A TRIBUTE TO OUR LEADER

"Jinnah is the most important man in Asia because he can sway the battle this way or that way as he chooses. His 100 million Muslims will march to the left, to the right, to the front, to the rear at his binding and nobody else’s - that is the point. If Gandhi goes, there is always Nehru, or Rajagopalchari, or Patel or a dozen others. But if Jinnah goes, who is there?" (Beverly Nichols, British author and reporter, 1943)

"Mr. M A Jinnah himself was more advanced than most of his colleagues of the Muslim League. Indeed he stood head and shoulders above them and had therefore become the indispensable leader and eventually he became the Muslim League." (Nehru, Discovery of India) 

To achieve your own dreams it takes a lifetime but to achieve the dream of millions, it’s a feat only a few can perform in the history of mankind. And Jinnah was one of them. And to achieve that one has to rise above the fear and display courage. The ability and skills which he manifested in the process of creation of Pakistan and the fight he carried in all quarters, with reason and logic to bring the dream of a lifetime for millions of souls was unsurpassable. We will always remain in debt to this man and those millions of sacrifices. 

There has been a lot written about him; there is a lot that has been said of him.  From Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre to Stanley Walport- all agreed on one thing: this man, this Jinnah, this leader and founder of Pakistan had resolve of a man unbreakable even by the might of the mightiest, the British Empire, the connivance and huge presence of Hindu pressure and by all who thought that to create Pakistan was something beyond comprehension and reason. But he stood his ground against all who promised, tempted, and applied pressure from all directions and yet they could not move him, not even an inch. He was to give all, right to their end of days the question how he single handedly carried this responsibility and what were those elements that made him unique in all sense; as a leader, as a tactician, as one of the finest implementer of law, as a symbol of governance and system which we all forgot, the very citizens and leaders of Pakistan after his death. 

It is still time for Pakistan and Pakistanis to wake up from its slumber and to invoke the spirit of its founder to bring back this country to its feet. All the challenges we see around us, all the opposition we face amongst ourselves and from outside can be dealt with if we could only understand the persona of Jinnah and his life and understand the mechanics in creation of a country that became second largest Muslim country in 20th century. A presence, a home for all where fairness and justice will exist.  But alas, this was not to happen as we forgot our very own sacrifices, our very own people and our very own founder Jinnah. 

Instead of following him and his vision; we followed our instincts based on greed and promotion of values against all what he created and practiced; against all what the vision of Iqbal and his philosophy stood for; against all what Chaudhry Rahmat Ali envisioned. We forgot Jinnah and all those very people that stood by him against opposition the world had never seen. These people exist in all of us. Never a day that goes past, when we do not come across the saying and quotations from any of these, but we have turned all this into a big ceremony. We have turned Jinnah into just a mere symbol. A place where he rests now needs no salutes, no visitor’s book, no swarming crowd to take pictures. It is his words; it is his life that needs to be lived in all of us. We have betrayed him in last 61 years. It is still time to appreciate and to revive that spirit in Pakistan and in all of us, and to forget these differences that we have created. We must become more understanding and tolerant of each other and work together. It is this challenge that is the need of the time and our responsibility. 

It is this man Mohammed Ali Jinnah who became in the process our Quaid-e-Azam, our leader and founder of Pakistan. It is this man we owe our responsibility to as free citizens of Pakistan. It is this man Jinnah, his words and his vision we owe our alliances to.  It is this man we owe our debt resulting from his endeavor to turn this dream of a separate homeland for millions of Muslims. It is this man, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Quaid-e-Azam, a man for all seasons we owe our lives to and to Pakistan. 

 By:

  Omaima Khalid

References:

• http://pakinfo.tripode.com/leader.htm
• http://www.insaf.pk/Media/InsafBlog/tabid/168/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1617/Quaid-e-Azam-Mohammed-Ali-Jinnah-A-Man-for-All-Seasons