Was Jinnah a bargainer or a politician?

          In 1909 Jinnah elected in Imperial Lagislative Council. In the First World War Indians sacrifices a lot for the cause of participation in ruling India along with the British. Hoping toward this issue the prime Indian political figures including Jinnah and Sarojini Naidu started Home rule League in 1913. By 1917, the Home Rule Leagues had more than 60,000 members. Then in 1916, the Muslim League and Congress made the Lucknow Pact by which it was agreed that Muslims would have a fixed proportion of seats in an Indian parliament and additional ones where they were in a minority. Both the Muslims and Congress aimed to create a new India which would have Dominion status within the British Empire.

Jinnah’s first big political success was Lucknow Pact of 1916. Historian like David Page claims in his article “M. A. Jinnah and the System of Imperial Control” it was nothing but to strengthen his bargaining power as an all-India Level politics.

Main Features of Lucknow Pact:

1. There shall be self-government in India.
2. The same method should be adopted for the Executive Councils of Governors.
3. The India Council must be abolished.
4. The salaries of the Secretary of State for Indian Affairs should be paid by the British government and not from Indian funds.
5. The executive should be separated from the judiciary.
6. The number of Muslims in the provincial legislatures should be laid down province by province.
7. Muslims should be given 1/3 representation in Central Govt.
8. There should be separate electorates for all communities until they ask for joint electorate.
9. System of weight-age should be adopted.
10. Term of Legislative Council should be 5 years.
11. Half of the members of Imperial Legislative Council must be Indians.

But his hopes were nipped in the bud when British Raj has adopted the policy of increasing the political power in the provincial Level.  Especially, Muslim majority Bengal and Punjab were highly affected.  Actually, the British were not in a state of tolerating interruption in administrating provinces.

For this, in the following year, Edwin Montagu issued what became known as the Montagu Declaration which stated:

‘… The policy of His Majesty’s Government is that of increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration and the gradual development of self-governing institutions with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as part of the British Empire.’

Following the Declaration, reforms were announced in August 1918 and were eventually put into practice by the Government of India Act in December 1919.

In 1928 Nehru report were published. But Jinnah differed with the report and presented 14 points in 1929 in response of the report.

The Fourteen Points:

1. The form of the future constitution should be federal, with the residuary powers vested in the provinces.
2. The uniform measure of autonomy shall be guaranteed to all provinces.
3. All legislatures in the country and other elected bodies shall be constituted on the definite principle of adequate and effective representation of minorities in every province without reducing the majority in any province to a minority or even equality.
4. In the Central Legislature, Muslim representation shall not be less than one third.
5. Representation of communal groups shall continue to be by means of separate electorate as at present, provided it shall be open to any community at any time to abandon its separate electorate in favor of a joint electorate.
6. Any territorial distribution that might at any time be necessary shall not in any way affect the Muslim majority.
7. Full religious liberty, i.e. liberty of belief, worship and observance, propaganda, association and education, shall be guaranteed to all communities.
8. No bill or resolution or any part thereof shall be passed in any legislature or any other elected body if three fourths of the members of any community in that particular body oppose it as being injurious to the interests of that community or in the alternative, such other method is devised as may be found feasible and practicable to deal with such cases.
9. Sindh should be separated from the Bombay Presidency.
10. Reforms should be introduced in the North West Frontier Province and Balochistan on the same footing as in the other provinces.
11. Provision should be made in the constitution giving Muslims an adequate share, along with the other Indians, in all the services of the state and in local self-governing bodies having due regard to the requirements of efficiency.
12. The constitution should embody adequate safeguards for the protection of Muslim culture and for the protection and promotion of Muslim education, language, religion, personal laws and Muslim charitable institutions and for their due share in the grants-in-aid given by the state and by local self-governing bodies.
13. No cabinet, either central or provincial, should be formed without there being a proportion of at least one-third Muslim ministers.
14. No change shall be made in the constitution by the Central Legislature except with the concurrence of the State's contribution of the Indian Federation.

Though the essence of Lucknow pact did not last and Jinnah’s bargaining counter was failed but his quality of leadership made him irresistible. But it is widely accepted that bargaining was one of his political strategies. In favor of the issue, from A. G Noorani’s “Jinnah and Partition”, we can quote that “The evidence is irrefutable that it was a bargaining counter he had to devise because in 1939 the Viceroy kept asking him for a concrete "alternative":

(1) A Working Committee draft of October 22, 1939, spoke of a "confederation of free states".

(2) On January 19, 1940, Jinnah wrote of two nations "who both must share the governance of their common motherland".

(3) Only 24 hours earlier, the draft provided for "a central Agency... the Grand Council of the United Dominions of India". Jinnah dropped it to raise the price.

(4) The Lahore Resolution itself envisaged a centre for the interim period ("finally"), a typical Jinnah tactic for bargaining.

(5) An English friend of Penderel Moon "who knew Jinnah" was told, "in reply to his expressions of surprise at such a dramatic revolution... that it was a tactical move".

(6) There is overwhelming testimony by several of Jinnah's confidants. I. I. Chundrigar, a Leaguer close to him, told H.V. Hodson, the Reforms Commissioner, in April 1940 that the object of the Lahore Resolution was not to create "Ulsters" but to achieve "two nations... welded into united India on the basis of equality".

It was, he added, an alternative to majority rule, not a bid to destroy India's unity.

Jinnah himself told Nawab Mohammed Ismail Khan, one of the few who thought for himself, in November 1941, that he could not come out with these truths "because it is likely to be misunderstood especially at present". But "I think Mr. Hodson finally understands as to what our demand is." (Hodson regarded it as a bid for a set-up on "equal terms" motivated by the fear that Muslims might be reduced to being "a Cinderella with trade union rights and a radio in the kitchen but still below-stairs".)

(7) Professor R.J. Moore's Escape from Empire refers to a file in the Jinnah papers in Pakistan's archives containing his correspondence with Cripps in 1942 on "the creation of a new Indian Union". Significantly, it is still embargoed.

(8) On April 25, 1946, he was offered two alternatives - the Pakistan as it came to be established in 1947 or an Indian Union superimposed on groups of Muslim provinces. Jinnah rejected the first and said he would consider the second if Congress did the same. His own proposals of May 12 envisaged not Pakistan but a confederation.

(9) Mumtaz Daultana, a prominent Leaguer of Punjab, told Ayesha Jalal: "Jinnah never wanted a Pakistan which involved the partition of India and was all in favour of accepting the Cabinet Mission's proposals" of May 16, 1946; which he did.

(10) Documents in Volume VI of The Transfer of Power 1942-47 record top League leaders like Nazimuddin and Ispahani of Bengal, Saadullah of Assam, Aurangzeb Khan of the North West Frontier Province and Khaliquzzaman expressing their skepticism to Governors early in 1946.

(11) Liaquat Ali Khan suggested federation, not confederation, to Stafford Cripps in 1942.”

All the above-mentioned evidences prove that Jinnah’s Pakistan claim was nothing but a bargaining counter. But these are not all about it. If we consider one of Jinnah's fellow barristers’ comments, we see that he is remembered as "Jinnah's faith in himself was incredible.”

Lastly, I want to present a note from the notebook of British Cabinet minister Edwin Montagu, he recalled Jinnah in his memoirs, "young, perfectly mannered, impressive-looking, armed to the teeth with dialectics, and insistent on the whole of his scheme".

No more discussion. It is clear that Jinnah is such a politician who was successful in using his entire political weapon whatever it may be bargaining or others what made him one of the greatest leaders of all time who succeeded to create world’s first nation state “Pakistan” which is first of its kind.