“Mr Jinnah’s actions were secular”

By MAMUN M. ADIL

Murtaza Solangi, former DG, Radio Pakistan, speaks about Mr Jinnah’s tapes and his vision for Pakistan.

MAMUN M. ADIL: How did you become involved with the Jinnah tapes?

MURTAZA SOLANGI: I joined Radio Pakistan as Director General in June 2008 and while there, I started going through the archived tapes. Mr Jinnah was a subject of interest to me and I went through most of the analogue tapes of his speeches. Very few were digitised, and I was told that since there was no recording facility in Karachi in 1947, a team of engineers from All India Radio in Delhi had been sent to Karachi to record the June 3, August 11 and 14 speeches. However, I only found the June 3 and August 14 speeches, which dealt with the Partition Plan and Transfer of Power respectively. I initiated the digitisation of the analogue tapes, and had the speeches uploaded on Radio Pakistan’s YouTube channel in 2011, along with about 300 other recordings.

MMA: Given that the June 3 and August 14 speeches were made public two years ago, why have they been in the news recently?


MS:
Because All India Radio released the master copies of the tapes recently. The quality of their tapes is better than the ones we had.

MMA: What do you think is the impact of the June 3 speech?

MS: Not too much; the June 3 speech gives clues regarding Mr Jinnah’s central thinking of not creating a theocratic state; the August 14 speech says it better.

It is important because Mr Jinnah talks about Akbar the Great and the Prophet (PBUH) during whose time Jews and Christians were accorded the same status and respect as Muslims. However, the August 11 speech is the most important of them all.

MMA: What attempts did you make to retrieve the August 11 speech?

MS: I emailed the BBC in London and they replied that they did not have it, but it is still possible that there is a copy somewhere; All India Radio may have a copy. I am still making an effort to recover it. My suspicion is that somebody destroyed the tape in Pakistan.

In this speech Mr Jinnah said, “You are free to go to your temples…” and that religion has nothing to do with the state. I spoke to many people who worked under Zia-ul-Haq and according to them, as well as several books and reports, the tapes had been taken from the Radio Pakistan archives and destroyed.

MMA: Why would they do that?

MS:
Because of the content. In this speech Mr Jinnah said, “You are free to go to your temples…” and that religion has nothing to do with the state. I spoke to many people who worked under Zia-ul-Haq and according to them, as well as several books and reports, the tapes had been taken from the Radio Pakistan archives and destroyed. Mr Jinnah was a secular person. The original speech that he was supposed to read on August 14, during the transfer of power, had religious phrases such as “so help me God” but Mr Jinnah chose not to read out these phrases. His actions were also secular. For example, just before the creation of Pakistan, Mr Jogindernath Mandal, a scheduled cast Hindu from East Pakistan, was inducted into the Constituent Assembly and was given the important portfolio of Minister of Law.

If Pakistan was going to be an Islamic, theocratic state how could the ministry of law be headed by a Hindu? That is why I feel that the tape was destroyed – because of its content.

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