2008-08-09 Magisterial

Historians, by charting only the political course of the Pakistan movement and by concentrating on Jinnah's constitutional brilliance, have obscured the cultural dimensions of Jinnah's leadership and the humanity of his personality. It thus left to the eminent anthropologist, Akbar Ahmed to correct the one-dimensional depictions of Jinnah. The following is a summary of the key aspects that distinguish this book from other biographies of Jinnah:

1) Ahmed provides Jinnah with a more realistic face as opposed to Pakistani official representation, which ironically reinforced Indian and Western prejudices of a stern man devoid of emotion. Thus we learn that Jinnah's last act before leaving for the state he founded was to visit his late wife's - Ruttie - grave.

2) Ahmed also successfully traces much of the negative portrayal of Jinnah in the West to Mountbatten's propaganda against him. The lazy and uncritical acceptance of the last Viceroy's views has led to Jinnah's arguments being traduced and the man being misrepresented.

3) Akbar Ahmed also explains Jinnah's conversion from defender of Hindu-Muslim unity to proponent of Muslim separatism, with a great deal of sophistication, by reference to the environment, personal factors and crucially the influence of the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal. Certainly Jinnah came to echo many of Iqbal's views as well as gaining a deeper appreciation of his Islamic identity.

4) Perhaps the most significant aspect of his work was the demonstration of how Jinnah came to symbolise Muslim hopes and aspirations, i.e. the cultural dimension of his charismatic leadership, too often ignored by historians who concentrated on `high politics' and thus presented him as a detached constitutionalist. The Muslim decline in India and the fears for the future as India was spinning towards independence laid the foundations for Jinnah's charismatic leadership. Jinnah's immense integrity, use of clothes as a "diacritical cultural symbol," elevation in status as an equal to Indian opposition leaders, refusal to kow-tow to anyone and displays of Mughal type state processions were all important in the crystallisation of Jinnah's charisma.

5) Finally, the author outlines Jinnah's vision, whilst alerting us to the problems of transporting back contemporary meanings of secularism and fundamentalism. He demonstrates that for the Quaid, there was no conflict between tolerance, respect for minorities, equal citizenship rights, democracy and Islam and why such a conception is relevant in a world besotted by images of "Islamic fundamentalism."

Akbar Ahmed's book is then a passionate but scholarly, sophisticated but readable, defence of Jinnah.