Pakistan, one of the largest Muslim states in the world, is a
living and exemplary monument of Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali
Jinnah. With his untiring efforts, indomitable will, and
dauntless courage, he united the Indian Muslims under the banner
of the Muslim League and carved out a homeland for them, despite
stiff opposition from the Hindu Congress and the British
Government.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah was born in Karachi on December 25, 1876.
His father Jinnah Poonja was an Ismaili Khoja of Kathiawar, a
prosperous business community. Muhammad Ali received his early
education at the Sindh Madrasa and later at the Mission School,
Karachi. He went to England for further studies in 1892 at the
age of 16. In 1896, Jinnah qualified for the Bar and was called
to the Bar in 1897.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah started his political career in 1906 when he
attended the Calcutta session of the All India National Congress
in the capacity of Private Secretary to the President of the
Congress. In 1910, he was elected to the Imperial Legislative
Council. He sponsored the Waqf Validating Bill, which brought
him in touch with other Muslim leaders. In March 1913, Jinnah
joined the All India Muslim League.
Father of
the Nation Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah's achievement as
the founder of Pakistan, dominates everything else he did in
his long and crowded public life spanning some 42 years.
Yet, by any standard, his was an eventful life, his
personality multidimensional and his achievements in other
fields were many, if not equally great. Indeed, several were
the roles he had played with distinction: at one time or
another, he was one of the greatest legal luminaries India
had produced during the first half of the century, an
`ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, a great
constitutionalist, a distinguished parliamentarian, a
top-notch politician, an indefatigable freedom-fighter, a
dynamic Muslim leader, a political strategist and, above all
one of the great nation-builders of modern times. What,
however, makes him so remarkable is the fact that while
similar other leaders assumed the leadership of
traditionally well-defined nations and espoused their cause,
or led them to freedom, he created a nation out of an
inchoate and down-trodden minority and established a
cultural and national home for it. And all that within a
decade. For over three decades before the successful
culmination in 1947, of the Muslim struggle for freedom in
the South-Asian subcontinent, Jinnah had provided political
leadership to the Indian Muslims: initially as one of the
leaders, but later, since 1947, as the only prominent
leader- the Quaid-i-Azam.
For over
thirty years, he had guided their affairs; he had given
expression, coherence and direction to their legitimate
aspirations and cherished dreams; he had formulated these
into concrete demands; and, above all, he had striven all
the while to get them conceded by both the ruling British
and the numerous Hindus the dominant segment of India's
population. And for over thirty years he had fought,
relentlessly and inexorably, for the inherent rights of the
Muslims for an honourable existence in the subcontinent.
Indeed, his life story constitutes, as it were, the story of
the rebirth of the Muslims of the subcontinent and their
spectacular rise to nationhood, phoenixlike.