“
Outside of Congress, however, Jinnah’s political career began to decline and his relationship with Ruttie deteriorated. Depressed and alone, Ruttie sought solace in Bombay’s jazz clubs while Jinnah focused on building a political base in the Muslim League – a rival political party to the Congress. But his growing emphasis on his Muslim identity only alienated Ruttie more, and one day, when she drove to meet him at the town hall, he screamed at her for packing ham sandwiches. ‘What have you done!’ he exclaimed. ‘If my voters were to learn that I am going to eat ham sandwiches for lunch, do you think I have a ghost of a chance of being elected?’29 Ruttie distanced herself from her husband after that, and instead started experimenting with drugs and spirit communication, leading friends to worry about the number of morphine needles she left scattered around her room.
With their marriage falling apart, both Jinnah and Ruttie neglected their newborn daughter, who would remain nameless for almost six years. The ‘little baby is one of the most pathetic, heart-breaking things I have ever seen,’ wrote Sarojini’s daughter Padmaja Naidu to her sister in 1921. ‘I simply cannot understand Ruttie’s attitude – I do not blame her as most people here seem to do, but whenever I remember the dazed, scared child, like some mortally hurt animal, I come near hating Ruttie in spite of my great affection for her.
”
”