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Comparing Gandhi and Jinnah is an extremely complex exercise but important for they were, or rather became, the two foci of the freedom movement. Gandhi was doubtless of a very different mould, but he too, like Jinnah, had gained eminence and successfully transited from his Kathiawari origins to become a London barrister before acquiring a political personality. Yet there existed an essential difference here. Gandhi’s birth in a prominent family— his father was, after all, a diwan (prime minister) of an Indian state—helped immeasurably. No such advantage of birth gave Jinnah a leg-up, it was entirely through his endeavours. Gandhi, most remarkably became a master practitioner of the politics of protest. This he did not do by altering his own nature, or language of discourse, but by transforming the very nature of politics in India. He transformed a people, who on account of prolonged foreign rule had acquired a style of subservience. He shook them out of this long, moral servitude. Gandhi took politics out of the genteel salons, the debating halls and societies to the soil of India, for he, Gandhi, was rooted to that soil, he was of it, he lived the idiom, the dialogue and discourse of that soil: its sweat; its smells and its great beauty and fragrances, too.

Some striking differences between these two great Indians are lucidly conveyed by Hector Bolitho in In Quest of Jinnah . He writes: ‘Jinnah was a source of power’. Gandhi…an ‘instrument of it… Jinnah was a cold rationalist in politics—he had a one track mind, with great force behind it’. Then: ‘Jinnah was potentially kind, but in behaviour extremely cold and distant’. Gandhi embodied compassion. Jinnah did not wish to touch the poor, but then Gandhi’s instincts were rooted in India and lifelong he soiled his hands in helping the squalid poor.

Not so Jinnah: for having been uprooted repeatedly in his childhood, then moved too frequently, he neither easily belonged nor did he relate with comfort. Besides being the quintessential constitutionalist, he had to follow a different course; for him to adapt to the changing times, to the dusty trails of rural India was not at all easy. That is why he found it so diffcult, by around 1920, to maintain his position at the national level given Gandhi’s arrival and rapid ascendancy. Besides, there was no province, not one, not then, not later, that he could rely upon totally as his exclusive parish. His lack of ability to adapt to the integrative politics of the masses always remained a problem. Whereafter, his status as a Muslim, it must be accepted, further handicapped his position at the national level, for in nationalist politics the scene had already got crowded; as a Muslim, yes, there was a role for him to play but only in the second rank. For Jinnah, a secondary status was galling, what he had always sought and mostly attained was the centre stage; yet, now how could he, when so many factors constantly kept pushing him to the periphery of it?

Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph, professors of political science, emeritus, University of Chicago, in correspondence with me have shared thoughts, briefly, on the same theme. They hold: ‘Jinnah couldn’t stand Gandhi but his reasons I believe were markedly different from those driving his “hatred” of Nehru. Almost from the beginning of Gandhi’s entry into national politics in the 1915– 1920 era, Jinnah thought of him not only as a rival but also as “a poseur, a fake, and a demagogue”. They shared an English experience that included common mentors, patrons and admirers and studying for and becoming a barrister. And they shared the common patronage in India of Gokhale, a “moderate” and a liberal.’ Jinnah acquired the style of an English gentleman and the views of a liberal. Gandhi did too, for a time, as photos of him as a successful barrister in South Africa and as his efforts to secure the rights of British subjects for the Indian minority in South Africa attest. But by the time Gandhi returned to India from twenty-one years in South Africa he had begun to shed his identity as an English gentleman and to add to his liberal creed a commitment to be a man of and for the people, the ordinary people of India’s towns and villages.

Jinnah remained committed to his three-piece suits, his lorgnette, his cigarette holder and the King’s English. No Gujarati for him, and no political language that invoked religion. Jinnah excelled in parliamentary politics, the kind of politics that the moderate Gokhale was good at and that the extremist Tilak scorned. Gandhi combined a liberal concern for deliberative, non-violent politics evident in the politics of satyagraha with the extremist tactics of direct action. His was an out of doors politics of the public sphere and of public opinion rather than an indoors politics of the halls of parliament and the corridors of power. When Gandhi donned the clothes and style of the common man, then later shed even these for the bare minimum of the poorest villager, Jinnah was progressively repelled and increasingly convinced that Gandhi was a demagogue and a fake. For decades Jinnah resented and resisted Gandhi’s common man politics until, on 16 August 1946, he called for direct action to defend Islam and in support of Pakistan. Jinnah then became the demagogue he deplored and detested in Gandhi. He had come to fight fire with fire − but doing so didn’t bring him closer to Gandhi. At the same time, he had, over the years, developed a wary respect for the man who, for most of his political career, outshone and outgunned him. Toward the end, he practised the highest form of flattery, imitation. He, too, [like Gandhi in reality was of the Congress, the final arbiters] would be the sole spokesman.

Jinnah saw Congress as his adversary and his nemesis. It was Congress versus the Muslim League, two parties contending for power in an independent Indian state that led to partition. Gandhi, unlike Nehru, did not share the view that Congress should take power in an independent Indian state. For him, Congress was a vehicle for the independence movement and for a constructive work movement. He rarely took interest in Congress party affairs. In his last will and testament written the day before he was assassinated on 30 January 1948, he called on the Congress party to disband itself. Contending for power in an independent Indian state, and assuming and using power in that state appalled and repelled him. In his last will and testament, he called on Congress party workers to form a Lok Sevak Sangh where they could engage in constructive work in the towns and villages of India. Gandhi was a man of civil society dedicated to achieving individual and national swaraj, not to seizing and using state power. That was what Nehru wanted. In this context it made sense for Gandhi to tell Mountbatten that he should call on Jinnah to be the prime minister of the interim government, and for the Muslim League to form the government. (Covered in detail in chapter 9). Gandhi wanted India’s independence, not Congress rule, and in that he didn’t attract the kind of animosity and distrust that Jinnah directed at Nehru.

Excerpted from Page 77-80 of ‘Jinnah: India-Partition Independence’ by Jaswant Singh