Article content continued

Photo by Bert Brandt/AFP/Getty Images

And so, one might say it is now an act of supreme optimism to immortalize even a beloved national founder’s name in a public park. Today a preponderance of the neighbourhood in which the park sits may be of Pakistani provenance. In years to come, that may change. Who knows if what seems like utterly blameless cause for rejoicing in 2018 may not be perceived as a shibboleth for division somewhere down the line?

Who knows if what seems like utterly blameless cause for rejoicing in 2018 may not be perceived as a shibboleth for division somewhere down the line?

It’s worth remembering, after all, that the creation of Pakistan was a gratifying historical fact for most Muslims, but not all, when Jinnah’s nascent Muslim League proposed a two-state solution. India’s main Muslim religious party, Jamaat-e-Islami, for example, argued Islam was a world, not a state religion.

Apart from sparking these questions, the news story recalled my personal introduction to Muhammad Ali Jinnah and his historical significance. Paul Scott’s magisterial 1966 four-volume novel, The Raj Quartet (in 1984 made into the magnificent BBC TV series, The Jewel in the Crown), ranks amongst the greatest reading experiences of my life. The Quartet is set in the fictional city of Myapore, India, during the Second World War in the last days of the British Raj. Ali Jinnah was not a major character in the novel, but he is memorably deployed, playing an important role as representative of Muslim interests and ambitions in those turbulent political times. All historical characters were faithfully and accurately recreated through the use of archived diaries, interviews, speeches and other public records, so I know Scott got him right.