Biography Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah

The Founder of Pakistan

Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah's achievement as the founder of Pakistan, dominates everything else he did in his long and crowded public life spanning some 42 years. Yet, by any standard, his was an eventful life, his personality multidimensional and his achievements in other fields were many, if not equally great. Indeed, several were the roles he had played with distinction: at one time or another, he was one of the greatest legal luminaries India had produced during the first half of the century, an `ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, a great constitutionalist, a distinguished parliamentarian, a top-notch politician, an indefatigable freedom-fighter, a dynamic Muslim leader, a political strategist and, above all one of the great nation-builders of modern times. What, however, makes him so remarkable is the fact that while similar other leaders assumed the leadership of traditionally well-defined nations and espoused their cause, or led them to freedom, he created a nation out of an inchoate and down-trodeen minority and established a cultural and national home for it. And all that within a decase. For over three decades before the successful culmination in 1947, of the Muslim struggle for freedom in the South-Asian subcontinent, Jinnah had provided political leadership to the Indian Muslims: initially as one of the leaders, but later, since 1947, as the only prominent leader- the Quaid-i-Azam. For over thirty years, he had guided their affairs; he had given expression, coherence and direction to their ligitimate aspirations and cherished dreams; he had formulated these into concerete demands; and, above all, he had striven all the while to get them conceded by both the ruling British and the numerous Hindus the dominant segment of India's population. And for over thirty years he had fought, relentlessly and inexorably, for the inherent rights of the Muslims for an honourable existence in the subcontinent. Indeed, his life story constitutes, as it were, the story of the rebirth of the Muslims of the subcontinent and their spectacular rise to nationhood, phoenixlike.

Early Life: Born on December 25, 1876, in a prominent mercantile family in Karachi and educated at the Sindh Madrassat-ul-Islam and the Christian Mission School at his birth place,Jinnah joined the Lincoln's Inn in 1893 to become the youngest Indian to be called to the Bar, three years later.  Starting out in the legal profession withknothing to fall back upon except his native ability and determination, young Jinnah rose to prominence and became Bombay's most successful lawyer, as few did, within a few years. Once he was firmly established in the legal profession, Jinnah formally entered politics in 1905 from the platform of the Indian National Congress. He went to England in that year alongwith Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915), as a member of a Congress delegation to plead the cause of Indian self-governemnt during the British elections. A year later, he served as Secretary to Dadabhai Noaroji(1825-1917), the then Indian National Congress President, which was considered a great honour for a budding politician. Here, at the Calcutta Congress session (December 1906), he also made his first political speech in support of the resolution on self-government.

Political Career: Three years later, in January 1910, Jinnah was elected to the newly-constituted Imperial Legislative Council. All through his parliamentary career, which spanned some four decades, he was probably the most powerful voice in the cause of Indian freedom and Indian rights. Jinnah, who was also the first Indian to pilot a private member's Bill through the Council, soon became a leader of a group inside the legislature. Mr. Montagu (1879-1924), Secretary of State for India, at the close of the First World War, considered Jinnah "perfect mannered, impressive-looking, armed to the teeth with dialecties..."Jinnah, he felt, "is a very clever man, and it is, of course, an outrage that such a man should have no chance of running the affairs of his own country."

For about three decades since his entry into politics in 1906, Jinnah passionately believed in and assiduously worked for Hindu-Muslim unity. Gokhale, the foremost Hindu leader before Gandhi, had once said of him, "He has the true stuff in him and that freedom from all sectarian prejudice which will make him the best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity: And, to be sure, he did become the architect of Hindu-Muslim Unity: he was responsible for the Congress-League Pact of 1916, known popularly as Lucknow Pact- the only pact ever signed between the two political organisations, the Congress and the All-India Muslim League, representing, as they did, the two major communities in the subcontinent.

The Congress-League scheme embodied in this pact was to become the basis for the Montagu-Chemlsford Reforms, also known as the Act of 1919. In retrospect, the Lucknow Pact represented a milestone in the evolution of Indian politics. For one thing, it conceded Muslims the right to separate electorate, reservation of seats in the legislatures and weightage in representation both at the Centre and the minority provinces. Thus, their retention was ensured in the next phase of reforms. For another, it represented a tacit recognition of the All-India Muslim League as the representative organisation of the Muslims, thus strengthening the trend towards Muslim individuality in Indian politics. And to Jinnah goes the credit for all this. Thus, by 1917, Jinnah came to be recognised among both Hindus and Muslims as one of India's most outstanding political leaders. Not only was he prominent in the Congress and the Imperial Legislative Council, he was also the President of the All-India Muslim and that of lthe Bombay Branch of the Home Rule League. More important, because of his key-role in the Congress-League entente at Lucknow, he was hailed as the ambassador, as well as the embodiment, of Hindu-Muslim unity.   "We are a nation", they claimed in the ever eloquent words of the Quaid-i-Azam- "We are a nation with our own distinctive culture and civilization, language and literature, art and architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of values and proportion, legal laws and moral code, customs and calandar, history and tradition, aptitudes and ambitions; in short, we have our own distinctive outlook on life and of life. By all canons of international law, we are a nation". The formulation of the Musim demand for Pakistan in 1940 had a tremendous impact on the nature and course of Indian politics. On the one hand, it shattered for ever the Hindu dreams of a pseudo-Indian, in fact, Hindu empire on British exit from India: on the other, it heralded an era of Islamic renaissance and creativity in which the Indian Muslims were to be active participants. The Hindu reaction was quick, bitter, malicious.Demand for Pakistan: Equally hostile were the British to the Muslim demand, their hostility having stemmed from their belief that the unity of India was their main achievement and their foremost contribution. The irony was that both the Hindus and the British had not anticipated the astonishingly tremendous response that the Pakistan demand had elicited from the Muslim masses. Above all, they faild to realize how a hundred million people had suddenly become supremely conscious of their distinct nationhood and their high destiny. In channelling the course of Muslim politics towards Pakistan, no less than in directing it towards its consummation in the establishment of Pakistan in 1947, non played a more decisive role than did Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. It was his powerful advocacy of the case of Pakistan and his remarkable strategy in the delicate negotiations, that followed the formulation of the Pakistan demand, particularly in the post-war period, that made Pakistan inevitable.

FATHER OF THE NATION Quaid-i-Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah 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; and Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all the three. Hailed as the Quaid-i-Azam (the great leader), Jinnah virtually conjured the country into a statehood by his indomitable will. His place of primacy in Pakistan’s history looms large like a lofty minaret over the achievement of all his contemporaries in Muslim League. Yet Jinnah began his political career as a leader of the Indian National Congress and remained until the World War I India’s best “Ambassador of  Hindu-Muslim unity”. As enigmatic as Mahatma Gandhi, more powerful that Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah was one of the most charismatic leaders of the recent history ended up as the architect of partitioning India to carve out Pakistan in 1947, some four decades after he started as a Congress leader who initially wanted political and electoral safeguards for Indian Muslims with a separate electorate that ensured them one-thirds of their representation in the Central Legislative Council and provincial assemblies. Jinnah’s effort was manifest in the Lucknow Pact (1916) and his Fourteen Points (1920). That is how noted American biographer and expert on South India Stanley Wolpert assessed the life and political role of the founder of Pakistan in his outstanding biographic write-up “Jinnah of Pakistan”, as one of the most credible book on the father of the nation. Born on December 25, 1876 as the scion of the Poonja family from Gujrat’s Kathiwar, Jinnah had the early education from Sindh Madrassa and the Mission School in Karachi and left in 1892 for England to study law at the Lincoln's Inn, then among top 10 universities of the world. He graduated from the university at the age of 19 and became the youngest Indian to be called to the bar in England. On returning to India in 1896, Jinnah joined the Indian National Congress, then the largest Indian political organization. Like most of the Congress at the time, Jinnah did not favour outright independence, considering British influences on education, law, culture and industry as beneficial to India. Jinnah became a member on the sixty-member Imperial Legislative Council and was greatly 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 at Dehra Dun during the World War I because he was among the Indian moderates who supported the British war effort, hoping that Indians would be rewarded with political freedoms. Eventually, Jinnah  joined the All-India Muslim League in 1913 and became its president at the 1916 session in Lucknow.. He 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. Jinnah’s life witnessed a turning point when the Raj got the Rowlett Act passed by the Central Legislative Council to give police the sweeping powers of entering any house without warrant in search of rebels and rebellion literature. Otherwise a cool and composed person, Jinnah made a hard hitting speech at the council meeting and quit its membership in protest. This single episode made Jinnah later to advocate a separate Muslim state and the Lahore Resolution adopted by the Muslim League’s general council’s session near the Minar-i-Pakistan (then Minto Park) seeking complete support of the demand of the Quaid-i-Azm The League won most reserved Muslim seats in the elections of 1946. After the British and Congress backed out of the Cabinet Mission Plan Jinnah called for a Direct Action Day on August 16, 1946.to achieve Pakistan. The day saw  massive rioting in Calcutta between Muslims and Hindus.[As the Indian National Congress and Muslim League failed to reach a power sharing formula for united India, it prompted both the parties and the British to agree to independence of Pakistan and India. As the first Governor-General of Pakistan, Jinnah led efforts to lay the foundations of the new state of Pakistan, frame national policies and rehabilitate millions of Muslim refugees who had migrated from India. He died in September 1948, just over a year after Pakistan gained independence from the British Empire. He was so active on a wide range of subjects that in 1925 he was offered a knighthood by Viceroy Lord Reading that he declined saying "I prefer to be plain Mr. Jinnah".