Historian Ayesha Jalal in a conversation with Nadeem Farooq Parach on the second day of the 10th Lahore Literary Festival tried to debunk, as always, some myths that have seeped into Pakistani society since its inception.

In a session, Pakistan at 75; Phantom of Freedom?, she was asked the old question with reference to her 1985 book, the Sole Spokesman, that Mr Jinnah initially did not want the Partition of India and there were certain circumstances which led him to do that.

“We make a mistake in assuming that the end result of the Pakistan Movement was the exact Pakistan that Jinnah wanted. I show very carefully in my book that he wanted a lot more and it’s a great mistake to confuse the Partition with Pakistan. He wanted a Pakistan with a federal arrangement. Belatedly, he said that if not a confederation, then a treaty arrangement should be made in matters of common concern,” she explained.

The whole confusion stems from the fact that we assume that Pakistan meant Partition, she said and added that in his book, Pakistan or Partition of India, Ambedkar makes a distinction. The confusion arises when Pakistan and Partition are equated, she argued.

Ms Jalal said another confusion came from the presumption that Pakistan was predominantly created because of religious reasons, i.e. scriptures and not politics. Pakistan was a product of India’s federal problem and the insistence on seeing this as a religious one on both sides of the border was wrong and in the current times, both India and Pakistan had federal problems, she said.

In her book, Self and Sovereignty, she said, she had made the distinction between religion as identity and religion as faith so religion as identity did play a role in the Partition but not religion as faith.

To the question of the resurgence of religion all over the world, including India, she said the question of religion was problematic and “my next book deals with it”.

“Religion is a way to mobilise people but that’s a political mobilisation. The difference between Congress and Muslim League were not the scriptures, not ideas of God or even prayer, they were about politics, power, political representation. Why are we reluctant to call a spade a spade?”

There was an Indo-Persian world in which religion was not the main factor in the political system, rather it was merit. Religion was not an issue, there was diversity. The British were aware of religious diversity of India, in their census in the mid-19th century, they made a distinction that anybody who was not a Muslim was Hindu.

“We should realise that religion is a personal matter but the way religion has emerged in the public sphere has been informed by colonial categories and the convenience of those categories for postcolonial state and its elite.”

HARRIS KHALIQUE: Harris Khalique said the concept of the book, Pakistan: Here and Now, was to go beyond the current affairs which had trapped the Pakistanis.

“There is a project in Pakistan to erase the memory along with distorting history. The Pakistani state has succeeded in two projects; radicalisation of society and erasing memory,” he said, adding that the book was an attempt to try to understand and bring back the memory that the project of Riyasat-i-Madina was 400 years old and it was nothing new. He said the book consisted of essays in English.

He said there was an essay on the Muslim statecraft in Urdu by Zahida Hina that had been translated into English for the book while other essays were on portrayal of non-Muslims in cinema and on cultural confusion in Pakistan by journalist Hasan Zaidi.

Talking about the Pakistani diaspora and its attitude toward the political situation in Pakistan, he said the Pakistani diaspora shared some traits with the diaspora from other countries like Indians that also supported the rise of the right wing in their native country.

Talking about the book, edited by Harris Khalique and Irfan Ahmed Khan, journalist Khaled Ahmed said Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s comparison with Nazim Hikmet in the book was highly appreciable.

“Hikmet was born in Greece, then the Soviet Union adopted him. Faiz Sahib had written in Pakistan on culture and there was no space of ideology in his concept of culture. Culture was termed a spontaneous phenomenon while culture was something that moulded you. Faiz was also adopted by the Soviet Union although the union was not according to the thinking of Faiz or even Hikmet.”

Khaled said that he was in Moscow when Faiz used to visit it. He was concerned at the curbs on freedom of expression and understood everything. Hikmet was suppressed in his country as was Faiz, he added.

“The word ideology was first used in the French Revolution and through Lenin etc, it became a part of Soviet utopia. Ideology makes utopia and it can’t be negated.” Khalid said Faiz and Hikmet both had reached the Soviet Union where no opposition could exist because of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’.

Navid Shahzad also spoke while the session was moderated by Fahd Ali.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2022