Muhammad Ali Jinnah Biography

Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the first Governor-General of Pakistan and a key political leader of the All India Muslim League. In Pakistan, he is known as Quaid-e-Azam ("Great Leader") and Baba-e-Qaum ("Father of the Nation"). In Pakistan, the anniversaries of his birth and death are celebrated as national holidays.

Jinnah rose to prominence as a proponent of Hindu-Muslim unity in the Indian National Congress. He was a significant player in the All India Home Rule League, helping to establish the 1916 Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the Muslim League. Jinnah left the Congress due to disagreements with Mahatma Gandhi. He then became the leader of the Muslim League and submitted a fourteen-point constitutional reform plan to protect Muslims' political rights in an independent India. Jinnah spent many years in London when his attempts failed, due to a lack of unity within the League.

Jinnah was encouraged by other Muslim leaders to return to India in 1934 to reform the League. After failing to form alliances with Congress, Jinnah endorsed the Lahore Resolution's goal of creating a separate state for Muslims. In the 1946 elections, the League gained the most Muslim seats, and Jinnah initiated the Direct Action campaign of strikes and rallies to establish "Pakistan," which devolved into sectarian violence across India by those opposed to division. After the Congress-League alliance failed to manage the country, both parties, as well as the British, agreed to split. Jinnah spearheaded efforts to rehabilitate millions of refugees and to frame national policies on international affairs, security, and economic development as the Governor-General of Pakistan. In Pakistan, Jinnah's name is treasured, but his political, social, and religious ideals are overlooked.

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Information About Md Ali Jinnah

Muhammad Ali Jinnah birthday: 25 December 1876

Muhammad Ali Jinnah death date: 11 September 1948

Muhammad Ali Jinnah father’s name: Jinnahbhai Poonja

Early Life and Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s Education

Jinnah was born in Wazir Mansion in Karachi, Sindh, as Mahomedali Jinnahbhai (now in Pakistan). His birth date is given as October 20, 1875, in the earliest records of his school register, however, Sarojini Naidu, the author of Jinnah's first biography, cites the date as December 25, 1876. Jinnah was the eldest of seven children born to Jinnahbhai Poonja (1857–1901), a wealthy Gujarati trader who immigrated to Sindh from Kathiawar in Gujarat. His family belonged to the Shi'a Khoja sect of Islam. Jinnah had a tumultuous journey at several different institutions before settling down at Karachi's Christian Missionary Society High School.

Jinnah started to work for Graham's Shipping and Trading Company in London in 1887. He had been married to Emibai, a distant relative who was perhaps 14 or 16 years old at the time of their marriage, but she died not long after he arrived in London. Around the same time, his mother passed away. Jinnah left his work in 1894 to study law at Lincoln's Inn, where he graduated in 1896. Jinnah began to get involved in politics during this period. Jinnah, a supporter of Indian politicians Dadabhai Naoroji and Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, worked on Naoroji's bid for a seat in the British Parliament alongside other Indian students.

Jinnah resented British officials' arrogance and discrimination towards Indians as he developed predominantly constitutionalist views on Indian self-government.

Jinnah was put under a lot of stress when his father's business failed. He settled in Bombay and became a renowned lawyer, most known for his expert handling of the "Caucus Case." In Malabar Hill, Jinnah erected a house that became known as Jinnah House. He was not a devout Muslim, and he dressed in European-style clothing throughout his life, speaking English rather than Gujarati. In 1905, Indian leader Bal Gangadhar Tilak hired him as a defence attorney for his sedition trial due to his reputation as a good lawyer. Although Jinnah successfully argued that an Indian's quest for freedom and self-government in his own nation was not sedition, Tilak was sentenced to a lengthy prison sentence.

Early Political Career

Jinnah joined the Indian National Congress, India's main political organisation, in 1896. Jinnah, like the rest of the Congress at the time, opposed total independence, believing that British effects on education, law, culture, and industry were good for India. Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a moderate politician, became Jinnah's role model, with Jinnah declaring his desire to become the "Muslim Gokhale." He quickly gained a reputation as the best spokesman for Hindu-Muslim unity. Jinnah was elected to the Imperial Legislative Council's sixty-member Imperial Legislative Council on January 25, 1910.

Despite this, Jinnah was a key figure in the passage of the Child Marriages Restraint Act, the legalisation of Muslim wakf (religious endowments), and his appointment to the Sandhurst committee, which assisted in the establishment of the Indian Military Academy at Dehra Dun.

Jinnah had initially refused to join the All India Muslim League, which had been created in 1906 because he considered it to be excessively communal. He eventually joined the league in 1913 and was elected president during the Lucknow session in 1916. Jinnah arranged for the Congress and the League to sign the Lucknow Pact in 1916, bringing them together on most matters of self-government and presenting a united face to the British.

Jinnah was also instrumental in the establishment of the All India Home Rule League in 1916. Jinnah, along with political heavyweights Annie Besant and Lokmanya Tilak, requested that India be granted "home rule," the status of a self-governing dominion within the Empire, akin to Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. He was the president of the Bombay Presidency chapter of the League.

Fourteen Points and "Exile"

With the ascension of Mohandas Gandhi in 1918, Jinnah's issues with Congress began. Gandhi advocated nonviolent civil disobedience as the best way to achieve Swaraj (independence, or self-rule) for all Indians. Jinnah disagreed, claiming that the only way to achieve independence was via constitutional warfare. Gandhi's support for the Khilafat campaign, which Jinnah perceived as an endorsement of religious zealotry, was denounced by Jinnah. 

Jinnah withdrew from the Congress in 1920, claiming that Gandhi's strategy of mass struggle would cause tensions between Hindus and Muslims, as well as inside the two populations. Jinnah got pulled into a fight between a pro-Congress section and a pro-British League faction after becoming president of the Muslim League.

During the campaign against the all-British Simon Commission, Jinnah initiated negotiations with Muslim and Hindu leaders on the idea of a future constitution in 1927. For the time being, the League preferred separate electorates, whilst the Nehru Report advocated for united electorates. Jinnah was an outspoken opponent of separate electorates, but he crafted compromises and demands that he believed would please both parties. These became known as Mr Jinnah's fourteen points. The Congress and other major parties, however, rejected them.

Leader of the Muslim League

The Aga Khan, Choudhary Rahmat Ali, and Sir Muhammad Iqbal were among the prominent Muslim leaders who tried to persuade Jinnah to return to India and lead the newly reconstituted Muslim League. In 1934, Jinnah returned to the party and began to reorganise it, with the help of Liaquat Ali Khan, who would become his right-hand man. The League emerged as a competent party in the 1937 elections, obtaining a considerable number of seats among Muslim voters, but lost in Muslim-majority Punjab, Sindh, and the Northwest Frontier Province.

Jinnah proposed a partnership with the Congress in which both parties would battle the British together, but the Congress would have to share power, accept separate electorates, and recognise the League as India's Muslim representative. The Congress, which claimed to represent all Indians, rejected the last two terms.

After failing to engage with the Congress, Jinnah, who had supported separate electorates and the League's sole claim to represent Muslims, became convinced that Muslims needed their own state to preserve their rights. Jinnah came to feel that Muslims and Hindus were two separate countries with irreconcilable divides, which he called the Two-Nation Theory.

Jinnah predicted that a unified India would result in Muslims being marginalised and, eventually, civil conflict between Hindus and Muslims. This shift in perspective may have occurred as a result of his correspondence with Iqbal, a close friend of Jinnah. The Pakistan resolution was adopted as the party's principal purpose at the session in Lahore in 1940. The Congress flatly rejected the resolution, and many Muslim leaders, including Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Syed Ab'ul Ala Maududi, and the Jamaat-e-Islami, slammed it. In an attempted assassination on July 26, 1943, a member of the radical Khaksars stabbed and injured Jinnah.

Founding Pakistan

The Congress won the majority of elected seats and Hindu electorate seats in the 1946 elections for the Constituent Assembly of India, but the League gained a strong majority of Muslim electorate seats. On May 16, 1946, the British Cabinet Mission to India issued a plan proposing for a united India made up of relatively autonomous provinces and "groups" of provinces based on religion. A second plan, unveiled on June 16, proposed partitioning India along religious lines, with princely states having the option of joining a dominion of their choice or declaring independence.

Fearing India's fragmentation, the Congress slammed the May 16th suggestion and rejected the June 16th proposal. Jinnah got the League's approval for both ideas, understanding that power would only go to the party that backed them. Congress approved the May 16th plan after much debate and against Gandhi's caution that both ideas were harmful while denouncing the grouping principle. Jinnah denounced this as "dishonesty," charged the British negotiators with "treachery," and the League's ratification of both schemes was withdrawn. The League boycotted the assembly, handing power to Congress but denying it credibility in the view of many Muslims.

The League was sworn in as the provisional government at a meeting in London in December 1946, but Jinnah refused to take office. The League entered government having rejected both schemes and was allowed to choose an equal number of ministers despite being the minority party, which was regarded as a big triumph for Jinnah. Because the alliance was unable to function, Congress began to believe that partition was the only way to avert political instability and possible civil war. In late 1946, Congress consented to the religious partition of Punjab and Bengal.

Lord Mountbatten, the new viceroy, and V. P. Menon, an Indian civil official, suggested a plan to construct a Muslim dominion in West Punjab, East Bengal, Baluchistan, and Sindh. The measure was passed by Congress after a contentious and passionate discussion.

Governor - General

Muhammad Ali Jinnah, together with Liaquat Ali Khan and Abdur Rab Nishtar, represented the League in the Partition Council, which was formed to distribute public assets between India and Pakistan. The new state's constituent legislature was made up of lawmakers from the provinces that would become Pakistan, while British India's military was separated into Muslim and non-Muslim units and officers. Jinnah's courtship of the princes of Jodhpur, Bhopal, and Indore to join Pakistan enraged Indian authorities because these princely realms were not physically associated with Pakistan and each had a Hindu-majority population.

Jinnah was the most popular and prominent politician because of his participation in the formation of the state. He was instrumental in the protection of minorities rights, the establishment of colleges, military institutions, and Pakistan's financial policies. Jinnah stated during his first visit to East Pakistan that Urdu should be the only national language, a position that the Bengali people of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) fiercely rejected because they had always spoken Bangla (Bengali). He also worked to reach an agreement with India to resolve asset division disputes.

Death

Jinnah had tuberculosis during the 1940s, and only his sister and a few others close to him were aware of his illness. Jinnah's health began to deteriorate in 1948, exacerbated by the enormous burden that had fallen upon him as a result of Pakistan's formation. He spent many months at his official retreat in Ziarat, attempting to recover, but died on September 11, 1948, from a combination of tuberculosis and lung cancer. His funeral was followed by the erection of a huge mausoleum in Karachi called Mazar-e-Quaid, which hosts official and military rituals on major occasions.