Jinnah's Vision: Pakistan's Founding Speech Delivered

Three days before Pakistan formally came into existence, Muhammad Ali Jinnah stood before the Constituent Assembly in Karachi on August 11, 1947, and delivered a speech that has been fought over by secularists and Islamists ever since. The address laid out a vision of religious tolerance that appeared to contradict the two-nation theory upon which the demand for Pakistan had been built. Jinnah, a London-trained barrister who had once been called the "ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity," had spent the previous decade arguing that Muslims and Hindus constituted separate nations requiring separate homelands. The Muslim League under his leadership had pressed the British and the Indian National Congress until partition became inevitable. Millions were already preparing to move across borders that had not yet been drawn. Yet in his August 11 address, Jinnah told the Assembly that religion should have nothing to do with the business of the state. "You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan," he declared. He spoke of citizens being equal regardless of faith, caste, or creed, and envisioned a Pakistan where religious distinctions would fade from political life. The speech created a tension that has never been resolved. Secularists cite it as proof that Pakistan's founder intended a pluralistic state. Religious conservatives argue it was a diplomatic courtesy to Hindu minorities, not a constitutional blueprint. Successive Pakistani governments have alternately embraced and suppressed the address. The text was omitted from school curricula for years and only partially restored. Jinnah died just thirteen months later, leaving Pakistan without the one figure who might have settled the argument definitively.