Monday, June 28, 2010

Which is it?

The author of this dailytimes article quotes Iskandar Mirza on Jinnah as follows:
Even more forthright is the version transmitted to us by Iskandar Mirza who quoted Jinnah as saying, “Shariah? Whose shariah? No. I shall have a modern state.”
But elsewhere,  the same author writes (entire comment copied, emphasis added):
That is not what he said. He was informed late and he turned around and said allegedly – don’t tell me anything. I want my conscience to be clear.

This according to George Cunningham who heard it from someone else… Iskandar Mirza actually… I think. Hardly the world’s best source.

According to Fatima Jinnah however … Jinnah knew nothing about invasion Kashmir. Jinnah had sent three major leftist stalwarts to win over Shaikh Abdullah so it is highly unlikely that he would want to stab his own effort.

But then in the lala land of Ishtiaq Ahmed’s imagination everything is possible.
 One other quote from the dailytimes article is worth noting:
That he was willing to negotiate on the basis of united India till the very end is a fact now well established as a consensus amongst historians studying partition whether in the West or in South Asia.
The problem is that the cited consensus does not exist.

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