A Long Way Home …

“Failure is a word unknown to me,” these were the words of Muhammad Ali Jinnah
the founder of Pakistan. His perseverance for Pakistan is described in great words. He
gave his family no significance over his work. He faced cruelty at the hands of British
and the Hindus and also suffered criticism at the hands of the radical Muslims who
accused him of being too westernized. Jinnah suffered hardships but remained steadfast
and bore difficulties to achieve his goal. His illness prevailed but he paid no heed and
continued to work for the creation of a Muslim state.

Islam gave the Muslims of India a sense of identity; dynasties like the Mughals gave
them territory; poets like Allama Iqbal gave them a sense of destiny but Jinnah's towering
stature derives from the fact that, by leading the Pakistan movement and creating the state
of Pakistan, he gave them all three. For the Pakistanis he is simply the Quaid-e-Azam or
the Great Leader. Whatever their political affiliation, they believe there is no one quite
like him.

Born on 25th December 1876 Muhammad Ali Jinnah studied at Sindh - Madarssa - tul
Islam and Christian Missionary Society High School in Karachi. After matriculation he
and was offered apprenticeship in a trading company in London. In London he left the
company and decided to study law at Lincolns Inn. After seeing the name of Muhammad
(PBUH) heading the list of ten leading magistrates of the world he decided to add
Muhammad to his Christian name of Ali Jinnah.

In 1896 he became the youngest Indian to become a barrister. His dressing and fashion
were influenced by the western culture. He soon returned to India, stayed in Mumbai and
started his practice as a lawyer. He was hired by an Indian political leader to defend him
in his trial. He became a member of the Indian National Congress. Later on he became a
member and then the leader of All India Muslim League. He continuously tried to bring
about reconciliation between the Hindus and the Muslims but was unable to do so. Later

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on frustrated with politics and disunity within the League, he returned to London to
practice law.

In the early 1930s several important visitors came to Jinnah's Hampstead home,
requesting him to return to India and lead the Muslim League. Eventually he was
persuaded to return in 1935. He led the League into the 1937 elections. Its poor showing
did not discourage him; instead, he threw himself into reorganizing it. The 1937 Muslim
League session in Lucknow was a turning point generating wide enthusiasm. In 1939,
now in his early sixties, Jinnah made his last will, appointing his sister Fatima, his close
political advisor Liaquat Ali Khan and his solicitor as joint executors and trustees of his
estate. Jinnah offered an alliance with the Congress - both bodies would face the British
together, but the Congress had to share power, accept separate electorates and accept the
League as the sole representative of the Muslims in India. The latter two terms were
unacceptable to the Congress.

Although by now called the Quaid-e-Azam, the Great Leader, Jinnah never courted
titles. He had refused a knighthood and even a doctorate from his favourite university: In
1942, when the Muslim University, Aligarh, had wished to award him an honorary
Degree of Doctor of Laws, he refused saying: “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 happy if there was no prefix to my name.”

Following the failure to work with the Congress, Jinnah, who had embraced separate
electorates and the exclusive right of the League to represent Muslims, was converted to
the idea that Muslims needed a separate state to protect their rights. Jinnah came to
believe that the Muslims and the Hindus were two distinct nations, with unbridgeable
differences - a view later known as the Two Nation Theory. Jinnah declared that a united
India would lead to the dismissal of Muslims, and eventually to a civil war between
Hindus and Muslims. This change of opinion may have occurred through his close
relations with Iqbal. In the annual session of Muslim League in Lahore in 1940, the
Pakistan Resolution was formerly adopted as the main goal of the party. The Resolution
was rejected outright by the Congress, and criticised by many Muslim leaders who

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believed that the Muslims would better benefit in a united India rather than in a different
state altogether.

In 1945- 46, the Muslim League triumphed in the General Elections. The League was
widely recognized as the third force in India along with the Congress and the British.
Even Jinnah's opponents now acknowledged him: Gandhi addressed him as Quaid-e-
Azam. The Muslim masses throughout India were now with him, seeing in him an
Islamic champion.

Jinnah's fine clothes and erect bearing helped to conceal the fact that he was in
extremely poor physical health. From 1938 onwards he was to be found complaining of
'the tremendous strain' on his 'nerves and physical endurance’. From then on he regularly
fell ill, yet that was carefully hidden from the public. He remained unwell for much of the
first half of 1945. Later in the year he admitted: 'The strain is so great that I can hardly
bear it'. His doctors ordered him to take it easy, to rest, but the struggle for Pakistan had
begun and Jinnah was running out of time.

The coalition of the Congress and the Muslim League failed, resulting in a rising
feeling within the Congress that independence of Pakistan was the only way of avoiding
political chaos and possible civil war. The Congress agreed to the division of Punjab and
Bengal along religious lines in late 1946. Lord Mountbatten who had been sent as the last
viceroy to India in 1947 proposed a plan that would create a Muslim dominion in West
Punjab, East Bengal, Baluchistan and Sindh. After heated and emotional debate, the
Congress approved the plan. The North-West Frontier Province voted to join Pakistan in
a referendum in July 1947. Jinnah asserted in a speech in Lahore on October 30, 1947
that the League had accepted independence of Pakistan because "the consequences of any
other alternative would have been too disastrous to imagine. Jinnah once said:
“There is no power on earth that can undo Pakistan.”

There were several dramatic twists and turns on the road to Pakistan, with Jinnah
trying to negotiate the best possible terms to satisfy the high expectations and emotions of

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the Muslims. Pakistan was finally conceded in the summer of 1947, with Jinnah as its
Governor-General. It was, in his words, 'moth-eaten' and 'truncated', but still the largest
Muslim nation in the world. In Karachi, its capital, as Governor-General, Jinnah
delivered two seminal speeches to the Constituent Assembly on 11th and 14th August.
Suddenly, at the height of his popularity, Jinnah resigned from the Presidency of the
League.

Jinnah’s troubles did not end with the creation of Pakistan - they increased. Many new
problems arose: Geographical, Political, Economical and Social. There were disputes
over Hyderabad and Kashmir. Pakistan did not get its due share in the army and the
finances. More importantly, the row over canal and river water arose as most of the rivers
in Pakistan originated from India and India stopped the water supply without warning. On
the 11th of October 1947 in his speech, Call to Duty, Jinnah said:

“This is challenge to our very existence and if we are to survive as a nation and are to
translate our dreams about Pakistan into reality we shall have to grapple with the
problem facing us with redoubled zeal and energy. Our masses are today disorganized
and disheartened by the cataclysm that has befallen them.”

By now Jinnah’s health was seriously impaired. His long battle with tuberculosis,
heavy smoking - fifty cigarettes a day, and punishing work schedule had also taken their
toll. But despite of his failing health he had worked persistently to achieve his ultimate
goal.

Jinnah died on 11th September 1948 at the age of 71 in Karachi. The nation went into
deep mourning. Hundreds of thousands of people joined the burial procession - a million
people, it was estimated. They felt like orphans; their father had died. The grief was
genuine. Those present at the burial itself or those who heard the news still look back on
that occasion as a defining moment in their lives. They felt an indefinable sense of loss,
as if the light had gone out of their lives. A magnificent mausoleum in Karachi was built
to honour Jinnah. Lord Pethick Lawrence in the biography of Fatima Jinnah, My Brother,
says:

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“Gandhi died by the hands of an assassin; Jinnah died by his devotion to Pakistan.”

Quaid-e-Azam kept up an unfaltering resolve to achieve his goal, which was a

separate country for the Muslims. He was faced by immense hardships but he never gave
up and continued to strive to accomplish what he had begun. The creation of Pakistan
was a long way home for Muhammad Ali Jinnah. In his last message on the 1st
Independence Day of Pakistan, 14th August 1948, he told the nation:

“Remember, that the establishment of Pakistan is a fact of which there is no parallel in

the history of the world. It is one of the largest Muslim States in the world, and it is
destined to play its magnificent part year after year, as we go on, provided we serve
Pakistan honestly, earnestly and selflessly.”

“Whatever the struggle, continue the climb. It may be only one step to the summit.”
- Anonymous
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BILBOGRAPHY
www.wikipedia.org
www.haqeeqat.org
www.hamsafar.info
en.wikiquote.org
www.mofa.gov.pk
www.geocities.com

WORD COUNT: 1618 words

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