Claim: Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah said, “We are all Pakistanis and none of us is Sindhi, Balochi, Pathan or Punjabi. We should be proud to be Pakistani only and only.”
Fact: The quote is being wrongly attributed to Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah in posts shared online. Jinnah did not say, “We are all Pakistanis and none of us is Sindhi, Balochi, Pathan or Punjabi. We should be proud to be Pakistani only and only.”
Soch Fact Check received a screenshot of a now-deleted post which was originally shared on 24 December 2021 at 6:24 AM by verified account Adnan Shahid (@realpahore). Both the caption of the post and text superimposed onto an image attributed to the founder of Pakistan the quote, “We are all Pakistanis and none of us is Sindhi, Balochi, Pathan or Punjabi. We should be proud to be Pakistani only and only.”
Jinnah spoke many times on matters of unity and nationalism. For instance, in a Civic Address at Quetta Municipality on 15 June 1948, Jinnah said the following:
“We are now all Pakistanis, not Balochis, Pathans, Sindhis, Bengalis, Punjabis, and so on and as Pakistanis, we must feel, behave and act, and we should be proud to be known as Pakistanis and nothing else.”
This quote can be found on the Government of Pakistan official website.
While there are some similarities between the above quote and the false quote now being circulated online, the latter does not accurately reflect Jinnah’s words or his politics.
The quote being attributed to Jinnah is also grammatically incorrect — particularly the phrase “only and only” — as confirmed by English Learner sources. The false quote also changes the context and meaning of Jinnah’s original saying as the founder of Pakistan did not say that we should be known as Pakistanis “only and only”, but rather emphasized that we should take pride in being Pakistani citizens first.
Virality and Post Origins
Shortly after the post by Adnan Shahid surfaced, at 7:25 PM, the same image with the same hashtag but a different caption was posted here on Twitter. This particular post has 138 retweets; it was reshared on 25 Dec 2021, garnering 109 retweets. The same post was also shared here on Twitter on 25 Dec at 11:05 AM.
Soch Fact Check traced the exact text back to a Facebook post from 25 Dec 2020, the anniversary of Jinnah’s birth. The quote was also posted here on 14 August 2021, and here and here on 25 December 2021. Text on an image suggests that the post was shared by Twitter account Team Muhammad Ali Jinnah (@OfficialTeamMAJ), but no other posts shared by the account could be found at the time of reporting.
Conclusion: While Jinnah did advocate for unity among Pakistanis, the quote contained in the posts being circulated online does not accurately reflect Jinnah’s words. In addition to being grammatically incorrect, the posts change the meaning of Jinnah’s original quote.