Partition And The Wily Qaid-I-Azam

IN THE DAYS LEADING UP TO AND IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING PARTITION AND PAKISTAN’S BIRTH, JINNAH KEPT FLIP-FLOPPING IN HIS PUBLIC STATEMENTS, AS IT SUITED HIM.

- Venkat Dhulipala

AS MUSLIM REFUGEES from East Punjab streamed into Pakistan following the Partition massacres, Mohammad Ali Jinnah initially reiterated his oft repeated belief in exchanges of population, something he had first articulated soon after the All India Muslim League’s (AIML) Lahore Resolution in 1940 and would repeat, following the Bihar and Garhmuktesar riots in 1946. As he noted, “if the ultimate solution to the minority problem is to be mass exchange of population, let it be taken up on a governmental plane and not left to be sorted out by bloodthirsty elements”.

But as Pakistan faced a flood of refugees, Ghazanfar Ali Khan, the Pakistan Rehabilitation Minister, made it clear that it did not want any exchange of population. Prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan’s statement that the government of Pakistan was absolutely opposed to migration of Muslims from Delhi, the western parts of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (now Uttar Pradesh — UP) and areas outside East Punjab came as a major psychological blow to UP Muslims.