Muslim Zion by Faisal Devji

Author:Faisal Devji [Devji, Faisal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2013-05-14T18:30:00+00:00

Devil’s advocate

Having abandoned history, geography and numbers as foundations for a Muslim nationality, I have been arguing, Jinnah and his followers were occupied with self-making as a form of transcendence. The narcissistic potential of this procedure was very great, but even more interesting was its self-conscious flirtation with the demonic. For nothing in the traditional Muslim imagination represented Satan more than pride in one’s own power and even virtue. And so the story of Lucifer’s refusal to bow before Adam at God’s command has been the subject of Muslim reflection for centuries, with some thinkers seeing in this sign of demonic pride a perverse form of obedience as well, since the fallen angel was only being faithful in refusing obeisance to any but God. So was Adam in some sense divine? We shall soon see how this mystical tradition of thinking about the relationship between man and God was resuscitated and transformed in Muslim politics, but what interests me for the moment is the way in which the Qaid came to figure as Satan in the Pakistan Movement.

His opponents in the Congress had always seen Jinnah as being possessed of demonic qualities, with Nehru, for instance, repeatedly making the point that his power depended entirely upon the ability to refuse and negate, as, for instance in The Discovery of India, where Jinnah is described as “a strangely negative person whose appropriate symbol might well be a ‘no’. Hence all attempts to understand his positive aspect fail and one cannot come to grips with it.”34 And this is to say nothing about the Qaid’s famous pride, arrogance and indeed rudeness, which made him the kind of leader more feared than loved by his followers. His closest associates, for instance, addressed Jinnah by title rather than name, as even their private and very deferential correspondence demonstrates. So his lifelong friend and true intimate, the Congress poetess and politician Sarojini Naidu, was not being particularly original in comparing Jinnah to Lucifer in a conversation with Lord Wavell in 1946.35 This image, however, was also taken up by the Qaid’s own followers, with Z. A. Suleri opening the first chapter of his book like this:

“Jinnah Sahib is vain…”

“India’s political enemy Number One…”

“Bull in [sic] China Shop…”

“He wants to become the Dictator of India…”

“Prouder than the proudest of Pharos [sic]…”

“Would to God, he is [sic] silent forever…”

“…the most insufferable man.”

“Disruptor of India…”

“He is an egoist who would own no equal…”

“…he would let India go to hell for the sake of his communal ambition…”

“Most unrelenting in his fanaticism…”

“To him a Muslim is ever more precious than a thousand Hindus…”

“Arrogant and uncompromising…”

“An essentially bad man…”

Precisely this ‘proudest of Pharos” [sic], this ‘most insufferable man’, this ‘fanatic’, this ‘egoist’, this ‘India’s political enemy Number One’, this ‘arrogant and uncompromising’, this ‘Disruptor of India’, this ‘essentially bad man’ is MY LEADER. I stand by him; I will follow him; I will lay down my life for him.36

What Suleri goes on to argue is that Jinnah’s arrogance has given Muslims back their own pride and faith in themselves.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.