Speaking to the newly formed assembly that would govern the world's first modern state created explicitly for Muslims, Jinnah urged religious tolerance, declaring that Hindus, Muslims, and all citizens would be equal before the law. The speech remains hotly debated in Pakistani politics, cited by secularists and largely downplayed by Islamist factions ever since.
Jinnah, dying of tuberculosis he had concealed from nearly everyone, delivered this address just three days before Pakistan's official birth on August 14, 1947. He told the assembly, 'You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan... You may belong to any religion or caste or creed — that has nothing to do with the business of the State.'
The speech stunned many who expected an unambiguously Islamic vision from the man who had spent the preceding decade demanding a separate homeland for South Asia's Muslims on the premise that Hindus and Muslims were fundamentally distinct nations. His vision of a pluralistic, civically-minded Pakistan sat uneasily alongside the very sectarian logic that had brought the country into being.
Within months Jinnah was dead, and the speech's legacy became a battleground: Pakistani liberals invoke it as the founding father's true intent, while religious conservatives argue it was aspirational rhetoric quickly overtaken by the realities of a state built on religious identity. State broadcasters in Pakistan reportedly censored parts of the speech for decades.