Thread alert (Jogendranath Mandal- Pakistan's 1st law minister)
1- 5th October ie day before yesterday was Jogendranath Mandal’s death anniversary.
Dalit history in our country is an obscure subject and Dalit heroes are deliberately pushed into oblivion.

2- While there is a deliberate attempt to appropriate Baba Saheb Ambedkar by people of all political ideologies, the name of Jogendranath Mandal, who propelled Dalit and Scheduled Caste activism during India’s independence got lost somewhere.

3-Mandal started his political career as a leader of the Scheduled Caste communities in Bengal. He was elected a member of the Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1937. Later, he held the posts of minister for Co-operative Credit and Rural Indebtedness.

4-Mandal also established the Bengal branch of All India Scheduled Castes Federation (AISCF). Ambedkar was its national leader.
Mandal also pushed for Ambedkar’s election to the Constituent Assembly.

5-In 1946, senior Congress leaders worked closely to not let Ambedkar win in the Bombay provincial assembly election. On Mandal’s insistence, Ambedkar contested from the Bengal province.

6-Due to Mandal’s close association with the Muslim League and active participation of Dalits in the region, Ambedkar was elected to the Constituent Assembly. (Source: The Print)

7- Jogendranath Mandal represented the Muslim League as minister in the 1946 pre-partition India. He was in favor of a United Bengal but when Lord Mountbatten announced partition on 3 June 1947 he got inclined towards Pakistan.

8- This inclination was because of the similarity of the socio-economic conditions of Dalits and Muslims.
Mandal also presided over the historic session of the Constituent Assembly on 11th August 1947, where Mohammed Ali Jinnah was sworn in as the first Governor-General of Pak.

9- Jinnah trusted Mandal for his vision and righteousness. He later progressed to become the highest-ranking Hindu member of the government by holding the post of Pakistan’s first law and labor minister.

10- However, his stature as a minority leader did not last long, as the majoritarian regime began to position itself to usurp power- its first targets were the non-Muslim politicians. The situation worsened after Jinnah’s death in 1948.

11-In March 1949, Mandal supported the Objective Resolution, which was controversial in nature, and the progressives believe that it was exploited to transform Jinnah’s ‘secular Pakistan’ into a religious state.

12-The Objective Resolution laid down a few principles for Pakistan including Allah’s sovereignty over the universe, principles of democracy, freedom, equality according to Islam, among others.

13-Mandal later campaigned for separate electorate for minorities like Dalits.

14- When a resolution was tabled in the Constituent Assembly to award the title of ‘Quaid-i-Azam’ or The Great Leader to Jinnah, almost all of the minority members opposed it, but Mandal threw his weight behind the resolution.

15-On Jinnah’s death, he said,
Fate has ruthlessly taken Quaid-i-Azam from us at a time when he was most needed.
In return for his services, he was booted out of office as government minister.

16- Dawn explains his situation using a Sindhi proverb “Jini laey moasi, sey kandi nah thia” (You have died for them, but they won’t bother to attend your funeral).

17- Dejected and ostracised by his own people and the country he so passionately defended, Jogendranath Mandal returned to India in 1950. Unfortunately even India did not treat him kindly, and he became a political untouchable.

18- He however continued working with Hindu refugees from Bangladesh. He died in 1968 after living a life of anonymity in West Bengal.

19- In his resignation letter to Liaqat Khan, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Jogendranath Mandal cited the perceived anti-Hindu bias of the Pakistani administration as the reason.

20-Indians and Pakistanis both have forgotten him because of their inherent biases.