The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

Jinnah, Mohammad ‘Ali (1876–1948)

Mohammad ‘Ali Jinnah was the leader of the All-India Muslim League, which successfully demanded the creation of Pakistan following India’s independence from British rule. After Pakistan gained its independence from India, he was the country’s first governor-general until his death on September 11, 1948.

Jinnah was born in Karachi on December 25, 1876. His father was a wealthy Isma‘ili merchant. He was sent to London in 1892 to work with Graham’s Shipping and Trading Company, which had extensive dealings with his father’s firm. He abandoned this career for the legal profession and successfully qualified as a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn, the oldest of the four Inns of Court in London where lawyers are called to the bar. Upon his return to Bombay, Jinnah quickly established himself as the leading Muslim advocate in the high court. He moved in elite Indian circles, and in 1896 he joined the Indian National Congress, becoming a prominent figure in its so-called moderate wing. The Muslim League was founded in 1906 at the annual session of the All-India Muhammadan Educational Conference, but it was not until 1913 that Jinnah joined the organization while maintaining his congress membership. His burgeoning wealth as a result of careful investment of his earnings was further augmented by his marriage to Rattanbai Petit, the daughter of the wealthy Parsi magnate Sir Dinshaw Petit. Jinnah was considered a future leader of the congress and was instrumental in bringing about the 1916 Lucknow Pact between congress and the Muslim League. This agreement marked the high watermark of cooperation between the two parties.

Four years later, Jinnah resigned from the congress because of his disillusionment with the violence and communal passions that followed Mohandas Gandhi’s (1869–1948) introduction of religion into politics. It was only in 1928, however, that the division further widened between him and the congress when the Nehru Report, the first nationalist draft of a constitution for an independent India, rejected his famous “Fourteen Points” constitutional proposals. These had been drawn up to protect the interests of the Muslim minority community. At their heart lay devolution of power to the provinces and separate electorates. For Jinnah, it was essential to maintain the latter as a safeguard for Muslim interests.

Shortly after parting ways with the congress in 1928, Jinnah abandoned Indian politics. He had become estranged from his young wife. His personal unhappiness increased as a result of her illness and later death in 1929. He thereafter increasingly turned to his sister Fatima both as a confidant and to help bring up his daughter, Dina. Between 1930 and 1935, Jinnah forged a lucrative legal career in London. The new political situation following the 1935 Government of India Act encouraged him to return to the fray. The All-India Muslim League fared poorly, however, in the 1937 elections in the provinces where Muslims were in the majority. The league was rescued from oblivion both by Jinnah’s attempts to reorganize it and by the way in which the seven congress provincial governments insensitively handled Muslim interests. Following this episode, the Muslim League publicly committed itself in 1940 to the demand for a Muslim homeland.

Jinnah’s espousal of the two-nation theory as the basis for Pakistan effectively provided a rallying cry for the Indian Muslim community, which previously had been divided by the conflicting political interests and demands of politicians from the Muslim majority and minority provinces. The disadvantage of the elevation of a minority rights discourse into demands for political sovereignty was the deterioration of community relations in the future “Pakistan” areas. This formed the backdrop to the constitutional negotiations at the end of the raj.

Jinnah’s political skills as a negotiator were crucial to his success. He was also able to bring unity and discipline to the fractious Muslim League movement, in part through his strong personality. He could also stand aloof, because of his personal wealth, from the landed magnates who formed a key element in the party.

World War II also assisted Jinnah’s rise to prominence. The British saw the Muslim League as a useful counterbalance to the noncooperating congress, and Jinnah was elevated to a position of equality with Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) and Gandhi. The key turning point was the July 1945 Simla Conference, which was designed to establish an expanded Viceroy’s Council in which only the viceroy and the commander-in-chief would be British. The creation of a politically representative executive council was seen as a major step toward eventual independence. Jinnah blocked its formation by successfully demanding that all Muslim representatives be members of the Muslim League. He maintained that the proposals were a stopgap and could in no way affect the Muslim League’s demand for Pakistan.

Pakistan did not, however, become an inevitability until after the collapse of the Cabinet Mission proposal and the first major outbreak of communal violence on August 16–18, 1946, known as the Great Calcutta Killing. This followed Jinnah’s call for direct action in response to the British formation of an interim government without the league. While Indian unity was impossible thereafter, the circumstances were created in which the Muslim majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal were divided. Mass migrations and massacres accompanied the Punjab’s partition. This meant that Pakistan faced an unprecedented refugee crisis at birth.

Jinnah held the two offices of Pakistan governor-general and president of the Constituent Assembly. On August 11, the eve of independence, in a famous speech to the Constituent Assembly, he laid the basis for a liberal and tolerant conception of Pakistan. By then, however, he had become increasingly ill with tuberculosis. The burden of state construction became an impossible task, and in the final months of his life, he spent much time at his official retreat in Ziarat.