By ignoring the contours of Muslim political evolution itself in United India, Pakistan’s state narrative has conveniently elevated the status of political leaders to saviors of Islam. The immediate difficulties faced by the Muslim political parties, Muslim League’s leadership and the intricacies involved in formulating the demand for Pakistan are vital in understanding not only the past but also addressing our political problems today. The assumption that Muslims of the subcontinent always were a separate political category (as they were a religious and social category) demanding the right to an independent homeland on one platform has been part of state policy.
Partition of the subcontinent through the realist prism exposes the lack of communal sentiment in the communal politics that took off in the decades leading to partition. Jinnah’s secular mindset stands in contrast to the religious undertones that Pakistan has adopted as a state. Was Jinnah, as historical discourse in Pakistani textbooks suggests, fighting Jihad against the Hindus and the British Raj? And if not then must we pit everything political and apolitical against Islam or have we polluted the religious with the political and the social to a point of no return, to the point that all actions, decisions, and justifications pertaining to the public realm must also conform to specifically constructed Islamic ideals?
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