1926: Jinnah in Canada and the USA

Stanley Wolpert, Jinnah of Pakistan (1984), page 88:

Jinnah had been appointed to the assembly's Sandhurst Committee in 1925, chaired by then army chief of staff Lieutenant General Sir Andrew Skeen, to study the feasibility of establishing a military college like Sandhurst in India.  He was one of three Indian subcommittee members invited to undertake the grand tour of inspection of military colleges and installations overseas, leaving Bombay early in April and returning home in August.

Report of the Indian Sandhurst Committee, dated 14th November 1926, published 1927 (found via the State Library of Victoria, Australia) tells us that a sub-committee was constituted that

...consisted of Mr. Jinnah, Sir Phiroze Sethna, and Major Zorawar Singh.  Leaving India about the beginning of April 1926, the members first met in London at the end of April.  They visited educational institutions of all kinds in England and also toured in France, Canada and the United States...They returned to India on August 13th, 1926.

Traces of the visit to North America have been hard to come by.

A "secular" jihad

Some excerpts from Jinnah's speeches:

"The Muslims demand Pakistan, where they could live according to their own code of life, their own cultural growth, traditions and Islamic Laws."
Speech at the Frontier Muslim League Conference, Peshawar, November 20, 1945.

He hoped that those who had not been given the League's ticket would faithfully work for the League's success. "If you betray a hundred million Muslims, you will not survive to become a Premier or Minister yourself"
Speech at a Public Meeting, Peshawar, November 21, 1945
Reported in The Eastern Times, November 22, 1945

"Shake off your differences and stand united against the Congress which the enemy of Mussalmans".
Speech at Public Meeting, Mardan, November 24, 1945.
Reported in The Eastern Times, November 27, 1945.

"The Musalmans of India should remember that in case they fail to get Pakistan they shall perish."
Speech at a public meeting held to celebrate the victory of
Muslim League in the Central Assembly elections, Delhi, Jan 11, 1946
The Dawn, Jan 12, 1946.

"We are determined to get Pakistan either by agreement or by force."
Speech at a public meeting, Lahore, Jan 13, 1946
reported in The Eastern Times, Jan 15, 1946.

"You can send your money in annas and rupees, by cheques, drafts, and registered post parcels. But it must be sent to me direct. I am responsible for the control and accounting of funds before the Muslim Nation. Our accounts are open to any bona fide Muslim (Laughter). I am glad you realise the meanings of bona fide."
Address to the Muslim students of local colleges, Lahore, Jan 17, 1946
{Note: this speech is against the Unionists, which was a Muslim-Hindu-Sikh coalition. Clearly Jinnah meant that Unionist Muslims were not bona fide Muslims.}

"If we do not succeed in our struggle for Pakistan, the very trace of Muslims and Islam will be obliterated from the face of India," he added.
Speech at a Ladies Meeting, Lahore, Jan 17, 1946.

“Let us go back to our Holy Book, the Quran. Let us revert to the Hadis and the great traditions of Islam which have everything in them for our guidance, if we correctly interpret them and follow our great Holy Book, The Quran”
Speech at a large meeting of ladies, Shillong, March 4, 1946.

"I say to you, Punjab has taken pride as the swordarm of India and you played your part heroically on different battlefields which is recognized by the world. Let now your swordarm play a more magnificent role in the achievement of Pakistan".
Address to the League Members of the Punjab Legislative Assembly
Lahore, March 20, 1946

What was going on as Jinnah spoke these words?

Ian Talbot writes in ‘Khizr Tiwana, the Punjab Unionist Party and the Partition of India’ :

The Punjab had been a powder keg for many months. It is nevertheless significant, that within less than a week of Khizr’s resignation, communal violence had reached alarming proportions and the Congress had demanded the partition of the province. For the first time, violence spread from the cities to the countryside and took on the sinister undertones of ‘ethnic cleansing’. Whole villages in the Jhelum, Attock and Rawalpindi districts were put to the sword. About 40,000 people, mainly Sikhs had taken refuge in hurriedly established camps. The outrage which many Sikh leaders felt at these assaults which were orchestrated by Muslim National Guards and ex-servicemen[Jenkins to Wavell, 17 March 1947] and condoned by Muslim League politicians[Jenkins to Mountbatten, 30 April 1947] fed a desire for revenge which bred a civil war mentality. 

The March violence destroyed any lingering hopes that the Punjab might escape partition… The violence also destroyed the British system of control in the countryside centred around such loyalist political families as the Tiwanas. The collapse of Unionist influence created political and administrative chaos..”

Jinnah, I suppose, was waging a secular jihad.

Jinnah's religion - 8

Wolpert (Jinnah of Pakistan, chapter 2, covering the period 1896-1910 ) writes, without citations:

Though religion never played an important role in Jinnah's life - except for its political significance - he left the Aga Khan's  "Sevener" Khoja community at this stage of his maturation, opting instead to join the less hierarchically structured Isna 'Ashari sect of "Twelver" Khojas, who acknowledged no leaders.  One of Jinnah's most admired Bombay friends, Justice Badruddin Tyabji (1844-1906), first Muslim high court judge and third president of the Indian National Congress, was an Isna Ashari.

Jaswant Singh (Jinnah - India - Partition - Independence) explains in endnote 2 in Chapter 2:

Khoja in a strict sense is the name of an Indian caste consisting mostly of Nizari Ismailis and some Sunnis and Twelver Shias split off the Ismaili community.   In a larger sense, the name commonly refers to the Indian Nizaris in general, including some minor communities like the Shamsis in the area of Multan and some Momnas in Northern Gujarat.  Most Nizari activity seems to be centered around Sindh.

The Khojas had been active in commerce between India and East Africa since the seventeenth century but could only settle in large numbers in East Africa after the eighteenth century.   The coming of the Aga Khan Hasan Ali Shah to India in 1840 led to an aggravation of earlier conflicts within the Khoja community about the rights of the Imam.   In 1866, a judgment in a law suit brought against the Aga Khan by ex-communicated members of the community ended up fully upholding the rights and authority of the Imam.  This resulted in the dissidents separating from the community; the Sunni Khojas.  The later dissidents, seceding in 1877 and 1901, formed Ithna Ashari Khoja communities in Bombay and East Africa.

 

How historians manufacture history

An incident in the careers of Jinnah and Gandhi serves to illustrate how historians manufacture their narratives.  I've written about it before (here) but now have a more complete contemporary source, and so am bringing it  up again.

On January 14, 1915, the Gujarati community in Bombay held a meeting to felicitate Gandhi and his wife, recently returned from South Africa.  Jinnah presided over the meeting.

The most complete contemporary account of the meeting that I have (from the newspaper Bombay Chronicle) is here.  Note that Jinnah ended his speech with the problem of Hindu-Muslim unity, and Gandhi began by saying that while in South Africa "Gujarati" was associated with Hindus only and not Parsis and Muslims, here he was glad a Muslim was a member, and presiding.

Click here for the Bombay Chronicle version (via Riaz Ahmed) 
(Note: Riaz Ahmed, in his introduction to Volume 2, cites the above as saying, "[Gandhi] thanked Jinnah for presiding over "a [sic] Hindu gathering".)

Click here for Wolpert's version.

(excerpt) Had he meant to be malicious rather than his usual ingenuous self, Gandhi could not have contrived a more cleverly patronizing barb, for he was not actually insulting Jinnah, after all, just informing every one of his minority religious identity.

Click here for Jaswant Singh's version.

(excerpt) At their very first meeting, at the Gurjar Sabha in January 1915, convened to felicitate Gandhi upon his return from South Africa, in response to a welcome speech, with Jinnah presiding, Gandhi had somewhat accommodatingly said he was ‘glad to find a Muslim not only belonging to his own region’s sabha but chairing it.’ Gandhi had singled out Jinnah as a Muslim, though, neither in appearance or in conduct was Jinnah anywhere near to being any of the stereotypes of the religious identity ascribed by Gandhi. Jinnah, on the other hand, was far more fulsome in his praise......This, too, was all right but then, needlessly, he thanked Jinnah for presiding over a Hindu gathering. This was an ungracious and discouraging response to Jinnah’s warm welcome and had a dampening effect.

The CWMG (electronic) with Gandhi's speech.

You be the judge, are either Wolpert or Jaswant Singh justified in what they wrote?

_____

PS:

Wolpert wrote in that same passage:

The Mahatma's ambulance corps had sailed for France without its founder after he had a slight nervous breakdown in London and decided to return home to India instead, thus prolonging his life by some three decades.

As per Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi, “Gandhi was ill with pleurisy in London”.  Gandhi, in a January 9, 1915 interview with the Bombay Chronicle, (CWMG (electronic), Volume 14, #269)

Unfortunately, however, I was suffering from pleurisy, and the Commanding Officers in charge of the various sections would not listen to my going to any of the hospitals. Meanwhile, Mrs. Gandhi had a relapse of an old malady, and the Under-Secretary of State for India, on hearing this, immediately wrote to me saying that, after all, my work, so far as the organisation of the corps was concerned, was finished, and that as both of us were ill. we should at once return to India. Hence it is that we are here before our time. 

Earlier, (CWMG (electronic) Volume 14, #241)) from London, Gandhi wrote to Maganlal Gandhi:

 I am still confined to bed and shall be so, it seems, for another ten days at least….

Gandhi’s letter to Herman Kallenbach,  January 22, 1915 (CWMG (electronic), Volume 14, #281) –

Pleurisy has become chronic. It is not very painful but it necessitates great care. …. Blood continues to come up while coughing…

Only by March 2, 1915, could Gandhi write to D.B. Shukla (CWMG (electronic), Volume 14, #316) –

My health is fairly good. There is still pain in my ribs but Dr.Dev said that there was no pleurisy now.

Gandhi also records the visits of Lady Cecilia Roberts, and also the Under Secretary of State, Charles Roberts, visiting him and advising him to return to India. (The Story of My Experiments with Truth, CWMG(electronic), Volume 44, page 358)

Whilst things were going on in this way, Mr. Roberts one day came to see me and urged me very strongly to go home. ‘You cannot possibly go to Netley in this condition. There is still severer cold ahead of us. I would strongly advise you to get back to India, for it is only there that you can be completely cured. If, after your recovery, you should find the War still going on, you will have manyopportunities there of rendering help. As it is, I do not regard what you have already done as by any means a mean contribution.’

I accepted his advice and began to make preparations for returning to India.

I do not yet have any information about the fate of the volunteer nursing corp that Gandhi organized (Wolpert implies that it was decimated, and Gandhi would have perished if he shipped to continental Europe with it.)

----
Jaswant Singh writes:

To receive Gandhi, Jinnah had forsaken attending the Madras Congress meet of 1914.

He does not say where he got this from.  The Congress session in Madras was from December 28-30 of 1914,  and as per this online chronology of Jinnah, he was "elected member of All India Congress Committee at Indian National Congress session Madras" (in absentia?)

Gurjar Sabha, January 14, 1915 from Stanley Wolpert

Stanley Wolpert, "Jinnah of Pakistan" (chapter 3):

"By January of 1915, Jinnah was home.  The Gujarat Society (Gurjar Sabha), which he led, gave a garden party to welcome Gandhi back to India.  The Mahatma's ambulance corps had sailed for France without its founder after he had a slight nervous breakdown in London and decided to return home to India instead, thus prolonging his life by some three decades.  Gandhi's response to Jinnah's urbane welcome was that he was "glad to find a Mahomedan not only belonging to his own region's Sabha, but chairing it."  Had he meant to be malicious rather than his usual ingenuous self, Gandhi could not have contrived a more cleverly patronizing barb, for he was not actually insulting Jinnah, after all, just informing every one of his minority religious identity.  What an odd fact to single out for comment about this multifaceted man, whose dress, behavior, speech and manner totally belied any resemblance to his religious affiliation!  Jinnah, in fact, hoped by his Anglophile appearance and secular wit and wisdom to convince the Hindu majority of his colleagues and countrymen that he was, indeed, as qualified to lead any of their public organizations as Gokhale, or Wedderburn, or Dadabhai.  Yet here, in the first public words Gandhi uttered about him, every one had to note that Jinnah was a "Mahomedan".

Gurjar Sabha, January 14, 1915 from Jaswant Singh

We find this in Jaswant Singh's book - Jinnah : India - Partition - Independence.  Jaswant Singh's reference is "M.K. Gandhi at the Gurjar Sabha reception, Bombay, 14 January 1915, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, XIII, No. 8., p.9, Publications Division, Ministry of Information, Delhi, 1964."

   The Telegraph of Calcutta has an excerpt of the book, from which I reproduce the following:

Although the families of both Jinnah and Gandhi had once lived just about 40 miles or so apart in Kathiawar (Gujarat), this adjacency of their places of origin did nothing to bring their politics close together. At their very first meeting, at the Gurjar Sabha in January 1915, convened to felicitate Gandhi upon his return from South Africa, in response to a welcome speech, with Jinnah presiding, Gandhi had somewhat accommodatingly said he was ‘glad to find a Muslim not only belonging to his own region’s sabha but chairing it.’ Gandhi had singled out Jinnah as a Muslim, though, neither in appearance or in conduct was Jinnah anywhere near to being any of the stereotypes of the religious identity ascribed by Gandhi. Jinnah, on the other hand, was far more fulsome in his praise.

Gandhi had reached India by boat in January 1915 when many leaders, including Jinnah and Gokhale, went to Bombay to give him an ovatious welcome. By this date Jinnah had already engaged as an all India leader and was committed to attaining his stated goals of unity, not just between the Muslims and the Hindus, Extremists and Moderates, but also among various classes of India. To receive Gandhi, Jinnah had forsaken attending the Madras Congress meet of 1914. Gandhi, upon reaching Bombay, had been warmly welcomed by Jinnah who wanted to enlist his services for the cause of Hindu-Muslim unity. It was because of his popularity and standing that Jinnah had been invited to preside over a garden party given by the Gurjar Sabha, an association of the Gurjar (Gujar) community, arranged to welcome Mr and Mrs Gandhi, on his arrival on 13 January 1915.

In his presidential address, Jinnah ‘welcomed... Mr and Mrs Gandhi, not only on behalf of Bombay but on behalf of the whole of India.’ He impressed upon Gandhi that the greatest problem was ‘to bring about unanimity and co-operation between the two communities so that the demands of India (from Imperial Britain) may be made absolutely unanimously.’ For this he desired ‘that frame of mind, that state, that condition which they had to bring about between the two communities, when most of their problems, he had no doubt, would easily be solved.’ Jinnah went to the extent of saying: ‘Undoubtedly he [Gandhi] would not only become a worthy ornament but also a real worker whose equals there were very few.’ This remark was greatly applauded by a largely Hindu audience, accounts of that meeting report. Gandhi, however, was cautious and somewhat circuitous in his response. He took the plea that he would study all the Indian questions from ‘his own point of view,’ a reasonable enough assertion; also because Gokhale had advised him to study the situation for at least a year before entering politics. This, too, was all right but then, needlessly, he thanked Jinnah for presiding over a Hindu gathering. This was an ungracious and discouraging response to Jinnah’s warm welcome and had a dampening effect.

Gurjar Sabha, January 14, 1915 from CWMG

Stanley Wolpert & Jaswant Singh cite Volume XIII, page 9 of The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi; however in the electronic version, it is Volume 14, page 342.



276. SPEECH AT GURJAR SABHA RECEPTION, BOMBAY
{footnote: A brief report of this also appeared in Gujarati, 17-1-1915.}
January 14, 1915

A garden party in honour of Gandhiji and Shrimati Kasturba Gandhi was given by members of the Gurjar Sabha, Bombay, on the grounds of Mangaldas House, on January 14, 1915. Messrs M. A. Jinnah, Chairman of the Sabha, who presided on the occasion, and K. M. Munshi having spoken (in English) welcoming the guests, Gandhiji replied as follows:

Mr. Gandhi, who spoke in Gujarati, thanked Mr. Jinnah for presiding at this function and said that while he was in South Africa and anything was said about Gujaratis, it was understood to have a reference to the Hindu community only and Parsis and Mahomedans were not thought of. He was, therefore, glad to find a Mahomedan a member of the Gurjar Sabha and the chairman of that function.

With regard to their words of praise and welcome, he was at a loss to say anything. As he had said so often before, he and his wife had done nothing beyond their duty. He did not wish to repeat the same thing, but he desired to say that he considered all these good feelings and kind words as their blessings and he prayed to God. that those blessings might enable him and his wife faithfully to serve their country. They first intended to study all the Indian questions and then enter upon the service of the country. He had looked upon the Hon. Mr. Gokhale as his guide and leader and he had full confidence in him and he was sure that Mr. Gokhale would not put him on the wrong track. He had visited His Excellency the Governor {Lord Willingdon}   that morning and while thanking him for the honour, he also mentioned the same thing that he was absolutely confident that under the guiding spirit of the Hon. Mr. Gokhale he would be adopting the right course.

Continuing, Mr. Gandhi said that the chairman had referred to the South African question. He had a good deal to say on this subject and he would explain the whole situation in the very near future to the Bombay public and through them to the whole of India. The compromise was satisfactory and he trusted that what had remained to be gained would be gained. The South Africans had now learnt that they could not utterly disregard the Indians or disrespect their feelings.

With regard to the Hindu-Mahomedan question he had much to learn, but he would always keep before his eyes his twenty-one years’ experience in South Africa and he still remembered that one sentence uttered by Sir Syed Ahmed, namely, that the Hindus and Mahomedans were the two eyes of Mother India and if one looked at one end and the other at the other, neither would be able to see anything and that if one was gone, the other would see to that extent only. Both the communities had to bear this in mind in the future.

In conclusion, he thanked them for the great honour done to him and his wife.

The Bombay Chronicle,  15-1-1915