Anwar H. Syed **

Introduction  

Pakistan, which arose as an independent state in 1947 from a partitioning of India, was herself dismembered in 1971. The larger part of her population broke away from the rest to establish a new state called Bangladesh. One way of interpreting this event is to say that the elite, who spoke and acted for the people of East Pakistan, came, or were driven to, the position that they did not wish to be Pakistanis any more. Certain political forces in parts of the "new" Pakistan are also said to have secessionist aims and one of them, the National Awami Party (NAP), was declared to be an unlawful organization on the basis of that allegation in February 1975. Earlier its top leaders were accused of fomenting an insurrection in Baluchistan in the summer of 1973 that raged for more than two years. It would seem then that Pakistan's crisis of national integration has not quite been resolved yet. Pakistani nationhood has not been made; partly because an influential school of thought maintains that to make it would be to repudiate the legacy of Allama lqbal and the Quaid‑i‑Azam, the founding fathers of Pakistan. We will see below that this fear issues from a misreading of their legacy.

            Cultural homogeneity, economic interest, shared remembrance of a common historical experience, satisfaction with the quality and levels of participation and distributive justice, and, on occasion, a judicious resort to coercive power are among the factors that help preserve a national community. Concepts of authority, rights, and justice are also involved. Individuals may be linked with one another in a nation because they agree on the definition of a just political order. It is in this sense, more than any other, that nationalism, such as Muslim nationalism, which many Pakistanis uphold, as distinguished from territorial nationalism of which some of the same Pakistanis are suspicious.

In their actual functioning the preservatives of national unity, referred to above, are interdependent. For instance, a common stake in the union will develop more easily among a culturally homogeneous people than it will among diverse group. The greater the cultural homogeneity and the sense of a common stake, the less the need for coercion. On the other hand, if resort to coercion has been excessive or if aspirations for participation and distributive justice have been frustrated, the ideological consensus may break down and even the sustaining role of cultural homogeneity may begin to decline.

Since early 1972  Pakistani commentators have debated issues of national identity, integrity, and survival. The “Islam‑pasands”— meaning those who believe that Pakistan remains unfulfilled until her society and polity are Islamized — maintain that domestic conspirators and foreign interventionists succeeded in dismembering Pakistan mainly because the Pakistani ruling elite's persistent neglect of the ideology of Muslim nationalism — in whose name Pakistan was demanded and attained ‑-- had disrupted the nation's sense of solidarity and cohesion. In this train of reasoning Muslim nationalism means that the common faith in Islam (rather than regional, ethnic, or cultural affiliations) suffices as a basis of political group‑making, and that the group is to organize itself and function as an Islamic polity. When a Muslim community is free to choose, because it is politically independent, and does not choose to conduct its affairs according to the law of Islam, its behaviour amounts to nothing less than "a form of national apostasy.” [1] It is asserted also that the obligation to establish an Islamic state in Pakistan is in the nature of a social contract. The founding fathers, Allama lqbal and the Quaid‑i‑Azam, understood and projected Muslim nationalism in the above terms  and envisaged that Pakistan would be an Islamic state. The generality of Indian Muslims struggled for Pakistan in the same expectation. They were “inspired by the ideology of Islam and the country was carved into existence solely to demonstrate the efficacy of the Islamic way of life.” [2]

This is a familiar argument. After the emergence of Pakistan Maulana Maududi, one of the more eminent scholars of Islam in our time and, until recently, head of the Jamat‑e-Islami, other ulema, the lay “Islam‑pasands,” including numerous Muslim League politicians, often asserted that none other than the original community‑making impulse—that is, Muslim nationalism—would preserve independent Pakistan. They warned that a Pakistani nationhood or nationalism, embracing both Muslim and non‑Muslim citizens, would ruin and disintegrate the state. In his well known work, Islamic Law and Constitution, the Maulana claimed that Muslims in pre‑independence India had opposed a joint electorate with Hindus because they rejected the notion of territorial nationalism. They believed instead in a concept of ideological nationalism that transcended geographical, ethnic, and linguistic attachment. The establishment of Pakistan had in no way altered their way of thinking: they still opposed territorial nationalism, knowing that it would lead to the construction of a secular state, which they did not desire. For if that had been their goal, "what was the harm in a united India? What was the need of offering a heavy price of life and property for the establishment of a separate state?” [3]

Maulana Maududi and his associates make a valid, albeit insufficient, argument when they say that Pakistan was undone in 1971 because Islam had not been implemented. They do not take account of the possibility, perhaps the likelihood, that in the foreseeable future Islam’s operationalization in Pakistan and elsewhere will continue to be partial. This is a predicament Islam shares with other comprehensive ideologies. Nor is this a new problem. Ever since the beginning of Umayyad rule in A.D. 661, Muslim politicians have been unwilling to subordinate their own pursuit of power to the restraints of Islamic law even though they were often willing to enforce that law in non‑political spheres. Muslim nationalism, as a group-making principle in politics, has not functioned since the end of Umayyad rule, for since then the ummah has been politically fragmented instead of being united in a single polity as, according to Muslim nationalism, it should be. The chasm between Islamic law and actual Muslim political behaviour was so great that the medieval Muslim jurist had to go outside the Islamic framework to look for principles that might help him deal with the twin problems of political legitimacy and the multiplicity of political authority. Al‑Mawardi (974‑1058), Al‑ Ghazali (1058-1111),  and Ibn Jama'a (1241-1333), among others, invoked the logic of necessity and a theory of the primacy of power to legitimize the empirical reality. [4]

The position that if Pakistan does not become an Islamic state, Pakistan is not worth having, has obvious disintegrative implications. Since there is no assurance that in any foreseeable future Pakistan will become an Islamic state to the satisfaction of the ulema, this verdict subverts the Pakistani people's patriotism and their sense of solidarity with one another. It distracts them from introducing into their value consensus ingredients that would meet, the needs of their particular situation. For while Muslim, they do have some other qualifications and characteristics also. It should be clear that if common attachment to a model of the good society, such as Islam, was the main community‑making force, and if subsequently this model could not be implemented enough so that revived faith in it would act as a community‑preserving agent, other preservatives must be activated to its assistance.

The historicity of the alleged social contract needs to be examined. It is true many Muslim League party workers and organizers of processions, demonstrations, and mass meetings during the Pakistan movement, made catching and rhyming slogans which seem to suggest that Pakistan would be an Islamic state. The position of Iqbal and Jinnah was much more complex as the following analysis of their writings and statements will show. But it should be recalled that Maulana Maududi himself did not, at the time, believe that the Muslim League and its leaders sought an Islamic state. He maintained that they were issuing a nationalistic call to unite Indian Muslims to protect their cultural personality and material interests. They wanted to free the Muslim majority areas from the dominance of the overall Hindu majority in the country. Pakistan, he thought, would be a non‑religious nation‑state like Iran  or Turkey. [5]

It is a mistake not to distinguish between the forces that bring a national community into being and those which preserve it. The two may have much in common, but they are not identical. The Indian Muslims’ identification with values and symbols provided by their common faith in Islam, and their regard of an Islam‑related culture, sufficed to initiate the Pakistani union, but we know that these identifications did not suffice to preserve it. Additional values and symbols, even if unrelated to Islam, were needed to make up a national personality with which the regions might be able to identify. In other words, a Pakistani nationalism was, and is, needed to assemble a more viable cluster of preservative assets. I suggest that the ideological requirements of Pakistani national integrity are not met unless the concept of Muslim nationhood is integrated with that of Pakistani nationhood. Both Iqbal and Jinnah knew that an independent Muslim state would need more than a common faith in Islam to preserve itself. They were not opposed to the development of a Pakistani nationalism and they did not believe that Pakistan would be worth having only if it were Islamic in a pre-established measure. First and foremost, they wanted as many Indian Muslims, to be politically independent and free to determine their destiny undaunted and unhindered by a hostile and overbearing non‑Muslim presence. They believed that an independent Muslim community must necessarily be Islamic to some degree. A half‑loaf, they thought, was better than none.  

Allama 1qbal  

            Mohammad Iqbal (1877‑1938), the "poet‑philosopher of Pakistan," began urging and explicating the idea of a separate Muslim nationhood in India long before Jinnah came to embrace it. In fact, during the 1920’s and early 1930’s, the two men stood on opposite sides of the political aisle, lqbal being secretary of the Shafi group in the Muslim League which had separated from the Jinnah group. They differed with regard to outlook, goals, and stra­tegy. Later, Jinnah adopting Iqbal’s ideological exposition of Muslim nationalism, provided the negotiating skill, leadership, and mass mobilization which carried this nationalism to fulfillment. lqbal and Jinnah are thus the founding fathers of Pakistan, and it is appropriate that we present the ideas of both men on Muslim nationalism and the role they envisaged for Islam in the state they demanded. The study of lqbal should be especially rewarding. As a philosopher, he formulated ideals; as a politician and as a man of affairs, he applied them to concrete situations and, in the process, gave us an indication of the ideal's potential as an operating principle. [6]

As a young man, Iqbal was an Indian patriot as was Jinnah. He advocated Hindu Muslim unity and thought in terms of a united India. His Bang‑e‑Dara, which also includes his early poems, opens with an eloquent tribute to the beauty and grandeur of the Himalayas, “the great wall protecting the State of India.” Several other poems reject the Brahmin's and the Mullah's narrow‑mindedness, condemn communal strife, and plead for communal harmony and unity. Some poems—for instance, "Tarana‑e‑Hindi" (The Song of India), “Hindustani Bachon ka Qawmi Geet” (The National Song of Indian Children), and “Naya Shiwala” (The New Temple)—might even be interpreted to show him as an Indian nationalist. But these poems belong to a period when 1qbal was still in his twenties. By 1909, when he was 32, he had already begun to think that “the preservation of their separate national entities is desirable for both the Hindus and Muslims.” Considering the prevailing conditions and the way the two communities were going, he concluded that, despite its “poetic appeal,” the goal of a common Indian nationhood would be impossible to achieve. [7]

At first glance, it may seem that Iqbal's position on Muslim nationalism is the same as that of Maududi. But, despite similarities, there are significant differences between the two as we will see below. Maududi is a fine scholar of traditional Islamic learning. lqbal is much more complex. He is a profound student of Muslim theology, law, history, and philosophy; he is at home with Western law, philosophy, and literature. He is a philosopher himself, but he is also a creative artist, practicing lawyer, and politician. [8] He is capable of  high idealism, but he is no stranger to empiricism or pragmatism. First, consider his idealism:  
The expression, “Indian Muhammedan,” however convenient it may be, is a contradiction in terms, since Islam in its essence is above all conditions of time and space. Nationality with us is a pure idea, it has no geographical basis. But in as much as the average man demands a material centre of nationality, the Muslim looks for it in holy town of Mecca, so that the basis of Muslim nationality combines the real and the ideal, the concrete and the abstract. [9]  

Or this statement of a purely ideological nationalism:  

It is not the unity of language or country or the identity of economic interests that constitutes the basic principles of our nationality. It is because we all believe in a certain view of the universe… that we are members of the society founded by the Prophet of Islam. Islam abhors all material limitations, and bases its nationality on a purely abstract idea objectified in a potentially expansive group of concrete personalities. It is not dependent for its life principle on the character and genius of a particular people. In its essence, it is non-temporal, non-spatial. [10]  

            Or, while referring to the Western imperial powers’ exploitation of the Third World, Italy’s suppression of Ethiopia, and the civil war in Spain, this assertion of the brotherhood of man:  

            Remember, man can be maintained on this earth only by honouring mankind…national unity too is not a very durable force. Only one unity is dependable and that unity is the brotherhood of man, which is above race, nationality, colour or language … So long as men do not demonstrate by their actions that they believe that the whole world is the family of God, so long as distinctions of race, colour and geographical nationalities are not wiped out completely….the beautiful ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity will never materialize. [11]          

            But Iqbal could also be pragmatic. He could see, and respond to, the changing capabilities, needs, and aspirations of the Muslim world. He did not divide the Muslim community between the righteous and the sinful, the learned and the unlettered, as Maududi did. He was deeply attached to this community even in its “corrupt” state and wished to advance its moral and material well-being.

            Iqbal’s concern with the unity and solidarity of the ummah and his rejection of the ethnic, linguistic, and territorial criteria for political group-making, are interspersed in his poetical works. Brief references to these matters will also be found in his major philosophical work, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, [12] and his presidential address to the All India Muslim Conference on March 21, 1932 in Lahore. But for a sustained discussion one should turn to his presidential address to the 1930 annual Muslim League session in Allahabad, his rejoinder to Jawaharlal Nehru who had published some criticism of his stand regarding the Ahmadis, and his rejoinder to Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madani in March 1938. [13] It cannot be over‑emphasized that, in these addresses and rejoinders, argument issues from his anxiety over the destiny of Indian Muslims. His observations on nationalism are often preceded and followed by a discussion of how best the Muslim personality in India may be preserved. In espousing Muslim nationalism he wants to dissuade the Indian Muslims merging themselves in a Hindu‑dominated Indian nationalism. Mis-understanding and distortion will result from ignoring this contextual relationship.

            Iqbal’s presidential address to the Allahabad meeting of the Muslim League is important not only because it was on this occasion that he demanded the establishment of an autonomous Muslim state in northwestern India, the territorial dimensions of which, as he spelled them out, are virtually the same as those of today’s Pakistan. He was addressing a group of politicians, not academicians and philosophers. Despite the disclaimer—“I lead no party; I follow no leader” [14] —he himself was both a philosopher and a man of politics. He was to speak to them of  Islamic ideals, but he was to do so with reference to the facts of Indian political life with which they must deal. On another similar occasion—The All India Muslim Conference in March 1932—he would speak to the difficulty inherent in such a role. But it is apparent that the same outlook informed his Allahabad address:

           

To reveal an ideal freed from its temporal limitations is one function; to show the way how ideals can be transformed into living actualities is quite another. If a man is temperamentally fit for the former function his task is comparatively easy, for it involves a clean jump over temporal limitations which waylay the practical politician at every step. The man who has got the courage to migrate from the former to the latter function has constantly to take stock of, and often yield to, the force of those very limitations which he has been in the habit of ignoring. Such a man has the misfortune of living in the midst of perpetual mental conflict and can be easily accused of self-contradiction. However, I gladly accept the difficult position in which you have placed me… [15] (Italics mine)           

The empirical reality may itself be amenable to change. But if it is not, or if men must act before it changes, the ideal will have to bear a measure of modification. Alternatively, the idealist, while maintaining the ideal in its original pure form on the drawing board, will have to be content with its partial implementation on the ground.

At the level of general theory, Iqbal’s position is essentially the same as that of other Muslim jurists and scholars. Islam is a polity and a society in addition to being an ethical ideal. It cannot be preserved as an ethical ideal unless it is maintained as a polity. The believers in Islam thus constitute a community not only for establishing worship but for organizing politics. The ummah, for which he uses the Persian equivalent “millat,” is your “nation” if you are a Muslim. Iqbal thought of nationalism as a form of idolatry. Muslims could not then adopt as a community‑making principle something that Islam meant to demolish. For them the entire earth was home.

Iqbal sees Islam and nationalism as rival principles for organizing the ultimate political group. Nationalism brings people together, but it also divides them and keeps them divided, for its criteria for solidarity among men—race, language, territory—cannot readily be met, by the outsider. One cannot change the place of one's birth and upbringing or the colour of one’s skin and eyes at will. In its divisive aspect, nationalism generates pride in one’s own group and low regard for other. It legitimizes one group's imperialistic control and exploitation of another. In its identification with secularism, it makes religion a private affair, consigning it to the individual’s relationship with God. Thus, it authorizes rulers of majorities, kings, dictators to usurp religion's regulatory jurisdiction in social interaction. It makes coercive power the ultimate author and arbiter of morals. A Muslim community's acceptance of such nationalism entails a subversion of  Islam.

While Islam also sees mankind as consisting of two groups—the Muslim and the non-Muslim—it does invite the non‑Muslim to enter its fold. At least potentially, it is then a uniting, rather than a divisive, principle. Its ultimate aim is to bring all men into society that transcends ethnic, linguistic, and territorial distinctions. This remains the goal no matter how many centuries it may take to be realized. [16]

Let us now turn to Iqbal’s Allahabad address. He began by telling his audience that Islam, as an ethical ideal and as a politico‑legal value system, had provided generations of Indian Muslims “those basic emotions and loyalties which gradually unify scattered individuals and groups and finally transform them into a well‑defined people.” [17]   One might even say that Islam had functioned as a “people‑building force” more effectively in India than any where else in the world. Laws and institutions associated with Islamic culture had given the Indian Muslim community a remarkable degree of inner unity and homogeneity. Its future as a “distinct cultural unit” would depend on the maintenance of this Islamic connection. He went on to say that Indian Muslims were far more homogeneous than any other group in the country. Indeed, they were the only Indian people “who can fitly be described as a nation in the modern sense of the word.” Even the Hindus, he thought, had not yet achieved the cohesion necessary for being a nation, “which Islam has given you as a free gift.” [18]

The “communal” problem in India was then not a matter of aggregating the varying interests of specific groups within a single nation. India was a land of many nations and her problems could not be resolved without the recognition that these problems were “international and not national.” The Indian Muslim national personality would be stifled if it fell under the dominance of a non‑Muslim national personality. Hence the demand for a “Muslim India within India”:  

I would like to see the Panjab, North‑West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single state. Self‑Government within the British Empire or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North‑West Indian Muslim State appears to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North‑West India. [19]  

In his rejoinders to Nehru and Madani, Iqbal distinguished between patriotism and nationalism, as some of his Arab contemporaries had also done. Madani, endorsing the concept of territorial nationalism, had said that “nations are formed by countries.” True, answered Iqbal, in the sense that historically nations had been associated with countries and countries with nations. There was nothing wrong with loving one’s land of birth and residence; it was a “natural instinct.” But Iqbal felt he must object to Madani's proposition when it was urged upon Indian Muslims as a political concept, implying that they should put aside their faith, stop thinking of themselves as a separate nation, and sink their identity in a larger Indian nationhood. Madani was only echoing the Hindu leaders, who gave Muslims the same advice, with a view to securing their own “permanent communal dominance in the whole of India.” [20]

Though an exponent of Muslim nationalism, Iqbal does not advocate a worldwide Muslim state here and now. He welcomed the Turkish abolition of the caliphate which, according to him, had been a corrupt institution ever since the Umayyads’ coming to power. He accepted the Mutazilite view that the caliphate, far from being divine or indispensable, was to be judged pragmatically. We should view it in the light of our past experience, which demonstrated that the “idea of a universal imamate has failed in practice.” Now that many independent Muslim states did exist, it could no longer work “as a living factor in the organization of modern Islam.” [21]   For the foreseeable future, wrote Iqbal:  

.... every Muslim nation must sink into her own deeper self, temporarily focus her vision on herself alone, until all are strong and powerful to form a living family of republics. A true and living unity.... (is) manifested in a multiplicity to free independent units whose racial rivalries are adjusted and harmonized by the unifying bond of a common spiritual aspiration. It seems to me that God is slowly bringing home to us the truth that Islam is neither Nationalism nor Imperialism but a League of Nations which recognizes artificial boundaries and racial distinctions for facility of reference only, and not for restricting the social horizon of its members. [22]  

Depending upon the possibilities that do exist, Islamic solidarity may take one of several forms ranging from a world state, which remains the ideal, to pacts and alliances made on purely political and economic grounds. [23]   It is shaken only when Muslim states make war on one another or, in religious terms, when Muslims rebel against any of the basic beliefs (unity of God and the finality of Muhammad's (PBUH) prophethood) and parctices of the faith.

Iqbal sees Islam more as a principle of social action than as a way of securing eternal bliss in the hereafter. The solidarity which it has given Indian Muslims is to be valued because it is the basis of their group cohesion for developing that “organic wholeness of a unified will” which is necessary for taking effective political action, especially in crisis situations. [24] Likewise, the two basic beliefs, referred to above, have a social function: they serve as pre-requisites of admission to the Muslim group. He, wants to place the Ahmadis outside the pale of Islam, principally because their denial of the finality of Muhammad's (PBUH) prophethood tends to disrupt the Muslim community's corporate life as a social organism. A Muslim state’s attitude towards heresy, he says, is a political matter to be determined on the basis of whether the “heresy,” and the attitude towards it, are life‑preserving or life‑destroying for the community. Otherwise, disputation among the ulema may be healthy, and he would reinitiate them into the “function of logical contradiction as a principle of movement in the theological dialectic.” [25]

It is of a piece with his position as set forth above that Iqbal does not worry over the tendency of some Muslim nations, such as Iran and Turkey, to embrace modern territorial nationalism. This nationalism, he says, becomes objectionable where Muslims are in a minority so that it can demand their “self‑effacement” by establishing that Islam, or religion as such, cannot be a “living factor” in national life. But where Muslims themselves are in the majority, and therefore politically dominant, Islam accommodates nationalism and the two become “practically identical.” Even if a Muslim state declares itself to be secular, its legislature cannot disregard “the conscience of the people which has for centuries been trained by the spirituality of Islam” [26] It follows that nationalism is not an issue in a Muslim country. Turkish, Iranian, and Pakistani nationalisms may flourish, for they pose no threat to the Muslim personality of the people concerned.

Again and again in his works, Iqbal asserts that Islam is a state more than anything else. Would the proposed Muslim state in northwestern India be an Islamic state? In his letters to Jinnah, Iqbal identified poverty as the Indian Muslims’ main problem and looked to the law of Islam and “its further development in the light of modern ideas” for its solution. But the modernization and enforcement of this law, he said, would be impossible except in a free Muslim state in the Indian subcontinent. [27] He hoped that such a state would help Islam, “mobilize its law, education and culture and bring them closer to its original spirit and to the spirit of modern times.” It might then be said that he would expect Pakistan to develop and enforce Islamic law. But once again this expectation must accommodate the world of reality.

It should first be emphasized that Iqbal thought the Muslim law, as formulated by the medieval jurists, needed massive reorientation and revision to be relevant to a Muslim community's needs in our time. Muslim lawyers, conversant with modern jurisprudence, working together with the ulema, might accomplish this task. He hoped that a Muslim polity might be led by men who had “a keen perception of the spirit and destiny of Islam” and “an equally keen perception of the trend of modern history.” [28]   In any case, this modernization would be an ongoing process in the fashioning of which the community must be self determining while remembering that “life is not change, pure and simple" but contains within itself  “elements of conservation also.” He denied any final or binding authority to the interpretations and judgments of the Prophet’s companions or the founders of the various schools of Islamic law. “The teaching of the Quran that life is a process of progressive creation necessitates that each generation, guided but unhampered by the work of its predecessor, should be permitted to solve its own problems.” [29] Iqbal maintains that Islam as a polity, demands loyalty to God, not to kings, but loyalty to God “virtually amounts to man's loyalty to his own ideal nature.” The Islamic principle of the unity of God in effect means equality, solidarity, and freedom among men—ideals, which the state in a Muslim country should endeavour to actualize. [30]

Iqbal’s response to the innovations and reforms undertaken in republican Turkey is further illustrative of what he would regard as good enough behaviour on the part of a Muslim state. We have already seen that he welcomed the abolition of the caliphate. He praised the new Turkish leaders’ materialistic outlook, saying that Islam had too much of renunciation. The spirit of Islam is not afraid of contact with matter; indeed, the Quran says “forget not thy share in the world.” A dose of materialism would help counter “mullah‑craft” and “sufi‑craft” which had mystified and exploited the Muslim masses for centuries. Kamal Ataturk's decrees requiring his people to wear Western clothes and write their language in the Roman script were acceptable because Islam, as a society, had no commitment to any particular dress or language. Nor would he object to the licensing of the ulema or the abolition of polygamy, for under Islamic law the government could withdraw the permissions if it thought that, because of misuse, they were liable to produce social corruption. Recitation of the Quran in the vernacular was inexpedient though not un‑Islamic, since Arabic, of all the Muslim languages, had the greatest future. The adoption of the Swiss Code was a serious error, but even this might only be an excusable excess arising from the youthful zeal of a people "furiously desiring to go ahead. The joy of emancipation from the fetters of long‑standing priestcraft some times drives a people to untried courses of action.” [31]

Iqbal was just as pragmatic while addressing the Muslim League at Allahabad. He wished to reassure the Indian Hindus that the Muslim state he was proposing would not join hands with a Muslim invading force from outside the Indian subcontinent. But, more importantly, he declared: “Nor should the Hindus fear that the creation of autonomous Muslim states (in the subcontinent) will mean the introduction of a kind of religious rule in such states.” By way of illustration, and further reassurance, he chose to refer to the fact— cited in a Times of India  editorial on a recent Indian Banking Enquiry Committee report—that, while the state in ancient India had usually regulated interest rates, the Muslim states in India did not impose restrictions on the giving or taking of interest on loans despite the Islamic injunction against it. [32]

Why then, as Maududi later asked, a separate Muslim state? It is clear that, unlike the purist, Iqbal thinks that a half‑loaf is better than none. The first order of business for a Muslim community is to attain independence of political choice‑making and action. Then it can Islamize itself to the extent, and at the pace, of which it is capable. A Muslim state is bound to be Islamic to some degree inasmuch as its value system has been influenced by the value preferences of Islam over a long period of time. Such a state, even if it is not fully Islamic at any given time, is worth having and Muslims should prefer it to the one where a non‑Muslim majority dominates the making of value and policy choices. We have seen that Iqbal thinks of Islam as a dynamic agent for restructuring the social order on an egalitarian basis. More than the forbidding of “song and dance,” Islamic resurgence means the unleashing of massive energy on the part of a Muslim people for building material prosperity subject to the overall framework of Islamic distributive justice. His aspirations regarding the goals and directions of an independent Muslim community may be gauged from the following statement he made while addressing the All India Muslim Conference:  

The peoples of Asia are bound to rise against the acquisitive economy which the West has developed and imposed on nations of the East.... The faith you represent recognizes the worth of the individual, and disciplines him to give away his all to the service of God and man. Its possibilities are not yet exhausted. It can still create a new world order where the social rank of man is not determined by his caste or colour or the amount of dividend he earns, but by the kind of life he lives; where the poor tax the rich… where an untouchable may marry the daughter of a king, where private ownership is a trust and where capital cannot be allowed to accumulate so as to dominate the real producer of wealth. This superb idealism of your faith, however, needs emancipation from the medieval fancies of theologians and legists.” [33]

            Beyond this matter of how far Indian Muslims might order their individual and collective lives according to the law of Islam, lqbal was vitally concerned with the preservation of their cultural personality which, he feared, would be destroyed in a Hindu‑dominated poli­ty. The foregoing discussion would show that this concern was central to his case for Muslim political self‑determination. By way of further substantiation, additional reference to this aspect of his thinking may be offered.     At Allahabad, he reasoned that Muslims must have their own homelands so that they might develop themselves “on the lines of their culture and tradition.”  He said he respected the customs and institutions of the Hindus and other Indian communities, but “I love the communal group which is the source of my life and behaviour and which has formed me.” He cautioned that India's political problems would not ease until the Muslims were assured “fullest cultural autonomy.” And again: “the life of Islam, as a cultural force, in this country very largely depends on its centralization in a specified territory.” [34] At the All India Muslim Conference, he declared that one’s faith, culture and historical tradition were indeed the things worth living for and dying for. In closing his rejoinder to Nehru, he said he was certain that Indian Muslims “will not submit to any kind of political idealism which would seek to annihilate their cultural entity.” [35] On the other hand, he felt they might even drop their insistence on separate electorates if the Indian provinces were reconstituted so as to ensure “comparatively homogeneous communities possessing linguistic, racial, cultural and religious unity.” [36]   In this connection, it is noteworthy that he excluded those parts of the Panjab, “where non‑Muslims predominate,” from the autonomous Muslim state he was proposing. (Italics in this paragraph are mine).

            Iqbal’s letters to Jinnah dated March 20, May 28, and June 21, 1937 are also relevant to an understanding of his position. He wrote that to most Indian Muslims the preservation of their culture was even more important than the advancement of their economic well‑being. He again urged the formation of one or more autonomous states where Muslims would have “absolute majorities.” A separate federation of the Muslim majority provinces, he thought, was the only way “to save Muslims from the domination of non‑Muslims.” In order to ensure that the Muslim majority, and thus the Muslim control of the policy realm, in the proposed state would be unambiguous and firm, he was not only willing to let go parts of the Panjab, as mentioned above, but urged the Muslim League to ignore, “at present,” the provinces where Muslims were in the minority and concentrate on organizing Muslim power in Northwestern India.

            In sum, it may fairly be said that Iqbal was interested, first and foremost, in liberating the Muslim majority areas of  India from Hindu rule in order that they might be able to safe­guard their cultural personality and, in addition, have at least the opportunity of mobilizing the spirit of  Islam according to their lights and capabilities.

Before we turn to Jinnah’s ideas on Muslim nationalism and related matters, two additional questions about lqbal must be raised. In reconciling the ideal on the drawing board with the empirical reality on the ground, has he fared any better than Ghazali and Ibn Jama’a had done in their times?  I think the answer would have to be that, yes, he has. In accepting the primacy of power as a legitimizing principle in politics, Ghazali and Ibn Jama'a were in fact going outside Islam to look for their criteria of judgment. For one reason or another, they were declining to apply the Islamic criteria to the politics of their day. Iqbal is not content with leaving the Islamic political model on the drawing board. He applies it to real life and reformulates it in the process. He feels that, instead of being distorted or subverted, the model is now more capable of fulfilling its original purpose.

            How different is Muslim nationalism from modern territorial nationalism which Iqbal opposed? In its “pure” form Muslim nationalism was wholly ideological. Ethnic, linguis­tic, and territorial affiliations were not only irrelevant but repugnant to its spirit. In its application to Indian Muslims, however, the same discarded components were put back to work: territory became crucial, ethnic and linguistic homogeneity and historical tradition became valuable, and Islam itself became virtually the same thing as “culture.” This would seem to be almost like a metamorphosis. Once again, my own view is that this contradiction is more apparent than real. Muslim nationalism with Iqbal is the same that it has more often been: a Muslim community's unwillingness to be ruled by a non‑Muslim political power. Territorial, ethnic, and linguistic appeals are to be rejected if they are being addressed by a non‑Muslim group to a smaller Muslim group. Muslim nationalism is pre‑eminently ideological in actually or potentially confrontational situations involving the non‑Muslim. But when only a Muslim group is involved, territorial, ethnic, and linguistic sympathies may be summoned in aid of ideology to strengthen the group's inner cohesion necessary for plain survival as well as for undertaking significant collective action. Where Muslims are politically dominant Islam has no quarrel with modern territorial nationalism.  

Quaid‑i‑Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah  

M. A. Jinnah (1876-1948), with whom the “two nation theory” is more generally associated, did not press it in its Pan‑Islamic aspect and, to that extent, his position is simpler to handle. His interest is focused on the destiny of Indian Muslims. But the linkage between the idea of Muslim nationalism and that of lslam as a polity is present in his thought also and, therefore, has to be examined.

Jinnah's best known statement of the two‑nation theory was made during his presidential address at the annual meeting of the Muslim League in March 1940, where a resolution demanding independent Muslim states in the subcontinent was adopted. His argument merits extended quotation:

 

The problem in India is not of an inter‑communal character but manifestly of an international one, and it must be treated as such.... They [Islam and Hinduism] are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders, and it is a dream that Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality.... The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, literatures. They neither inter-marry nor inter-dine together and, indeed, they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions.... Hindus and Musalmans derive their inspirations from different sources of history. They have different epics, different heroes, and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other and, likewise, their victories and defeats overlap.... Musalmans are a nation according to any definition and they must have their homelands, their territory and their state. [37]  

            The Muslims, he said, would not accept an Indian polity in which a permanent Hindu majority—often hostile to their cultural personality—predominated. Beyond that, they wished to develop their spiritual, cultural, economic, and political life according to their “genius” and their own ideals. Jinnah exhorted his listeners at Lahore to “come forward as servants of Islam” and organize the Muslim masses for the attainment of these goals.

Numerous references to Islam, as a major factor in the Indian Muslims' personality and destiny, will be found in Jinnah's observations both before and after Pakistan’s establishment. Addressing the Panjab Muslim Students Federation on March 18, 1944, he called Islam “our bedrock and sheet‑anchor,” and asked the Communist Party to leave the Muslims alone for whom Islam was “the guide and a complete code of life.” A few days later, he observed that Pakistan alone could ensure the Muslims their own freedom and the greater “glory of Islam”. On June 18, 1945 he told Muslim students in Peshawar that they must help organize “our nation” to achieve independence and to be able to live according to Islamic ideals and principles. "Pakistan not only means freedom and independence but the Muslim ideology which has to be preserved, which has come to us as a precious gift and treasure and which we hope others will share with us.” [38]

After independence Jinnah invoked the Islamic idiom to hearten the Pakistani people whose new state faced severe problems arising from mass migration of populations on both sides of the border, in addition to a variety of Indian  pressures. In an Eid message on August 18, 1947 he hoped there would be a “renaissance of Islamic culture and ideals” in Pakistan. In another Eid message on October 24, 1947 he asked the people to show the spirit of sacrifice that Ibrahim (Abraham) had shown and then hope that “God would rend the clouds and shower on us his blessings as he did on Ibrahim.” He urged them to persevere in their objective of creating a state “of our own concept” and show the world that the state exists not to order life as such but to organize the “good life.” [39] In another statement he interpreted the Islamic requirement of fasting during the month of Ramadan as impressing upon Muslims the values of unity, discipline, and orderliness. [40] On October 30, 1947, referring once again to the Indian pressures and related problems facing the country, Jinnah said: “We thank Providence for giving us courage and faith to fight these forces of evil. If we take our inspiration and guidance from the Holy Quran, the final victory, I once again say, will be ours.” He reminded Pakistanis that their history—that is, Islamic history—was full of instances of heroism. He urged them to make whatever sacrifices might be necessary to save the "honour of Pakistan and Islam” and make Pakistan into a “bulwark of Islam.” [41]

            Jinnah’s use of the Islamic idiom was not limited to confrontational situations involving India but extended to domestic reconstruction policy. Thus, on February 4, 1948, he told a Sibi audience that in wanting to give Baluchis a voice in the administration of their province, he had been moved by his commitment to the principle of Islamic democracy. God had taught Muslims that they should settle the affairs of state through mutual discussion and consultation. “It is my belief that our salvation lies in following the golden rules of conduct set for us by our great lawgiver, the Prophet of Islam (PBUH). Let us lay the foundations of our democracy on the basis of truly Islamic ideals and principles.” [42]

On the other hand, it may be recalled that in a speech in the Indian Legislative Assembly on February 7, 1936 he had asserted that religion as such, being “merely a matter between man and God,” should not be allowed to come into politics [43] .  Soon after the adoption of the Pakistan Resolution in March 1940, he sought to assure the Sikhs that they would have a great deal more political influence in Muslim Pakistan than they could possibly have in Hindu India. After independence, he declared that Hindus were not unwanted in Pakistan and, on several occasions, deplored their mass migration from Sind. He urged Pakistani Muslims—in the name of Islam, ordinary decency, and the country's good order—to protect Pakistani Hindus. Repeatedly he declared that, as citizens, Hindus and other non‑Muslims, had the same rights and obligations as Muslims. In a radio broadcast intended for American audience, recorded in February 1948, he said Pakistan's constitution should incorporate the essential principle of Islam which were good and relevant in our day as they were thirteen hundred years ago. But Pakistan would not be a “theocratic state” ruled by "priests.” He went on to say that “we have many non‑Muslims.... (and) they are all Pakistanis.” [44]

Jinnah's presidential address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947 deserves close attention. The partition of India, he said, had been inevitable. But it was equally unavoidable that minorities would be left in each of the successor states: Hindus in Pakistan, Muslims in India. Now that Pakistan had been attained, Muslims and Hindus in the country should “bury the hatchet” and work together to advance the wellbeing of the masses.  

If you change your past and work together in a spirit that everyone no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you in the past....is first, second, and last a citizen of this state with equal rights, privileges and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make.

I cannot emphasize it too much. We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and the minority, the Hindu community and the Muslim community.... will vanish.... You are free, you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed—that has nothing to do with the business of the State [45] .  (Italics mine).  

Now that Pakistan had materialized, would the idea of Muslim nationalism, and the two‑nation theory, their work done, retire from the political scene and yield to a Pakistani nationhood to which not only Muslims but Pakistani Hindus and other non‑Muslims might belong? It would seem that at the time of making the above address to the Constituent Assembly, Jinnah regarded this as a desirable development. But it appears also that his mind was not entirely made up. Hindus had equal rights as citizens; religion had nothing to do with business of the state—these were radical enough positions to take after all that had been, said, and was being said, about Islam and its connection with Pakistan. Jinnah could not bring himself to declaring flatly that the validity of the two‑nation theory had been situational, and that henceforth Muslims and Hindus would belong to the same and one Pakistani nation. He went about it indirectly, telling the Assembly that the Protestants and Catholics in England, who once battled and persecuted each other, had changed their attitudes and, politically speaking, ceased to be Protestants and Catholics. Over time they had all become British citizens, “and they are all members of the Nation. Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our  ideal and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state.” [46] (Italics mine).

Jinnah was not to make quite the same kind of a statement again. Note that it was made on August 11, 1947, that is, before the terrible massacres of Muslims in the Indian Panjab pushed millions of refugees into Pakistan. There were massacres of Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan and refugees, again by the million, streamed into India. Jinnah believed that militant Hindu groups in India had deliberately planned the massacres to crush the new state of Pakistan under the weight of having to care for so many refugees. On the other hand, they had sought to disrupt the Pakistani economy by instigating the Sindhi Hindus to leave the country. He suspected that elements within Pakistan's Hindu population were participants in this conspiracy. He still asserted that non‑Muslims in Pakistan had equal rights, but he did not return to the theme of a single Pakistani nationhood embracing citizens. He may have concluded, perhaps regretfully, that this was an idea of which the time had not yet arrived.

The problem of “provincialism,” which eventually broke up Pakistan, arose, within months of the new state’s birth. The presence of non‑Bengali higher civil servants, the status of the Bengali language, Bengali under‑representation in the nation’s armed forces agitated East Pakistani minds. In Baluchistan also the issue of non‑Baluchis holding positions of power and profit became troublesome. Jinnah’s response to this problem in the two regions was substantially the same. “We are all Pakistanis, we are all Muslims”—he would say. He placed more emphasis on Islam while addressing audiences in East Pakistan where Hindus constituted about 20 per cent of the population. Jinnah thought that some of the more influential among them were actively in league with their militant co‑religionists in India for the purpose of disrupting Pakistan. By contrast, no credible threat to the Muslim personality existed in Baluchistan: the Baluchis were all Muslim and the non‑Muslim were too few to be politically significant.

Responding to an address of welcome presented to him by the Quetta Municipality, Jinnah observed that it was right to love one’s town or region and to work for its welfare but one must love one’s country even better. “Local attachments have their value but what is the value and strength of a part except within the whole?”  It was appropriate to demand provincial autonomy and local liberty to avoid British control. But now that they had their own government, it was folly to think and act in the old way, especially when their new state faced difficult external and internal problems.  

At this juncture any subordination of the larger interest of the state to the provincial or local or personal interest would be suicidal.. . .  These whisperings of Mulki and non‑Mulki (local and non‑local) are neither profitable for the land (Baluchistan) nor worthy of it. We are now all Pakistanis .... and we should be proud to be known as Pakistanis and nothing else. [47]

  At the same time, Jinnah expressed great concern, and a sense of personal responsibility, for Baluchistan’s welfare. He told his listeners that their affairs were not out of his mind even “for one moment.” He was most anxious to hasten their material advancement to enable them to have the same degree of self‑government as “their brothers in the other provinces” did. [48]   As an immediate measure, he offered them an advisory council and assured them that plans for their political, economic, social and educational development would be made and implemented in consultation with this body.

            In East Pakistan too, except in the matter of accepting Bengali as a national language, Jinnah identified himself fully with the people’s aspirations for participation and equality of access to the means of material well‑being. He sought to awaken in them a sense of Pakistani identity. He gave them the example of America where, he thought, the various ethnic groups had been sensible enough to overcome their sectionalism and think of themselves as Americans. “And so you should think, live and act in terms that your country is Pakistan and you are a Pakistani.” But with even greater emphasis he appealed to their sense of  Muslim identity. He warned them that Indian propagandists and their agents “in our midst”, posing as champions of East Pakistani rights, were spreading the poison of provincialism to sabotage Pakistan by driving a wedge between Muslim and Muslim.  

As long as you do not throw off this poison in our body politic, you will never be able to weld yourself .... into a real true nation. What we want is not to talk about Bengali, Panjabi, Sindhi, Baluchi, Pathan and so on. They are of course units. But I ask you; have you forgotten the lesson that was taught to us thirteen hundred years ago ?.... So what is the use of saying “we are Bengalis, or Sindhis, or Pathans, or Panjabis ?” No, we are Muslims. [49]  

His insistence that Urdu alone must be the national language of Pakistan was also linked with Islam. He argued that Urdu was understood all over Pakistan, and that the hundred million Muslims of the subcontinent had nurtured it. But above all it was a language “which, more than any other provincial language, embodies the best that is in Islamic culture and Muslim tradition and is nearest to the languages used in other Islamic countries.” [50]

Jinnah’s prescription for preserving the national community may be said to have had the following ingredients. In both Baluchistan and East Pakistan he appealed to the people’s Muslim personality for the defence and development of which Pakistan had been demanded and attained. At the same time, he attempted to impart to them a sense of a Pakistani nationhood. Like Iqbal he saw no conflict between Muslim nationhood and Pakistani nationhood in a polity where the Muslims were bound to be dominant because of their overwhelming majority. Secondly, he linked his appeal to nationalism, Muslim and Pakistani, with the government’s obligation to accommodate the popular urges for participation and egalitarianism. Pakistan broke up because Jinnah’s successors ignored this second element in the mix.

We have seen Jinnah urging Pakistanis to follow the Quran and establish their affairs according to the ideals and principles it enunciates. Is this a plea for an Islamic state that the ulema might accept as the genuine thing?

Jinnah’s reasons for demanding Pakistan, and his notion of the content of Muslim nationalism, are substantially the same as those of Iqbal. There is first the Muslim community’s historic reluctance to be ruled by the non‑Muslim. In the Indian context, this is heightened by the harshness of the alternative. Jinnah maintained that, its protestations of secularism notwithstanding the Congress Party was a Hindu organization, dedicated to the establishment of Hindu Raj in India, and that it had no intention of developing a non‑sectarian, genuinely liberal polity which might value the diversity of religious and cultural expressions in the country. Hindu leaders had made it abundantly clear that “Hindustan is for the Hindus” and the Congress leadership, Jinnah thought, was “absolutely determined” to crush all other communities and cultures. The behaviour of Congress governments in the Hindu majority provinces between 1937 and 1939 had provided a clear indication of the treatment the Muslims might expect in a Hindu‑dominated state. These governments had attempted to stifle Urdu and force Hindi on Muslims. They had adopted the Bande Mataram -- a “hymn of hate” against the Muslims -- as a national song. They had tried to impose Hindu ideals on Muslims, interfered with their religious and social life, and violated their economic and political rights. They meant to destroy the Muslim community as a distinct cultural entity in India. There could then be no honourable settlement with the Congress: Muslims must have their own governments in the two regions which they regarded as their homelands where they might live by their own culture. [51]

Pakistan was sought to protect and promote the political, economic, cultural, and religious interests of Muslims. Note that in Jinnah’s justifications of the demand for Pakistan these four interests are almost invariably mentioned together. He sees the Muslim personality as a seamless whole in which several elements—religion, ethnicity, historical experience—are enmeshed. His view of the Indian Muslim culture as Islamic culture, “which we have inherited, is essentially the same as that of 1qbal: the cultural personality to be preserved and mobilized has, for many centuries, been the recipient of influences associated with Islam’s journey through history. The interlocking nature of these relationship in forming the Muslim personality, as Jinnah saw it, is apparent from his speech in the Indian Legislative Assembly on February 7, 1935 referred to earlier. Addressing himself to the Report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Indian Constitutional Reforms, he observed that the minority problem in India was not a matter purely of language, race or religion. It was rather a “combination of all these various elements—religion, culture, race, language, art, music, and so forth [that] makes the minority a separate entity in the state, and that separate entity as an entity wants safeguards.” [52]

It will be seen that this position is vastly different from that of the purist such as Maududi. The Indian Muslim personality has Islamic elements. But it also has many other elements that are non‑Islamic and some that are, strictly speaking, un‑Islamic. The purist wants to throw them out. He would, for instance, be gratified if a Muslim community were to banish most, if not all, of its poets, playwrights, storytellers, jokesters, painters, sculptors, musicians, dancers, bridge players, coffee house chatters—to mention only a few categories. He rejects much of what he sees and wants to rebuild the Muslim personality in conformity to his own model. But lqbal and Jinnah regard the existing Muslim personality, despite its imperfections, as something precious that deserves to be defended. They too seek its improvement. But the community itself, and not the purist, is to be the author and agent of this improvement. In the meantime, they love and cherish this personality as they find it, because they feel they belong to it. They identify with it while the purist looks at it with the attitude of a disapproving outside critic.

An insight into Jinnah's understanding of Islam should also be helpful in answering the question we posed above. He was not a scholar of Islam as 1qbal was. Yet, like Iqbal, he was inclined to regard Islam more as a social order, a basis of solidarity among men, and a principle of dynamic social action than as a prescription for securing tranquility in the hereafter. Islam to him was a civilization, a culture, a way of life. Islam was everything good and decent. Consider an Eid Day radio broadcast he made on November 13, 1939; “Islam,  as you all know, really means action,” which implies a societal context. In emphasizing action, the Holy Prophet (PBUH) was not thinking of “the solitary life of a single human being, the deed he accomplishes only within himself.” The discipline of fasting, for instance, was designed to give Muslims the capability for social action. The obligation to pray also had a social significance. Congregational prayer, being the preferred mode, offered “many wonderful opportunities” to meet, study, understand, and serve our “fellow beings.”  

You will have noticed that this plan of our prayers must necessarily bring us into contact not only with other Muslims but also with members of all communities whom we must encounter on our way. I don’t think these injunctions about our prayers could have been merely a happy accident. I am convinced that they were designed thus to afford men, opportunities of fulfilling their social instincts.  

In the same broadcast Jinnah maintained that the value of self‑discipline taught by Islam applied to all aspects of one’s behaviour, including such mundane things as doing an honest job of one’s work, eating and going to bed at the proper time, and abstaining from littering the road. At the loftier plane, he reminded his audience, “Islam expects every, Muslim to do his duty to people,” serve them and, if necessary, make sacrifices for them. He went on to say:  

If we have any faith in love and toleration towards God's children, to whatever community they may belong, we must act upon that faith in the daily round of our simple duties and unobstrusive pieties....I would ask you to remember.... that no injunction is considered by our Holy Prophet (PBUH) more imperative or more divinely binding than the devout but supreme realisation of our duty of love and toleration towards all other human beings. [53]  (Italics mine) .  

              In Jinnah's statements and speeches there are countless references to the Muslim community’s right, and obligation, to fashion and conduct its politics according to Islamic ideals and principles.  But it would be a mistake to think that in acknowledging  this obligation he was issuing a call for the enforcement of Abu Hanifa 's fiqah (or that of any other Muslim jurist). He often identified Islamic ideals and principles as democracy, equality, social justice, tolerance, and brotherhood of man. The values he urged in the name of Islam are honesty, hard work, dedication to duty, discipline, orderliness, national solidarity and unity.  His speech in Chittagong on March 26, 1948 is a good example of his understanding of Islam as a polity:  

You are only voicing my sentiments .... when you say that Pakistan should be based on the secure foundations of social justice and Islamic socialism which emphasises equality and brotherhood of man. Similarly, you are voicing my thoughts in asking. . equal opportunities for all. These targets of progress are not controversial in Pakistan.... Brotherhood, equality, and fraternity of man—these are all the basic points of our religion, culture and civilisation. And we fought for Pakistan because there was a danger of denial of these human rights in this sub‑ continent. [54]  

In defining what Jinnah would regard as good enough behaviour on the part of Muslim Pakistan the answer may be the same as that we gave with reference to Iqbal: a Muslim community, conscious and proud of being Muslim, endeavouring to implement the values of tolerance, egalitarianism, and democracy, and applying the values of dynamism, inventiveness, and hard work to improve its material environment, is Islamic enough. It should be noted that Jinnah, being more of a politician than Iqbal, was even more aware that in the actual conduct of affairs one may have to make concessions and compromises which detract from the ideal. In the Eid Day radio broadcast in 1939, to which we referred earlier, he said:           

            In the pursuit of truth and the cultivation of beliefs we should be guided by our rational interpretation of the Quran.... In the translation of this truth into practice, how­ever, we shall be content with so much, and so much only, as we can achieve without encroaching on the rights, of others, while at the same time not ceasing our efforts to achieve more. [55]  

            It is apparent that many of Jinnah’s references to Islam are made in an exhortative context. Men are being asked to work hard, resist temptation, make sacrifices, fight, build, incorporate order and discipline into their lives, respect the opinions of others and consult with them before making collective decisions. But for these restraints and exertions no immediate material rewards are being offered. Then, can we expect that the desired values will be imparted to one’s audience unless these are traced or related to a source the audience respects? Will a Pakistani, or for that matter a Korean or a Chinese, audience value equality, tolerance, or discussion and debate on the ground that John Locke and Thomas Jefferson commended them as dictates of “reason”? Why should it pay any attention to Locke and Jefferson? They are not its men. Assuming their argument is sensible (even though Hume, Calhoun, Fitzhugh, and others say it is not), one may turn to it if the same or a similar argument is not available in one’s own tradition. But if it is, it would be inexpedient not to make the connection and forego the additional receptivity resulting from a people’s loyalty to their own heritage. Now it might be argued that the values being urged in the name of Islam are not uniquely Islamic and that they are upheld in other systems of thought also. But if some of the values advanced by Jefferson and Paine were also advanced by Confucius, this coincidence does not constitute a reason for Americans to drop their identification with their own tradition and, in the Fourth of July orations, start exhorting each other in the name of Confucius.  
Conclusion  

In the above discussion, we have made comparisons between the positions of Iqbal and Jinnah with regard to the rationale and destiny of a separate Muslim state in the Indian  sub-continent. While there may be differences of emphasis between them, it is clear that they agree on essentials. Neither is willing to see a Muslim community subjected to non‑Muslim rule if an alternative exists. They both feel a Muslim community derives its separate identity from having a cultural personality that combines local influences with an Islamic content, which is not only ritualistic but attitudinal and philosophic in character. A Muslim polity is therefore inevitably Islamic in some measure and is to be valued regardless of its stage of Islamization. In such a polity nationalism, even if it means dedication to a composite cultural personality, is acceptable and may be harmonized with the sense of solidarity the polity entertains towards the rest of the Muslim world. Both Jinnah and Iqbal are concerned with the problem of poverty and backwardness among Muslims for the eradication of which they look, on the one hand, to the urges of dynamism, struggle, and creativity in Islam and, on the other, to the Islamic principle of distributive justice. Both regard as Islamic the values of liberty under law, equality, and participation, and hope that these would be operationalized in a Muslim polity. Neither is a “secularist” in the sense of maintaining either that morals are irrelevant to politics or that the will of the ruling authority is the final arbiter of morals.

            The foregoing discussion of the thought of the two men who contributed the most to the making of Pakistan, and the record of Maududi’s assessment of the intentions of Jinnah and his associates while the struggle for Pakistan was in progress, will not sustain the proposition that the establishment of an Islamic state, satisfactory to the  ulema, was a part of the “social contract” that brought Pakistan into being. Nor can it be argued that the idea of Pakistani nationalism is repugnant to the nation’s Muslim personality and must therefore remain unavailable as one of the preservatives of its unity and integrity.n