autobiography says that Mr. Jinnah wanted the Congress to restrict its membership to matriculates.