Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, passed away in 1948. However today in November 2021 he has come alive in the political battlefield of Uttar Pradesh. Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav recently said, “Sardar Patel, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Jinnah … became barristers and got us independence.” The statement predictably led to a controversy.
BJP social media activists seized upon the Jinnah reference to attack SP and stereotype its identity politics. Union home minister Amit Shah said in a speech that for SP, JAM was about Jinnah, Azam Khan (the party’s Rampur strongman) and Mukhtar (Ansari, UP’s ‘don’ politician). A slugfest over Jinnah in a 21st-century UP election reveals not only the crisis of new ideas among India’s political class but also a deeper truth about how the state remains trapped in competitive communalism. The recent Hindutva vs Hinduism war of words and the unfortunate vandalising of Salman Khurshid’s home illustrate this hair-trigger edginess on religious identity.
