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Muhammad Ali Jinnah
born Mahomedali Jinnahbhai; 25 December 1876 – 11 September 1948) was
a lawyer, politician, and the founder ofPakistan. Jinnah served
as leader of the All-India Muslim League from 1913 until Pakistan's
independence on 14 August 1947 and as Pakistan's first Governor-Generalfrom
independence until his death. He is revered in Pakistan
as Quaid-i-Azam (Great Leader) and Baba-i-Qaum (Father of the
Nation). His birthday is observed as a national holiday.
Born in Karachi and
trained as a barrister at Lincoln's Inn in London, Jinnah rose to
prominence in the Indian National Congress in the first two decades
of the 20th century. In these early years of his political career, Jinnah
advocated Hindu–Muslim unity, helping to shape the 1916 Lucknow Pact between
the Congress and the All-India Muslim League, a party in which Jinnah had also
become prominent. Jinnah became a key leader in the All India Home Rule
League, and proposed a fourteen-point constitutional reform plan to
safeguard the political rights of Muslims should a united British India become
independent. In 1920, however, Jinnah resigned from the Congress when it agreed
to follow a campaign of Satyagraha, or non-violent resistance, advocated
by the influential leader, Mohandas Gandhi.
By 1940, Jinnah had come to
believe that Indian Muslims should have their own state. In that year, the
Muslim League, led by Jinnah, passed the Lahore Resolution, demanding a
separate nation. During the Second World War, the League gained strength
while leaders of the Congress were imprisoned, and in the elections held
shortly after the war, it won most of the seats reserved for Muslims.
Ultimately, the Congress and the Muslim League could not reach a power-sharing
formula for a united India, leading all parties to agree to separate
independence for a predominately Hindu India, and for a Muslim-majority state,
to be called Pakistan.
As the first Governor-General of
Pakistan, Jinnah worked to establish the new nation's government and policies,
and to aid the millions of Muslim migrants who had emigrated from the new
nation of India to Pakistan after the partition, personally
supervising the establishment of refugee camps. Jinnah died at age 71 in
September 1948, just over a year after Pakistan gained independence from
the British Raj. He left a deep and respected legacy in Pakistan, though
he is less well thought of in India. According to his biographer, Stanley
Wolpert, he remains Pakistan's greatest leader.
Early years
Background
Jinnah was born Mahomedali
Jinnahbhai, in 1876, to
Jinnahbhai Poonja and his wife Mithibai, in a rented apartment on the second
floor of Wazir Mansion, Karachi. Jinnah's birthplace is in Sindh,
a region today part of Pakistan, but then within theBombay Presidency of British
India. His father was a prosperous Gujarati merchant who had been
born to a family of weavers in the village of Paneli in the princely state of Gondal;
his mother was also of that village. They had moved to Karachi about 1875,
having married before their departure. Karachi was then enjoying an economic
boom: the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 meant it was 200 nautical
miles closer to Europe for shipping than Bombay.
Jinnah's family was of
the Ismaili Khoja branch of Shi'a Islam, though Jinnah
later followed the Twelver Shi'a teachings. Jinnah was the
second child; he had three brothers and three sisters, including his
younger sister Fatima Jinnah. The parents were nativeGujarati speakers,
and the children also came to speak Kutchi, Sindhi and
English. Except for Fatima, little is known of his siblings, where they
settled or if they met with their brother as he advanced in his legal or
political careers.
As a boy, Jinnah lived for a time
in Bombay with an aunt and may have attended the Gokal Das Tej Primary School
there, or possibly a madrasa, later on moving to the Cathedral and John
Connon School. In Karachi, he attended the Sindh-Madrasa-tul-Islam and
the Christian Missionary Society High School. He gained his matriculation from Bombay
University at the high school. In his later years and especially after his
death, a large number of stories about the boyhood of Pakistan's founder were
circulated: that he spent all his spare time at the police court, listening to
the proceedings, and that he studied his books by the glow of street lights for
lack of other illumination. His official biographer, Hector Bolitho,
writing in 1954, interviewed surviving boyhood associates, and obtained a tale
that the young Jinnah discouraged other children from playing marbles in the
dust, urging them to rise up, keep their hands and clothes clean, and play
cricket instead.
In England
In 1892, Sir Frederick Leigh
Croft, a business associate of Jinnahbhai Poonja, offered young Jinnah a London
apprenticeship with his firm, Graham's Shipping and Trading Company. He accepted the position despite the
opposition of his mother, who before he left, had him enter an arranged
marriage with a girl two years his junior from the ancestral village of Paneli,
Emibai Jinnah. Jinnah's mother and first wife Both died during his absence in England.
Although the apprenticeship in
London was considered a great opportunity for Jinnah, one reason for sending
him overseas was a legal proceeding against his father, which placed the
family's property at risk of being sequestered by the court. In 1893, the
Jinnahbhai family moved to Bombay.
Soon after his arrival in London,
Jinnah gave up the apprenticeship in order to study law, enraging his father,
who had, before his departure, given him enough money to live for three years.
The aspiring barrister joined Lincoln's Inn, later stating that
the reason he chose Lincoln's over the Lincoln's Inn, seen in 2006other Inns of Court was that over the main entrance to Lincoln's Inn were the names of the world's great lawgivers, including Muhammad. Jinnah's biographer Stanley Wolpert notes that there is no such inscription, but instead inside is a mural showing Muhammad and other lawgivers, and speculates that Jinnah may have edited the story in his own mind to avoid mentioning a pictorial depiction which would be offensive to many Muslims. Jinnah's legal education at the Inns of Court followed the apprenticeship system, which had been in force there for centuries. To gain knowledge of the law, he followed an established barrister and learned from what he did, as well as from studying lawbooks. During this period, he shortened his name to Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
During his student years in
England, Jinnah was influenced by 19th-century British liberalism, like
many other future Indian independence leaders. This political education
included exposure to the idea of the democratic nation, and progressive
politics. He became an admirer of the Parsi Indian political
leaders Dadabhai Naoroji and Sir Pherozeshah Mehta. Naoroji had
become the firstMember of Parliament of Indian extraction shortly before
Jinnah's arrival, triumphing with a majority of three votes in Finsbury Central.
Jinnah listened to his maiden speech in the House of Commons from
the visitor's gallery.
The Western world not only
inspired Jinnah in his political life, but also greatly influenced his personal
preferences, particularly when it came to dress. Jinnah abandoned Indian garb
for Western-style clothing, and throughout his life he was always impeccably
dressed in public. He came to own over 200 suits, which he wore with heavily
starched shirts with detachable collars, and as a barrister took pride in never
wearing the same silk tie twice. Even when he was dying, he insisted on
being formally dressed, "I will not travel in my pyjamas." In
his later years he was usually seen wearing a Karakul hat which
subsequently came to be known as the "Jinnah cap".
Dissatisfied with the law, Jinnah
briefly embarked on a stage career with a Shakespearean company, but resigned
after receiving a stern letter from his father. In 1895, at age 19, he
became the youngest Indian to be called to the bar in England. Although
he returned to Karachi, he remained there only a short time before moving to
Bombay.
Legal and early political career
Barrister
Aged twenty, Jinnah began his
practice in Bombay, the only Muslim barrister in the city. English had
become his principal language and would remain so throughout his life. His
first three years in the law, from 1897 to 1900, brought him few briefs. His
first step towards a brighter career occurred when the acting Advocate
General of Bombay, John Molesworth MacPherson, invited Jinnah to work from
his chambers. In 1900, P. H. Dastoor, a Bombay presidency magistrate, left
the post temporarily and Jinnah succeeded in getting the interim position.
After his six-month appointment period, Jinnah was offered a permanent position
on a 1,500 rupee per month salary. Jinnah politely declined the
offer, stating that he planned to
earn 1,500 rupees a day—a huge sum at that time—which he eventually did. Nevertheless,
as Governor-General of Pakistan, he would refuse to accept a large salary,
fixing it at 1 rupee per month.
As a lawyer, Jinnah gained fame
for his skilled handling of the 1907 "Caucus Case". This controversy
arose out of Bombay municipal elections, which Indians alleged were rigged by a
"caucus" of Europeans to keep Sir Pherozeshah Mehta out of the
council. Jinnah gained great esteem from leading the case for Sir Pherozeshah,
himself a noted barrister. Although Jinnah did not win the Caucus Case, he
posted a successful record, becoming well known for his advocacy and legal
logic. In 1908, his factional foe in the Indian National Congress, Bal
Gangadhar Tilak, was arrested for sedition. Before Tilak unsuccessfully
represented himself at trial, he engaged Jinnah in an attempt to secure his
release on bail. Jinnah as barrister
Jinnah did not succeed, but obtained an acquittal for Tilak when he was charged with sedition again in 1916.
Jinnah did not succeed, but obtained an acquittal for Tilak when he was charged with sedition again in 1916.
One of Jinnah's fellow barristers
from the Bombay High Court remembered that "Jinnah's faith in himself was
incredible"; he recalled that on being admonished by a judge with
"Mr. Jinnah, remember that you are not addressing a third-class
magistrate" Jinnah shot back "My Lord, allow me to warn you that you
are not addressing a third-class pleader." Another of his fellow
barristers described him:
He was what God made him, a great
pleader. He had a sixth sense: he could see around corners. That is where his
talents lay ... he was a very clear thinker ... But he drove his
points home—points chosen with exquisite selection—slow delivery, word by word.
Rising leader
In 1857, many Indians had
risen in revolt against British rule. In the aftermath of the
conflict, some Anglo-Indians, as well as Indians in Britain, called for greater
self-government for the subcontinent, resulting in the founding of the Indian
National Congress in 1885. Most founding members had been educated in
Britain, and were content with the minimal reform efforts being made by the
government. Muslims were not enthusiastic about calls for democratic
institutions in British India, as they constituted a quarter to a third of
the population, outnumbered by the Hindus. Early meetings of the Congress
contained a minority of
Muslims, mostly from the elite.
Jinnah began political life by
attending the Congress's twentieth annual meeting, in Bombay in December 1904. He
was a member of the moderate group in the Congress, favouring Hindu–Muslim
unity in achieving self-government, and following such leaders as Mehta,
Naoroji, and Gopal Krishna Gokhale. They were opposed by leaders such as
Tilak and Lala Lajpat Rai, who sought quick action towards freedom. In
1906, a delegation of Muslim leaders headed by the Aga Khancalled on the
new Viceroy of India, Lord Minto, to assure him of their loyalty and
to ask for assurances that in any political reforms they would be protected
from the "unsympathetic [Hindu] majority". Dissatisfied with
this, Jinnah wrote a letter to the editor of the newspaper Gujarati,
asking what right the members of the delegation Jinnah in 1910
had to speak for Indian
Muslims, as they were unelected and self-appointed. When many of the same
leaders met inDacca in December of that year to form the All-India
Muslim League to advocate for their community's interests, Jinnah was
again opposed. The Aga Khan later wrote that it was "freakishly ironic"
that Jinnah, who would lead the League to independence, "came out in
bitter hostility toward all that I and my friends had done ... He said
that our principle of separate electorates was dividing the nation against
itself." In its earliest years, however, the League was not
influential; Minto refused to consider it as the Muslim community's
representative, and it was ineffective in preventing the 1911 repeal of
the partition of Bengal, an action seen as a blow to Muslim interests.
Although Jinnah initially opposed
separate electorates for Muslims, he used this means to gain his first elective
office in 1909, as Bombay's Muslim representative on the Imperial
Legislative Council. He was a compromise candidate when two older, better-known
Muslims who were seeking the post deadlocked. The council, which had been
expanded to 60 members as part of reforms enacted by Minto, recommended
legislation to the Viceroy. Only officials could vote in the council;
non-official members, such as Jinnah, had no vote. Throughout his legal career,
Jinnah practised probate law (with many clients from India's
nobility), and in 1911 introduced the WakfValidation Act to place Muslim
religious trusts on a sound legal footing under British Indian law. Two years
later, the measure passed, the first act sponsored by non-officials to pass the
council and be enacted by the Viceroy. Jinnah was also appointed to a
committee which helped to establish the Indian Military Academy in Dehra
Dun.
In December 1912, Jinnah
addressed the annual meeting of the Muslim League, although he was not yet a
member. He joined the following year, although he remained a member of the
Congress as well and stressed that League membership took second priority to
the "greater national cause" of a free India. In April 1913, he again
went to Britain, with Gokhale, to meet with officials on behalf of the
Congress. Gokhale, a Hindu, later stated that Jinnah "has true stuff in
him, and that freedom from all sectarian prejudice which will make him the best
ambassador of Hindu–Muslim Unity". Jinnah led another delegation of
the Congress to London in 1914, but due to the start of the First World
War found officials little interested in Indian reforms. By coincidence,
he was in Britain at the same time as a man who would become a great political
rival of his, Mohandas Gandhi, a Hindu lawyer who had become well known
for advocatingsatyagraha, non-violent non-cooperation, while in South Africa.
Jinnah attended a reception for Gandhi, and returned home to India in January 1915.
Break from the Congress
Jinnah's moderate faction in the
Congress was undermined by the deaths of Mehta and Gokhale in 1915; he was
further isolated by the fact that Naoroji was in London, where he remained
until his death in 1917. Nevertheless, Jinnah worked to bring the Congress and
League together. In 1916, with Jinnah now president of the Muslim League, the
two organisations signed the Lucknow Pact, setting quotas for Muslim and
Hindu representation in the various provinces. Although the pact was never
fully implemented, its signing ushered in a period of cooperation between the
Congress and the League.
During the war, Jinnah joined
other Indian moderates in supporting the British war effort, hoping that
Indians would be rewarded with political freedoms. Jinnah played an important
role in the founding of the All India Home Rule League in 1916. Along
with political leaders Annie Besant and Tilak, Jinnah demanded "home
rule" for India—the status of a self-governing dominion in the
Empire similar to Canada, New Zealand and Australia, although, with the war,
Britain's politicians were not interested in considering Indian constitutional
reform. British Cabinet minister Edwin Montagu recalled Jinnah in his
memoirs, "young, perfectly mannered, impressive-looking, armed to the
teeth with dialectics, and insistent on the whole of his scheme".
In 1918, Jinnah married his
second wife Rattanbai Petit ("Ruttie"), 24 years his
junior. She was the fashionable young daughter of his friend Sir Dinshaw Petit,
of an elite Parsi family of Bombay. There was great opposition
to the marriage from Rattanbai's family and the Parsi community, as well as
from some Muslim religious leaders. Rattanbai defied her family and nominally
converted to Islam, adopting (though never using) the name Maryam Jinnah,
resulting in a permanent estrangement from her family and Parsi society. The
couple resided in Bombay, and frequently travelled across India and Europe. The
couple's only child, daughter Dina Jinnah, was born on 15 August
1919. The couple separated prior to Ruttie's death in 1929, and
subsequently Jinnah's sister Fatima looked after him and his child.
Relations between Indians and
British were strained in 1919 when the Imperial Legislative Council extended
emergency wartime restrictions on civil liberties; Jinnah resigned from it when
it did. There was unrest across India, which worsened after the Jallianwala
Bagh massacre in Amritsar, in which British troops fired upon a
protest meeting, killing hundreds. In the wake of Amritsar, Gandhi, who had
returned to India and become a widely respected leader and highly influential
in the Congress, called for Satyagraha against the British. Gandhi's
proposal gained broad Hindu support, and was also attractive to many Muslims of
the Khilafat faction. These Muslims, supported by Gandhi, sought
retention of the Uthman caliphate, which supplied spiritual leadership to
many Muslims. The caliph was the Ottoman Emperor, who would be deprived of
both offices following his nation's defeat in the First World War. Gandhi had
achieved considerable popularity among Muslims because of his work during the
war on behalf of killed or imprisoned Muslims. Unlike Jinnah and other
leaders of the Congress, Gandhi did not wear western-style clothing, did his
best to use an Indian language instead of English, and was deeply
rooted in Indian culture. Gandhi's local style of leadership gained great
popularity with the Indian people. Jinnah criticised Gandhi's Khilafat
advocacy, which he saw as an endorsement of religious zealotry. Jinnah
regarded Gandhi's proposedsatyagraha campaign as political anarchy, and
believed that self-government should be secured through constitutional means.
He opposed Gandhi, but the tide of Indian opinion was against him. At the 1920
session of the Congress in Nagpur, Jinnah was shouted down by the
delegates, who passed Gandhi's proposal, pledging satyagraha until
India was free. Jinnah did not attend the subsequent League meeting, held in
the same city, which passed a similar resolution. Because of the action of the
Congress in endorsing Gandhi's campaign, Jinnah resigned from it, leaving all
positions except in the Muslim League.
Wilderness years; interlude in England
Jinnah devoted much of his time
to his law practice in the early 1920s, but remained politically involved. The
alliance between Gandhi and the Khilafat faction did not last long, and the
campaign of resistance proved less effective than hoped, as India's
institutions continued to function. Jinnah sought alternative political ideas,
and contemplated organising a new political party as a rival to the Congress.
In September 1923, Jinnah was elected as Muslim member for Bombay in
the new Central Legislative Assembly. He showed much skill as a
parliamentarian, organising many Indian members to work with the Swaraj
Party, and continued to press demands for full responsible government. In 1925,
as recognition for his legislative activities, he was offered a knighthood by Lord
Reading, who was retiring from the Viceroyalty. He replied: "I prefer to
be plain Mr. Jinnah."
In 1927, the British Government,
under Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, undertook a
decennial review of Indian policy mandated by the Government of India Act
1919. The review began two years early as Baldwin feared he would lose the next
election (which he did, in 1929). The Cabinet was influenced by minister Winston
Churchill, who strongly opposed self-government for India, and members hoped
that by having the commission appointed early, the policies for India which
they favoured would survive their government. The resulting commission,
led by Liberal MP John Simon, though with a majority of
Conservatives, arrived in India in March 1928. They were met with a
boycott by India's leaders, Muslim and Hindu alike, angered at the British
refusal to include their representatives on the commission. A minority of
Muslims, though, withdrew from the League, choosing to welcome the Simon
Commission and repudiating Jinnah. Most members of the League's executive
council remained loyal to Jinnah, attending the League meeting in December 1927
and January 1928 which confirmed him as the League's permanent president. At
that session, Jinnah told the delegates that "A constitutional war has
been declared on Great Britain. Negotiations for a settlement are not to come
from our side ... By appointing an exclusively white Commission, [Secretary
of State for India] Lord Birkenhead has declared our unfitness for
self-government."
Birkenhead in 1928 challenged
Indians to come up with their own proposal for constitutional change for India;
in response, the Congress convened a committee under the leadership of Motilal
Nehru. The Nehru Report favoured constituencies based on
geography on the ground that being dependent on each other for election would
bind the communities closer together. Jinnah, though he believed separate
electorates, based on religion, necessary to ensure Muslims had a voice in the
government, was willing to compromise on this point, but talks between the two
parties failed. He put forth proposals that he hoped might satisfy a broad
range of Muslims and reunite the League, calling for mandatory representation
for Muslims in legislatures and cabinets. These became known as his Fourteen
Points. He could not secure adoption of the Fourteen Points, as the League
meeting in Delhi at which he hoped to gain a vote instead dissolved into
chaotic argument.
After Baldwin was defeated at
the 1929 British parliamentary election, Ramsey MacDonald of
the Labour Party became prime minister. MacDonald desired a
conference of Indian and British leaders in London to discuss India's future, a
course of action supported by Jinnah. Three Round Table Conferences followed
over as many years, none of which resulted in a settlement. Jinnah was a
delegate to the first two conferences, but was not invited to the last. He
remained in Britain for most of the period 1930 through 1934, practising as a
barrister before the Privy Council, where he dealt with a number of
Indian-related cases. His biographers disagree over why he remained so long in
Britain—Wolpert asserts that had Jinnah been made a Law Lord, he would
have stayed for life, and that Jinnah alternatively sought a parliamentary
seat. Early biographer Hector Bolitho denied that Jinnah sought to
enter the British Parliament, while Jaswant Singh deems Jinnah's time in
Britain as a break or sabbatical from the Indian struggle. Bolitho called this
period "Jinnah's years of order and contemplation, wedged in between the
time of early struggle, and the final storm of conquest".
In 1931, Fatima Jinnah joined
her brother in England. From then on, Muhammad Jinnah would receive personal
care and support from her as he aged and began to suffer from the lung ailments
which would kill him. She lived and travelled with him, and became a close
advisor. Muhammad Jinnah's daughter, Dina, was educated in England and India.
Jinnah later became estranged from Dina after she decided to marry a
Christian, Neville Wadia from a prominent Parsi business
family. When Jinnah urged Dina to marry a Muslim, she reminded him that he had
married a woman not raised in his faith. Jinnah continued to correspond
cordially with his daughter, but their personal relationship was strained, and
she did not come to Pakistan in his lifetime, but only for his funeral.
Return to politics
Beginning in 1933, Indian
Muslims, especially from the United Provinces, began to urge Jinnah to
return to India and take up again his leadership of the Muslim League, an
organisation which had fallen into inactivity. He remained titular
president of the League, but declined to travel to India to preside over its
1933 session in April, writing that he could not possibly return there until
the end of the year. Among those who met with Jinnah to seek his return
was Liaquat Ali Khan, who would be a major political associate of Jinnah
in the years to come and the first Prime Minister of Pakistan. At Jinnah's
request, Liaquat discussed the return with a large number of Muslim politicians
and confirmed his recommendation to Jinnah. In early 1934, Jinnah
relocated to the subcontinent, though he shuttled between London and India on
business for the next few years, selling his house in Hampstead and
closing his legal practice in Britain.
Muslims of Bombay elected Jinnah,
though then absent in London, as their representative to the Central
Legislative Assembly in October 1934. The British Parliament's Government
of India Act 1935 gave considerable power to India's provinces, with a
weak central parliament in New Delhi, which had no authority over such
matters as foreign policy, defence, and much of the budget. Full power remained
in the hands of the Viceroy, however, who could dissolve legislatures and rule
by decree. The League reluctantly accepted the scheme, though expressing
reservations about the weak parliament. The Congress was much better prepared
for the provincial elections in 1937, and the League failed to win a
majority even of the Muslim seats in any of the provinces where members of that
faith held a majority. It did win a majority of the Muslim seats in Delhi,
but could not form a government anywhere, though it was part of the ruling
coalition in Bengal. The Congress and its allies formed the government
even in the North-West Frontier Province(N.W.F.P.), where the League won
no seats despite the fact that almost all residents were Muslim.
According to Singh, "the
events of 1937 had a tremendous, almost a traumatic effect upon Jinnah". Despite
his beliefs of twenty years that Muslims could protect their rights in a united
India through separate electorates, provincial boundaries drawn to preserve
Muslim majorities, and by other protections of minority rights, Muslim voters
had failed to unite, with the issues Jinnah hoped to bring forward lost amid
factional fighting. Singh notes the effect of the 1937 elections on Muslim
political opinion, "when the Congress formed a government with almost all
of the Jinnah (front, left) with the Working Muslim MLAs sitting on the Opposition benches, Committee of the Muslim League non-Congress Muslims were suddenly faced with this after a meeting in Lucknow, stark reality of near total political powerlessness.
October 1937
It was brought home to them, like a bolt of lightning, that even
if the Congress did not win a single Muslim seat ... as long as it won an
absolute majority in the House, on the strength of the general seats, it could
and would form a government entirely on its own ..."
In the next two years, Jinnah
worked to build support among Muslims for the League. He secured the right to
speak for the Muslim-led Bengali and Punjabi provincial governments
in the central government in New Delhi ("the centre"). He worked to
expand the league, reducing the cost of membership to two annas (⅛ of
a rupee), half of what it cost to join the Congress. He restructured the League
along the lines of the Congress, putting most power in a Working Committee,
which he appointed. By December 1939, Liaquat estimated that the League had
three million two-anna members.
Struggle for Pakistan
Background to independence
Jinnah addresses the Muslim
League session at Parma, 1938
Until the late 1930s, most
Muslims of the British Raj expected, upon independence, to be part of a unitary
state encompassing all of British India, as did the Hindus and others who
advocated self-government. Despite this, other nationalist proposals were being
made. In a speech given at Allahabad to a League session in 1930,
Sir Muhammad Iqbal called for a state for Muslims in India. Choudhary
Rahmat Ali published a pamphlet in 1933 advocating a state
"Pakistan" in the Indus Valley, with other names given to
Muslim-majority areas elsewhere in India. Jinnah and Iqbal corresponded
in 1936 and 1937; in subsequent years, Jinnah credited Iqbal as his mentor, and
used Iqbal's imagery and rhetoric in his speeches.
Although many leaders of the
Congress sought a strong central government for an Indian state, some Muslim
politicians, including Jinnah, were unwilling to accept this without powerful
protections for their community. Other Muslims supported the Congress,
which officially advocated a secular state upon independence, though the
traditionalist wing (including politicians such as Madan Mohan Malaviya and Vallabhbhai
Patel) believed that an independent India should enact laws such as banning the
killing of cows and making Hindi a national language. The failure of
the Congress leadership to disavow Hindu communalists worried
Congress-supporting Muslims. Nevertheless, the Congress enjoyed considerable
Muslim support up to about 1937.
Events which separated the
communities included the failed attempt to form a coalition government
including the Congress and the League in the United Provinces following the
1937 election. According to historian Ian Talbot, "The provincial
Congress governments made no effort to understand and respect their Muslim
populations' cultural and religious sensibilities. The Muslim League's claims
that it alone could safeguard Muslim interests thus received a major boost.
Significantly it was only after this period of Congress rule that it [the
League] took up the demand for a Pakistan state ..."
Balraj Puri in his journal
article about Jinnah suggests that the Muslim League president, after the 1937
vote, turned to the idea of partition in "sheer
desperation".Historian Akbar S. Ahmed suggests that Jinnah
abandoned hope of reconciliation with the Congress as he "rediscovered his
own Islamic roots, his own sense of identity, of culture and history, which
would come increasingly to the fore in the final years of his life". Jinnah
also increasingly adopted Muslim dress in the late 1930s. In the wake of the
1937 balloting, Jinnah demanded that the question of power sharing be settled
on an all-India basis, and that he, as president of the League, be accepted as
the sole spokesman for the Muslim community.
Second World War and Lahore Resolution
With the British and Muslims to
some extent cooperating, the Viceroy asked Jinnah for an expression of the Muslim
League's position on self-government, confident that it would differ greatly
from that of the Congress. To come up with such a position, the League's
Working Committee met for four days in February 1940 to set out terms of
reference to a constitutional sub-committee. The Working Committee asked that
the sub-committee return with a proposal that would result in "independent
dominions in direct relationship with Great Britain" where Muslims were
dominant. On 6 February, Jinnah informed the Viceroy that the Muslim
League would be demanding partition instead of the federation contemplated in
the 1935 Act. The Lahore Resolution (sometimes called the
"Pakistan Resolution", although it does not contain that name), based
on the sub-committee's work, embraced the Two-Nation Theory and
called for a union of the Muslim-majority provinces in the northwest of British
India, with complete autonomy. Similar rights were to be granted the
Muslim-majority areas in the east, and unspecified protections given to Muslim
minorities in other provinces. The resolution was passed by the League session
in Lahore on 23 March 1940.
Gandhi's reaction to the Lahore
Resolution was muted; he called it "baffling", but told his disciples
that Muslims, in common with other people of India, had the right to
self-determination. Leaders of the Congress were more vocal; Jawaharlal
Nehru (son of Motilal) referred to Lahore as "Jinnah's fantastic
proposals" while Chakravarti Rajagopalacharideemed Jinnah's views on
partition "a sign of a diseased mentality".Linlithgow met with Jinnah
in June 1940, soon after Winston Churchill became the British prime
minister, and in August offered both the Congress and the League a deal whereby
in exchange for full support for the war, Linlithgow would allow Indian
representation on his major war councils. The Viceroy promised a representative
body after the war to determine India's future, and that no future settlement
would be imposed over the objections of a large part of the population. This
was satisfactory to neither the Congress nor the League, though Jinnah was
pleased that the British had moved towards recognising Jinnah as the
representative of the Muslim community's interests. Jinnah was reluctant to
make specific proposals as to the boundaries of Pakistan, or its relationships
with Britain and with the rest of the subcontinent, fearing that any precise
plan would divide the League.
The Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbour in December 1941 brought the United States into the war. In the
following months, the Japanese advanced in Southeast Asia, and the British
Cabinet sent a mission led by Sir Stafford Cripps to try to
conciliate the Indians and cause them to fully back the war. Cripps proposed
giving some provinces what was dubbed the "local option" to remain outside
of an Indian central government either for a period of time or permanently, to
become dominions on their own or be part of another confederation. The Muslim
League was far from certain of winning the legislative votes that would be
required for mixed provinces such as Bengal and Punjab to secede, and Jinnah
rejected the proposals as not sufficiently recognising Pakistan's right to
exist. The Congress also rejected the Cripps plan, demanding immediate
concessions which Cripps was not prepared to give. Despite the rejection,
Jinnah and the League saw the Cripps proposal as recognising Pakistan in
principle.
Jinnah with Gandhi, 1944 without going into great detail about what that would entail. Jinnah also worked to increase the League's political control at the provincial level. He helped to found the newspaper Dawn in the early 1940s in Delhi; it helped to spread the League's message and eventually became the major English-language newspaper of Pakistan.
In September 1944, Jinnah and
Gandhi, who had by then been released from his palatial prison, met at the
Muslim leader's home on Malabar Hill in Bombay. Two weeks of talks
followed, which resulted in no agreement. Jinnah insisted on Pakistan being
conceded prior to the British departure, and to come into being immediately on
their departure, while Gandhi proposed that plebiscites on partition occur
sometime after a united India gained its independence. In early 1945,
Liaquat and the Congress leader Bhulabhai Desai met, with Jinnah's
approval and agreed that after the war, the Congress and the League should form
an interim government and that the members of the Executive Council of the
Viceroy should be nominated by the Congress and the League in equal numbers.
When the Congress leadership was released from prison in June 1945, they
repudiated the agreement and censured Desai for acting without proper
authority.
Postwar
Field Marshal the Viscount Wavell succeeded
Linlithgow as Viceroy in 1943. In June 1945, following the release of the
Congress leaders, Wavell called for a conference, and invited the leading
figures from the various communities to meet with him at Simla. He
proposed a temporary government along the lines which Liaquat and Desai had agreed.
However, Wavell was unwilling to guarantee that only the League's candidates
would be placed in the seats reserved for Muslims. All other invited groups
submitted lists of candidates to the Viceroy. Wavell cut the conference short
in mid-July without further seeking an agreement; with a British general
electionimminent, Churchill's government did not feel it could proceed.
The British people returned Clement
Attlee and his Labour Party later in July. Attlee and his Secretary of
State for India, Lord Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, immediately ordered a
review of the Indian situation. Jinnah
had no comment on the change of government, but called a meeting of his Working
Committee and issued a statement calling for new elections in India. The League
held influence at the provincial level in the Muslim-majority states mostly by
alliance, and Jinnah believed that, given the opportunity, the League would improve
its electoral standing and lend added support to his claim to be the sole
spokesman for the Muslims. Wavell returned to India in September after
consultation with his new masters in London; elections, both for the centre and
for the provinces, were announced soon after. The British indicated that
formation of a constitution-making body would follow the votes.
In February 1946, the British
Cabinet resolved to send a delegation to India to negotiate with leaders there.
This Cabinet Missionincluded Cripps and Pethick-Lawrence. The
highest-level delegation to try to break the deadlock, it arrived in New
Delhi in late March. Little negotiation had been done since the previous
October because of the elections in India. The British in May released a
plan for a united Indian state comprising substantially autonomous provinces,
and called for "groups" of provinces formed on the basis of religion.
Matters such as defence, external relations and communications would be handled
by a central authority. Provinces would have the option of leaving the union
entirely, and there would be an interim government with representation from the
Congress and the League. Jinnah and his Working Committee accepted this plan in
June, but it fell apart over the question of how many members of the interim
government the Congress and the League would have, and over the Congress's
desire to include a Muslim member in its representation. Before leaving India,
the British ministers stated that they intended to inaugurate an interim
government even if one of the major groups was unwilling to participate.
The Congress soon joined the new
Indian ministry. The League was slower to do so, not entering until October
1946. In agreeing to have the League join the government, Jinnah abandoned his
demands for parity with the Congress and a veto on matters concerning Muslims.
The new ministry met amid a backdrop of rioting, especially in Calcutta.
The Congress wanted the Viceroy to immediately summon the constituent assembly
and begin the work of writing a constitution, and felt that the League
ministers should either join in the request or resign from the government.
Wavell attempted to save the situation by flying leaders such as Jinnah,
Liaquat, and Jawaharlal Nehru to London in December 1946. At the end of the
talks, participants issued a statement that the constitution would not be
forced on any unwilling parts of India. On the way back from London, Jinnah and
Liaquat stopped in Cairo for several days of pan-Islamic meetings.
Nehru (left) and Jinnah walk
together at Simla, 1946
Mountbatten and independence
On 20 February 1947, Attlee
announced Mountbatten's appointment, and that Britain would transfer power in
India not later than June 1948. Mountbatten took office as Viceroy on 24 March
1947, two days after his arrival in India. By then, the Congress had come
around to the idea of partition. Nehru stated in 1960, "the truth is that
we were tired men and we were getting on in years ... The plan for
partition offered a way out and we took it." Leaders of the Congress
decided that having loosely tied Muslim-majority provinces as part of a future
India was not worth the loss of the powerful government at the centre which
they desired. However, the Congress insisted that if Pakistan were to become
independent, Bengal and Punjab would have to be divided.
Louis and Edwina Mountbatten with Jinnah, 1947
Mountbatten had been warned in
his briefing papers that Jinnah would be his "toughest customer" who
had proved a chronic nuisance because "no one in this country [India] had
so far gotten into Jinnah's mind". The men met over six days
beginning on 5 April. The sessions began lightly when Jinnah, photographed
between Louis andEdwina Mountbatten, quipped "A rose between two
thorns" which the Viceroy took, perhaps gratuitously, as evidence that the
Muslim leader had pre-planned his joke, but had expected the vicereine to stand
in the middle. Mountbatten was not favourably impressed with Jinnah,
repeatedly expressing frustration to his staff about Jinnah's insistence on
Pakistan in the face of all argument.
Jinnah feared that at the end of
the British presence in India, they would turn control over to the
Congress-dominated constituent assembly, putting Muslims at a disadvantage in
attempting to win autonomy. He demanded that Mountbatten divide the army prior
to independence, which would take at least a year. Mountbatten had hoped that
the post-independence arrangements would include a common defence force, but
Jinnah saw it as essential that a sovereign state should have its own forces.
Mountbatten met with Liaquat the day of his final session with Jinnah, and
concluded, as he told Attlee and the Cabinet in May, that "it had become
clear that the Muslim League would resort to arms if Pakistan in some form were
not conceded." The Viceroy was also influenced by negative Muslim
reaction to the constitutional report of the assembly, which envisioned broad
powers for the post-independence central government.
On 2 June, the final plan was
given by the Viceroy to Indian leaders: on 15 August, the British would turn
over power to two dominions. The provinces would vote on whether to continue in
the existing constituent assembly, or to have a new one, that is, to join
Pakistan. Bengal and Punjab would also vote, both on the question of which
assembly to join, and on partition. A boundary commission would determine the
final lines in the partitioned provinces. Plebiscites would take place in the
North-West Frontier Province (which did not have a League government despite an
overwhelmingly Muslim population), and in the majority-Muslim Sylhet
district of Assam, adjacent to eastern Bengal. On 3 June,
Mountbatten, Nehru, Jinnah and Sikh leader Baldev Singh made
the formal announcement by radio. Jinnah concluded his address with "Pakistan
zindabad” (Long live Pakistan), which was not in the script. In the weeks
which followed Punjab and Bengal cast the votes which resulted in partition.
Sylhet and the N.W.F.P. voted to cast their lots with Pakistan, a decision
joined by the assemblies in Sind and Baluchistan.
On 4 July 1947, Liaquat asked
Mountbatten on Jinnah's behalf to recommend to the British king, George VI,
that Jinnah be appointed Pakistan's first governor-general. This request
angered Mountbatten, who had hoped to have that position in both dominions—he would
be India's first post-independence governor-general—but Jinnah felt that
Mountbatten would be likely to favour the new Hindu-majority state because of
his closeness to Nehru. In addition, the governor-general would initially be a
powerful figure, and Jinnah did not trust anyone else to take that office.
Although the Boundary Commission, led by British lawyer Sir Cyril
Radcliffe, had not yet reported, there were already massive movements of
populations between the nations-to-be, as well as sectarian violence. Jinnah
arranged to sell his house in Bombay and procured a new one in Karachi. On 7
August, Jinnah, with his sister and close staff, flew from Delhi to Karachi in
Mountbatten's plane, and as the plane taxied, he was heard to murmur,
"That's the end of that.". On 11 August, he presided over the
new constituent assembly for Pakistan at Karachi, and addressed them,
"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." On 14 August, Pakistan became independent;
Jinnah led the celebrations in Karachi. One observer wrote, "here indeed
is Pakistan's King Emperor, Archbishop of Canterbury, Speaker and Prime
Minister concentrated into one formidable Quaid-e-Azam."
Governor-General
The Radcliffe Commission,
dividing Bengal and Punjab, completed its work and reported to Mountbatten on
12 August; the last Viceroy held the maps until the 17th, not wanting to spoil
the independence celebrations in both nations. There had already been
ethnically charged violence and movement of populations; publication of
the Radcliffe Line dividing the new nations sparked mass migration,
murder, and ethnic cleansing. Many on the "wrong side" of the lines
fled or were murdered, or murdered others, hoping to make facts on the ground
which would reverse the commission's verdict. Radcliffe wrote in his report
that he knew that neither side would be happy with his award; he declined his
fee for the work. Christopher Beaumont, Radcliffe's private secretary,
later wrote that Mountbatten "must take the blame—though not the sole
blame—for the massacres in the Punjab in which between 500,000 to a million
men, women and children perished". As many as 14,500,000 people
relocated between India and Pakistan during and after partition. Jinnah did
what he could for the eight million people who migrated to Pakistan; although
by now over 70 and frail from lung ailments, he travelled across West
Pakistan and personally supervised the provision of aid. According
to Ahmed, "What Pakistan needed desperately in those early months was a
symbol of the state, one that would unify people and give them the courage and
resolve to succeed."
Quaid-e-Azam! Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Speech At Karachi in 1946.
Along with Liaquat and Abdur
Rab Nishtar, Jinnah represented Pakistan's interests in the Division Council to
appropriately divide public assets between India and Pakistan. Pakistan was
supposed to receive one-sixth of the pre-independence government's assets,
carefully divided by agreement, even specifying how many sheets of paper each
side would receive. The new Indian state, however, was slow to deliver, hoping
for the collapse of the nascent Pakistani government, and reunion. Few members
of the Indian Civil Service and theIndian Police Service had
chosen Pakistan, resulting in staff shortages. Crop growers found their markets
on the other side of an international border. There were shortages of
machinery, not all of which was made in Pakistan. In addition to the massive
refugee problem, the new government sought to save abandoned crops, establish
security in a chaotic situation, and provide basic services. According to
economist Yasmeen Niaz Mohiuddin in her study of Pakistan, "although
Pakistan was born in bloodshed and turmoil, it survived in the initial and
difficult months after partition only because of the tremendous sacrifices made
by its people and the selfless efforts of its great leader."
The Indian Princely States,
of which there were several hundred, were advised by the departing British to
choose whether to join Pakistan or India. Most did so prior to independence,
but the holdouts contributed to what have become lasting divisions between the
two nations. Indian leaders were angered at Jinnah's courting the princes
of Jodhpur, Bhopal and Indore to accede to Pakistan—these
princely states did not border Pakistan, and each had a Hindu-majority
population. The coastal princely state of Junagadh, which had a
majority-Hindu population, did accede to Pakistan in September 1947, with its
ruler's dewan, Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, personally delivering the accession
papers to Jinnah. The Indian army occupied the principality in November,
forcing its former leaders, including Bhutto, to flee to Pakistan, beginning
the politically powerful Bhutto family.
Some historians allege that
Jinnah's courting the rulers of Hindu-majority states and his gambit with
Junagadh are evidence of ill-intent towards India, as Jinnah had promoted
separation by religion, yet tried to gain the accession of Hindu-majority
states. In his bookPatel: A Life, Rajmohan Gandhi asserts that
Jinnah hoped for a plebiscite in Junagadh, knowing Pakistan would lose, in the
hope the principle would be established for Kashmir. Despite the United
Nations Security Council Resolution 47 issued at India's request for a
plebiscite in Kashmir after the withdrawal of Pakistani forces, this has never
occurred.
In January 1948, the Indian
government finally agreed to pay Pakistan its share of British India's assets.
They were impelled by Gandhi, who threatened a fast until death. Only days
later, Gandhi was assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu
nationalist, who believed that Gandhi was pro-Muslim. Jinnah made a brief
statement of condolence, calling Gandhi "one of the greatest men produced
by the Hindu community".
In March, Jinnah, despite his
declining health, made his only post-independence visit to East Pakistan.
In a speech before a crowd estimated at 300,000, Jinnah stated (in English) that Urdu alone
should be the national language, believing a single language was needed for a
nation to remain united. The Bengali-speaking people of East Pakistan
strongly opposed this policy, and in 1971 the official language issue was a
factor in the region's secession to form Bangladesh.
Illness and death
Jinnah spent many of the last days of his life at
Quaid-e-Azam Residency, Ziarat, Pakistan.
From the 1930s, Jinnah suffered
from tuberculosis; only his sister and a few others close to him were
aware of his condition. Jinnah believed public knowledge of his lung ailments
would hurt him politically. In a 1938 letter, he wrote to a supporter that
"you must have read in the papers how during my tours ... I suffered,
which was not because there was anything wrong with me, but the irregularities
[of the schedule] and over-strain told upon my health".Many years later,
Mountbatten stated that if he had known Jinnah was so ill, he would have
stalled, hoping Jinnah's death would avert partition. Fatima Jinnah later
wrote, "even in his hour of triumph, the Quaid-e-Azam was
gravely ill ... He worked in a frenzy to consolidate Pakistan. And, of
course, he totally neglected his health ..." Jinnah worked with
a tin ofCraven "A" cigarettes at his desk, of which he had
smoked 50 or more a day for the previous 30 years, as well as a box of Cuban
cigars. He took longer and longer rest breaks in the private wing of Government
House in Karachi, where only he, Fatima and the servants were allowed.
In June 1948, he and Fatima flew
to Quetta, in the mountains of Baluchistan, where the weather was cooler
than in Karachi. He could not completely rest there, addressing the officers at
the Command and Staff College saying, "you, along with the other
Forces of Pakistan, are the custodians of the life, property and honour of the
people of Pakistan." He returned to Karachi for the 1 July opening
ceremony for the State Bank of Pakistan, at which he spoke; a reception by
the Canadian trade commissioner that evening in honour of Dominion Day was
the last public event he ever attended.
On 6 July 1948, Jinnah returned
to Quetta, but at the advice of doctors, soon journeyed to an even higher
retreat at Ziarat. Jinnah had always been reluctant to undergo
medical treatment, but realising his condition, the Pakistani government sent
the best doctors it could find to treat him. Tests confirmed tuberculosis, and
showed evidence of lung cancer. Jinnah was informed, and asked for full
information on his disease and for care in how his sister was told. He was
treated with the new "miracle drug" of streptomycin, but it did
not help. Jinnah's condition continued to deteriorate despite the Eid
prayers of his people. He was moved to the lower altitude of Quetta on 13
August, the eve of Independence Day, for which a statement ghost-written
for him was released. Despite an increase in appetite (he then weighed just
over 36 kilograms [79 lb]), it was clear to his doctors that if he was to
return to Karachi in life, he would have to do so very soon. Jinnah, however,
was reluctant to go, not wishing his aides to see him as an invalid on a stretcher.
By 9 September, Jinnah had also
developed pneumonia. Doctors urged him to return to Karachi, where he could
receive better care, and with his agreement, he was flown there on 11
September. Dr. Ilahi Bux, his personal physician, believed that Jinnah's change
of mind was caused by foreknowledge of death. The plane landed at Karachi, to
be met by Jinnah's limousine, and an ambulance into which Jinnah's stretcher
was placed. The ambulance broke down on the road into town, and the
Governor-General and those with him waited for another to arrive; he could not
be placed in the car as he could not sit up. They waited by the roadside in
oppressive heat as trucks and buses passed by, unsuitable for transporting the
dying man and with their occupants not knowing of Jinnah's presence. After an
hour, the replacement ambulance came, and transported Jinnah to Government
House, arriving there over two hours after the landing. Jinnah died at
10:20 pm at his home in Karachi on 11 September 1948, just over a year
after Pakistan's creation.
Indian Prime Minister Nehru
stated upon Jinnah's death, "How shall we judge him? I have been very
angry with him often during the past years. But now there is no bitterness in
my thought of him, only a great sadness for all that has been ... he
succeeded in his quest and gained his objective, but at what a cost and with
what a difference from what he had imagined."[ Jinnah was buried on
12 September 1948 amid official mourning in both India and Pakistan; a million
people gathered for his funeral. Indian Governor-General Rajagopalachari
cancelled an official reception that day, in honour of the late leader. Today,
Jinnah rests in a large marble mausoleum,Mazar-e-Quaid, in Karachi.
Aftermath
Dina Wadia, Jinnah's daughter,
remained in India after independence before ultimately settling in New York
City. In the 1965 presidential election, Fatima Jinnah, by then known
as Madar-e-Millat ("Mother of the Nation"), became the
presidential candidate of a coalition of political parties that opposed the
rule of President Ayub Khan, but was not successful.
The Jinnah House in Malabar
Hill, Bombay, is in the possession of the Government of India, but the
issue of its ownership has been disputed by the Government of Pakistan.[ Jinnah
had personally requested Prime Minister Nehru to preserve the house, hoping one
day he could return to Mumbai. There are proposals for the house be offered to
the government of Pakistan to establish a consulate in the city as a goodwill
gesture, but Dina Wadia has also asked for the property.
After Jinnah died, his sister
Fatima asked the court to execute Jinnah's will under Shia Islamic law. This
subsequently became the part of argument in Pakistan about Jinnah's religious
affiliation. Vali Nasr says Jinnah "was an Ismaili by birth and
a Twelver Shia by confession, though not a religiously observant
man." In a 1970 legal challenge, Hussain Ali Ganji Walji claimed Jinnah
had converted to Sunni Islam, but the High Court rejected this claim
in 1976, effectively accepting the Jinnah family as Shia. Publicly, Jinnah
had a non-sectarian stance and "was at pains to gather the Muslims of
India under the banner of a general Muslim faith and not under a divisive
sectarian identity." In 1970, a Pakistani court decision stated that
Jinnah's "secular Muslim faith made him neither Shia nor Sunni", and
in 1984 the court maintained that "the Quaid was definitely not
a Shia". Liaquat H. Merchant elaborates that "he was also not a
Sunni, he was simply a Muslim".
Legacy and historical view
London Blue Plaque dedicated to Jinnah
Jinnah is depicted on all Pakistani rupee currency,
and is the namesake of many Pakistani public institutions. The former
Quaid-i-Azam International Airport in Karachi, now called the Jinnah International
Airport, is Pakistan's busiest. One of the largest streets in the Turkish
capital Ankara, Cinnah Caddesi, is named after him, as is theMohammad Ali
Jenah Expressway in Tehran, Iran. The royalist government of
Iran also released a stamp commemorating the centennial of Jinnah's birth in
1976. In Chicago, a portion of Devon Avenue was named "Mohammed
Ali Jinnah Way". The Mazar-e-Quaid,
Jinnah's mausoleum, is among Karachi's landmarks. The "Jinnah Tower" in Guntur,Andhra Pradesh, India, was built to commemorate Jinnah.
Jinnah's mausoleum, is among Karachi's landmarks. The "Jinnah Tower" in Guntur,Andhra Pradesh, India, was built to commemorate Jinnah.
There is a considerable amount of
scholarship on Jinnah which stems from Pakistan; according to Akbar S.
Ahmed, it is not widely read outside the country and usually avoids even the
slightest criticism of Jinnah. According to Ahmed, nearly every book
about Jinnah outside Pakistan mentions that he drank alcohol, but this is
omitted from books inside Pakistan. Ahmed suggests that depicting
the Quaid drinking alcohol would weaken Jinnah's Islamic identity,
and by extension, Pakistan's. Some sources allege he gave Tomb of Muhammad Ali Jinnah in Karachi
up alcohol near the end of his life.
up alcohol near the end of his life.
According to historian Ayesha
Jalal, while there is a tendenc towards hagiography in the Pakistani
view of Jinnah, in India he is viewed negatively. Ahmed deems Jinnah
"the most maligned person in recent Indian history ... In India; many
see him as the demon who divided the land." Even many Indian Muslims see
Jinnah negatively, blaming him for their woes as a minority in that state. Some
historians such as Jalal and H. M. Seervai assert that Jinnah never
wanted partition of India—it was the outcome of the Congress leaders being
unwilling to share power with the Muslim League. They contend that Jinnah only
used the Pakistan demand in an attempt to mobilise support to obtain significant
political rights for Muslims. Jinnah has gained the admiration of Indian
nationalist politicians such as Lal Krishna Advani, whose comments
praising Jinnah caused uproar in his Bharatiya Janata Party.
The view of Jinnah in the West
has been shaped to some extent by his portrayal in Sir Richard
Attenborough's 1982 film, Gandhi. The film was dedicated to Nehru and
Mountbatten, and was given considerable support by Nehru's daughter, the Indian
prime minister, Indira Gandhi. It portrays Jinnah (played by Alyque
Padamsee) as a scowling, villainous figure, who seems to act out of jealousy of
the title character. Padamsee later stated that his portrayal was not
historically accurate.
In a journal article on Pakistan's
first governor-general, historian R. J. Moore wrote that Jinnah is universally
recognised as central to the creation of Pakistan. Wolpert summarises the
profound effect that Jinnah had on the world:
Few individuals significantly
alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly
anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Mohammad Ali Jinnah did
all three.
MAY HIS SOUL REST IN PEACE
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