Shumail 🇵🇰🍁

Never have I seen anything more incoherent, self-defeating, and self-implicating than this. The person accusing Iqbal and Jinnah himself stands true on all charges – racism, deceit, and myopia. To begin with, it has been argued that Muhammad Iqbal “Kashmiri” tried to “Punjabize” the Muslim League. Does that not sound fantastic? What is more fantastic is that it is factually incorrect. Until Iqbal's death, the Muslim League had a meager presence in Punjab. Leadership positions were largely held by people from the minority provinces, except for Bengal, including Jinnah. Second, your claim that the Muslim leadership of the minority provinces had no intellectual or political capacity to challenge such an overt machination is a severe indictment of a vague group – "Indian Muslims" – which is not a monolith if we go by the racial standard you so much cherish. On the contrary, the leadership of the minority provinces was pragmatic. It saw the viability of the Pakistan plan and struggled for its realization. In that plan, Punjab and Sindh were to selflessly accept Muslims from the minority provinces. This only solidifies the fact that Iqbal was a Muslim par excellence, far removed from petty provincialism or ethnic politics. Moreover, after deciphering your racism and below-par intellectual capacity above, it is not hard to understand your perversion of Jinnah's Kanpur statement. The statement, far from being a divorce, was a clarion call to the Muslims of the minority provinces. Jinnah perfectly saw the future amid the raging Second World War that Congress was in a mood to compromise and wanted all of India for itself. Jinnah's fears were based on the "glorious" Congress rule of 1937 and were immediately proved true by the Quit India Movement, where Congress wanted the British to quit without an agreed formula. He was further vindicated by the Cabinet Mission and by what is happening today to those who remained in India. The reference to Bengal is a failed effort to salvage the glaring flaws in your aforesaid thesis. Sadly, it made matters worse. You called it "tactical pragmatism rather than tribal affinity," which repudiates your race thesis. In addition, what "resources" did Jinnah seek to exploit when, in his own words, Bengal was nothing without Calcutta? If you have someone to blame, it is only Maulana Madni and Maulana Azad, who in their naivety led minority Muslims toward suicide. Pandering never worked, and it will not work. A couplet from Iqbal may help you better orient your thoughts: فرقہ بندی ہے کہیں اور کہیں ذاتیں ہیں کیا زمانے میں پنپنے کی یہی باتیں ہیں