Mr and Mrs Jinnah Read online

  Certainly, Jinnah’s own attitude to religion was not as casual and uncomplicated as his bride’s. He was not a believer in the orthodox sense and had always remained above sectarian prejudices but he certainly did not belong to that class of the English educated who were raised like European children, taught by European governesses and tutors to disdain Indian culture and religion. As long as she was alive, he was devoted to his mother who was a deeply devout woman, if not in the purely Islamic way approved by the orthodox. And even his father, who was raised as an Ismaili to be half-Hindu in his customs and beliefs, had turned pronouncedly Muslim after his migration to Karachi. Jinnahbhai refused to give his children Hindu names or ceremonies, according to the Ismaili custom back home, and gave them daily lessons in the Quran while they were still young. While never overtly religious like his sisters, especially Fatima, Jinnah had a thorough knowledge of the Quran, having always allowed himself a rational, dispassionate interest in Islam, reading a biography in English of Prophet Muhammad while he was in England preparing for his Bar examinations. He also embarked on a study of Islamic jurisprudence while still a law student, supposedly because it would come in handy for his future law career whenever he returned to India. After his return too, Jinnah’s religious sentiments could only be described as mixed.

  Fastidious about being associated with Muslim backwardness and their many taboos and orthodoxy and superstitions, he refused to sport the outward identity of a Muslim, abjuring the round turban and spade beard and black gown that even educated and influential Muslim leaders clung on to. He not only defiantly dressed like a British gentleman but openly smoked, drank, ate pork and, more seriously, insisted on putting his sister into a convent boarding school in the teeth of stiff opposition from his own Khoja community. But he did not wish to turn his back entirely on his Muslim identity, carefully reinventing himself as a different kind of Muslim—one who did not go to a mosque to pray but still belonged to the community. It was as a part of this reinvention that Jinnah joined a reformist Muslim organization called the Khoja Shia Isnaashari Jamaat that was started in the beginning of the twentieth century by a few Khojas anxious to join the mainstream and to be seen as a more modern and progressive Islamic faith. Jinnah wasted no time joining this new organization with its own mosques, madrasas and imamvadas to distinguish them from the Ismailis, resulting, according to some biographers, in the rejection of a marriage proposal that his father sent on his behalf soon after Jinnah’s return from England as a qualified barrister.

  Overtly, his interest in Islam was purely legal and rational. When he joined the Imperial Legislative Council, for example, he took it upon himself to draft the first Muslim Wakf Bill, spending years reading and talking to Islamic experts to gain the thorough understanding of Islamic law he required in order to draft the bill. And yet, whatever Ruttie may have concluded from his anglicized appearance and habits, her conversion to Islam was more important to him than merely a quick way of getting around the law. He was already fighting a stiff battle with Muslim rivals who insisted on labelling him a kafir, a non-believer, and now by marrying a kafira, the knives would be out again. He needed to find the right man to do the conversion, someone who would ensure that it would be so legally binding that it would stand up to his critics’ scrutiny not only for now, but in the years to come.

  He did not have to look too far. Maulana Nazir Ahmad Khujandi was not only a renowned religious scholar of the majority Sunni sect and a presiding imam of Bombay’s Jama Masjid but also a member of the Muslim League. As his leader, Jinnah could expect the moulvi to accommodate him in any way possible as well as keep the conversion a secret at least until the wedding announcement was made. The date for the conversion, Thursday, 18 April, was carefully chosen, not because it was the anniversary of the Ajmeri Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti and was considered one of the holiest days on the Muslim calendar, as his Pakistani biographers conjecture, but because it was the most sensible way of holding his tightly plotted wedding plan together. It gave just enough time not to crowd up the wedding day but not enough time for the secret to leak out before they got away. All Ruttie had to do was walk into the Jama Masjid the previous day, accompanied by Jinnah’s then trusted lieutenant, Umar Sobhani. No woman, veiled or unveiled, had probably stepped into the mosque before, but she was Jinnah’s bride-to-be and therefore an exception. The ritual of conversion could not have taken very long, with her going through the prayers that she made no pretence of memorizing beforehand. She would have been back in Petit Hall well in time for dinner. The day of her conversion, incidentally, was also a Parsi festival day, Aban Jasan, dedicated to the angel who presides over the sea, when Parsis approach the sea to offer prayers with coconuts and flowers. It follows the day after the most sacred day on the Parsi calendar, Adar Jasan, the ninth day of the ninth month, when every devout Parsi visits a fire temple. It was an irony that was lost on both of them.

  But what was not lost on Jinnah was the opportunity that the three public holidays in a row—Wednesday and Thursday for the two Parsi festivals, followed by the Hindu Ram Navami on Friday—provided him, especially as these were followed by the weekend. He was far too smart a strategist to miss such a rare advantage he suddenly held over Sir Dinshaw. The high court was already closed for the summer, but Sir Dinshaw had not relaxed his vigil, putting off his summer plans to keep guard over his daughter. But now, even were he to discover their plans and go after them, he would find his hands tied till the following Monday, when the police courts reopened. By then they would have safely escaped to an undisclosed destination that Jinnah arranged for them, but confided to no one. What is more, he could even think of sending out a press release announcing his wedding, giving the impression that it was conducted quietly but openly in the public eye and that there had been nothing clandestine about it whatsoever, knowing that by the time the newspapers came out with it, it would be too late to do anything about it.

  The wedding ceremony itself couldn’t have been more primly respectable. For Ruttie, accustomed to Parsi weddings with an open courtyard where white-robed priests performed a picturesque ceremony while guests feasted in the surrounding galleries, it must have seemed a poor show. Since neither the bride nor the bridegroom could recite the Arabic words of the nikah, others were deputed to do it for them. The moulvi gave a brief discourse praising Allah for his wisdom and recited three verses from the Quran that neither could follow. There was some discussion on her mehr, or dowry, and then a sign in a register, and it was over. It had lasted an hour, from seven to eight in the evening. The only memorable moment was when the bridegroom had to place a ring on his bride’s finger and discovered that, with so much on his mind, he had forgotten to buy one. But the chief wedding guest, the Raja of Mahmudabad, an old friend and admirer of Jinnah’s, came to the rescue, pulling off the diamond ring on his own finger. The marriage, according to Mahmudabad’s son and heir, was performed according to Shiite rites, and a certain Maulana Mohammad Hasan Najafi was deputed as Ruttie’s representative, signing the nikah document on her behalf, while Shariat Madar Aqai Haji Mohammad Abdul Hashim Najafi signed on behalf of the bridegroom. The attorneys and witnesses included Shareef Dewji Kanji, Umar Sobhani and the Raja of Mahmudabad. The wedding document was written in Persian, and the serial number in the nikah register was 118.37. According to the nikah document, the mehr was settled at Rs 1001. But quite apart from the mehr, Jinnah presented Ruttie with Rs 125,000 as a gift. This was almost as much as what His Highness the Raja of Rajpipli had just contributed to the War Fund, but the sheer magnificence of the sum was totally lost on Ruttie. Apart from her fuzzy head for figures, she had never handled cash before.

  If refreshments were served after the ceremony, the newspapers, usually fond of dwelling on such details, did not mention it. The newly-weds, at any rate, would have been in a rush to get out of Bombay before the storm broke. Not that the prospect of it ruffled Jinnah’s usual calm—he stopped long enough in his office at the bungalow to s
ign a letter requisitioning a public meeting three days later to be addressed by Gandhi. Jinnah, of course, would not be there to address the meeting according to the original programme, but he was too meticulous to leave without attending to this last detail. Apparently, even with Ruttie finally by his side, it was politics that continued to be topmost in his mind.

  Chapter Seven

  For those who saw them on their honeymoon, they seemed a perfect match: a dazzlingly handsome couple despite the twenty-four-year age difference; witty, intelligent and fashionable. And yet, no two people could be more unlike each other, even in their outward appearance. Jinnah was tall and thin with sharply chiselled features; he had fine eyebrows beneath which his rather narrow eyes shone with a calm intelligence. ‘Aloof and imperious of manner,’ he rarely smiled, spoke in a measured voice, each word perfectly pronounced and enunciated, tending to emphasize his points with a pointed index finger, especially when he mounted one of his polemical high horses, which was quite often. His expression of austere gravity was further heightened by the distinguished streak of grey hair right in the middle of his head. He was at all times immaculately clad, refusing even to step out of his bed without throwing on a silk dressing gown over his silk pyjamas. Such fastidious attention to his dress had prompted his more irreverent junior colleagues into dubbing him the ‘Beau Brummell’ of the Bombay High Court, after the regency buck who ruled over London’s fashionable world in the early nineteenth century. The formal style in dress that he assiduously cultivated—well-tailored suits that sat so well on his graceful five-foot-eleven frame, correct to the last detail from the silk jackets and shirts to the stiff white collars, the matching tie and a kerchief in the vanity pocket and shining pump shoes—was more reminiscent of a generation that was already getting outdated, even before the conclusion of the War which overturned all the old notions of propriety and culture. In other words, Jinnah looked distinctly old school.

  In contrast, Ruttie was dainty, warm, spontaneous, with a deep, mocking voice, and a look of sparkling mischief that made her irresistible. As on this first evening of her honeymoon, coming down to dinner with the Raja of Mahmudabad’s family in his palatial residence in Lucknow. She was dressed unexceptionally—underdressed, in fact, for a newly-wed—in a plain white sari with a black and gold embroidered border, and with no trace of the shy, demure bride. Jinnah had accepted Mahmudabad’s invitation to visit them in Lucknow before driving to Nainital where they would stay for a month in the Raja’s house in the hill station. And as she stepped into the drawing room, frail and beautiful, besides her tall, composed husband, her charm was mesmerizing, as Mahmudabad’s young son was to later recall. The four-year-old was so bewitched by Ruttie’s first appearance that he could vividly recount the experience nearly seventy years later: ‘She looked like a fairy . . . delicate as a doll made of glass . . . I never saw a lady so beautiful, elegant and graceful in my whole life.’ The little boy gazed at her in wonder ‘thinking it was a real fairy which has come down to our house’.

  Seeing the little boy staring up at her with such astonishment, Ruttie swooped down in her quick, graceful way, picked him up and put him on her lap as she sat down on a sofa. As the eldest in an extended family of brothers and cousins, she had grown up with adoring little children hanging around her and it came naturally to her to reach out and pet the youngest, no matter how distracted. But at this moment, faced with the prospect of making small talk with relative strangers instead of being alone with her husband, the child’s presence was very welcome. He broke the ice between the four adults groping for a way to get past that first, awkward pause, making them laugh by refusing to get off Ruttie’s lap. ‘I kept sitting in her lap for a long time, even when my father and mother ordered me to come down, until the supper started,’ the boy who became Raja Amir Ahmad Khan of Mahmudabad later said, recalling her ‘very charming and enchanting fragrance . . . which still lingers in my soul’.

  For the host, whose hospitality was legendary, this was no ordinary occasion. He was one of Jinnah’s closest friends, staying with the plain-spoken barrister when he visited Bombay and insisting that Jinnah stay with him whenever he came to Lucknow. They were the same age, although at first glance the Raja appeared at least twenty years older; and despite his superior lineage and rank, it was the Raja who treated Jinnah as his superior in both intelligence and character. They had met years ago, when Ruttie was still a child, and although very different in temperament, had soon become close friends. The friendship was based on their shared ideals of nationalism, and also on the Raja’s genuine admiration for Jinnah, and his loyalty, which was always the way to Jinnah’s heart. When they were together, they would talk until the early hours of the morning, but only about politics. Of a romantic temperament himself, the Raja was delighted when his ‘calm and logical’ friend—‘no apostle of frenzy’, as he once aptly put it—at last succumbed to passion like any other man. And since he regarded romantic passion as more his territory than his pragmatic friend’s, he felt entitled not only to play chief adviser to the veteran bachelor in his matrimonial schemes but also to make the arrangements for their honeymoon which he was sure would not occur to Jinnah to plan.

  The prince was well aware of Jinnah’s aversion to holidays, unable to take even two or three days off from his work and politics without fretting. In fact, Jinnah had successfully aborted their first attempt at a honeymoon within the first five days of their marriage because he wanted to attend a conference of Indian leaders on the War called by the viceroy in Delhi. The announcement, splashed in the papers on the morning after they had fled Bombay following their wedding, was to demonstrate Indian support for the British government for the War, and apart from all the members of the viceroy’s executive council, a number of Indian princes and leaders, including Gandhi, had been invited to present their views. There was no question, of course, of his skipping the meeting and although Delhi was hardly the place for a honeymoon, especially at that time of the year, when even the hotels were closed for the summer, Ruttie made no protest,

  She wanted, with all her youthful ardour, to share in his enthusiasm for the conference. Jinnah was looking forward to voicing his views on constitutional reforms as the only price Indians were prepared to accept in exchange for fighting England’s War, although he had spoken on this on innumerable occasions already. Only two days after their wedding, a delegation of Home Rule Leaguers had carried a memorandum he had drafted on the same theme to the viceroy in Delhi, with a copy of the letter also wired to the secretary of state in England. Of course, the government did not bother to respond, only making a note that Jinnah was to be carefully watched in future because he was an ‘extremist’ and an ‘agitator’. But Jinnah’s faith in his own persuasive abilities was unshakeable, and Ruttie preferred to swallow her disappointment and pack her bags for Delhi scarcely before she had unpacked them on their first holiday together.

  Delhi was even duller than she feared. They were among the first to arrive because Jinnah wanted to attend the legislative council meeting before the main War conference. They stayed at the Maidens Hotel, reputed to be among the best in Delhi. Jinnah had always stayed there as a bachelor and now he booked one of the only two suites in the hotel. It was too nice and quiet, as she told the viceroy’s ADC several years later at an official banquet, responding when he observed that the hotel she was living in was ‘nice and quiet at night’, that ‘I don’t like nice, quiet nights, I like a lot going on’. Not that the days were any less dull. The next two days when she was not stuck alone in this deadly dull hotel, cut off from the city, were spent in the visitors’ gallery of the legislature. There were a hundred others, all of them old fogeys, listening to one long speech after the other, over thirty of them, beginning with the viceroy reading out the king’s message, followed by the Gaekwad of Baroda proposing a royal reply in response to the message and then supported by other ruling princes and delegates in long-winded speeches. Jinnah was among the last to speak, which mea
nt she could not even get away before the end. This was not the stirring political life that she had yearned to share with him, marching side by side, as she had fondly imagined. All in all, it was a ‘sad fiasco’, as the Bombay governor, Lord Willingdon, later described it, and for the first time Ruttie found herself in agreement with something the governor said.

  She had also dreaded going to Delhi so soon after her marriage because of her recent notoriety, thanks to the newspapers. The Parsi and Urdu papers especially were at each other’s throats over the marriage—as if it was anyone’s business but hers and Jinnah’s. Vicious things were being said, especially by the Parsi newspapers. They seemed even more incensed that she had converted to Islam than by the fact that she had dared to disobey her father. Even more offensive was their accusation that Jinnah and even the whole Muslim community had made her convert to Islam as part of a vile conspiracy against the Parsis, as if she was a puppet with no mind and will of her own.

  The Muslims weren’t thanking her either for her sacrifice. They were particularly outraged by some Parsi newspapers describing her wedding day, a Friday, as ‘Black Friday’. An Urdu daily from Lahore, Paisa Akhbar, made threatening noises against those who ‘dared to attack . . . the Muslim nation, a nation alive among the nations of the world, and the follower of a living religion’. And it more or less disowned J—she had decided to call him ‘J’ because Jinnah somehow sounded so unfamiliar and unlike the man she loved: ‘Mr. Jinnah is not so illustrious and distinguished in the world of Islam that this one action on his part could prove to be a blot on Islam and its blessed horizon would be covered by dark clouds.’ And although what the paper said was true—J was hardly Muslim at all except for his strange name—J himself seemed to be taking what they were saying more seriously than she had expected him to. It was all turning so strange and communal and had so little to do with them as two individuals in love.