EDITORIAL
Mohammed Ali Jinnah, also called Qaid-i-Azam “Great Leader”, was born in Karachi on December 25, 1876, and died on September 11, 1948. He was an Indian Muslim politician who was Pakistan’s founder and first governor-general (1947–48).
Jinnah was the eldest of seven children of Jinnah bhai Poonja, a prosperous merchant, and his wife, Mithibai. His family was a member of the Khoja caste, Hindus who had converted to Islam centuries earlier and were followers of the Aga Khan. There is some query about Jinnah’s date of birth: although it is maintained that it was December 25, 1876.
Jinnah was sent in 1887 to the Sind Madrasat al-Islam (now Sindh Madressatul Islam University) 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 (now the University of Mumbai, in Mumbai, India). On the recommendation of an English friend, his father resolved 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 an early marriage for him before he left for England.https://republicpolicy.com/unity-faith-and-discipline/
In London, he joined Lincoln’s Inn, one of the legal societies that qualified students for the bar. In 1895, at 19, he was called to the bar. While in London, Jinnah suffered two severe bereavements—his wife’s and mother’s deaths. 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 Indian and Indian students. When the Parsi leader Dadabhai Naoroji, a leading Indian nationalist, ran for the British Parliament, Jinnah and other Indian students toiled day and night for him. Their efforts were crowned with success: 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 rely on himself. He resolved 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 ten 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. His interest in women was also limited to Rattenbai (Rutti)—the daughter of Sir Dinshaw Petit, a Bombay Parsi millionaire—whom he married in 1918 over immense opposition from her parents and others. The couple had one daughter, Dina, but the marriage proved discouraging, and Jinnah and Rutti soon divorced. His sister Fatima provided him solace and company in his political life.
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. In Bombay, he came to know Gopal Krishna Gokhale, the eminent Maratha leader, among other influential Congress Party characters. Greatly influenced by those nationalist politicians, Jinnah aspired during 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 people of India were the chief elements of his politics. At that time, he still looked upon Muslim interests in the context of Indian nationalism.https://republicpolicy.com/explaining-article-2-of-the-constitution-objectives-resolution-and-islam-as-the-state-religion/
By the beginning of the 20th century, the conviction had been growing among the Muslims that their interests demanded preserving their separate identity rather than amalgamation in the Indian nation that would be Hindu for all practical purposes. Primarily 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.
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. Through his efforts, the Congress Party and the Muslim League began to hold their annual sessions jointly to facilitate reciprocal 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 pact’s terms, 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 exchange of give and take. Still, the Muslims acquired a critical concession in the shape of separate electorates, already conceded to them by the government in 1909 but hitherto resisted by Congress.
Meanwhile, a new force in Indian politics appeared in the person of Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi. The Home Rule League and the Congress Party had come under his sway. Opposed to Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement and his virtually Hindu approach to politics, Jinnah left both the league and the Congress Party in 1920. He kept himself aloof from the primary political campaigns for a few years. He firmly believed in Hindu-Muslim unity and constitutional methods for achieving political ends. After his withdrawal from Congress, he used the Muslim League platform to propagate 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.https://republicpolicy.com/present-pakistan-is-indus-land-it-will-not-break-apart/
When the failure of the non-cooperation 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 parties to serve their demands. 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. In addition, as a prerequisite for political progress, he had to convince the Congress Party of the necessity of settling the Hindu-Muslim conflict.
Jinnah’s chief purpose was to bring about such a rapprochement 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, separation of the predominantly Muslim Sindh region from the rest of the Bombay province, and introduction of reforms in the North-West Frontier Province. 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. At that time, he found himself in a bizarre position: many Muslims thought that he was too nationalistic in his policy and that Muslim interests were not safe in his hands. At the same time, 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, Muslim leaders persuaded him 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 about 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 could have done better. The Congress Party decided not to include the league in forming provincial governments, and exclusive all-Congress governments resulted. Relations between Hindus and Muslims started to deteriorate, and soon Muslim discontent became boundless.
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. 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 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.https://republicpolicy.com/fall-of-dhaka-a-failure-how-to-run-a-federation/
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 Pakistani idea was ridiculed and then mightily 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, the Congress Party and the British government had no option but to agree to partition India. Pakistan thus emerged as an independent state in 1947.
Jinnah became the first head of the new state. Faced with the severe problems of a young country, he tackled Pakistan’s issues with authority. He was not regarded as merely the governor-general. He was revered as the father of the nation. He worked hard until he was overpowered by age and disease in Karachi, the place of his birth, in 1948. He inspired the Muslims of India to struggle for a separate homeland. Unity, faith and discipline were the hallmarks of his political movement. Pakistan owes allegiance to these principles. Hence, the nation and Pakistan need the same principles of Jinnah to translate the objectives of Pakistan.https://republicpolicy.com/youth-wants-immigration-it-is-not-brain-drain-but/
