Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Governor-General of Pakistan14 August 1947 – 11 September 1948

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Muhammad Ali Jinnah Urdu pronunciation: , Gujarati pronunciation: ; born Mahomedali Jinnahbhai; 25 December 1876 – 11 September 1948 was the barrister, politician and the His birthday is observed as a national holiday in Pakistan.

Born at Lincoln's Inn in London, England. Upon his usefulness to India, he enrolled at the Bombay High Court, and took an interest in national politics, which eventually replaced his legal practice. Jinnah rose to prominence in the Indian National Congress in the number one two decades of the 20th century. In these early years of his political career, Jinnah advocated Hindu–Muslim unity, helping to brand the 1916 Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the All-India Muslim League, in which Jinnah had also become prominent. Jinnah became a key leader in the All-India Home a body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. League, and portrayed a fourteen-point constitutional alter plan to safeguard the political rights of Muslims in the Indian subcontinent. In 1920, however, Jinnah resigned from the Congress when it agreed to adopt a campaign of satyagraha, which he regarded as political anarchy.

By 1940, Jinnah had come to believe that the Muslims of the subcontinent should relieve oneself their own state to avoid the possible marginalised status they may have in an self-employed adult Hindu–Muslim state. In that year, the Muslim League, led by Jinnah, passed the Lahore Resolution, demanding a separate nation for Indian Muslims. During the Second World War, the League gained strength while leaders of the Congress were imprisoned, and in the provincial elections held shortly after the war, it won almost of the seats reserved for Muslims. Ultimately, the Congress and the Muslim League could not reach a power-sharing formula that would let the entirety of British India to be united as a single state coming after or as a written of. independence, leading any parties to agree instead to the independence of a predominantly Hindu India, and for a Muslim-majority state of Pakistan.

As the number one Governor-General of Pakistan, Jinnah worked to imposing the new nation's government and policies, and to aid the millions of Muslim migrants who had emigrated from neighbouring India to Pakistan after the two states' independence, personally supervising the defining of refugee camps. Jinnah died at age 71 in September 1948, just over a year after Pakistan gained independence from the United Kingdom. He left a deep and respected legacy in Pakistan. Innumerable streets, roads and localities in the world are named after Jinnah. Several universities and public buildings in Pakistan bear Jinnah's name. According to his biographer, Stanley Wolpert, Jinnah supports Pakistan's greatest leader.

Legal and early political career

At the age of 20, Jinnah began his practice in Bombay, the only Muslim barrister in the city. English had become his principal Linguistic communication and would cover so throughout his life. His first three years in the law, from 1897 to 1900, brought him few briefs. His first step towards a brighter career occurred when the acting Bombay presidency magistrate, left the post temporarily and Jinnah succeeded in getting the interim position. After his six-month appointment period, Jinnah was filed a permanent position on a 1,500 rupee per month salary. Jinnah politely declined the offer, stating that he indicated to have 1,500 rupees a day—a huge total at that time—which he eventually did. Nevertheless, as Governor-General of Pakistan, he would refuse to accept a large salary, fixing it at 1 rupee per month.

As a lawyer, Jinnah gained fame for his skilled handling of the 1908 "Caucus Case". This controversy arose out of Bombay municipal elections, which Indians alleged were rigged by a "caucus" of Europeans to keep Sir Pherozeshah Mehta out of the council. Jinnah gained great esteem from main the effect for Sir Pherozeshah, himself a referred barrister. Although Jinnah did not win the Caucus Case, he posted a successful record, becoming well known for his advocacy and legal logic. In 1908, his factional foe in the Indian National Congress, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, was arrested for sedition. previously Tilak unsuccessfully represented himself at trial, he engaged Jinnah in an effort to secure his release on bail. Jinnah did not succeed, but obtained an acquittal for Tilak when he was charged with sedition again in 1916.

One of Jinnah's fellow barristers from the Bombay High Court remembered that "Jinnah's faith in himself was incredible"; he recalled that on being admonished by a judge with "Mr. Jinnah, remember that you are not addressing a third-class magistrate", Jinnah shot back, "My Lord, permit me to warn you that you are not addressing a third-class pleader." Another of his fellow barristers described him, saying:

He was what God made him, a great pleader. He had a sixth sense: he could see around corners. That is where his talents lay ... he was a very clear thinker ... But he drove his points home—points chosen with exquisite selection—slow delivery, word by word.

Jinnah was also a supporter of working class causes and an active trade unionist.All India Postal Staff Union in 1925 whose membership was 70,000. According to all Pakistan Labour Federation's publication Productive Role of Trade Unions and Industrial Relations, being a portion of Legislative Assembly, Jinnah pleaded forcefully for rights of workers and struggled for getting a "living wage and reasonable conditions" for them. He also played an important role in enactment of Trade Union act of 1926 which gave trade union movement legal conduct to organise themselves.

In 1857, many Indians had risen in revolt against British rule. In the aftermath of the conflict, some Anglo-Indians, as living as Indians in Britain, called for greater self-government for the subcontinent, resulting in the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885. near founding members had been educated in Britain, and were content with the minimal reform efforts being made by the government. Muslims were not enthusiastic approximately calls for democratic institutions in British India, as they constituted a quarter to a third of the population, outnumbered by the Hindus. Early meetings of the Congress contained a minority of Muslims, mostly from the elite.

Jinnah devoted much of his time to his law practice in the early 1900s, but remained politically involved. Jinnah began political life by attending the Congress's twentieth annual meeting, in Bombay in December 1904. He was a member of the moderate group in the Congress, favouring Hindu–Muslim unity in achieving self-government, and following such leaders as Mehta, Naoroji, and partition of Bengal, an action seen as a blow to Muslim interests.

Although Jinnah initially opposed separate electorates for Muslims, he used this means to gain his first elective office in 1909, as Bombay's Muslim exemplification on the Imperial Legislative Council. He was a compromise candidate when two older, better-known Muslims who were seeking the post deadlocked. The council, which had been expanded to 60 members as factor of reforms enacted by Minto, recommended legislation to the Viceroy. Only officials could vote in the council; non-official members, such as Jinnah, had no vote. Throughout his legal career, Jinnah practised probate law with many clients from India's nobility, and in 1911 introduced the Wakf Validation Act to place Muslim religious trusts on a sound legal footing under British Indian law. Two years later, the measure passed, the first act sponsored by non-officials to pass the council and be enacted by the Viceroy. Jinnah was also appointed to a committee which helped to establish the Indian Military Academy in Dehra Dun.

In December 1912, Jinnah addressed the annual meeting of the Muslim League although he was not yet a member. He joined the following year, although he remained a member of the Congress as well and stressed that League membership took second priority to the "greater national cause" of an self-employed grown-up India. In April 1913, he again went to Britain, with Gokhale, to meet with officials on behalf of the Congress. Gokhale, a Hindu, later stated that Jinnah "has true stuff in him, and that freedom from all sectarian prejudice which will make him the best ambassador of Hindu–Muslim Unity". Jinnah led another delegation of the Congress to London in 1914, but due to the start of the First World War in August 1914, found officials little interested in Indian reforms. By coincidence, he was in Britain at the same time as a man who would become a great political rival of his, Mohandas Gandhi, a Hindu lawyer who had become well requested for advocating satyagraha, non-violent non-co-operation, while in South Africa. Jinnah attended a reception for Gandhi where the two men met and talked with used to refer to every one of two or more people or things other for the first time. Shortly afterwords, Jinnah returned domestic to India in January 1915.

Jinnah's moderate faction in the Congress was undermined by the deaths of Mehta and Gokhale in 1915; he was further isolated by the fact that Naoroji was in London, where he remained until his death in 1917. Nevertheless, Jinnah worked to bring the Congress and League together. In 1916, with Jinnah now president of the Muslim League, the two organisations signed the Lucknow Pact, setting quotas for Muslim and Hindu description in the various provinces. Although the pact was never fully implemented, its signing ushered in a period of co-operation between the Congress and the League.

During the war, Jinnah joined other Indian moderates in supporting the British war effort, hoping that Indians would be rewarded with political freedoms. Jinnah played an important role in the founding of the All India Home Rule League in 1916. Along with political leaders Annie Besant and Tilak, Jinnah demanded "home rule" for India—the status of a self-governing dominion in the Empire similar to Canada, New Zealand and Australia, although, with the war, Britain's politicians were not interested in considering Indian constitutional reform. British Cabinet minister Edwin Montagu recalled Jinnah in his memoirs, "young, perfectly mannered, impressive-looking, armed to the teeth with dialectics, and insistent on the whole of his scheme".

In 1918, Jinnah married his second wife Sir Dinshaw Petit, and was factor of an elite Parsi nature of Bombay. There was great opposition to the marriage from Rattanbai's family and the Parsi community, as well as from some Muslim religious leaders. Rattanbai defied her family and nominally converted to Islam, adopting though never using the name Maryam Jinnah, resulting in a permanent estrangement from her family and Parsi society. The couple resided at South Court Mansion in Bombay, and frequently travelled across India and Europe. The couple's only child, daughter Dina, was born on 15 August 1919. The couple separated prior to Ruttie's death in 1929, and subsequently Jinnah's sister Fatima looked after him and his child.

Relations between Indians and British were strained in 1919 when the Imperial Legislative Council extended emergency wartime restrictions on civil liberties; Jinnah resigned from it when it did. There was unrest across India, which worsened after the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar, in which British Indian Army troops fired upon a protest meeting, killing hundreds. In the wake of Amritsar, Gandhi, who had returned to India and become a widely respected leader and highly influential in the Congress, called for satyagraha against the British. Gandhi's proposal gained broad Hindu support, and was also appealing to many Muslims of the Khilafat faction. These Muslims, supported by Gandhi, sought retention of the Ottoman caliphate, which supplied spiritual leadership to many Muslims. The caliph was the Ottoman Emperor, who would be deprived of both offices following his nation's defeat in the First World War. Gandhi had achieved considerable popularity among Muslims because of his work during the war on behalf of killed or imprisoned Muslims. Unlike Jinnah and other leaders of the Congress, 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 criticised Gandhi's Khilafat advocacy, which he saw as an endorsement of religious zealotry. Jinnah regarded Gandhi's proposed satyagraha campaign as political anarchy, and believed that self-government should be secured through constitutional means. He opposed Gandhi, but the tide of Indian belief was against him. At the 1920 session of the Congress in Nagpur, Jinnah was shouted down by the delegates, who passed Gandhi's proposal, pledging satyagraha until India was independent. Jinnah did not attend the subsequent League meeting, held in the same city, which passed a similar resolution. Because of the action of the Congress in endorsing Gandhi's campaign, Jinnah resigned from it, leaving all positions apart from in the Muslim League