PROFILE - Celebrating birth of Jinnah, founder of Pakistan

PROFILE - Celebrating birth of Jinnah, founder of Pakistan

Over 200M Pakistanis celebrate 142nd birth anniversary of Quaid-i-Azam, the ‘greatest leader’

By Aamir Latif

KARACHI, Pakistan (AA) - Over 200 million Pakistanis are celebrating the 142nd birth anniversary of the country's founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah -- commonly known as Quaid-i-Azam or the greatest leader.

Born to a wealthy merchant family in the port city of Karachi on Dec. 25, 1876, Jinnah has remained the only undisputed leader during Pakistan’s 72 years of independence.

One can find Jinnah’s name and pictures everywhere in Pakistan -- from currency notes to streets, from universities to naval bases.


- Personal life

Jinnah received his early education from Sindh Madrassahtul Islam school and Christian Missionary Society School in Karachi. He was later offered an apprenticeship by a family friend in London in 1892, but before leaving, Jinnah’s mother arranged his marriage with his cousin Emibai.

Jinnah's mother and Emibai died within a year after his departure to London, where he soon quit the apprenticeship and joined the famous Lincoln's Inn as an aspiring barrister.

Upon earning his degree, Jinnah started practicing law as the first Muslim barrister in Bombay and served as an interim magistrate for a brief six-month period.

In 1918, Jinnah married Rattanbai -- famously known as Ruttie -- from an elite Parsi family. Ruttie embraced Islam before tying the knot with Jinnah. The marriage, however, worked only for a few years as the couple separated before Ruttie died in 1929. Jinnah only had one daughter, Dina, who was later raised by his younger sister Fatima Jinnah.

Dina married a wealthy Parsi businessman against her father’s will and did not choose to move to Pakistan after the creation of the then largest Muslim state in 1947.

Jinnah was the second child among seven siblings but except for Fatima Jinnah -- his political aide --, little is known about his other three brothers and two sisters.

Fatima Jinnah was later declared Madar-e-Millat (Mother of the Nation) by the Pakistani government. A southern slum locality in Karachi is named after Shireen Jinnah, who is believed to have been one of Jinnah's sisters.

Jinnah's religious affiliation is also disputed. Some historians assert that he belonged to the Gujarati Ismaili community, while others dubbed him a Shia. His relatives claimed that he was converted to the Sunni school of thought in his last year.

Suffering from tuberculosis, Jinnah died on Sept. 11, 1948 in Karachi, and was laid to rest in the same city.

A magnificent mausoleum, Mazar-e-Quaid, was built on his grave in 1970, where thousands throng every day to pay their respects to the great leader who envisioned a separate state for the Muslims of the sub-continent.


- Political Life

According to Stanley Wolpert, a Jinnah biographer, Quaid-i-Azam was influenced by 19th-century British liberalism based on democratic nations and progressive politics during his stay in London.

In 1906, he joined the Indian National Congress -- a party founded in 1885 in the aftermath of the 1857 revolt against the British Raj to demand a greater self-governance for the sub-continent.

Initially, Jinnah remained a great advocate of Hindu-Muslim unity and refused to join the All India Muslim League established by some Muslim leaders to protect their community's interests in Hindu-majority United India.

In 1913, he joined the Muslim League but remained associated with the Congress until 1920, when he completely disassociated himself with his first political party.

He was part of the 1916 Lucknow Pact, which set quotas for the representation of Muslims and Hindus in different provinces. However, the pact was never fully implemented.

In 1928, the then British government offered Indians to come up with their sets of constitutional changes to govern the sub-continent. Motilal Nehru, founder of the Nehru political dynasty in India, came up with the Nehru Report that demanded the formation of constituencies based on geography. Jinnah, for his part, presented his famous 14 points demanding a mandatory representation of the Muslim minority in the legislative assemblies.

Jinnah remained in Britain from 1930 to 1934 practicing as a barrister. His biographers quarrel over why he had lived for a such a long period away from the political struggle in India.

Following the persistence of several Muslim leaders, including national poet Allama Mohammad Iqbal and first Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan, Jinnah returned to India in 1934 to lead the All India Muslim League amid growing Muslim nationalism in the region.

On March 23, 1940, the famous Lahore Resolution -- later converted into the Pakistan Resolution -- was adopted at a massive gathering at the then Minto Park in Lahore under Jinnah's leadership, demanding a separate Muslim state comprising of five Muslim majority provinces.

Adoption of the Pakistan Resolution is considered the most decisive point in Jinnah's political struggle when he came up with a clear-cut idea about his future plans. The next seven years turned out to be turbulent following campaigns and counter-campaigns, one after the other.

In 1942, in the midst of World War II, the Congress launched the “Quit India Movement”, sensing that the weakening British empire could no longer get a hold of the sub-continent. In response, Jinnah launched the “Divide and Quit Movement” sticking to his guns for a separate Muslim state.

“Pakistan is a matter of life and death for us,” Jinnah declared.In December 1945, the Muslim League won all the seats reserved for Muslims in the provincial assemblies, reflecting the ever-increasing confidence of Indian Muslims on Jinnah's leadership.

In 1946, the British government resorted to sending a high-level parliamentary delegation, the Cripps Mission, to break the deadlock between the Congress and the Muslim League over future governance, but to no avail.

Finally, on June 3, 1947, Lord Mountbatten, the last British viceroy of India, announced the partition. On August 14, Pakistan became an independent state.

Jinnah was elected as the first Governor General of Pakistan but he could survive only a year after independence.

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