QUAID-E-AZAM

Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah is our hero in history. he was born in Karachi 0n 25th December, 1876. He received his early education at Karachi. Then he went to England and returned as a Barrister. He started his practice in Bombay and did very well as a lawyer. His fame spread far and wide. The Quaid-e-Azam joined the Indian National Congress in 1905 and advised the Hindus and the Muslims to unite to fight for freedom. But the Congress disappointed him because it was working for Hindu Raj in India. He, therefore, separated himself from the Congress. He tried his best to unite the Muslims. He joined the Muslim League and brought the Muslims on one platform. On 23rd March, 1940, the famous Pakistan Resolution was passed under his leadership at Lahore. He declared that the Hindus and the Muslims were two completely different nations. Their likes and dislikes, their cultures, rites and customs and their religions are totally different from each other. He demanded a separate homeland for the Muslims of India Where they could lead their lives according to their own religions and cultures. The Hindus opposed this demand and the British refused to accept this demand. But Quaid-e-Azam was as firm as rock so he did not budge even an inch from his mission. He led his nation to the right direction and forced the British rulers to yield to his demand. Thus, after a long struggle and numberless sacrifices of property and life, Pakistan came into existence on 14th August,1947.

The Quaid-e-Azam became the first Governor General of Pakistan. In his address to the first Constitutional Assembly, he advised the assembly to frame such laws as could uproot social evils like nepotism, bribery, smuggling from Pakistan. He granted freedom to every citizen of Pakistan to live according to his own religion. Everybody was free to go his place of worship. The Quaid eAzam did not discontinue his work despite his failing health. He Worked from dawn to dusk for the welfare of the Pakistani people. Al long last, he died on 11th September, 1948. May God Shower his blessings on Him! He is my Hero in History.

EARLY LIFE

Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the first child born to Mithibai and Jinnahbhai Poonja in a Gujarati family in Wazir Mansion Karachi on December 25, 1876 .He was a lawyer, politician, statesman and the founder of Pakistan. He is popularly and officially known in Pakistan as Quaid-e-Azam ("Great Leader") and Baba-e-Qaum("Father of the Nation").His grandfather, Poonja Gokuldas Meghji, was a Hindu from Paneli village in Gondal state in Kathiawar who had converted to Islam. Jinnah's family belonged to the Ismaili Khoja branch of Shi'a Islam,though Jinnah later converted to Twelver Khoja Shi'a Islam.The first-born Jinnah was soon joined by six siblings: three brothers—Ahmad Ali, Bunde Ali, and Rahmat Ali—and three sisters: Maryam, Fatima and Shireen. Jinnah was a great but restless student and studied at several schools: first at the Sindh-Madrasa-tul-Islam in Karachi; then briefly at the Gokal Das Tej Primary School in Bombay; and finally at the Christian Missionary Society High School in Karachi, where, at the age of 16, he passed the matriculation examination of the University of Bombay.Before he left for England in 1892, at his mother's urging, he married his distant cousin—Emibai Jinnah, who was two years his junior; she died a few months later. During his sojourn in England, his mother too would pass away. In London, Jinnah soon gave up the apprenticeship to study law instead, by joining Lincoln's Inn. It is said that the sole reason of Jinnah's joining Lincoln's Inn is that the main entrance to the Lincoln's Inn had the names of the world's all-time top-ten lawgivers, and that this list was led by Muhammad. This story, however, has no basis in fact. In three years, at age 19, he became the youngest Indian to be called to the bar in England.

During his student years in England, Jinnah came under the spell of 19th-century British liberalism, like many other future Indian independence leaders. This education included exposure to the idea of the democratic nation and progressive politics.

Political Struggle And Achievements

n 1906, Jinnah joined the Indian National Congress, which was the largest Indian political organization. Like most of the Congress at the time, Jinnah did not favour outright independence, considering British influences on education, law, culture and industry as beneficial to India. Jinnah became a member on the 60-member Imperial Legislative Council. The council had no real power, and included a large number of un-elected pro-Raj loyalists and Europeans.Jinnah had initially avoided joining the All India Muslim League, founded in 1906, regarding it as too Muslim oriented. However, he decided to provide leadership to the Muslim minority. Eventually, he joined the League in 1913 and became the president at the 1916 session in Lucknow. Jinnah was the architect of the 1916 Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the League, bringing them together on most issues regarding self-government and presenting a united front to the British.In 1924, Jinnah reorganized the Muslim League, of which he had been president since 1916, and devoted the next seven years attempting to bring about unity among the disparate ranks of Muslims and to develop a rational formula to effect a Hindu-Muslim settlement, which he considered the pre condition for Indian freedom. He attended several unity conferences, wrote the Delhi Muslim Proposals in 1927, pleaded for the incorporation of the basic Muslim demands in the Nehru report.Jinnah broke with the Congress in 1920 when the Congress leader, Mohandas Gandhi, launched a Non-Cooperation Movement against the British, which Jinnah disapproved of. Unlike most Congress leaders, Gandhi did not wear western-style clothing, did his best to use an Indian language instead of English, and was deeply rooted in Indian culture. Gandhi's local style of leadership gained great popularity with the Indian people. Jinnah criticized Gandhi's support of the Khilafat Movement, which he saw as an endorsement of religious zealotry.[31] Jinnah quit the Congress, with a prophetic warning that Gandhi's method of mass struggle would lead to divisions between Hindus and Muslims and within the two communities.[29] Becoming president of the Muslim League, Jinnah was drawn into a conflict between a pro-Congress faction and a pro-British faction.In 1941, Muhammad Ali Jinnah founded Dawn, a major newspaper that helped him propagate the League's point of views. Jinnah felt that the state of Pakistan should stand upon true Islamic tradition in culture, civilization and national identity rather than on the principles of Islam as a theocratic state.

In 1937, Jinnah further defended his ideology of equality in his speech to the All-India Muslim League in Lucknow where he stated, "Settlement can only be achieved between equals." He also had a rebuttal to Nehru's statement which argued that the only two parties that mattered in India were the British Raj and INC. Jinnah stated that the Muslim League was the third and "equal partner" within Indian politics.Jinnah became the first Governor-General of Pakistan and president of its constituent assembly.Pakistanis view Jinnah as their revered founding father, a man that was dedicated to safeguarding Muslim interests during the dying days of the British Raj. Most of the Pakistanis take Jinnah as hero for their personal lives.

ROLE OF JINNAH

Jinnah played a decisive role in articulating the Muslim demands and pursuing these faced strong opposition from the Hindus and the British. He started his political career in 1906 by joining the Indian National Congress. He was elected to the Legislative Council in 1909 and in 1913 he also joined the All India Muslim League (AIML). Now he was member of both the political parties. Having disagreement with Gandhi on the issue of Swaraj (self-rule), complete freedom from the British and on using extra-constitutional means, Jinnah resigned from the Congress in 1920. His early efforts to promote Hindu-Muslim unity were materialized when THE LUCKNOW PACT (1916) was signed. The Hindus accepted the Muslim demands: • Separate Electorate • One-third Seats in Central Legislature • Protection of minority rights

In the Nehru Report, the accepted Muslim rights were ignored. Jinnah retaliated forcefully by presenting 14 Points in 1929. He defined Muslim identity and mobilized them with reference to Islam and convinced others that Muslims are different from the Hindus and the Congress. Islamic principles, concepts and symbols surfaced in his speeches and statements.

Jinnah used the term NATION for the Muslims of India in Feb 1935 (Legislative Assembly). He argued that the combination of religion, culture, race, arts, music and so forth make a minority a SEPARATE ENTITY. In March 1936 Bombay, he stated that the Muslims could arrive at a settlement with Hindus as TWO Nations. In 1937, he asserted that there is also a third party in India, the Muslims. In 1939, he roared that the Muslims and Hindus are two nations and they are going to live as a nation and playing part as a nation:

We are a nation with our own distinctive culture and civilization, language and literature, names and nomenclature, sense of values and proportion, legal laws and moral code, custom and calendar, history and tradition, aptitudes and ambitions; in short, we have our own distinctive outlook on life and of life. By all cannons of international law, we are a nation.

Speeches and statements: 1940-47 Jinnah believed in the force of Islam as he said that Islam is a dynamic force that can unite the Muslims. It can help to overcome the present crisis. It’s a source of inspiration and guidance providing ethical foundation, a framework, social order and civilization.

Guidance & inspiration for constitution-making and Governance He also talked of the modern notions of state, constitution, civil and political rights and democracy. He assured that constitution of Pakistan would be framed by the elected assembly.

Modern democratic and Islamic State He gave assurance of equality of all citizens and rights and freedom to religious minorities in the new state.

Second World War and Lahore Resolution

On 3 September 1939, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced the commencement of war with Nazi Germany. The following day, the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, without consulting Indian political leaders, announced that India had entered the war along with Britain. There were widespread protests in India. After meeting with Jinnah and with Gandhi, Linlithgow announced that negotiations on self-government were suspended for the duration of the war. The Congress on 14 September demanded immediate independence with a constituent assembly to decide a constitution; when this was refused, its eight provincial governments resigned on 10 November and governors in those provinces thereafter ruled by decree for the remainder of the war. Jinnah, on the other hand, was more willing to accommodate the British, and they in turn increasingly recognized him and the League as the representatives of India's Muslims. Jinnah later stated, "after the war began, ... I was treated on the same basis as Mr. Gandhi. I was wonder struck why I was promoted and given a place side by side with Mr. Gandhi." Although the League did not actively support the British war effort, neither did they try to obstruct it.

With the British and Muslims to some extent cooperating, the Viceroy asked Jinnah for an expression of the Muslim League's position on self-government, confident that it would differ greatly from that of the Congress. To come up with such a position, the League's Working Committee met for four days in February 1940 to set out terms of reference to a constitutional sub-committee. The Working Committee asked that the sub-committee return with a proposal that would result in "independent dominions in direct relationship with Great Britain" where Muslims were dominant. On 6 February, Jinnah informed the Viceroy that the Muslim League would be demanding partition instead of the federation contemplated in the 1935 Act. The Lahore Resolution (sometimes called the "Pakistan Resolution", although it does not contain that name), based on the sub-committee's work, embraced the Two-Nation Theory and called for a union of the Muslim-majority provinces in the northwest of British India, with complete autonomy. Similar rights were to be granted the Muslim-majority areas in the east, and unspecified protections given to Muslim minorities in other provinces. The resolution was passed by the League session in Lahore on 23 March 1940.

Gandhi's reaction to the Lahore Resolution was muted; he called it "baffling", but told his disciples that Muslims, in common with other people of India, had the right to self-determination. Leaders of the Congress were more vocal; Jawaharlal Nehru (son of Motilal) referred to Lahore as "Jinnah's fantastic proposals" while Chakravarti Rajagopalachari deemed Jinnah's views on partition "a sign of a diseased mentality". Linlithgow met with Jinnah in June 1940, soon after Winston Churchill became the British prime minister, and in August offered both the Congress and the League a deal whereby in exchange for full support for the war, Linlithgow would allow Indian representation on his major war councils. The Viceroy promised a representative body after the war to determine India's future, and that no future settlement would be imposed over the objections of a large part of the population. This was satisfactory to neither the Congress nor the League, though Jinnah was pleased that the British had moved towards recognizing Jinnah as the representative of the Muslim community's interests. Jinnah was reluctant to make specific proposals as to the boundaries of Pakistan, or its relationships with Britain and with the rest of the subcontinent, fearing that any precise plan would divide the League.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941 brought the United States into the war. In the following months, the Japanese advanced in southeast Asia, and the British Cabinet sent a mission led by Sir Stafford Cripps to try to conciliate the Indians and cause them to fully back the war. Cripps proposed giving some provinces what was dubbed the "local option" to remain outside of an Indian central government either for a period of time or permanently, to become dominions on their own or be part of another confederation. The Muslim League was far from certain of winning the legislative votes that would be required for mixed provinces such as Bengal and Punjab to secede, and Jinnah rejected the proposals as not sufficiently recognizing Pakistan's right to exist. The Congress also rejected the Cripps plan, demanding immediate concessions which Cripps was not prepared to give.Despite the rejection, Jinnah and the League saw the Cripps proposal as recognizing Pakistan in principle.

The Congress followed the failed Cripps mission by demanding, in August 1942, that the British immediately "Quit India", proclaiming a mass campaign of satyagraha until they did. The British promptly arrested most major leaders of the Congress and imprisoned them for the remainder of the war. Gandhi, however, was placed on house arrest in one of the Aga Khan's palaces prior to his release for health reasons in 1944. With the Congress leaders absent from the political scene, Jinnah warned against the threat of Hindu domination and maintained his Pakistan demand without going into great detail about what that would entail. Jinnah also worked to increase the League's political control at the provincial level. He helped to found the newspaper Dawn in the early 1940s in Delhi; it helped to spread the League's message and eventually became the major English-language newspaper of Pakistan.

In September 1944, Jinnah and Gandhi, who had by then been released from his palatial prison, met at the Muslim leader's home on Malabar Hill in Bombay. Two weeks of talks followed, which resulted in no agreement. Jinnah insisted on Pakistan being conceded prior to the British departure, and to come into being immediately on their departure, while Gandhi proposed that plebiscites on partition occur sometime after a united India gained its independence. In early 1945, Liaquat and the Congress leader Bhulabhai Desai met, with Jinnah's approval and agreed that after the war, the Congress and the League should form an interim government and that the members of the Executive Council of the Viceroy should be nominated by the Congress and the League in equal numbers. When the Congress leadership was released from prison in June 1945, they repudiated the agreement and censured Desai for acting without proper authority.

ILLNESS AND DEATH

From the 1930s, Jinnah suffered from tuberculosis; only his sister and a few others close to him were aware of his condition. Jinnah believed public knowledge of his lung ailments would hurt him politically. In a 1938 letter, he wrote to a supporter that "you must have read in the papers how during my tours ... I suffered, which was not because there was anything wrong with me, but the irregularities [of the schedule] and over-strain told upon my health". Many years later, Mountbatten stated that if he had known Jinnah was so ill, he would have stalled, hoping Jinnah's death would avert partition. Fatima Jinnah later wrote, "even in his hour of triumph, the Quaid-e-Azam was gravely ill ... He worked in a frenzy to consolidate Pakistan. And, of course, he totally neglected his health ..." Jinnah worked with a tin of Craven "A" cigarettes at his desk, of which he had smoked 50 or more a day for the previous 30 years, as well as a box of Cuban cigars. He took longer and longer rest breaks in the private wing of Government House in Karachi, where only he, Fatima and the servants were allowed.

In June 1948, he and Fatima flew to Quetta, in the mountains of Baluchistan, where the weather was cooler than in Karachi. He could not completely rest there, addressing the officers at the Command and Staff College saying, "you, along with the other Forces of Pakistan, are the custodians of the life, property and honor of the people of Pakistan." He returned to Karachi for the 1 July opening ceremony for the State Bank of Pakistan, at which he spoke; a reception by the Canadian trade commissioner that evening in honor of Dominion Day was the last public event he ever attended.

On 6 July 1948, Jinnah returned to Quetta, but at the advice of doctors, soon journeyed to an even higher retreat at Ziarat. Jinnah had always been reluctant to undergo medical treatment, but realising his condition, the Pakistani government sent the best doctors it could find to treat him. Tests confirmed tuberculosis, and showed evidence of lung cancer. Jinnah was informed, and asked for full information on his disease and for care in how his sister was told. He was treated with the new "miracle drug" of streptomycin, but it did not help. Jinnah's condition continued to deteriorate despite the Eid prayers of his people. He was moved to the lower altitude of Quetta on 13 August, the eve of Independence Day, for which a statement ghost-written for him was released. Despite an increase in appetite (he then weighed just over 36 kilograms [79 lb]), it was clear to his doctors that if he was to return to Karachi in life, he would have to do so very soon. Jinnah, however, was reluctant to go, not wishing his aides to see him as an invalid on a stretcher.

By 9 September, Jinnah had also developed pneumonia. Doctors urged him to return to Karachi, where he could receive better care, and with his agreement, he was flown there on 11 September. Dr. Ilahi Bux, his personal physician, believed that Jinnah's change of mind was caused by foreknowledge of death. The plane landed at Karachi, to be met by Jinnah's limousine, and an ambulance into which Jinnah's stretcher was placed. The ambulance broke down on the road into town, and the Governor-General and those with him waited for another to arrive; he could not be placed in the car as he could not sit up. They waited by the roadside in oppressive heat as trucks and buses passed by, unsuitable for transporting the dying man and with their occupants not knowing of Jinnah's presence. After an hour, the replacement ambulance came, and transported Jinnah to Government House, arriving there over two hours after the landing. Jinnah died at 10:20 pm at his home in Karachi on 11 September 1948, just over a year after Pakistan's creation.

Indian Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru stated upon Jinnah's death, "How shall we judge him? I have been very angry with him often during the past years. But now there is no bitterness in my thought of him, only a great sadness for all that has been ... he succeeded in his quest and gained his objective, but at what a cost and with what a difference from what he had imagined." Jinnah was buried on 12 September 1948 amid official mourning in both India and Pakistan; a million people gathered for his funeral. Indian Governor-General Rajagopalachari cancelled an official reception that day in honor of the late leader. Today, Jinnah rests in a large marble mausoleum, Mazar-e-Quaid, in Karachi.

AFTERMATH

Dina Wadia, Jinnah's daughter, remained in India after independence before ultimately settling in New York City. In the 1965 presidential election, Fatima Jinnah, by then known as Madar-e-Millat ("Mother of the Nation"), became the presidential candidate of a coalition of political parties that opposed the rule of President Ayub Khan, but was not successful.

The Jinnah House in Malabar Hill, Bombay, is in the possession of the Government of India, but the issue of its ownership has been disputed by the Government of Pakistan. Jinnah had personally requested Prime Minister Nehru to preserve the house, hoping one day he could return to Mumbai. There are proposals for the house be offered to the government of Pakistan to establish a consulate in the city as a goodwill gesture, but Dina Wadia has also asked for the property.

After Jinnah died, his sister Fatima asked the court to execute Jinnah's will under Shia Islamic law. This subsequently became the part of argument in Pakistan about Jinnah's religious affiliation. Vali Nasr says Jinnah "was an Ismaili by birth and a Twelver Shia by confession, though not a religiously observant man." In a 1970 legal challenge, Hussain Ali Ganji Walji claimed Jinnah had converted to Sunni Islam, but the High Court rejected this claim in 1976, effectively accepting the Jinnah family as Shia. Publicly, Jinnah had a non-sectarian stance and "was at pains to gather the Muslims of India under the banner of a general Muslim faith and not under a divisive sectarian identity." In 1970, a Pakistani court decision stated that Jinnah's "secular Muslim faith made him neither Shia nor Sunni", and in 1984 the court maintained that "the Quaid was definitely not a Shia".Liaquat H. Merchant elaborates that "he was also not a Sunni, he was simply a Muslim".

Quotes by Muhammad Ali Jinnah

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.

Expect the best, Prepare for the worst.

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.

Think 100 times before you take a decision, But once that decision is taken, stand by it as one man.

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

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 grim determination and discipline worthy of a great nation.

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.