Muhammad Ali Jinnah (
Urdu:
محمد علی جناح 
Audio (help·info), born
Mahomedali Jinnahbhai; 25 December 1876 – 11 September 1948) was a lawyer, politician and statesman, and the founder of
Pakistan. Jinnah is revered in Pakistan as
Quaid-i-Azam (
Urdu:
قائد اعظم "Great Leader") and
Baba-i-Qaum (
بابائے قوم "
Father of the Nation") and his birthday is a
national holiday there. 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-General from independence until his death on 11 September 1948.
Born in
Karachi and educated as a barrister at
Lincoln's Inn in London, Jinnah rose to prominence in the
Indian National Congress
(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 Congress and the
Muslim League. Jinnah also 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.
By 1940, Jinnah had come to believe that Indian Muslims should have their own state, and his party
Muslim League gained strength as Congress refused to cooperate with the British.
Muslim League. In 1940, the League passed the
Lahore Resolution,
demanding a separate nation for Muslims. In the elections held shortly
after the war, the League won most of the seats reserved for Muslims.
Ultimately, Congress and the Muslim League could not reach a
power-sharing formula for a united India, leading both organizations,
and the British, to agree to separate independence for a predominately
Hindu India, and a Muslim 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 refugees who had emigrated from India.
He personally supervised the establishment of refugee camps for those
who had fled the new nation of
India after
the separation. 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, most likely in 1876,
[a] Mahomedali Jinnahbhai (
Gujarati:
મુહમ્મદ અલી જિન્ના), to Jinnahbhai Poonja and his wife Mithibai, in the Gujarati-speaking
Jinnah family in
Wazir Mansion,
Karachi,
[1] part of
Sindh, a region today part of Pakistan, but then within the
Bombay 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, and who had moved to
Karachi
about 1875; he had married Mithibai a young woman of Paneli, before his
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;
[6][7] he had three brothers and three sisters, including his sister
Fatima Jinnah; the children came to speak
Gujarati,
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 obtained his
matriculation from
Bombay University.
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. A biographer, Hector Bolitho, writing in
1954, had 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
Muhammad Ali Jinnah as a young lawyer
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 Panela,
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 an
adverse court judgment against his father, which placed the family's
property at risk of attachment. In 1893, the Jinnahbhai family moved to
Bombay.
Soon after his arrival in London, Jinnah gave up the apprenticeship
to study law, enraging his father, who had 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 other
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 reading 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 education included exposure to the idea of
the democratic nation and progressive politics.
[18] He became an admirer of the
Parsi Indian political leaders
Dadabhai Naoroji and
Sir Pherozeshah Mehta. Naoroji had become the first
Member of Parliament of Indian extraction shortly before Jinnah's arrival, triumphing with a voting majority of three 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; he was then 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, Bombay's presidency magistrate, left the post
temporarily; Jinnah succeeded in getting the interim position. After his
six month appointment period, Jinnah was offered the position on a
1,500 rupee per month salary. Jinnah politely declined the offer, who
stated that he planned to earn 1,500 rupees a day – a huge sum at that
time – which he eventually did. Later, as the
Governor-General of Pakistan, he refused to accept a high salary from the new state and fixed his salary as 1
rupee a month.
[27]
As a lawyer, he 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 an extremely successful record,
noted for his advocacy and legal logic.
[28] In 1908, his factional foe in the
Indian National Congress (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 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 once Jinnah, on being admonished by a judge with "Mr. Jinnah,
remember that you are not addressing a third-class magistrate" 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.
[28]
Rising leader
This photo shows M.A Jinnah, as a young lawyer.
In 1857, many Indians rose
in revolt
British rule erupted. In the aftermath of the mutiny, some
Anglo-Indians, as well as Indians educated in Britain, called for
greater self-government, resulting in the founding of the
Indian National Congress
(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 Congress contained a minority of Muslims, mostly from the elite.
Jinnah began political life by attending Congress's twentieth annual meeting, in Bombay in December 1904.
Jinnah was a member of the moderate group in the Congress, favoring
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 achieving Indian independence. In 1906, a delegation of Muslim leaders headed by
Aga Khan called 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". Jinnah's response was to write a letter to the editor of the newspaper
Gujarati, asking what right the members of the delegation had to speak for Indian Muslims, as they were unelected and self-appointed. When many of the same leaders met in
Dacca in December of that year to form the
All-India Muslim League
("Muslim League", or "League") to advocate for communal interests,
Jinnah was again opposed; 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, seen as a blow to Muslim interests.
Although Jinnah initially opposed separate electorates for Muslims,
he benefited from one in gaining his first elective office, as Bombay's
Muslim representative on the
Imperial Legislative Council.
At the time aged 35, 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 Minto's reforms,
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 practiced
probate law (with many clients from India's nobility), and in 1911 introduced the
Wakf
Validation 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 instrumental in the passing of the Child Marriages Restraint Act and was appointed to the
Sandhurst committee, which helped to establish the
Indian Military Academy in
Dehra Dun.
[6][44]
In December 1912, he addressed the annual meeting of the Muslim
League, although he was not yet a member. This followed the following
year, although he remained a Congress member and stressed in joining
that joining it took second priority to the "greater national cause" of a
free India. In April 1913, he again went to Britain, with Ghokle, to
meet with officials on behalf of 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 Congress delegation to London in 1914, but due to the start of
World War I
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 gained considerable attention for advocating
satyagraha,
non-violent non-cooperation, while in South Africa. Jinnah attended a
reception for Gandhi, and returned home to India in January 1915.
Break from Congress
Jinnah's moderate faction in Congress was undermined by the Mehta's
death 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 Congress and League together. In 1916, with Jinnah now
president of the Muslim League, the two organizations 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 Congress and League.
During
World War I,
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.
[18] She was the fashionable young daughter of his friend Sir Dinshaw Petit, of an elite
Parsi family of Bombay.
[18]
There was great opposition to the marriage from Rattanbai's family, and
the Parsi community, as well as orthodox Muslim 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.
[18][49] The Jinnahs separated prior to Ruttie's death in 1929. Later on Jinnah's sister
Fatima looked after him and his child.
Relations between Indians and British were strained in 1919 when the
council extended emergency wartime restrictions on civil liberties;
Jinnah resigned over the action. 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 Congress, advocated
satyagraha against the British. Gandhi's proposal was also attractive to many Muslims of the
Khilafat faction. They sought retention of the
Uthman caliphate
(which supplied spiritual leadership to many Muslims) in the wake of
World War I, a cause which Gandhi supported. Gandhi had achieved
considerable popularity among Muslims because of his work during the war
on behalf of killed or imprisoned Muslims. Unlike most Congress leaders, 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 criticized Gandhi's Khilafat advocacy, which he saw as an
endorsement of religious zealotry.
Jinnah regarded Gandhi's campaign as political anarchy, and that
self-government should be secured through constitutional means. He
opposed Gandhi, but the tide of Indian opinion was against Jinnah. At
the 1920 Congress session 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 League meeting, held in
the same city, which passed a similar resolution, and resigned from the
Congress and from all positions except in the Muslim League.
Fourteen Points
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 organizing a new political party as a rival to Congress. In
September 1923, Jinnah was elected as Muslim member for
Bombay in the new
Central Legislative Assembly. He showed considerable skill as a parliamentarian, organizing 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. Jinnah 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 British Government was
influenced by Cabinet minister
Winston Churchill,
who strongly opposed self-government for India; the Government hoped
that by having the commission appointed early, the policies for India
which they favoured would continue.
The resulting commission, led by
Liberal MP John Simon, though with a majority of Conservatives, arrived in India in March 1928,
to be 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 withdrew from the League, choosing to
welcome the Simon Commission and repudiating Jinnah; however, most
members of the League's executive council attended the League meeting in
December 1927 and January 1928 which confirmed Jinnah 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."
Jinnah delivering a political speech.
Birkenhead in 1928 challenged Indians to come up with their own
proposal for constitutional change for India; in response, Congress
convened a committee under the leadership of
Motilal Nehru.
[1] The League wanted separate electorates based on religious community, while 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 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 was unable to 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 the next three years, none of which resulted in a
settlement among the parties. 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, practicing as a barrister before the
Privy Council. 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 sought a parliamentary seat as well. Early biographer
Hector Bolitho denied that Jinnah sought to enter the British Parliament, while Jahwent 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. Muhammed Jinnah's
daughter, Dina, was educated in England and India. Jinnah later became
estranged from his daughter,
Dina Jinnah, after she decided to marry Christian businessman,
Neville Wadia,
and when he urged her 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 organization which had fallen into
inactivity. He remained president of the League,
[b]
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 urge him to return and reinvigorate the League 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 reconfirmed 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 for the
Central Legislative Assembly in October 1934.
[75] The British Parliament's
Government of India Act 1935 gave considerable power to India's provinces, with a weak central parliament in
New Delhi,
with no power 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 centre. 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 formed only part of the government in Bengal. Congress and its allies formed the government even in the
North-West Frontier Province, 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
Muslim
MLAs
sitting on the Opposition benches, non-Congress Muslims were suddenly
faced with this stark reality of near total political powerlessness. 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 (Hindu)
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 was able to secure the right to speak for the
Muslim-led Bengal and
Punjabi provincial governments at 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 Congress. He restructured
the League along the lines of 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.
World War II; Lahore Resolution
Jinnah with Cabinet Mission
Until the late 1930s, most Indian Muslims expected, upon
independence, to be part of a unitary state, as did the Hindus and
others who advocated self-government. Although Hindu leaders sought a
strong central government, Muslim politicians were unwilling to accept
this without powerful protections for their community.
In the wake of the 1937 vote, Jinnah demanded that the question power
sharing be settled on an all-India basis, and that his League, and
through it himself, be accepted as the sole spokesman for the Muslim
community.
According to Balraj Puri in his journal article about Jinnah, after the
1937 elections, Jinnah turned to the idea of partition in "sheer
desperation".
According to historian Akbar Ahmed, Jinnah abandoned hope of
reconciliation with Congress as he "rediscover[ed] 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".
Despite the expectation of a unitary state, 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 for Muslims called in the
Indus Valley called "Pakistan", with other names given to proposed Muslim-majority states elsewhere of 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. Jinnah also increasingly adopted Muslim dress.
On 3 September 1939, British Prime Minister
Neville Chamberlain announced the commencement of war with
Nazi Germany; the following day, the Viceroy,
Lord Linlithgow,
without consulting with Indian politicians, announced that India had
entered the war with Britain. There were widespread protests in India.
After consulting with Jinnah and with Gandhi, Linlithgow announced that
negotiations on self-government were suspended for the duration of the
war.
Congress on 14 September demanded immediate independence with a
constituent assembly to decide a constitution; when this was refused,
its eight provincial governments resigned on 10 November and their
governors thereafter ruled by decree for the remainder of the war.
Jinnah, on the other hand, was more willing to accommodate the British,
and they in turn increasingly recognized him and the League as the
representatives of India's Muslims.
Jinnah later stated, "after the war began, ... I was treated on the
same basis as Mr. Gandhi. I was wonderstruck why I was promoted and
given a place side by side with Mr. Gandhi." Although the League did not actively support the British war effort, neither did they try to obstruct it.
With the British and Muslims to some extent co-operating, 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
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 resulting
Lahore Resolution (sometimes called the "Pakistan Resolution", although it does not contain that name) 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 to be
granted the Muslim-majority areas in the east, and unspecified
protections for 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. Congress leaders
were more vocal;
Jawaharlal Nehru (son of Motilal) referred to Lahore as "Jinnah's fantastic proposals" while
Chakravarti Rajagopalachari deemed Jinnah's views on partition "a sign of a diseased mentality". Linlithgow met with Jinnah in June 1940, soon after
Winston Churchill
became the new British prime minister, and in August offered both
Congress and the League a deal whereby in exchange for full support for
the war, the British would allow Indian representation on the Viceroy's
major war councils and the rulers promised a representative body after
the war to determine India's future. No future settlement would be
imposed over the objections of a large part of the population. This was
satisfactory to neither Congress nor 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, 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 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 as 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. 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.
Congress followed the failure of the Cripps mission by demanding, in August 1942, that the British immediately "
Quit India", with a mass campaign of
satyagraha
until they did. The British quickly arrested most major Congress
leaders, to be imprisoned for the remainder of the war. Gandhi, however,
was placed on house arrest in one of the Aga Khan's palaces prior to
his release for health reasons in 1944. With the Congress leaders absent
from the political scene, Jinnah warned against the threat of Hindu
domination and maintained his Pakistan demand, without going into great
detail about what that would entail. Jinnah also worked to increase the
League's political control at the provincial level—the Punjabi and
Bengali Muslim parties foresaw that the advent of Pakistan would mean
the division of their provinces.
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 Congress leader
Bhulabhai Desai
met with Jinnah's approval and agreed that after the war, Congress and
League should form an interim government and that the members of the
Executive Council of the Viceroy should be nominated by Congress and
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
Muhammad Ali Jinnah's passport issued by the
British Raj.
Linlithgow had been succeeded by
Field Marshal the Viscount Wavell 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 election imminent, 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 called for 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
announced that formation of a constitution-making body would follow the
votes.
The Muslim League declared that they would fight the elections on a single issue: Pakistan. Campaigning in
Ahmedabad, Jinnah echoed this, "Pakistan is a matter of life or death for us." In the December 1945 elections for the
Constituent Assembly of India,
the League won every seat reserved for Muslims. In the provincial
elections in January 1946, the League took 75% of the Muslim vote, an
increase from 4.4% in 1937.
According to his biographer Bolitho, "This was Jinnah's glorious hour:
his arduous political campaigns, his robust beliefs and claims, were at
last justified."
Wolpert wrote that the League election showing "appeared to prove the
universal appeal of Pakistan among Muslims of the subcontinent". Congress dominated the central assembly nevertheless, though it lost four seats from its previous strength.
In February 1946, the British Cabinet resolved to send
a mission to India
to negotiate with leaders there. The group, which included Cabinet
ministers Cripps and Pethick-Lawrence, was the highest-level delegation
to try to break the deadlock, and arrived in
New Delhi in late March. Little negotiation had been done since the previous October because of the elections.
The British in May released a plan for a united Indian state comprising
considerably 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 Congress and
the League. Jinnah and his Working Committee accepted this plan in June,
but the plan fell apart over the question of how many members of the
interim government, Congress and the League would have, and over
Congress's desire to include a nationalist Muslim in its representation.
Before leaving India, the British ministers stated that they intended
to inaugurate an interim government even if one of the major groupings
was unwilling to participate.
Congress soon joined the interim ministry, but the League was slower,
not agreeing until October 1946, and coming in without the demands
which Jinnah had tried to gain, such as parity with Congress or a veto
on matters concerning Muslims. The new government met amid a backdrop of
severe communal rioting, especially
in Calcutta.
There was also bitterness in the government; Congress wanted the
Viceroy to immediately summon the constituent assembly and begin the
work of writing a constitution, and that the League ministers should
either join in the request or resign from the government. Wavell
attempted to save the situation by flying Congress and League leaders,
including 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.
Congress endorsed the statement over angry dissent from some elements,
but the League was not willing to do so, and remained outside the
constituent assembly.
Although Jinnah had been willing to consider continued links to
Hindustan (as the Hindu-majority state which would be formed on
partition was sometimes referred to) under the Cabinet Mission plan, by
December, he insisted on a sovereign Pakistan with dominion status. On the way back from London, Jinnah and Liaquat stopped in Cairo for several days of pan-Islamic meetings.
Following the failure of the London trip, Jinnah was in no hurry to
reach an agreement, figuring that time would allow him to gain the
undivided provinces of Bengal and Punjab for Pakistan, but these
wealthy, populous provinces had sizable non-Muslim minorities,
complicating a settlement. The
Attlee ministry
desired a rapid British departure from India, but had little confidence
in Wavell to achieve that end. Beginning in December 1946, British
officials began looking or a viceregal successor to Wavell, and soon
fixed on
Admiral Lord Mountbatten of Burma, a war leader popular among Conservatives as the great-grandson of
Queen Victoria and among Labour for his political views.
Mountbatten and partition
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, 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."
Congress leaders 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, Congress insisted that if Pakistan were to become independent, Bengal and Punjab would have to be divided.
In briefings, Mountbatten had been warned 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 and
Edwina 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 his 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; the following day, 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.
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 form 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. 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
favor 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 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, 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 told 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 independence
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,
disliking to spoil the independence celebrations in both nations. There
had already been ethnically-charged violence and movement of
populations; publication of the
Radcliffe Line
of division 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".
[143] As many as 14,500,000 people relocated between India and Pakistan during and after partition.
[143]
Jinnah did what he could for the eight million people who migrated to
Pakistan; although by now 72 and frail from his lung ailments, he
traveled 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."
Along with Liaquat and
Abdur Rab Nishtar, Jinnah represented the League in the Division Council to appropriately divide public assets between India and Pakistan.
[146]
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 of the members of the
Indian Civil Service and the
Indian Police Service
had chosen Pakistan, resulting in staff shortages. Much of the market
for Pakistan's commodities would now be off limits to it, and there were
shortages of machinery, not all of which could be made there. In
addition to the massive refugee problem, the new government sought to
save abandoned crops, to establish security in a chaotic situation, and
to 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.
[149] The coastal princely state of
Junagadh,
which did not border Pakistan and which had a majority-Hindu
population, did accede to Pakistan in September 1947, with its ruler's
nawab, Sir
Shah Nawaz Bhutto,
personally delivering the accession papers to Jinnah. India occupied
the principality in November, and the Bhuttos settled in Pakistan,
beginning the powerful political
Bhutto family.
The most conentious of the disputes was, and continues to be, that over the
princely state of Kashmir. It had a Muslim-majority population and a Sikh
maharaja, Sir
Hari Singh,
who stalled his decision on which nation to join. With the population
in revolt in October 1947, aided by Pakistani irregulars, the maharaja
acceded to India; Indian troops were airlifted in. Jinnah objected to this action, and ordered that Pakistani troops move into Kashmir.
The army was still commanded by British officers, and the commanding officer, General Sir
Douglas Gracey,
refused the order, stating that he would not move into what he
considered the territory of another nation without approval from higher
authority, which was not forthcoming. Jinnah withdrew the order. This
did not stop
the violence there, which has broken into war between India and Pakistan from time to time since.
Some historians allege that Jinnah's courting the rulers of
Hindu-majority states and his gambit with Junagadh is evidence of
ill-intent towards India, as Jinnah had promoted separation by religion,
yet tried to gain the accession of Hindu-majority states.
[152] In his book
Patel: 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.
[153] Despite a
United Nations resolution for a plebiscite in Kashmir, this has never occurred.
Gandhi, by threatening a fast until death, caused the Indian
government in January 1948 to pay its Pakistani counterpart its share of
British India's assets according to the partition agreement. This
occurred only days before
Gandhi's assassination
by a Hindu 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. This policy would be strongly
opposed by the
Bengali-speaking people of East Pakistan, and in 1971 be a factor in their breaking away from Pakistan to form
Bangladesh.
Illness and death
The funeral of Jinnah in 1948.
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 ..." He worked with a tin of
Craven "A"
cigarettes, of which he has smoked 50 or more a day for the past 30
years, and a box of Cuban cigars at his desk. He took longer and longer
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 was not able to completely rest there, addressing the
officers at the
Command and Staff College
there, "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 attitude 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, 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. It being deemed
better for his health to return to Karachi, 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 promptly 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 for an hour 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. At last, 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; Indian Governor-General Rajagopalachari cancelled an
official reception that day in honour of Jinnah. A million people
gathered for his funeral. 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. Jinnah's grandson,
Nusli Wadia, is a prominent industrialist in Mumbai. In the 1964–65 elections, Jinnah's sister
Fatima Jinnah, 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 lost due to rigging of elections in favour of Ayub Khan.
[170]
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.
[171] Jinnah had personally requested Indian Prime Minister
Jawaharlal 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 his
daughter
Dina Wadia has also laid claim to the property, claiming that Hindu law is applicable to Jinnah as he was a
Khoja Shia.
[171][172]
After Jinnah died,
Fatima Jinnah had asked the court to execute Jinnah's will under
Shia law. Jinnah's family belonged to the
Ismaili Khoja branch of
Shi'a Islam, but Jinnah left that branch in 1901.
[173] This subsequently became 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."
[174] 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.
[175]
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."
[173] In 1970, a Pakistani court decision stated that Jinnah's "secular Muslim faith made him neither Shia nor Sunni",
[173] and in 1984 the court maintained that "the Quaid was definitely not a Shia".
[173] Liaquat H. Merchant elaborates that "he was also not a Sunni, he was simply a Muslim".
[173]
Legacy
An Iranian stamp commemorating the centenary of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, printed in 1976.
Jinnah's legacy is Pakistan. According to Mohiuddin, "He was and
continues to be as highly honored in Pakistan as [first US president]
George Washington
is in the United States ... Pakistan owes its very existence to his
drive, tenacity, and judgment ... Jinnah's importance in the creation of
Pakistan was monumental and immeasurable." Wolpert, giving a speech in honour of Jinnah in 1998, deemed him Pakistan's greatest leader.
[177]
Jinnah is depicted on all
Pakistani rupee notes of denominations five and higher, 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. In the Iranian capital,
Tehran, city's
Mohammad Ali Jenah Expressway is named after him. The government of Iran also released a stamp commemorating the centennial of Jinnah's birthday. In
Chicago, a portion of
Devon Avenue was named as "Mohammed Ali Jinnah Way". The
Mazar-e-Quaid, Jinnah's
mausoleum, is among Karachi's most imposing buildings.
[178] There is a "Jinnah Tower" in
Guntur,
Andhra Pradesh, India, which was built to commemorate Jinnah.
[179]
According to Singh, "With Jinnah's death Pakistan lost its moorings.
In India there will not easily arrive another Gandhi, nor in Pakistan
another Jinnah."
Malik writes, "As long as Jinnah was alive, he could persuade and even
pressure regional leaders toward greater mutual accommodation, but after
his death, the lack of consensus on the distribution of political power
and economic resources often turned controversial."
According to Mohiuddin, "Jinnah's death deprived Pakistan of a leader
who could have enhanced stability and democratic governance ... The
rocky road to democracy in Pakistan and the relatively smooth one in
India can in some measure be ascribed to Pakistan's tragedy of losing an
incorruptible and highly revered leader so soon after independence."
Muhammad Ali Jinnah's will, excerpt
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 says that portraying the Quaid drinking alcohol would
weaken Jinnah's Islamic identity, and by extension, Pakistan's. Several
sources indicate he gave up alcohol near the end of his life.
According to Jalal, while there is a tendency 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 like
H M Seervai and
Ayesha Jalal
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. It is asserted that Jinnah only used the Pakistan demand as a
method to mobilize support to obtain significant political rights for
Muslims.
[188] Jinnah has gained the admiration of major Indian nationalist politicians like
Lal Krishna Advani—whose comments praising Jinnah caused an uproar in his own
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
[189]
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 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.
Moore says that despite any of a number of biases, Jinnah is universally recognized as central to the creation of Pakistan.
[191] Wolpert summarizes the profound affect 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.
