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Ruttie’s suicide would be hidden for many years and only those in the Jinnahs’ inner circle were told the truth. Yet as Sarojini Naidu wrote to her daughter Padmaja:
Poor little Ruttie had taken an overdraught of veronal … But, darling you realize of course that this is not the official version … Poor mad little suffering child. Maybe [now] she’ll find the peace that she was denied – or denied herself on earth.
Jinnah’s friend Dwarkadas sat next to him at Ruttie’s funeral, and he later described the scene.
Never have I found a man so sad and bitter. He screamed his heart out … Something I saw had snapped in him. The death of his wife was not just a sad event, nor just something to be grieved over, but he took it, this act of God, as a failure and a personal defeat in his life.75
With Ruttie gone, Jinnah found solace in his still-nameless daughter, who soon took the name Dina. As a single father, he made her his primary project, moving to London and enrolling her at a new school in Sussex. By the time he returned to India, he would be a changed man.
By early 1929, with Jinnah living in Europe, Gandhi once again assumed supreme leadership of Indian politics. Looking to find a way to unite everyone, Hindu or Muslim, Bengali or Burmese, behind a single cause, he announced his intention to stage a national protest against the British Salt Act which gave the British government a monopoly on the manufacture and distribution of Indian salt.
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