The birth of Pakistan

Rudyard Kipling, about whom we have talked so much, lived in what is now Pakistan but then was part of British India . I have long regretted its breakup into a Hindu and a Muslim state, leading to the present dangerous confrontation. I have long blamed Muhammed Ali Jinnah (1876-1948), the Indian politician and longtime leader of the Muslim League; he was also the founding father of Pakistan and its first governor-general.

WAISers should be prepared to change their views on the basis of new evidence or a new interpretation of the facts. My opinion has been changed by an article about him in John Gehl's NewsScan. I have selected the significant parts; Jinnah was born the son of a prosperous Muslim merchant in Karachi, a city in what is now Pakistan, but at the time was part of British India. After being educated in Karachi and Bombay, Jinnah studied law at Lincoln's Inn in London, England, and was admitted to the bar in 1896. He returned to Bombay, where he became a prominent lawyer. He became politically active in 1906, and in 1913 he joined the Muslim League, formed to protect Muslim interests against India's Hindu majority. A fervent supporter of the Congress and a proponent of Hindu-Muslim unity, he advocated a moderate approach of cooperation with the British and gradual transfer of power. In 1930, when the Congress launched a non-cooperation campaign to boycott all aspects of British rule in India, Jinnah found himself in total disagreement with this movement and resigned from the Congress. Deeply disappointed, Jinnah decided to withdraw from political activities and leave India for the practice of law in England.

His self-imposed exile lasted for four years until in 1934 he returned to India on a visit to preside over a Muslim League session. He then decided that he must remain permanently in India to look after Muslim interests. From 1934 until his death, he headed the Muslim League and guided its struggle for an independent Pakistan, the predominantly Muslim area of India. Separating Pakistan from India was a position he accepted with reluctance once he realized that Hindu-Muslim political differences had hardened beyond any hope of reconciliation. Having reached this conclusion, however, Jinnah never swerved from it. During the many constitutional discussions that took place among the league, the Congress, and the British government in 1942, 1945, and 1946, he exhibited a tenacious leadership that made eventual partition a certainty. During those years Jinnah came to be known as Quaid-i-Azam, or "Great Leader." When Pakistan was created on August 14, 1947, he became its first governor-general, and the title of Quaid-i-Azam was officially bestowed on him by a resolution of the first constituent assembly. Already dying with tuberculosis at the time of Pakistan's independence in 1947, he died at Karachi the very next year at age 78.