The Life of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah
Ishak Soomro
Muhammad Ali Jinnah was born in Karachi on December 25, 1876. He died on September 11, 1948, at the age of 72. Muhammad Ali belonged to the Ismaili Khwaja family. The ancestors of two great leaders of the subcontinent, Jinnah and Gandhi, were from the Indian state of Gujarat. Both were native Gujarati speakers and both passed the Bar exam in London.
Jinnah's father was Poonja Bhai Jinnah. The family migrated to Karachi, a rapidly developing port city in Sindh. Jinnah was the first of seven children born to Poonja Bhai. Jinnah had four sisters, Rehmat, Maryam, Fatima and Shireen, and two brothers, Ahmed Ali and Banda Ali.
Jinnah was affectionately called "Mammad" at home. When Mammad was 6 years old, his father hired a private tutor to teach him the alphabet and arithmetic. Muhammad Ali was married at the age of 16 with his mother's consent. However, Muhammad Ali was not in favor of getting married so early. But obeying his parents, he got married. He was only 14 years old at the time of marriage.
Fatima Jinnah said that her brother wore a long necklace from head to toe on his wedding day, and was taken in a procession from his grandfather's house to the bride's house. Jinnah had never seen his wife before the wedding. A few days after the wedding, A few days after their marriage, Jinnah left his wife with her parents in Karachi and went to England to study law. When he passed the Bar exam in 1893 at the young age of 20 and returned to Karachi, his mother and wife had died.
The story of Jinnah's second marriage after the death of his first wife is very interesting. It goes like this: Jinnah fell in love with Sir Dinshaw's 16-year-old daughter Ratti during his two-month summer vacation in Darjeeling. Where he was staying with Dinshaw as a guest. Ratti's parents were not happy with their daughter's marriage to Jinnah. At that time Ratti was only 16 years old. Which was not the legal age for marriage. Ratti's parents also approached the court to stop this marriage and the court issued a restraining order. Under which Ratti and Jinnah were Under a ban was imposed on the meeting between Ratti and Jinnah. But as soon as Ratti turned 18, she left her father's house and joined Jinnah. She married Jinnah on 19 April 1918 and converted to Islam three days before the wedding. Jinnah and Ratti's marriage lasted only a decade and they divorced. The reason for the divorce was the age difference and the mismatch in temperament. After the divorce, Ratti became seriously ill and was admitted to a nursing home in Paris, but her condition did not improve and Ratti Jinnah died on her birthday, 20 April 1929.
After Rati's death, Jinnah's mood became harsh and depressed. He began to consider this separation as a personal defeat in life. He could not forget this shock till his death.
The closeness between Jinnah and Gandhi can be gauged from the fact that in 1917, when Jinnah got up to address the provincial political conference of the Gujarat Sabha, his "homo-speaker" Gandhi, who was present there, requested him to speak in Gujarati.
Jinnah, accepting Gandhi's words, began his speech by saying that he was speaking Gujarati at Gandhi's request. After that, Jinnah spoke in English for 40 minutes. Those who knew Jinnah's personality said that Jinnah had a soft heart like a woman and an innocent personality like a child. He was a practical and rational man.
In 1901, Mr. Charles asked Jinnah to work in his bench and offered him a monthly salary of Rs. 1500, which he refused and said that the day is not far when I will be able to earn Rs. 1500 daily.
Jinnah also came to Sukkur to fight the case of illegal arrest of Pir Pagara. The case was tried in the special court of Sukkur. During the trial, Jinnah stayed in the Government Circuit House Sukkur. Which was the best accommodation in Sukkur at that time. From where the view of the Indus River was also visible. In this case, Pir Pagara was convicted.
Jinnah took Rs. 500 daily for this case. Which was very high in those days. The book, published from Calcutta in 1946, lists the names of famous companies in India and their major shareholders. Jinnah's name was included in three companies. These included Tata Steel, Bombay Dyeing, and the Tramway Company. He had invested Rs 1.4 million in these three companies. Jinnah did not believe in business and entertainment like gambling or trying his luck, but he invested his capital after much deliberation. At the time of his death, Jinnah's personal assets were worth millions. Jinnah's will, which was found after his death, revealed that he had also donated Rs 600,000 to Aligarh University.
Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah's close friend Abul Hasan Isfahani wrote in his book (The Quaid as I Knew Him) that Quaid-e-Azam had previously belonged to the Ismaili sect. He was also an activist of the Khwaja Tanzeem and regularly donated to it. In 1898, he submitted an affidavit in the Bombay Magistrate's Court stating that he and his sister Fatima had left the Ismaili sect from that day onwards and adopted the Twelver Shia tradition.
When Quaid-e-Azam passed away, his body was bathed by Haji Kalu. He himself was a Khwaja and a Shia Twelver Imam. He was appointed to bathe the body in the Khwaja Jamaat. Two funeral prayers were offered for Quaid-e-Azam. The first prayer was offered at his house by the late Shia scholar Maulana Anis Hussain, while the second prayer was offered by Allama Shabbir Ahmed Usmani. It is also said that the ambulance carrying Jinnah's funeral was filled with grief. It is also said that the ambulance carrying Jinnah's funeral was flag (Alaam) flying.
Jinnah had contracted a dangerous disease called tuberculosis (TB). Due to which his body became thin and weak. Clothes, especially full suits, looked very loose on his body.
Jinnah was very fond of smoking. He smoked more than fifty cigarettes a day. Doctors allowed him to smoke only one cigarette a day during his illness, but Jinnah did not follow this advice and eventually the tuberculosis turned into lung cancer. During this time, he also suffered from pneumonia. Due to which he was shifted from Baluchistan to Karachi.
Apart from the disease, the causes of Jinnah's death included incidents such as lack of oxygen gas in the ambulance and the ambulance running out of petrol at the wrong time. Apart from the aforementioned disease, the factors leading to death also raise hundreds of questions in people's minds. His sister Fatima, who took care of the founding leader of the country during his illness, says that Jinnah was so weak that in the last days of his life he did not have enough strength to even fly away the flies sitting on his body.
The lamp of life of the founder of Pakistan, a leader and a great jurist went out at 10:20 am on September 11, 1948. Jinnah's daughter Dina reached Karachi to attend her father's funeral, she had never been to Karachi before.
Dina was also married to "Navel Wadia", who was a Parsi but a Christian. Jinnah also had strong objections to this.
