Muhammad Ali Jinnah , born 25 December 1876 – 11 September 1948) was a lawyer, politician and statesman, 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 (Great Leader) and
Baba-i-Qaum (Father of the Nation) and 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 refugees who had emigrated from the new nation of India after the separation,
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.
Background
Jinnah was born Mahomedali Jinnahbhai, most likely in 1876, 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.
