| Jinnah, Mohammed Ali, also called QA'ID-E A'ZAM (Arabic: "The
Great Leader") (b. Dec. 25, 1876, Karachi, India [now in Pakistan]--d. Sept. 11,
1948, Karachi), Indian Muslim politician, founder and first governor-general (1947-48) of
Pakistan.
Early years.
Jinnah was the first of seven children of Jinnahbhai, a
prosperous merchant. After being taught at home, Jinnah was sent to the Sind Madrasasah
High School in 1887. Later he attended the Mission High School, 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. He was greatly influenced by the liberalism of William E Gladstone, who
had become prime minister for the fourth time in 1892, the year of Jinnah's arrival in
London. Jinnah also took a keen interest in the affairs of India and in Indian students.
When the Parsi leader Dadabhai Naoroji, a leading Indian nationalist, ran for the English
Parliament, Jinnah and other Indian students worked day and night for him. Their efforts
were crowned with success, and Naoroji became the first Indian to sit in 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, but it took him years of work to establish himself as a lawyer.
It was nearly 10 years
later that he turned toward active politics. A man without hobbies, his interest became
divided 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. His interest in women was also limited to
Ruttenbai--the daughter of Sir Dinshaw Petit, a Bombay Parsi millionaire--whom he married
over tremendous opposition from her parents and others. The marriage proved an unhappy
one. It was his sister Fatima who gave him solace and company.
Entry into politics.
Jinnah first entered politics by participating in the 1906 Calcutta session of the
Indian National Congress, the party that called for dominion status and later for
independence for India. Four years later he was elected to the Imperial Legislative
Council--the beginning of a long and distinguished parliamentary career. In Bombay he came
to know, among other important Congress personalities, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, the eminent
Maratha leader. Greatly influenced by these nationalist politicians, Jinnah aspired during
the early part of his political life to become "a Muslim Gokhale." Admiration
for British political institutions and an eagerness to raise the status of India in the
international community and to develop a sense of Indian nationhood among the peoples of
India were the chief elements of his politics. At that time, he still looked upon Muslim
interests in the context of Indian nationalism.
But, by the beginning of the 20th century, the conviction had been growing among the
Muslims that their interests demanded the preservation of their separate identity rather
than amalgamation in the Indian nation that would for all practical purposes be Hindu.
Largely to safeguard Muslim interests, the All-India Muslium 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 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.
"Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity." Jinnah's endeavours 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 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. There was a good deal of give and take, but the Muslims obtained one important
concession in the shape of separate electorates, already conceded to them by the
government in 1909 but hitherto resisted by the Congress.
Meanwhile, a new force in Indian politics had appeared in the person of Mohandas K.
Gandhi. Both the Home Rule League and the Indian National Congress had come under his
sway. Opposed to Gandhi's Non-cooperation Movement and his essentially Hindu approach to
politics, Jinnah left both the League and the Congress 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 the 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 the Congress and the religiously oriented Muslim Khilafat
committee.
When the failure of the Non-cooperation
Movement and the emergence of Hindu revivalist movements led to antagonism and riots
between the Hindus and Muslims, the league gradually began to come into its own. Jinnah's
problem during the following years was to convert the league into an enlightened political
body prepared to cooperate with other organizations working for the good of India. In
addition, he had to convince the Congress, as a prerequisite for political progress, of
the necessity of settling the Hindu-Muslim conflict.
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 Conferences 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, separation of the predominantly Muslim Sind region
from the rest of the Bombay province, and the introduction of reforms in the North-West
Frontier Province. But he failed. 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 this time; many Muslims thought that he was too nationalistic in his policy
and that Muslim interests were not safe in his hands, while the Indian National Congress
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 Congress 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. The Congress obtained an absolute majority in
six provinces, and the league did not do particularly well. The Congress 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 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. It was not religious persecution that he feared so
much as the future exclusion of Muslims from all prospects of advancement within India as
soon as power became vested in the close-knit structure of Hindu social organization. To
guard against this danger he carried on 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 this 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 first ridiculed and then tenaciously opposed by the Congress. But it captured the
imagination of the Muslims. Pitted against Jinnah were men of the stature of 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 and the British government had no option
but to agree to the partitioning of India. Pakistan thus emerged as an independent state
in 1947.
Jinnah became the first head of the new state. Faced
with the serious problems of a young nation, he tackled Pakistan's problems with
authority. He was not regarded as merely the governor-general; he was revered as the
father of the nation. He worked hard until overpowered by age and disease in Karachi,
the place of his birth, in 1948.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Stanley Wolpert, Jinnah of Pakistan (1984), is a well-documented major
biography. Hector Bolitho, Jinnah, Creator of Pakistan (1954, reprinted 1981),
includes a survey of the political background. Other works include Sheila McDonough (ed.),
Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Maker of Modern Pakistan (1970); C.M. Naim (ed.), Iqbal,
Jinnah, and Pakistan: The Vision and the Reality (1979), studying the political and
social views of these leaders; Allen Hayes Merriam, Gandhi vs Jinnah: The Debate Over
the Partition of India (1980), a well-documented comparative examination of the two
men's ideologies; and Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League, and
the Demand for Pakistan (1985), an analysis of the political and historical role of
Jinnah |
