Jinnah Quotes

I do not believe in taking the right decision, I take a decision and make it right.

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. Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all three.

Think a hundred times before you take a decision, but once that decision is taken, stand by it as one man.

There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a great competition and rivalry between the two. There is a third power stronger than both, that of the women.

Expect the best, prepare for the worst.

Democracy is in the blood of the Muslims, who look upon complete equality of mankind, and believe in fraternity, equality, and liberty.

I have lived as plain Mr. Jinnah and I hope to die as plain Mr. Jinnah. I am very much averse to any title or honours and I will be more than happy if there was no prefix to my name.

You will have to make up for the smallness of your size by your courage and selfless devotion to duty, for it is not life that matters, but the courage, fortitude and determination you bring to it.

India is not a nation, nor a country. It is a subcontinent of nationalities.

With faith, discipline and selfless devotion to duty, there is nothing worthwhile that you cannot achieve.

No nation can rise to the height of glory unless your women are side by side with you. We are victims of evil customs. It is a crime against humanity that our women are shut up within the four walls of the houses as prisoners. There is no sanction anywhere for the deplorable condition in which our women have to live.

You are free; you are free to go to your temples. You are free to go to your mosques or to any other places of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste or creed—that has nothing to do with the business of the state.

Do not forget that the armed forces are the servants of the people. You do not make national policy; it is we, the civilians, who decide these issues and it is your duty to carry out these tasks with which you are entrusted.

Any idea of a United India could never have worked and in my judgment it would have led us to terrific disaster.

Islam expect every Muslim to do this duty, and if we realise our responsibility time will come soon when we shall justify ourselves worthy of a glorious past.

When Mrs. Jinnah feels cold, she will say so, and ask for a wrap herself.

The great majority of us are Muslims. We follow the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed (may peace be upon him). We are members of the brotherhood of Islam in which all are equal in rights, dignity and self-respect. Consequently, we have a special and a very deep sense of unity. But make no mistake: Pakistan is not a theocracy or anything like it.

No nation can ever be worthy of its existence that cannot take its women along with the men. No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men. There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a great competition and rivalry between the two. There is a third power stronger than both, that of the women.

I have nothing to do with this pseudo-religious approach that Gandhi is advocating.

Pakistan not only means freedom and independence but the Muslim Ideology which has to be preserved, which has come to us as a precious gift and treasure and which, we hope other will share with us.

I sincerely hope that they (relations between India and Pakistan) will be friendly and cordial. We have a great deal to do...and think that we can be of use to each other and to the world.

You have to stand guard over the development and maintenance of Islamic democracy, Islamic social justice and the equality of manhood in your own native soil.

Failure is a word unknown to me.

Come forward as servants of Islam, organize the people economically, socially, educationally and politically and I am sure that you will be a power that will be accepted by everybody.

My message to you all is of hope, courage, and confidence.

No settlement with the majority is possible as no Hindu leader speaking with any authority shows any concern or genuine desire for it.

We should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.

My message to you all is of hope, courage and confidence. Let us mobilize all our resources in a systematic and organized way and tackle the grave issues that confront us with the grim determination and discipline worthy of a great nation.

We have undoubtedly achieved Pakistan, and that too without bloody war, practically peacefully, by moral and intellectual force, and with the power of the pen, which is no less mighty than that of the sword and so our righteous cause has triumphed. Are we now going to besmear and tarnish this greatest achievement for which there is no parallel in the history of the world? Pakistan is now a fait accompli and it can never be undone, besides, it was the only just, honourable, and practical solution of the most complex constitutional problem of this great subcontinent. Let us now plan to build and reconstruct and regenerate our great nation...

with faith,discipline and selfless devotion to the duty,there is nothing worthwhile that you cannot achieve.

no struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men

Jinnah told my father", he (Ardeshir Cowasjee) said, "that each government of Pakistan would be worse than the one that preceded it.

With Zia's controversial demise in 1988, Jinnah was finally spared the false beard Zia kept pinning on the founder's otherwise clean-shaven face.

Pakistan was created by Jinnah’s will and Britain’s willingness’—not by Nehru’s wilfulness.

An enemy of today is a friend of tomorrow

Jinnah había dicho: «Ninguna lucha puede tener éxito si las mujeres no participan en ella junto a los hombres. Hay dos poderes en el mundo: uno es la espada y otro la pluma. Hay un tercer poder más fuerte que los dos, el de las mujeres».

Jinnah said, ‘No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men. There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a third power stronger than both, that of women.

thought a glass of lassi would be refreshing. In the shop I noticed that the fan was on, but turned away from both customers and the owner. I was curious and asked why it was so. The owner glared at me and said: ‘Can’t you see?’ I looked. The fan was pointed in the direction of a poster of our great leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah. I shouted, ‘Pakistan Zindabad!’ and left without the lassi. In front of a shop, a man

Jinnah to Lord Mountabatten in one of his many meetings before partition: "India has never been a true nation. It only looks that way on the map. The cows I want to eat, the Hindus stops me from killing. Every time a Hindu shakes hands with me he has to wash his hands. The only thing the Muslim has in common with Hindu is his slavery to the British.

No nation can rise to the height of glory unless your women are side by side with you.

The exigencies of maintaining the West Pakistani political, bureaucratic and military elite in power were the major reason why, after Jinnah’s death, the secular Muslim nationalist path was hurriedly abandoned.

Mountbatten was stunned by the rigidity of Jinnah's position. 'I never would have believed,' he later recalled, 'that an intelligent man, well-educated, trained in the Inns of Court, was capable of simply closing his mind

Many of the politicians in Delhi and Karachi, too, had once fought together against the British; they had social and family ties going back decades. They did not intend to militarize the border between them with pillboxes and rolls of barbed wire. They laughed at the suggestion that Punjabi farmers might one day need visas to cross from one end of the province to the other. Pakistan would be a secular, not an Islamic, state, its founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, promised: Hindus and Sikhs would be free to practice their faiths and would be treated equally under the law. India would be better off without two disgruntled corners of the subcontinent, its people were told, less

Jinnah's "Pakistan" did not entail the partition of India; rather it meant its regeneration into an union where Pakistan and Hindustan would join to stand together proudly against the hostile world without. This was no clarion call for pan-Islam; this was not pitting Muslim India against Hindustan; rather it was a secular vision of a polity where there was real political choice & safeguards, the India of Jinnah's dreams, a vision unfulfilled but noble nonetheless.

Jinnah had chosen a Hindu, Jogendar Nath Mandal, as the country’s first law minister to affirm that secular lawyers and not theologians would run Pakistan’s legal system. But many of his followers could not comprehend this nuanced conception of a state.

If Jinnah—a Western educated and, by all accounts, nonpracticing Muslim—could inspire India’s Muslims to create a state by appealing to their religious sentiment, Maulana Maududi reasoned there was scope for a body of practicing Islamists to take over that state.

The country was passing through turbulent times. British Raj was on its last legs. The World War had sucked the juice out of the British economy. Britain neither had the resources nor the will to hold on to a country the size of India. Sensing the British weakness and lack of resources to rule, different leagues of Indians sniffed different destinies in the air following the imminent exit of the British: a long stretch of Nehru Raj, Hindu Raj extending from Kashmir to Kerala not seen since Emperor Ashoka in third-century BCE before the emperor himself renounced Hinduism and turned a non-violent Buddhist, a Muslim-majority state carved out of two shoulders of India with a necklace-like corridor running through her bosom along Grand Trunk Road, balkanisation of the country with princes ruling the roost, and total chaos. From August 1946 onwards, chaos appeared to be the most likely destiny as it spurted in Bengal, Bihar, and United Provinces, ending in the carnage of minority communities at every place. The predicament of British government was how to cut their losses and run without many British casualties before the inevitable chaos spread to the whole country. The predicament of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League, was how to achieve his dream of Muslim-majority Pakistan carved out of India before his imminent demise from tuberculosis he suffered from, about which—apart from his doctor—only a handful of his closest relations and friends knew about. The predicament of Jawaharlal Nehru, the heir apparent of the Congress Party anointed by Gandhiji, was how to attain independence of the country followed by Nehru Raj while Gandhiji, a frail 77-year-old at the time, was still alive, for God only knew who would be the leader of the party once Gandhiji’s soul and his moral authority were dispatched to heaven, and Nehru couldn’t possibly leave the crucial decision in the hands of a God he didn’t particularly believe in. Time was of the essence to all the three.

Taking the logic of Jinnah's demand to its extreme, Congress now offered him a 'Pakistan' stripped of the Punjab's eastern divisions (Ambala and Jullundur), Assam (except Sylhet district) and western Bengal and Calcutta - the 'mutilated and moth-eaten' Pakistan which Jinnah had rejected out of hand in 1944 and again in May 1946. Such a permanent settlement would at a stroke eject Jinnah from the centre, clear the way for a strong unitary government wholly under Congress's sway, and give away only parts of provinces which past experience had shown lay outside the Congress's ken.

Under Zia’s regime life for women in Pakistan became much more restricted. Jinnah said, “No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men. There are two powers in the world; one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a third power stronger than both, that of women.” But General Zia brought in Islamic laws which reduced a woman’s evidence in court to count for only half that of a man’s. Soon our prisons were full of cases like that of a thirteen-year-old girl who was raped and became pregnant and was then sent to prison for adultery because she couldn’t produce four male witnesses to prove it was a crime.

India, created by collective leadership and built on principles of diversity and tolerance, has become a country addicted to debate; Pakistan,

The press is great power and it can do good as well as harm. If rightly conducted it can guide and instruct public opinion. Talk with journalists of Kashmir 23/4/1944

It was later disclosed that the Hindu majority Lahore was originally a part of India. But Jinnah objected to the ‘Radcliffe Line’ stating that all the four metropolitan towns of Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay and Lahore were given to India. Finally, the Indian Prime Minister Nehru was convinced by Gandhi to let go Lahore and thus, Lahore was acceded to Pakistan. The

This arrogant, conceited history strides with her head in the clouds and never looks down. She does not realize how she crushes millions of people beneath her feet. The common people. She doesn't understand that one may cut a mountain in two, but people? It's a hard task, Bhai, to cute one people in two. They bleed." A deep sigh coursed through the gathering. Master Fazal said, "History will keep on marching like this. The names of a few people will stick to her fabric. She will register those. there was Hitler, there was Mussolini, Churchill and Joseph Stalin, among others. this time the names maybe Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jinnah, Subhash Bose! But the names of the lakhs and crores who have lost their lives will be nowhere. They will be mere numbers in which all of us will be included!".

Scholars still debate whether Jinnah’s equally adamant insistence on a full Pakistan was a bluff. An influential school of thought holds that the Quaid always intended to settle for a united India, after he had extracted as much power and autonomy as he could for himself and the five “Muslim” provinces. The League leader was perfectly rational, Liaquat told Mountbatten: he understood, or could at least be persuaded to understand, how fragile and unworkable a shrunken Pakistan would be.79

For Jinnah, Partition was a constitutional way out of a political stalemate, as he saw it, and not the beginning of a permanent state of hostility between two countries or two nations. This explains his expectation that India and Pakistan would live side by side ‘like the United States and Canada’, obviously with open borders, free flow of ideas and free trade. It is also the reason why Pakistan’s Quaid-i-Azam insisted that his Malabar Hill house in Bombay be kept as it was so that he could return to the city where he lived most of his life after retiring as Governor-General of Pakistan.

Ironically, support for the idea of Pakistan was strongest in regions where Muslims were a minority and Jinnah, as well as most of his principal lieutenants, belonged to areas that would not fall in Pakistan. To emerge as chief negotiator on behalf of Muslims, Jinnah and the All-India Muslim League had to prove their support in the Muslim majority provinces. ‘Such support’, Jalal points out, ‘could not have been won by too precise a political programme since the interests of Muslims in one part of India did not suit Muslims in others.’ Jinnah invoked religion as ‘a way of giving a semblance of unity and solidity to his divided Muslim constituents’.

Jinnah began to claim that India’s Muslims represented a nation unto themselves: ‘We are different beings,’ he declared in barefaced denial of his entire upbringing, career, social relations and personal life. ‘There is nothing in life which links us together. Our names, our clothes, our foods—they are all different; our economic life, our educational idea, our treatment of women, our attitude to animals… We challenge each other at every point of the compass.’ For the Savile Row-suit-wearing, sausage-eating, whisky-swilling Jinnah to go on about clothes and food was a bit rich, as was the reference to women’s habits coming from the lips of a man who had been famously indulgent of his young wife’s scandalously ‘bold’ attire.

When one has been as near to the reality of Life (which after all is Death) as I have been dearest, one only remembers the beautiful and tender moments and all the rest becomes a half veiled mist of unrealities. Try and remember me beloved as the flower you plucked and not the flower you tread upon . . . . Darling I love you—I love you—and had I loved you just a little less I might have remained with you—only after one has created a very beautiful blossom one does not drag it through the mire. The higher you set your ideal the lower it falls. I have loved you my darling as it is given to few men to be loved. I only beseech you that the tragedy which commenced in love should also end with it. . . . Ruttie Jinnah's last letter to Jinnah

Recalling the exact words that she had heard Maulana Azad utter once, she said, ‘Today, if an angel were to descend from heaven and declare that India could get swaraj in twenty-four hours, provided it relinquished Hindu–Muslim unity, I would give up swaraj rather than give up Hindu–Muslim unity. Delay in the attainment of swaraj will be a loss to India, but if our unity is lost, it will be a loss to the entire mankind.

At the reception given by Jinnah on 14 August 1947 when Asghar Khan and Lt Col (later Maj. Gen.) Akbar Khan met Jinnah, Khan told Jinnah that they were disappointed that the higher posts in the armed forces had been given to British officers who still controlled their destiny. According to Asghar Khan, ‘the Quaid who had been listening patiently raised his finger and said, “Never forget that you are the servants of the state. You do not make policy. It is we, the people’s representatives, who decide how the country is to be run. Your job is only to obey the decision of your civilian masters.”’4 Could any politician have the temerity to say this to the army chief today? The answer has to be a resounding no. Hence, democratic governance in Pakistan instead of being a tripod of the executive, legislature and judiciary looks more like a garden umbrella in which the army is the central pole around which the other organs of the state revolve. Consequently, civilian governments in Pakistan have neither defined national security objectives nor developed strategies to implement them.

Evidently Nehru, though a nationalist at the political level, was intellectually and emotionally drawn to the Indus civilization by his regard for internationalism, secularism, art, technology and modernity. By contrast, Nehru’s political rival, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, neither visited Mohenjo-daro nor commented on the significance of the Indus civilization. Nor did Nehru’s mentor, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, India’s greatest nationalist leader. In Jinnah’s case, this silence is puzzling, given that the Indus valley lies in Pakistan and, moreover, Jinnah himself was born in Karachi, in the province of Sindh, not so far from Mohenjo-daro. In Gandhi’s case, the silence is even more puzzling. Not only was Gandhi, too, an Indus dweller, so to speak, having been born in Gujarat, in Saurashtra, but he must surely also have become aware in the 1930s of the Indus civilization as the potential origin of Hinduism, plus the astonishing revelation that it apparently functioned without resort to military violence. Yet, there is not a single comment on the Indus civilization in the one hundred large volumes of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. The nearest he comes to commenting is a touching remark recorded by the Mahatma’s secretary when the two of them visited the site of Marshall’s famous excavations at Taxila, in northern Punjab, in 1938. On being shown a pair of heavy silver ancient anklets by the curator of the Taxila archaeological museum, ‘Gandhiji with a deep sigh remarked: “Just like what my mother used to wear.

Two men are sitting in the back seat of a slow-moving car. They are both politicians. No words pass between the two. The taller man is legendarily averse to small talk, and the shorter one has nothing useful to say to his taciturn neighbor. They have known each other for decades and once were allies, but conflicting ideas and ambitions estranged them long ago. The two men in the car, both experienced lawyers, are perfectly aware of the constitutional position. In the back seat, the pair look strongly ill-matched. One is immaculately dressed in a suit of smooth-finished fabric, the other wears coarse khadi cloth. They share, perhaps, only one thing – an unnatural thinness. The two most recognizable men in India dominate the stage of national politics and are looked up to by millions as leaders, spokesmen and exemplars. They possess many strengths that later generations will come to praise and envy. The taller one is Mohammad Ali Jinnah, life-president All India Muslim League. And the shorter one is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi”. (Jinnah Vs. Gandhi by Roderick Matthews)

In any case, Jinnah died within a year of independence, leaving his successors divided, or confused, about whether to take their cue from his independence eve call to keep religion out of politics or to build on the religious sentiment generated during the political bargaining for Pakistan.

A deep sigh coursed through the gathering. Master Fazal said, 'History will keep on marching like this. The names of a few people will stick to her fabric. She will register those. there was Hitler, there was Mussolini, Churchill and Joseph Stalin, among others. this time the names maybe Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Jinnah, Subhash Bose! But the names of the lakhs and crores who have lost their lives will be nowhere. They will be mere numbers in which all of us will be included!

The Unionist construct of “Muslim interest” that was eventually incorporated in the Government of India Act of 1935 was a rude shock for minority- province Muslims, accustomed as they were to riding on the coattails of their coreligionists in the majority provinces. The revival of the AIML in 1934 with Jinnah at the helm was a direct result of minority- province Muslim dissatisfaction with the new constitutional arrangements.

Jinnah, the constitutionalist, with an eye on the all- India stage, was on the horns of a dilemma. Much has been made of the transformation of this secular and Westernized lawyer after 1940. Yet Jinnah’s recourse to Islam was a product of political necessity— the need to win the support of a community that was a distinctive category in official and popular parlance but with no prior history of organizing on a single platform. He could not dilate on his real political objectives because what could rouse Muslims in the minority provinces would put off Muslims where they were in a majority. A populist program to mobilize the Muslim rural masses was out of the question. It would infuriate the landed men who called the shots in provincial politics. This is where recourse to Islam made sense to a politician and a party with neither a populist past nor a populist present. Both politician and party needed to steal the populist march on their rivals.

This tribal movement into Kashmir was criminal folly. And it must have been well organized. Mr Jinnah, Lord Mountbatten assured me, was waiting at Abbottabad, ready to drive in triumph to Srinagar if it succeeded. It was a thoroughly evil affair. By contrast, India’s policy towards Kashmir, and the Princely States generally, had throughout been ‘impeccable’.

If Jinnah is regarded as the father of Pakistan, Churchill must qualify as its uncle; and, therefore, as a pivotal figure in the resurgence of political Islam.

Dewan had even negotiated an agreement with Jinnah ‘for the supply of foodstuffs from Pakistan’ and ‘it had already been agreed to exchange representatives between Travancore and Pakistan. He would also send representatives to other countries, for example Turkey.

The second trial for sedition was in 1908 before Justice D. D. Davar, who had been his counsel in the first trial, and a jury of which seven Europeans returned a verdict of guilty while the two Indians, both Parsis, returned a verdict of not guilty. Justice Davar sentenced Tilak to six years’ transportation. At his third and last trial for sedition in 1916, he was successfully defended by Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Tilak had been ordered to execute a bond for Rs 20,000 ‘for good behaviour’ for ‘disseminating seditious matter’. Justices Batchelor and Shah quashed the order.

If there is not sufficient power, create that power.

Jinnah proved obdurate: he was determined to obtain Pakistan. The Muslim League leader declared 16 August 1946 as ‘Direct Action Day’ to drive home this demand. Thousands of Muslim Leaguers took to the streets in an orgy of violence, looting and mayhem, and 16,000 innocents were killed in the resulting clashes, particularly in Calcutta.

The Empire seemed to be giving a veto on India’s political advance to Jinnah, the princes and Ambedkar.

After Congress ministries resigned across the land, the parties led by Jinnah, Ambedkar and Ramasami jointly observed 22 December 1939 as Deliverance Day.

Jinnah was not tempted. ‘India is not a nation’, he commented. ‘It is a subcontinent composed of nationalities.’ More than willing to fight the Congress, henceforth, he would fight even more the notion of one India and seek allies in that fight.

When you [the Congress] talk of democracy, you are thoroughly dish o nest . 'wben you talk of democracy you mean Hindu raj, to dominate over the Muslims , a totally different nation, different in culture, different in everything. You yourself are working for Hindu nationalism and Hindu raj.

Ladies and Gentlemen , we learned democrary 1,300 years ago. It is in our blood and it is as far away from the Hindu society as are the Arctic regions. You tell us that we are not democratic. It is we(Muslims), who have learned the lesson of equality and brotherhood of man . Among you(Hindus) one caste will not take a cup of water from another . Is this democracy? Is this honesty? We are for democrary. But not the democrary of your conception which will turn the whole of India into a Gandhi Ashram, or one society and nation will by this permanent majority destroy another nation or society in permanent minority and all that is dear to the minority.

When you [the Congress] talk of democracy, you are thoroughly dishonest . When you talk of democracy you mean Hindu raj, to dominate over the Muslims, a totally different nation, different in culture, different in everything. You yourself are working for Hindu nationalism and Hindu raj.

US-centered Pakistan's foreign policy by its undemocratic figures caused irreparable damage and the collapse of independent international relations that resulted in even the fall of Dhaka. The US leadership always betrayed Pakistan and left it alone in difficult times. Despite that, such puppet characters are still active in all institutions of the broken and failed state without shame and regret. The state of Pakistan has yet to regain freedom and liberty; indeed, it was a dream of Iqbal and the two-nation theory of Jinnah. Unfortunately, Pakistan has faced the traitorous ones of uniform since then; Pakistan can still unquestionably be a stable country with a neutral foreign policy and peaceful reciprocal relations with neighbors rather than a one-sided strategy.

If Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, known as Mahatma Gandhi, would not have started India's independence campaign against British rule; be sure, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, known as Quad-e-Azam, could never succeed the independence of Pakistan; Jinnah was the hero of Pakistan. However, Gandhi was not only the hero of India; he was also the hero of East and West Pakistan as well. It is undoubtedly a reality that no one realizes or accepts.

If Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, known as Mahatma Gandhi, would not start India's independence campaign against British rule; be sure, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, known as Quad-e-Azam, could never succeed the independence of Pakistan; Jinnah was the hero of Pakistan. However, Gandhi was not only the hero of India; he was also the hero of East and West Pakistan as well. It is undoubtedly a reality that no one realizes or accepts.

N.C. Chatterjee, one of Savarkar’s close colleagues in the Mahasabha, vented his frustration in a letter to Moonje: The entire Hindu population is with Gandhiji and his movement and if anybody wants to oppose it, he will be absolutely finished and hounded out of public life. The unfortunate statement of Veer Savarkar [opposing Quit India] made our position rather difficult in Bengal. It is rather amusing to find that Mr. Jinnah wants the Mussalmans not to join the Congress movement and Mr. Savarkar wants the Hindus not to join the same. Even when the Congress movement has made a great stir and it shows that it has got thousands of adherents.

My father met Morarji. It was a stormy meeting. Morarji said angrily, ‘You Sindhi Hindus have no reason to leave your homeland and come as refugees [to] India. We have full assurances [from] Jinnah that the minorities will be well treated in Sindh. There may have been provocations but you should have had the courage to resist these attacks. You must all go back. There is no place for you here.

Second, Jinnah died an exhausted man, unable to even get a functioning ambulance to take him from the airport in Karachi to his residence. According to M.J. Akbar, Jinnah’s personal physician in his last days, Col Ilahi Baksh, has recorded that once Jinnah, on his deathbed, lost his cool while speaking to Liaquat Ali, who had come to see him. Jinnah described Pakistan as ‘the biggest blunder of my life’. The story was printed in Peshawar’s Frontier Post in November 1987 and quotes Jinnah as saying, ‘If now I get an opportunity I will go to Delhi and tell Jawaharlal to forget about the follies of the past and become friends again.’56 According to Sarila if Col Elahi Baksh, the doctor who attended on Jinnah during the last phase of his illness in August–September 1948 at Ziarat near Quetta, is to be believed, he heard his patient say: ‘I have made it [Pakistan] but I am convinced that I have committed the greatest blunder of my life.’ And, around the same period, Liaquat Ali Khan, upon emerging one day from the sick man’s room after receiving a tongue-lashing, was heard to murmur: ‘The old man has now discovered his mistake.’57 To conclude, the

One popular perception of Gandhi is that of a mystic dreamer who blithely wandered into the harsh world of politics, in which he strove to remain fastidiously holy and which he ultimately failed to understand. This

Bombay,

These letters are dated 21 January and 24 July 1897. The contents are unknown, but, from what we otherwise know of the two men’s lives, some speculation may be in order. Could Jinnah’s first letter have been a message of support on hearing of the brutal attack on Gandhi at the Point in Durban? Or might both letters have been explorations of interest in a possible career in South Africa? In 1896, Jinnah returned from London to his home town, Karachi. Soon afterwards, he moved to Bombay. There, like Gandhi some years previously, he found it hard to establish an independent law practice. We know that Gandhi was keen to bring some barristers to Natal to help him, hence his invitation to the Parsi lawyer trained in London, F. S. Taleyarkhan. Jinnah may very well have known Taleyarkhan in London and Bombay, and thus have known of the opportunities across the ocean. Did he approach Gandhi to find out how to proceed? Or did Gandhi ask him in the first place? Jinnah was a Gujarati Muslim, in terms of personal and professional background extremely well qualified to work as a lawyer among the Indians of Natal. That Jinnah wrote to Gandhi to commiserate on his injuries is plausible; that he wrote to ask whether they could forge a legal partnership together in South Africa is not entirely impossible. But we must speculate no more. All we now know is that, a full fifty years before Partition and the independence of India and Pakistan, the respective ‘Fathers’ of those nations were in correspondence.

Did he approach Gandhi to find out how to proceed? Or did Gandhi ask him in the first place? Jinnah was a Gujarati Muslim, in terms of personal and professional background extremely well qualified to work as a lawyer among the Indians of Natal. That Jinnah wrote to Gandhi to commiserate on his injuries is plausible; that he wrote to ask whether they could forge a legal partnership together in South Africa is not entirely impossible. But we must speculate no more. All we now know is that, a full fifty years before Partition and the independence of India and Pakistan, the respective ‘Fathers’ of those nations were in correspondence.

The time for candid happiness was over. Laila had taken everything with her to her tomb. He had thought life was impossible without her, and had been prepared to join her if he hadn’t understood that such an act would have killed Naseem. No more tragedies! The neighbourhood had had its fair share of those. Women were battered, mistreated and abandoned every day. That deceitful Jinnah, proclaiming loud and clear that in coming to Pakistan and leaving discrimination and contempt behind in India, Muslims would be free and respected. Yet what had these women seen but the same discrimination, the same contempt, but this time in the sacred name of Islam which went even further to proclaim prostitution as the worst damnation?

Fighting violence with violence is like fighting wrong with more wrong, thus compounding the evil without introducing the good. For Gandhi, evil could only be conquered by superior virtue, not superior force. All

A Shia Muslim who grew up in India, Muhammad Ali Jinnah was

Before either men could commence a deliberation over who knew more of the hotel’s history, Coraline injected, “India was writing the last chapters of its saga of independence when The Imperial opened its doors in the 1930s.” She paused before proceeding, “Pandit Nehru, Mahatama Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Lord Mountbatten met under congenial conditions to discuss the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan on the very ground we stand on. Adding to that, the Nehru family also had

Before either men could commence a deliberation over who knew more of the hotel’s history, Coraline injected, “India was writing the last chapters of its saga of independence when The Imperial opened its doors in the 1930s.” She paused before proceeding, “Pandit Nehru, Mahatama Gandhi, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Lord Mountbatten met under congenial conditions to discuss the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan on the very ground we stand on. Adding to that, the Nehru family also had a permanent suite within the walls of this ‘Maiden of the East.’” She let out a discreet chuckle that I think only I caught. Both men stared at the female, not knowing how to respond. Before either one of them could opine, she continued, “If only walls could speak. Here indeed is a repository of fascinating anecdotal material for authors of romantic and detective fiction. It was here, at this very site, that one could clink glasses for the Royals to their war efforts, urge Gandhi to quit the India movement, or dance to the strains of Blue Danube, belly dance like a belle from Beirut or be serenaded by an orchestra from London.” The group of us stared at the big sister, wondering how in the world she knew so much about The Imperial. My teacher and Jabril pressed for affirmation. Instead, she vociferated, “Notably, The Imperial has the largest collection on display of land war gallantry awards in India and among its neighbouring countries such as Afghanistan, Burma, Bhutan and China. It also holds a sizeable record of orders and decorations bestowed by the British Royalties to the Emperor of India as an honour to the local Maharajas, Sultans and ruling Princes from the various Indian states.” While Narnia’s chaperone continued her historical spiel, the recruit pulled me aside and whispered amusingly, “Although everything my big sister said is true, she’s having fun with you guys. Her information is from the hotel’s brochure in the guest rooms.” I quipped. “Why didn’t you tell the rest of our group? I thought she was an expert in India’s history!” She gave me a wet kiss and said saucily, “I’m telling you because I like you.” Stunned by her raciness, I was speechless. I couldn’t decide whether to tell her there and then that I was gay – but at that very moment, Andy appeared from around the corner. “Where did you two disappear to?” he inquired. When Narnia was out of earshot, I muttered knowingly to my BB, “I’ll tell you later.”, as we continued the art tour browsing portraitures of India’s Princely Rulers of yore.

Jinnah had, among other things, criticized the singing in government schools of the patriotic hymn ‘Vande Mataram’. Composed by the great Bengali writer Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, the poem invoked Hindu temples, praised the Hindu goddess Durga, and spoke of seventy million Indians, each carrying a sword, ready to defend their motherland against invaders, who could be interpreted as being the British, or Muslims, or both. ‘Vande Mataram’ first became popular during the swadeshi movement of1905–07. The revolutionary Aurobindo Ghose named his political journal after it. Rabindranath Tagore was among the first to set it to music. His version was sung by his niece Saraladevi Chaudhurani at the Banaras Congress of 1905. The same year, the Tamil poet Subramania Bharati rendered it into his language. In Bengali and Tamil, Kannada and Telugu, Hindi and Gujarati, the song had long been sung at nationalist meetings and processions. After the Congress governments took power in 1937, the song was sometimes sung at official functions. The Muslim League objected vigorously. One of its legislators called it ‘anti-Muslim’, another, ‘an insult to Islam’. Jinnah himself claimed the song was ‘not only idolatrous but in its origins and substance [was] a hymn to spread hatred for the Musalmans’. Nationalists in Bengal were adamant that the song was not aimed at Muslims.The prominent Calcutta Congressman Subhas Chandra Bose wrote to Gandhi that ‘the province (or at least the Hindu portion of it) is greatly perturbed over the controversy raised in certain Muslim circles over the song “Bande Mataram”. As far as I can judge, all shades of Hindu opinion are unanimous in opposing any attempts to ban the song in Congress meetings and conferences.’ Bose himself thought that ‘we should think a hundred times before we take any steps in the direction of banning the song’. The social worker Satis Dasgupta told Gandhi that ‘Vande Mataram’ was ‘out and out a patriotic song—a song in which all the children of the mother[land] can participate, be they Hindu or Mussalman’. It did use Hindu images, but such imagery was common in Bengal, where even Muslim poets like Nazrul Islam often referred to Hindu gods and legends. ‘Vande Mataram’, argued Dasgupta, was ‘never a provincial cry and never surely a communal cry’. Faced with Jinnah’s complaints on the one side and this defence by Bengali patriots on the other, Gandhi suggested a compromise: that Congress governments should have only the first two verses sung. These evoked the motherland without specifying any religious identity. But this concession made many Bengalis ‘sore at heart’; they wanted the whole song sung. On the other side, Muslims were not satisfied either; for, the ascription of a mother-like status to India was dangerously close to idol worship.

Now, in Lucknow, itself a great centre of Islamic learning and culture, the president of the Muslim League accused ‘the present leadership of the Congress’ of ‘alienating the Mussalmans of India more and more by pursuing a policy which is exclusively Hindu’. Jinnah claimed that in the six provinces where the Congress was in power, Gandhi’s party had ‘by their words, deeds and programmes shown that the Mussalmans cannot expect any justice or fair play at their hands’. When a report of this speech reached Gandhi in Segaon, he was moved to protest. The ‘whole of your speech’, he wrote to Jinnah, ‘is a declaration of war’. He added: ‘Only it takes two to make a quarrel. You won’t find me one, even if I cannot become a peace-maker'.

As the Chronicle had predicted, Ambedkar spoke out against the Gandhi–Jinnah talks at the meeting of his followers in Madras. ‘The Hindu–Moslem problem,’ he remarked here, ‘was not the only one confronting the country. Christians, Scheduled Castes and other minorities were involved . . .’ He warned Gandhi not to ‘give more to Jinnah’ at the expense of the Scheduled Castes. He then launched a furious broadside against Gandhi, calling him ‘a man who has no vision, who has no knowledge, and who has no judgment, a man who has been a failure all his life . . .’ This prompted a puzzled editorial in a local newspaper. ‘Dr Ambedkar’s is undoubtedly one of the best causes in the world today', remarked the Indian Express. ‘Why is he then so keen on spoiling it by intemperate attacks on others, who have at least as much claim as he has to their own viewpoints?’.

Jawaharlal and Jinnah had announced the founding of two new kinds of democracies. Democracy, which is the last stage of human progress.

Some speculate that Muslim nationalism was intended by its leaders and in particular the country’s founding father, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, as a movement whose goals were open-ended enough to allow for the possibility of a new political relationship between India’s Hindu majority and the Muslim minority. Such a relationship, they claim, might even have precluded the creation of Pakistan, had the Indian National Congress been willing to compromise with the Muslim League. A reprise of arguments familiar from colonial times, this theory was known in a somewhat cruder form in Jinnah’s own day, with Pakistan seen by some of its supporters as well as detractors to be a “bargaining counter” that the Congress finally made into a reality—whether by design or accident it is difficult to tell. Indeed the focus of this group of historians on hidden motives and intentions resolves Pakistan’s history into nothing more than a failed conspiracy—which is only appropriate given the conspiratorial nature of political thought in that country.

Gandhi. Jinnah. Patel. Three men from Gujarat who had worked together as one team at one time for one goal, Now the British were leaving, goal achieved, but the team had fractured.

On behalf of the Muslim League, Jinnah also advised the ratings to surrender. Hence, Patel, helped incongruously by Jinnah, managed to persuade the ratings to surrender on 23 February, giving an assurance that national parties would prevent any victimization – a promise he had no authority to give, nor the power to deliver upon. Nor was it kept.