Muhammad Ali Jinnah
Muhammad Ali Jinnah
محمد علی جناح મુહમ્મદ અલી જિન્નાહ |
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In
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14 August 1947 – 11 September 1948 |
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Monarch
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Prime Minister
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Succeeded by
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In
office
11 August 1947 – 11 September 1948 |
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Deputy
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Preceded by
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Position Established
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Succeeded by
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Deputy
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Succeeded by
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Personal
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Born
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Mahomedali Jinnahbhai
25 December 1876
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Died
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11 September 1948 (aged 71)
Karachi, Pakistan |
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Profession
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Lawyer
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Religion
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Muhammad Ali Jinnah[a]
(
Audio (help·info), born Mahomedali Jinnahbhai; 25 December 1876 –
11 September 1948) was a lawyer, politician, and the founder of Pakistan. 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. He is revered in
Pakistan as Quaid-i-Azam[b]
(Great Leader) and Baba-i-Qaum[c]
(Father of the Nation). His birthday is observed as a national holiday.
Audio (help·info), born Mahomedali Jinnahbhai; 25 December 1876 –
11 September 1948) was a lawyer, politician, and the founder of Pakistan. 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. He is revered in
Pakistan as Quaid-i-Azam[b]
(Great Leader) and Baba-i-Qaum[c]
(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,[d]
most likely in 1876,[e]
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 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; 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 native Gujarati 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 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 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 first Member 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 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 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". Dissatisfied with this, Jinnah wrote 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 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 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 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 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 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 proposed satyagraha
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,[f]
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 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 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
Main article: Pakistan Movement
Background
to independence
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
"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". 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
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 Indian
political leaders, announced that India had entered the war along with Britain.
There were widespread protests in India. After meeting with Jinnah and with Gandhi,
Linlithgow announced that negotiations on self-government were suspended for
the duration of the war. The 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 governors in those
provinces 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 recognised 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 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.
.jpg){kind=small}
Jinnah makes a speech in New Delhi,
1943
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
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 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.
The Congress followed the failed
Cripps mission by demanding, in August 1942, that the British immediately
"Quit India", proclaiming a mass campaign of satyagraha
until they did. The British promptly arrested most major leaders of the
Congress and imprisoned them 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. 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 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 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.
The Muslim League declared that they
would campaign on a single issue: Pakistan. Speaking 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". The 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 delegation to India to negotiate with leaders there.
This Cabinet
Mission included 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.
ss endorsed the joint statement from
the London conference over angry dissent from some elements. The League refused
to do so, and took no part in the constitutional discussions. Jinnah had been willing to consider some continued links to
Hindustan (as the Hindu-majority state which would be formed on partition was
sometimes referred to), such as a joint military or communications. However, by
December 1946, he insisted on a fully sovereign Pakistan with dominion status.
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 sizeable 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 for 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 independence
Main article: Partition of India
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.
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 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 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."
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 the Indian 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.
The most contentious of the disputes
was, and continues to be, that over the princely
state of Kashmir. It had a Muslim-majority
population and a Hindu 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 Pakistani 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 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 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. 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
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 of Craven "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
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." Stanley Wolpert,
giving a speech in honour of Jinnah in 1998, deemed him Pakistan's greatest
leader.
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."
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 the Mohammad
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.
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 up alcohol near the end of his life.
According to historian Ayesha 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 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 an 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.
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