But was Jinnah really “secular”? Given how we Indians have distorted the word, there is no way such a question makes sense. But look at the original meaning (and, in my opinion, the only defensible meaning) of the word.
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\nWe have people saying that because Jinnah drank and ate pork, he could not have been “communal”. Ergo he was secular. Excuse me, but whether you are “secular” or not is not determined by whether you follow your religion. It is determined by whether you want the government to impose religion on others. You can be pious and God-fearing, but as long as you oppose the government imposing your religious beliefs on others, you are still secular. (In fact, if I were a pious and God-fearing Hindu, I would be even more vehemently a supporter of secularism, because I believe that associating government with religion will end up corrupting religion) You could violate every single tenet of your religion and you’d still be communal if you want the government to discriminate against people on the basis of religion. Just remember that many people identify themselves with a religion not because they necessarily believe in the principles of that religion, but because belonging to that group gives them the comfort of a group identity. That doesn’t make them “secular”. <\/p>\n
Now it is true that Jinnah wanted a country for Muslims. It is also true that he did not want this new country to discriminate on the basis of religion. Does that make him a theocrat or a supporter of secularism? The question is pointless. “Secular” and “Communal” are labels to give to a person’s views. The labels follow from the views and not the other way round. For example, I identify myself as a Capitalist because my views, when summarised, closely approximate those views that we’ve agreed to call Capitalism. You cannot say. “You are a Capitalist, so you must believe that ______” Fill in the blank with your favourite (mis) interpretation of Capitalist beliefs. It is “I believe in W, X, Y and Z and hence I am a Capitalist” If of these, W and X turn out to be close to what are normally considered Capitalist beliefs, but Y and Z turn out to be off, am I still a Capitalist? The question is irrelevant. Now that you know my specific beliefs, deal with my beliefs, not with your labeling of those beliefs. <\/p>\n
Similarly, if you want to judge Jinnah, judge him on his specific beliefs. Don’t argue on the label you give to those beliefs. I agree that he turns out to be an opportunistic prick even when evaluated on them. The problem is that for some reason, we identify “secular” with “good”, so calling someone secular seems to be equivalent to praising him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
But was Jinnah really “secular”? Given how we Indians have distorted the word, there is no way such a question makes sense. But look at the original meaning (and, in my opinion, the only defensible meaning) of the word.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}