On 17th March 1947, Bombay High Court’s registrar wrote this letter to Jinnah in Karachi:

“Sir, I have the honour to inform you that the Bombay Bar Association have decided to hold a reception in your honour, on your attaining the distinction of having completed 50 years as a distinguished member of the Bar.

I have therefore to request you to give any date suitable to you before 18th April 1947, or after 15th June 1947, when the reception proposed to be held in your honour may be fixed.

Hoping to be favoured with an early reply.

I beg to remain, Sir

Yours faithfully

CM Trivedi”

Jinnah replied on March 25. He wrote:

“Dear Sir, I am in receipt of your letter of 17th March and thank you for it. I appreciate the decision of the Bar Association to hold a reception in my honour on such day as may be fixed up.

According to my information this resolution was carried by 37 votes to 35 and, in face of such a strong opposition, while I am grateful to the majority, I am reluctant to force myself upon a large body of unwilling members of your Association. It would have been better that the sponsors of this move had sounded the feelings beforehand and also consulted me whether the resolution of this kind should be forced by a majority. In these circumstances, I feel that I should not accept the proposed resolution.

Thanking those who are in favour of giving the reception in my honour.

Yours faithfully

MA Jinnah”

Other than the civility of the exchange (one wonders how Jinnah would have performed on news television) the thing to note here is its date. This is March 1947, after the terrible events of Noakhali, after the violence of Direct Action Day, after all the years that Jinnah pushed the Two-Nation theory and after it was clear that India would be partitioned. After all this, and during all this, the majority of the Bombay Bar Association’s lawyers chose to honour Jinnah.

We cannot imagine this today, 70 years later, when an old portrait of Jinnah is offensive enough to be national news. We have regressed as a people and who can deny this?

The thing about Jinnah is that we can no longer see him neutrally, because of the brainwashing that our education has done to us. Like China (which apparently “stabbed us in the back”. How?), we have decided that Jinnah and Pakistan are evil.

Partition happened not because India’s Muslims wanted Mother India cut up but because the Hindus (led by Congress — what a quaint thing to imagine this in 2018) could not come to an arrangement for power sharing with Muslims, led by Jinnah.

What was one of the irreducible demands of Muslims that led to Partition? Separate electorates. Why? To ensure representation. Was this a demand that was justified? Let us examine it in our time. It was reported some time ago that of the 1,386 members of legislative assembly from our ruling party nationwide, four were Muslims. In state after state, as it has rumbled on to its triumph, the ruling party has perpetuated this. This is political apartheid, deliberate and cruel and it is real and hurtful.

If not Jinnah then someone else will raise it again in our time, I assure you. Today someone who speaks unemotionally and with pure reason and balance (Asaduddin Owaisi) is seen as some sort of communal whack job. We have lost our sense of balance when it comes to Muslim rights.

Gandhi was able to blackmail Ambedkar into giving up separate electorates for the Scheduled Castes. Dalits are all agreed today that this was a fatal error that has ensured their perpetual political marginalization in our prejudiced and close-minded society. Jinnah accepted the nature of tribal voting in the subcontinent and stuck to his guns. If Hindus wanted a united India they would have to accommodate Muslims politically. We chose not to then and we have not now as the numbers starkly reveal.

Some years ago, I came across a Gujarati interview of Jinnah from 1916 which I translated. It helped me hate him less. Here it is:

“Q: What are the qualities a man should be admired for?

A: Independence (swatantrata).

Q: What are the qualities a woman should be admired for?

A: Loyalty (vafadari)

Q: What do you think is true success in life?

A: To be admired and loved by people (lok-no chhah melavva-ma).

Q: What’s your favourite pastime?

A: Horse riding (ghode-savari).

Q: What’s your favourite flower?

A: Lily.

Q: Who’s your favourite writer?

A: Shakespeare.

Q: What’s your favourite book?

A: Monte Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas).

Q: What’s your motto?

A: Never be despondent (kadi nirash na thavu).”

He signed his name in Gujarati — ‘Mahmad Ali Jhina’. He was a hard negotiator and won a nation for his co-religionists. That it left the Muslims of India permanently divided into three nations ultimately is beside the point.