Mohammed Ali Jinnah born on December 25, 1876, died on September 11, 1948, the Founder and the first Governor- General of Pakistan. The creation of Pakistan in 1947 was a turning point in the history of South Asia. The new nation emerged from the struggle for independence against British colonial rule and the demand for a separate homeland for Muslims. Muhammad Ali Jinnah was leading from the front in the struggle for independence, often referred to as Quaid-e-Azam (the Great Leader). 

Initial Years: Mohammad Ali Jinnah was the eldest of seven children of Jinnahbhai Poonja, a prosperous merchant, and his wife, Mithibai. After being taught at home, Jinnah was sent in 1887 to the Sindh Madressat-ul-Islam in Karachi. Later he attended the Christian Missionary Society High School (also in Karachi), where at the age of 16 he passed the matriculation examination of the University of Bombay. On the advice of an English friend, his father decided to send him to England to acquire business experience. Jinnah, however, had made up his mind to become a barrister. In keeping with the custom of the time, his parents arranged for an early marriage for him before he left for England.

In London he joined Lincoln’s Inn, one of the legal societies that prepared students for the bar. In 1895, at the age of 19, he was called to the bar. While in London Jinnah suffered two severe bereavements—the deaths of his wife and his mother. Nevertheless, he completed his formal studies and also made a study of the British political system, frequently visiting the House of Commons.

When Jinnah returned to Karachi in 1896, he found that his father’s business had suffered losses and that he now had to depend on himself. He decided to start his legal practice in Bombay (now Mumbai), but it took him years of work to establish himself as a lawyer.

It was nearly 10 years later that he turned actively toward politics. A man without hobbies, he divided his interest between law and politics. Nor was he a religious zealot: he was a Muslim in a broad sense and had little to do with sects. Rattenbai (Rutti) the daughter of Sir Dinshaw Petit, a Bombay Parsi millionaire whom he married in 1918 over tremendous opposition from her parents and others. The couple had one daughter, Dina, but the marriage proved an unhappy one, and Jinnah and Rutti soon separated. It was his sister Fatima who gave him solace and company.

Jinnah first entered politics by participating in the 1906 session of the Indian National Congress (Congress Party) held at Calcutta (now Kolkata), in which the party began to split between those calling for dominion status and those advocating independence for India. Four years later he was elected to the Imperial Legislative Council the beginning of a long and distinguished parliamentary career.

Largely to safeguard Muslim interests, the All-India Muslim League was founded in 1906. But Jinnah remained aloof from it. Only in 1913, when authoritatively assured that the league was as devoted as the Congress Party to the political emancipation of India, did Jinnah join the league. When the Indian Home Rule League was formed, he became its chief organizer in Bombay and was elected president of the Bombay branch.

Political unison

Jinnah’s endeavors to bring about the political union of Hindus and Muslims earned him the title of “the best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity,” an epithet coined by Gokhale. It was largely through his efforts that the Congress Party and the Muslim League began to hold their annual sessions jointly, to facilitate mutual consultation and participation. In 1915 the two organizations held their meetings in Bombay and in 1916 in Lucknow, where the Lucknow Pact was concluded. Under the terms of the pact, the two organizations put their seal to a scheme of constitutional reform that became their joint demand vis-à-vis the British government.

Meanwhile, a new force in Indian politics had appeared in the person of Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi. Both the Home Rule League and the Congress Party had come under his sway. Opposed to Gandhi’s noncooperation movement and his essentially Hindu approach to politics, Jinnah left both the league and the Congress Party in 1920. For a few years he kept himself aloof from the main political movements. He continued to be a firm believer in Hindu-Muslim unity and constitutional methods for the achievement of political ends. After his withdrawal from Congress, he used the Muslim League platform for the propagation of his views. But during the 1920s the Muslim League, and with it Jinnah, had been overshadowed by Congress and the religiously oriented Muslim Khilafat movement.

When the failure of the noncooperation movement and the emergence of Hindu revivalist movements led to antagonism and riots between Hindus and Muslims, the Muslim League began to lose strength and cohesion, and provincial Muslim leaders formed their own parties to serve their needs. Thus, Jinnah’s problem during the following years was to convert the Muslim League into an enlightened, unified political body prepared to cooperate with other organizations working for the good of India.

To bring about such a rapprochement was Jinnah’s chief purpose during the late 1920s and early 1930s. He worked toward this end within the legislative assembly, at the Round Table Conference in London (1930–32), and through his “14 points,” which included proposals for a federal form of government, greater rights for minorities, one-third representation for Muslims in the central legislature etc. His failure to bring about even minor amendments in the Nehru Committee proposals (1928) over the question of separate electorates and reservation of seats for Muslims in the legislatures frustrated him. He found himself in a peculiar position at that time: many Muslims thought that he was too nationalistic in his policy and that Muslim interests were not safe in his hands, while the Congress Party would not even meet the moderate Muslim demands halfway. Indeed, the Muslim League was a house divided against itself. The Punjab Muslim League repudiated Jinnah’s leadership and organized itself separately. In disgust, Jinnah decided to settle in England. From 1930 to 1935 he remained in London, devoting himself to practice before the Privy Council. But when constitutional changes were in the offing, he was persuaded to return home to head a reconstituted Muslim League.

Soon preparations started for the elections under the Government of India Act of 1935. Jinnah was still thinking in terms of cooperation between the Muslim League and the Hindu-controlled Congress Party and with coalition governments in the provinces. But the elections of 1937 proved to be a turning point in the relations between the two organizations. Congress obtained an absolute majority in six provinces, and the league did not do particularly well. The Congress Party decided not to include the league in the formation of provincial governments, and exclusive all-Congress governments were the result. Relations between Hindus and Muslims started to deteriorate, and soon Muslim discontent became boundless.

Creator of Pakistan

Jinnah had originally been dubious about the practicability of Pakistan, an idea that the poet and philosopher Sir Muhammad Iqbal had propounded to the Muslim League conference of 1930, but before long he became convinced that a Muslim homeland on the Indian subcontinent was the only way of safeguarding Muslim interests and the Muslim way of life. To guard against that danger, he carried out a nationwide campaign to warn his coreligionists of the perils of their position, and he converted the Muslim League into a powerful instrument for unifying the Muslims into a nation.

At that point, Jinnah emerged as the leader of a renascent Muslim nation. Events began to move fast. On March 22–23, 1940, in Lahore, the league adopted a resolution to form a separate Muslim state, Pakistan. The Pakistan idea was at first ridiculed and then tenaciously opposed by the Congress Party. But it captured the imagination of the Muslims. Pitted against Jinnah were many influential Hindus, including Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. And the British government seemed to be intent on maintaining the political unity of the Indian subcontinent. But Jinnah led his movement with such skill and tenacity that ultimately both the Congress Party and the British government had no option but to agree to the partitioning of India. Pakistan thus emerged as an independent state in 1947.

Published in The Daily National Courier, December, 25 2023

Like Business on Facebook, follow @DailyNCourier on Twitter to stay informed and join in the conversation.