BB made a comment calling the Quaid-e-Azam “pure evil“. This is a-historical and triggering to Pakistanis.
Partition is a topic that demands nuance. To call the Quaid (or Pandit Nehru) “pure evil” just reveals a lack of historical knowledge. Quaid-e-Azam was not Hitler. He was not sending people to gas chambers. Historians probably wouldn’t even call Hitler “pure evil” but perhaps that’s the historical figure about whom the strongest case can be made.
I will take the opportunity to quote from my own writing:
In hindsight, perhaps the decision to Partition India was not the best one, yet there is no way that Jinnah could have known what form the future Indian Constitution would take or Pakistan’s struggles in establishing its identity and defining what it means to be a Muslim homeland. The only character in the play who seems to see what the politics of exclusion will lead to is Maulana Azad, who argues passionately against Jinnah’s “two nation theory” and later begs Nehru to avoid Partition at any cost. Azad is worried about the Muslims who will be left behind in the Hindu majority provinces that will remain part of India. He also firmly believes that once one starts on the road to a politics based on differences, there is no telling when the process will end. The creation of Bangladesh in 1971 showed that religion was not enough to hold Pakistan together and that ethnicity is also an extremely important factor. Ethnic conflict remains a fault line in today’s Pakistan, as well as to a lesser extent in India. Thus it can be forcefully argued that Azad was right in saying that Partition would not really solve anything.
Overall, “Tryst” is an extremely thought provoking play that compels the audience to reflect on the complex history of the years leading up to Indian independence. What a united India would have been like is a hypothetical question that can never be successfully answered, yet the play shows us that Partition was by no means inevitable and was very much an outcome of specific historical circumstances and personality clashes between flawed individuals
I will also refer readers to my review of Sam Dalrymple’s excellent book Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia. Continue reading Jinnah was not “pure evil”