by NADEEM F. PARACHA
Muhammad Ali Jinnah (in the background), Jogendra Nath Mandal (with glasses), and Zafarullah Khan ILLUSTRATION/Abro
Over the decades so much has been written and discussed about exactly what sort of a country the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, envisioned. One of the reasons why this debate is still raging is because its founder passed away just a year after the country’s inception in 1947.
In the decades that followed Jinnah’s demise, numerous theories and claims have been aired by historians, intellectuals, politicians and dictators about what Jinnah wanted Pakistan to evolve into.
One side has insisted that he wanted a progressive Muslim-majority state where the state would devise and then infuse into the society a modern, democratic spirit of Muslim nationalism, but where matters of faith and the state would be kept separate.
The other side suggests that though the founder was largely ‘Westernised’ in habit, he eventually grew into a leader who strived for a separate Muslim country which could then be evolved through legislation into becoming an ‘Islamic state’.
Both sides liberally dig out and air assorted quotes attributed to Jinnah in this regard. And the truth is, apart from certain sayings of the founder which have been clearly concocted, many quotes do strengthen the arguments of both sides! This is the other reason why this debate has continued to mushroom without reaching any consensual conclusion.
Nevertheless, the response to the question, ‘what kind of a Pakistan Jinnah was envisioning’, may more convincingly be found well outside complex intellectual debates on the issue and certainly, away from the awkward agitprop battles which, too, continue to rage between the two point of views.
For example, an answer can be extracted by simply studying the make-up and mindset of the country’s first ever federal cabinet. In her book, The Federal Cabinet of Pakistan, professor of history, Naumana Kiran Imran, provides the names of the men who constituted Pakistan’s first federal cabinet.
More interestingly, she uses the archived minutes of meetings of this cabinet to explain what these men were discussing during the very first days of the country.
She informs that Section 17 of Pakistan’s interim Constitution, which was framed and adopted by the country’s first Constituent Assembly, gave the powers of appointing the cabinet to Pakistan’s governor-general, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
Thus, the country’s first cabinet (headed by Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan) was entirely picked and constituted by Jinnah.
Formed on Aug 15, 1947, the cabinet initially had eight ministers. Names of two of these ministers stand out in the much polarised Pakistan of today: Zafarullah Khan (minister of foreign affairs & commonwealth relations), and Jogendra Nath Mandal (minister of law).
Khan was a member of the Ahmadiyya community which, 27 years later in 1974, and on the demands of the religious parties, was outlawed as a Muslim sect by the populist regime of Z.A. Bhutto.
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The case of the other stand-out minister in the first cabinet has, however, largely been forgotten. Mandal was a Hindu from Bengal. He belonged to the scheduled caste of Hindus in India and had joined Jinnah’s AIML believing that in Pakistan, his caste would be able to flourish more than they would in an India dominated by higher caste Hindus.
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