Judging Jinnah

Judging Jinnah
In Quest of Jinnah: Diary, Notes, and Correspondence of Hector Bolitho
Edited by Sharif al Mujahid
Oxford University Press
Dawn, April 15, 2007

A compilation of previously unpublished portions of Jinnah: Creator of Pakistan, the Quaid-i-Azam’s first biography by Hector Bolitho. The book also includes the author’s notes, correspondence and interviews with those who knew the founder of Pakistan.

Jinnah the man was very different from the stereotyped cardboard portrait that has been fed to us over the years, writes Prof Sharif al Mujahid.

THE portrait of Jinnah that emerges from Bolitho’s interviews is rather a mixed one, with several interviewees contradicting each other. However, the bare bones of the Jinnah story, backed by solid evidence, are as follows:

Jinnah was born into a reasonably affluent family for the time, his father being engaged in profitable business. The story about his studying school texts under the light of a street lamp, current for a long while, is utter nonsense. Nanji Jafar, six years his junior, tells us that he “went to school in a carriage while the other boys walked”. Jinnah’s father gave him a cricket set while he was in school, which Jinnah gifted away to Jafar on the eve of his departure for England in 1892. Not only did Jinnah shun playing marbles, then in vogue throughout the subcontinent, but he also urged other boys in the neighbourhood to “stand-up out of the dust and play cricket”. So passionately was he possessed of this idea that he even taught other boys to play cricket, but without being a bully.

His father had the foresight and the resources to send him to England to study law, recalls Dina Wadia, Jinnah’s only child. Actually, he was sent to study business management but he developed a penchant for politics after listening to the great British Liberal stalwarts in the House of Commons during the initial months of his four-year stay (1892-96) in London, and got himself bathed in the Liberalism of Lord Morley which was then in full sway. The Liberals had come into power under Gladstone in August 1892, and as Jinnah told Dr Ashraf, “I grasped that Liberalism, which became part of my life and thrilled me very much”. That penchant, which stayed with him till the end, led him to opt for law, abandoning his initial business-training plans. This, inter alia, highlights his independence and decision-making power, even at this initial stage.

When Jinnah began his professional life in Bombay, he had three or four years of struggle without briefs, but would not give up on his predetermined ambition. By about 1900, he was, however, a success, and a member of the prestigious Orient Club in Bombay where Sir Cowasjee Jehangir met him in 1901. “He was even more pompous and independent during those lean years,” recalls Sir Cowasjee. A good many of his friends and acquaintances thought that Jinnah was “no lawyer [but] a brilliant advocate,” but Major Haji, Secretary to the Aga Khan III, dismissed this assertion, arguing that:... he was the only Mohammedan lawyer of consequence in his time. There were one or two other Muslims practicing [law] but they were insignificant. It is not fair to say that Jinnah was merely a good advocate. This opinion is held by Hindus, who will not credit a Muslim with the facility to ‘know’ law, and how to interpret law. As an advocate, Jinnah outshone his fellows. His appeal to the judge and jury was dynamic, but he certainly also knew the law.

Others have also testified that Jinnah outshone everyone else as an advocate, and they usually attribute this to his remarkable clear headedness.

One of his prime ambitions was to become the highest paid lawyer in India, and this he achieved: his daily fee in 1936 was Rs1,500, computed from the day he left Bombay to the day he returned. His stockbroker, Shantilal L. Thar, puts his fortune at Rs6-7 million in 1947 (equivalent to Rs120 million today), a fabulous sum he had earned mostly through his practice, with his investments yielding but a fraction of it.

Jinnah was a political animal from the very beginning. He talked of nothing but politics, all the time, but “with all the differences and bitterness of political life, he was never malicious. Hard may be, but never malicious,” says Sir Cowasjee. Jinnah talked of politics even with his stockbroker, but there was no bitterness in his tone and tenor. Thar recalls that “he propounded his faith in Pakistan, but without ever being bitter against the Hindus. By nature, he was not anti-Hindu ...” This aspect of his politics is confirmed by Jamshed Nusserwanjee, former Mayor of Karachi. Nor was there any “ill-feeling” between Jinnah and Gandhi, or any dislike for each other. Thar also recalls Jinnah’s estimate of the Indian princes in 1946: he extolled the late ruler of Baroda as being “head and shoulders above all the other rulers”, the late Maharaja of Mysore as a “great gentleman” the late ruler of Gondal as “all head and no heart” and the Nawab of Bhopal as having “both head and heart”. It is rather interesting (and surprising) that the Nizam, the nawabs of Rampur and Bahawalpur, the major Muslim princes, or even the Khan of Kalat, with whom he had personal relations, do not figure in his list, and that when it comes to evaluation, Jinnah’s choice cuts across the Hindu-Muslim divide. This is because, in raising the Pakistan banner, he was not launching a crusade against the Hindus as such, but proclaiming Hindus and Muslims as separate nations, so that they could acquire power in their respective demographically dominant regions. To claim substantial or absolute power for Muslims in their regions by no means entailed antagonism or enmity towards the Hindus. Unfortunately, however, this was precisely what the Congress protagonists, propagandists and publicists harped upon, ad nauseum, damning and decrying Jinnah as the arch villain in the Indian political drama.

Jinnah has often been accused of being vain, arrogant and cold. He was hard, but not harsh. What some people considered arrogance was essentially his aggressive self-confidence.

Inter alia, this also highlights his overriding sense of impartiality, attested to by Major Haji, on the basis of his personal experience. His father took him to Jinnah, in Bombay, in 1920, and said, “Make him as brilliant as you are.” Jinnah replied, “He can come and work in my chambers but he must shine with his own brilliance.” Jinnah never used his influence to gain him a favourable position. He “was impartial, and did not give favours”, recalls Haji.

Jinnah has often been accused of being vain, arrogant and cold. He was hard, but not harsh. What some people considered arrogance was essentially his aggressive self-confidence, since he believed in himself all the way. Also, as a politician he kept his distance especially with his equals, lest he should be obliged to give in on some point or another. Yet incredibly perhaps, he talked freely with his stockbroker, his physician (Dr D.K. Mehta), and even with Sir Cowasjee. Actually, one had to come close to Jinnah, both to gain his confidence and to discover his virtues, as Sir Francis Mudie, former governor of Sindh and the Punjab — who “probably knew Jinnah better than any other British Officer in India” and who was “certainly the only British civilian who knew him at all well” — found out after August 1947. “I always found him very pleasant socially ... Officially until near the end ... I found him open to reason or at least to argument. In the end I got to know that I could trust him completely”, recalls Mudie.

Nor was Jinnah cold to all. He “loved talking to people who were not Muslims”, says Thar. Mazhar Ahmad, his naval ADC, adds a new dimension: as he “grew old, he liked to have young men about [around] him. His secretaries and ADCs were all young. He came to enjoy the stimulus of young people and seldom refused to speak to them in audiences, no matter how busy he was.” Hashimi found that he “relaxed with younger people who were not directly related to him and who had no political axes to grind”; he also loved them. That is precisely what a 14-year-old Tahira Hayat Khan (later Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan), though not a Muslim Leaguer, discovered when she cycled her way to Mamdot Villa, where Jinnah was staying, sometime around 1940 and asked the chowkidar to inform Jinnah that she was there. “He was very nice to me and told me that he knew the stance of the Communist Party. I showed him a pamphlet I was carrying in which the Communist Party had declared its support for an independent country. He said we did not need to fear because he would be able to see our friends just as he was going to visit Bombay regularly ...”

According to Mudie, Jinnah was not really cold, and he gives a capital instance of the great emotional strain under which he had been living under the cold exterior:

In judging Jinnah, we must remember what he was up against. He had against him, not only the wealth and brains of the Hindus, but also nearly the whole of British officialdom and most of the Home politicians, who made the great mistake of refusing to take Pakistan seriously. Never was his position really examined ... No man who had not the iron control of himself that Jinnah had could have done what he did. But it does not follow that he was really cold. In fact no one who did not feel as Jinnah did, could have done what he did.

To this may be added Nusserwanjee’s remark: “He was emotional and affectionate, but he was unable to demonstrate it. All was control, control!”

“He kept his thoughts, his emotions, to himself,” recalls Rabbani, his Air ADC, but his gardener testified that he was always kind to servants.

Jinnah also cared for those who worked for him. When he was staying at Sir Cowasjee’s country house, K.H. Khurshid (Secretary to Jinnah, 1944-47) recalls:

Jinnah [was] worried lest I was bored. He asked, “Do you read Shakespeare?” I confessed, “Not since school”. He went into town and brought back a whole set of Shakespeare, Shelley and Keats, for me to read.

He was also loyal and faithful to friends and colleagues who stood by him through thick and thin, despite what Habibullah says. Jinnah told Ahsan, his naval ADC, in Fatima Jinnah’s presence at the Amir of Bahawalpur’s palace, in Malir:

“Nobody had faith in me, everyone thought I was mad — except Miss Jinnah”. He then paused and added, “But, of course, if she hadn’t believed in me all along she would not be sitting here now.”