Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah


Early life:

Jinnah was born Mahomedali Jinnah (Gujarati: to the Gujarati-speaking Jinnah family in Wazir Mansion, Karachi in Sindh, a region within the Bombay Presidency of British India. Some sources suggest that he was born in the town of Jhirk. Jinnah’s first biographer, Sarojini Naidu, as well as his official passport, state the date of birth as 25 December 1876.

Jinnah was the second child born to Mithibai and Jinnah Poonja. His father was a prosperousGujarati merchant who came from the region now known as Gujarat and subsequently moved to Karachisome time before Jinnah’s birth. Jinnah’s family belonged to the Ismaili Khoja branch of Shi’a Islam, though Jinnah later converted to Twelver Khoja Shi’a Islam. He had three brothers and three sisters, including Fatima Jinnah, all of whom became multilingual, speaking Gujarati, Kutchi, Sindhiand English.


Years in England:

Jinnah was offered an apprenticeship at the London office of Graham’s Shipping and Trading Company, a business that had extensive dealings with Jinnahbhai Poonja’s firm in Karachi. Before he left for England in 1892, at his mother’s urging, he married his distant cousin, Emibai Jinnah, who was two years his junior; she died a few months later. During his sojourn in England his mother also died. In London, Jinnah soon gave up the apprenticeship to study law instead, by joining Lincoln’s Inn. It is said that the sole reason of Jinnah’s joining Lincoln’s Inn is that the main entrance to the Lincoln’s Inn had the names of the world’s all-time top-ten lawgivers, and that this list was led by the name Muhammad. This story, however, has not been proven.In three years, at age 19, he became the youngest Indian to be called to the bar in England.

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. He particularly admired William Gladstone and John Morley, British liberal statesmen. An admirer of the Indian political leaders Dadabhai Naoroji and Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, he worked with other Indian students on the former’s successful campaign to become the first Indian to hold a seat in the British Parliament.


Western influences on personal life:

The Western world not only inspired Jinnah in his political life. England had greatly influenced his personal preferences, particularly when it came to dress. Jinnah donned Western style clothing and he pursued the fashion with fervor. It is said he owned over 200 hand-tailored suits which he wore with heavily starched shirts with detachable collars. It is also alleged that he never wore the same silk tie twice.Although in his later years he was most commonly seen wearing Sherwani and Karakul hat which subsequently came to be known as the “Jinnah cap”.

Return to India:

During the final period of his stay in England, Jinnah came under considerable pressure to return home when his father’s business was under a financial crisis. In 1896 he returned to India and settled in Bombay. Jinnah built a house in Malabar Hill, later known as Jinnah House. He became a lawyer, gaining particular fame for his skilled handling of the “Caucus Case”. This prompted Indian leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak to hire him as defence counsel for his sedition trial in 1908 but Jinnah lost that case, resulting in a rigorous term of imprisonment for Tilak. Jinnah unsuccessfully argued that it was not sedition for an Indian to demand freedom and self-government in his own country. Jinnah was never reputed to be a successful lawyer, having lost most of the cases he advocated, but the political importance those cases and his general fame as a political leader made him a popular choice for many in the Indian subcontinent.

When he returned to India his faith in liberalism and progressive politics was confirmed through his close association with three Indian National Congress stalwarts Gopal Krishna Gokhale,Pheroze shah Mehta and Surendranath Banerjee. These people had an influence in his early life in England and they would influence his later involvement in Indian politics.

Early political career:

In 1906, Jinnah joined the Indian National Congress, which was the largest and one of the oldest democratic political parties of subcontinent. Like most of the Congress at the time, Jinnah did not favor outright independence, considering British influences on education, law, culture and industry as beneficial to India. Jinnah became a member on the 60-member Imperial Legislative Council. The council had no real power, and included a large number of un-elected pro-Raj loyalists and Europeans. Nevertheless, Jinnah was instrumental in the passing of the Child Marriages Restraint Act, the legitimization of the Muslim waqf (religious endowments) and was appointed to the Sandhurst committee, which helped establish the Indian Military Academy in Dehra Dun. During World War I, Jinnah joined other Indian moderates in supporting the British war effort, hoping that Indians would be rewarded with political freedoms.

In April, 1913 he again went to England and met Ghokle. For providing Indian students a platform in England, he made London Indian Association.Jinnah had initially avoided joining the All India Muslim League, founded in 1906, regarding it as too Muslim oriented. However, he decided to provide leadership to the Muslim minority. Eventually, he joined the League in 1913 on persuasion of Maulana Muhammad Ali Johar and Syed Wazir Hasanand became the president at the 1916 session in Lucknow. Jinnah was the architect of the 1916 Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the League, bringing them together on most issues regarding self-government and presenting a united front to the British. Jinnah also 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. He headed the League’s Bombay Presidency chapter.

In 1918, Jinnah married his second wife Rattanbai Petit (“Ruttie”), 24 years his junior. She was the fashionable young daughter of his personal friend Sir Dinshaw Petit, of an elite Parsi family of Bombay. Unexpectedly, 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. In August 15,1919 she bore Jinnah his only child, daughter Dina Jinnah.


Fourteen points:

Jinnah broke with the Congress in 1920 when the Congress leader, Mohandas Gandhi, launched a Non-Cooperation Movement against the British, which Jinnah disapproved of. 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 support of the Khilafat Movement, which he saw as an endorsement of religious zealotry. Jinnah quit the Congress, with a prophetic warning that Gandhi’s method of mass struggle would lead to divisions between Hindus and Muslims and within the two communities. Becoming president of the Muslim League, Jinnah was drawn into a conflict between a pro-Congress faction and a pro-British faction.

In September 1923, Jinnah was elected as Muslim member for Bombay in the new Central Legislative Assembly. He showed great gifts as a parliamentarian, organized many Indian members to work with the Swaraj Party, and continued to press demands for full responsible government. He was so active on a wide range of subjects that in 1925 he was offered aknighthood by Lord Reading, who was retiring from the position of Viceroy and Governor General. Jinnah replied: “I prefer to be plain Mr. Jinnah”.

In 1927, Jinnah entered negotiations with Muslim and Hindu leaders on the issue of a future constitution, during the struggle against the all-British Simon Commission. The League wanted separate electorates while the Nehru Report favoured joint electorates. Jinnah personally opposed separate electorates, but then drafted compromises and put forth demands that he thought would satisfy both. These became known as the 14 points of Mr. Jinnah. However, they were rejected by the Congress and other political parties.



At the Round Table Conferences in London, Jinnah was disillusioned by the breakdown of talks. After the failure of the Round Table Conferences, Jinnah returned to London for a few years. In 1936, he returned to India to reorganize Muslim League and contest elections held under the provisions of the 1935 Act.

Jinnah would receive personal care and support as he became more ill during this time from his sister Fatima Jinnah. She lived and travelled with him, as well as becoming a close advisor. She helped raise his daughter, who was educated in England and India. Jinnah later became estranged from his daughter, Dina Jinnah, after she decided to marry Christian businessman, Neville Wadia (even though he had faced the same issues when he married Rattanbai in 1918). Jinnah continued to correspond cordially with his daughter, but their personal relationship was strained. Dina continued to live in India with her family.

Leader of the Muslim League:


Jinnah moved to London in 1930 for political dialogue with the British government and work for the representation of Indian Muslims in Britain. During this period, he participated in the 1930 Round Table Conference. Due to his firm position regarding the rights of minorities in British India, Congress leaders was not happy with him. As a result, due to the British-Congress companionship, he was not invited for the next two conferences. Jinnah decided to stay in Britain so that he could convince British politicians about the state of affairs in India. He worked in the Privy Council Bar during this period. Muslims of Bombay elected him in his absence as their representative for the Central Legislative Assembly in October 1934. In 1934, Jinnah returned India and began to reorganize the party, being closely assisted by Liaquat Ali Khan, who visited Jinnah in London in 1933 and would act as his right-hand man. In the 1937 elections to the Central Legislative Assembly, the League emerged as a competent party, capturing a significant number of seats under the system of separate electorates, but lost in the Muslim-majority Punjab, Sindh and the North-West Frontier Province. Jinnah offered an alliance with the Congress—both bodies would face the British together, but the Congress had to share power, accept separate electorates and the League as the representative of India’s Muslims. The latter two terms were unacceptable to the Congress, which had its own national Muslim leaders and membership and adhered to secularism. Even as Jinnah held talks with Congress president Rajendra Prasad, Congress leaders suspected that Jinnah would use his position as a lever for exaggerated demands and obstruct government, and demanded that the League merge with the Congress. The talks failed, and while Jinnah declared the resignation of all Congressmen from provincial and central offices in 1939 as a “Day of Deliverance” from Hindu domination,some historians assert that he remained hopeful about an agreement.

Jinnah delivering a political speech.

In a speech given at Allahabad to the League in 1930, Sir Muhammad Iqbal came up with an idea of a state for Muslims in “northwest India.” Choudhary Rahmat Ali published a pamphlet in 1933 advocating a state called “Pakistan”. Following the failure to work with the Congress, Jinnah, who had embraced separate electorates and the exclusive right of the League to represent Muslims, was converted to the idea that Muslims needed a separate state to protect their rights. Jinnah came to believe that Muslims and Hindus were distinct nations, with unbridgeable differences—a view later known as the Two Nation Theory. Jinnah declared that a united India would lead to the marginalization of Muslims, and eventually civil war between Hindus and Muslims. This change of view may have occurred through his correspondence with Iqbal, who was close to Jinnah. In the session in Lahore in 1940, the Pakistan resolution was adopted as the main goal of the party. The resolution was rejected outright by the Congress, and criticized by some Muslim leaders like Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Syed Ab’ul Ala Maududi.

In 1941, Muhammad Ali Jinnah founded Dawn, a major newspaper that helped him propagate the League’s point of views. During themission of British minister Stafford Cripps, Jinnah demanded parity between the number of Congress and League ministers, the League’s exclusive right to appoint Muslims and a right for Muslim-majority provinces to secede, leading to the breakdown of talks. Jinnah supported the British effort in World War II, and opposed the Quit India movement. During this period, the League formed provincial governments and entered the central government. The League’s influence increased in the Punjab after the death of Unionistleader Sikander Hyat Khan in 1942. Gandhi held talks 14 times with Jinnah in Bombay in 1944, about a united front—while talks failed, Gandhi’s overtures to Jinnah increased the latter’s standing with Muslims.

Founding of Pakistan:

In the 1946 elections for the Constituent Assembly of India, the Congress won most of the elected seats, while the League won a large majority of Muslim electorate seats. The 1946 British Cabinet Mission to India released a plan on 16 May, calling for a united Indian state comprising considerably autonomous provinces, and called for “groups” of provinces formed on the basis of religion. A second plan released on 16 June, called for the separation of India along religious lines, with princely states to choose between accession to the dominion of their choice or independence. The Congress, fearing India’s fragmentation, criticised the 16 May proposal and rejected the 16 June plan. Jinnah gave the League’s assent to both plans, knowing that power would go only to the party that had supported a plan. After much debate and against Gandhi’s advice that both plans were divisive, the Congress accepted the 16 May plan while condemning the grouping principle. Jinnah decried this acceptance as “dishonesty”, accused the British negotiators of “treachery”, and withdrew the League’s approval of both plans. The League boycotted the assembly, leaving the Congress in charge of the government but denying it legitimacy in the eyes of many Muslims.



A letter by Jinnah to Winston Churchill

Jinnah issued a call for all Muslims to launch “Direct Action” on 16 August to “achieve Pakistan”. Strikes and protests were planned, but violence broke out all over India, especially in Calcutta and the district of Noakhali in Bengal, and more than 7,000 people were killed inBihar. Although viceroy Lord Wavell asserted that there was “no satisfactory evidence to that effect”,League politicians were blamed by the Congress and the media for orchestrating the violence. Interim Government portfolios were announced on 25 October 1946. Muslim Leaguers were sworn in on 26 October 1946. The League entered the interim government, but Jinnah refrained from accepting office for himself. This was credited as a major victory for Jinnah, as the League entered government having rejected both plans, and was allowed to appoint an equal number of ministers despite being the minority party. The coalition was unable to work, resulting in a rising feeling within the Congress that independence of Pakistan was the only way of avoiding political chaos and possible civil war. The Congress agreed to the division of Punjab and Bengal along religious lines in late 1946. The new viceroy Lord Mountbatten of Burma and Indian civil servant V. P. Menon proposed a plan that would create a Muslim dominion in West Punjab, East Bengal, Baluchistan and Sindh. After heated and emotional debate, the Congress approved the plan. The North-West Frontier Province voted to join Pakistan in a referendum in July 1947. Jinnah asserted in a speech in Lahore on 30 October 1947 that the League had accepted independence of Pakistan because “the consequences of any other alternative would have been too disastrous to imagine.”

The independent state of Pakistan, created on 14 August 1947, represented the outcome of a campaign on the part of the Indian Muslim community for a Muslim homeland which had been triggered by the British decision to consider transferring power to the people of India.

Louis Mountbatten and Jinnah

Jinnah’s vision for Pakistan:



Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s will, excerpt

On the opening ceremony of the State Bank of Pakistan Jinnah pointed out that the financial set-up of the state should be based on Islamic economic system, saying:


Jinnah felt that the state of Pakistan should stand upon true Islamic tradition in culture, civilization and national identity rather than on the principles of Islam as a theocratic state.



Along with Liaquat Ali Khan and Abdur Rab Nishtar, Muhammad Ali Jinnah represented the League in the Division Council to appropriately divide public assets between India and Pakistan.The assembly members from the provinces that would comprise Pakistan formed the new state’s constituent assembly, and the Military of British India was divided between Muslim and non-Muslim units and officers. Indian leaders were angered at Jinnah’s courting the princes of Jodhpur, Bhopal and Indore to accede to Pakistan – these princely states were not geographically aligned with Pakistan, and each had a Hindu-majority population.


On 11 October 1947, in an address to Civil, Naval, Military and Air Force Officers of Pakistan Government in Karachi, he said:




The office of governor general was ceremonial, but Jinnah also assumed the lead of government. The first months of Pakistan’s independence were absorbed in ending the intense violence that had arisen in the wake of acrimony between Hindus and Muslims. Jinnah agreed with Indian leaders to organize a swift and secure exchange of populations in Punjab and Bengal. He visited the border regions with Indian leaders to calm people and encourage peace, and organised large-scale refugee camps. Despite these efforts, estimates on the death toll vary from around 200,000, to over a million people. The estimated number of refugees in both countries exceeds 15 million. The then capital city of Karachi saw an explosive increase in its population owing to the large encampments of refugees, which personally affected and depressed Jinnah.


He controversially accepted the accession of Junagadh—a Hindu-majority state with a Muslim ruler located in the Saurashtra peninsula, some 400 kilometres (250 mi) southeast of Pakistan—but this was annulled by Indian intervention. It is unclear if Jinnah planned or knew of the tribal invasion from Pakistan into the kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir in October 1947, but he did send his private secretaryK.H. Khurshid to observe developments in Kashmir. When informed of Kashmir’s accession to India, Jinnah deemed the accession illegitimate and ordered the Pakistani army to enter Kashmir. However, Gen. Auchinleck, the supreme commander of all British officers informed Jinnah that while India had the right to send troops to Kashmir, which had acceded to it, Pakistan did not. If Jinnah persisted, Auchinleck would remove all British officers from both sides. As Pakistan had a greater proportion of Britons holding senior command, Jinnah cancelled his order, but protested to the United Nations to intercede.

Illness and death:

Through the 1940s, Jinnah suffered from tuberculosis; only his sister and a few others close to him were aware of his condition. In 1948, Jinnah’s health began to falter, hindered further by the heavy workload that had put upon him following Pakistan’s creation. Attempting to recuperate, he spent many months at his official retreat in Ziarat. According to his sister, he suffered ahemorrhage on 1 September 1948; doctors said the altitude was not good for him and that he should be taken to Karachi. Jinnah was flown back to Karachi from Quetta.

Jinnah died at 10:20 p.m. at the Governor-General’s House in Karachi on 11 September 1948, just over a year after Pakistan’s creation.

It is said that when the viceroy of India at that point of time, Lord Louis Mountbatten, learned of Jinnah’s ailment he said ‘had they known that Jinnah was about to die, they’d have postponed India’s independence by a few months as he was being inflexible on Pakistan’.

Jinnah was buried in Karachi. His funeral was followed by the construction of a massivemausoleum, Mazar-e-Quaid, in Karachi to honour him; official and military ceremonies are hosted there on special occasions.

He had two separate funeral prayers: one was held privately at Mohatta Palace in a room of the Governor-General’s House at which Yusuf Haroon, Hashim Raza and Aftab Hatim Alvi were present at the namaz-e-janaza held according to Shia rituals and was led by Syed Aneesul Husnain, while Liaquat Ali Khan waited outside. After the Shia prayers, the major public funeral prayers were led by Allamah Shabbir Ahmad Usmani a renowned Deobandi Muslim scholar, and attended by the masses from all over Pakistan.

Dina Wadia 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.


After Jinnah died, Fatima Jinnah had asked the court to execute Jinnah’s will under Shia law. Jinnah’s family belonged to the IsmailiKhoja branch of Shi’a Islam, but Jinnah left that branch in 1901. 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 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”.




Pakistanis view Jinnah as their revered founding father, a man that was dedicated to safeguarding Muslim interests during the dying days of the British Raj.[94] Jinnah is popularly and officially known in Pakistan as Quaid-i-Azam (Urdu: قائد اعظم — “Great Leader”) and Baba-i-Qaum (بابائے قوم) (“Father of the Nation”). His birthday is a national holiday in Pakistan. Despite any of a range of biases, Jinnah is universally recognized as central to the creation of Pakistan.

According to Akbar S. 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.

Jinnah is depicted on all Pakistani rupee notes of denominations five and higher, and is the namesakeof 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, one of its most important new highways is named after him, as is the city’sMohammad Ali Jenah Expressway. 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. There is a “Jinnah Tower” in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, India, which was built to commemorate Jinnah.

Jinnah was portrayed by British actors Richard Lintern (as the young Jinnah) and Christopher Lee (as the elder Jinnah) in the 1998 filmJinnah.[99] In Richard Attenborough’s film Gandhi, Jinnah was portrayed by Alyque Padamsee. In the 1986 televised mini-series Lord Mountbatten: the Last Viceroy, Jinnah was played by Polish actor Vladek Sheybal.

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. 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). Jaswant Singh likewise praised Jinnah for standing up to the Indian National Congress and the British. In August 2009, Singh was expelled from the BJP for writing a controversial book praising Jinnah,and shortly after, the state of Gujaratbanned Singh’s book because of its negative statements about Vallabh bhai Patel, the first home minister of India.[ However, Jaswant Singh’s book does portray the success of Jinnah’s ideology of Indian Muslims forming a separate nation not evident from the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. According to a BBC poll in 2004, Jinnah is considered as South Asia’s greatest-ever leader with the highest score of 39%, higher than Gandhi and Subhash Chandra Bose.


Some critics allege that Jinnah’s courting the rulers of Hindu-majority states and his gambit with Junagadh is proof of ill intentions towards India, as he was the proponent of the theory that Hindus and Muslims could not live together, yet being interested in Hindu-majority states. In his book Patel: A Life, Rajmohan Gandhi asserts that Jinnah sought to engage the question of Junagadh with an eye on Kashmir—he wanted India to ask for a plebiscite in Junagadh, knowing thus that the principle then would have to be applied toKashmir, where the Muslim-majority would, he believed, vote for Pakistan.

Abul Ala Maududi and the Jamaat-e-Islami leadership openly criticized Muhammed Ali Jinnah, arguing that he did not have an Islamic outlook. According to Maududi, Jinnah believed that Pakistan should be a democratic state with sovereignty vested in the people, a notion Maududi opposed as “western” and contrary to the sovereignty of Allah. Jamaat-i-Islami is, however, engaged in the political process and has been taking part in elections in Pakistan after the death of Maududi.

Apart from cultural legacies, it seems that Mohammad Ali Jinnah left a legacy as one of the most controversially portrayed figures in contemporary Asian history. From an Indian perspective, Jinnah tends to be depicted as a cunning and relentless force that compromised the unity of India to create Pakistan, for a range of religious, cultural, political, and personal motives; on the other handJaswant Singh, a member of Indian Parliament and former cabinet minister, viewed Nehru, not Mohammad Ali Jinnah, as causing the division of India into two separate states for Muslims and Hindus, mostly referring to his highly centralized policies for an independent India in 1947, which Jinnah opposed in favour of a more decentralized India. Singh suggests that the split between the two was among the causes of two separate nations.





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