Mr and Mrs Jinnah Page 17

  The protests had begun the previous month. On 26 May, before Ruttie and Jinnah returned from their honeymoon in Nainital, a few priests from the fire temples of Bombay gathered at the main Parsi cathedral, the Dadi Seth fire temple on Agiari Lane. It was a solemn occasion as befitted the gravity of the situation. The chief priest of Bombay, Shams-ul-Ulma Dastur Dorab Peshotan Sanjana, was voted chair of the meeting.

  Although it was held on a Sunday and no outsiders were invited, the meeting of the Parsi priests—‘to express its disapprobation of marriages of Parsi women with non-Parsis’—was widely reported, including for the first time by the British-run Times of India. And even though the names of Jinnah and Ruttie did not figure in the meeting, it was perfectly clear to all newspaper readers, especially the English-reading ones, who the priests were actually targeting: ‘In opening the proceedings,’ as the Times of India’s report said, ‘the chairman stated that during the past few months the Parsi community had been greatly grieved by marriages of Parsi girls with non-Parsis . . . and this feeling of grief was particularly noticeable among the priestly class of the community.’

  But the priests were not prepared to stop at merely condemning these marriages. Sensing that the moment was ripe for bringing the community back to the basics, they advocated a sweeping change in the lifestyle of their elite, especially in the way they were raising their daughters: ‘Unions such as these were to be highly deprecated in the interests of the community,’ the chief priest declared, ‘and he exhorted Parsi parents not to allow their daughters to mix with non-Parsis until they had received sufficient instructions according to the tenets of the Zoroastrian religion.’ Few could have missed the message behind the priestly injunction: Parsi girls, out of purdah for almost a century, were to be put back under the same restraints as girls from other communities. They were to be deprived of their English tutors and dancing teachers, their riding and shopping trips and garden parties, and even the Willingdon Club. It was nothing short of being told to lock up their daughters at home until they were safely married in the old, arranged way.

  Other preventive measures were discussed with equal solemnity. One resolution that was passed unanimously by the priests addressed what they had long felt was the root of the whole problem: the neglect of religious indoctrination by the more anglicized Parsis. The resolution, moved by Dastur Dinsha J. Garda, after condemning marriages of Parsis with non-Parsis, ‘and particularly marriages of Parsi girls with non-Parsis’, called upon the Parsi community ‘to give their children religious instructions and to teach them to follow in the footsteps of their great forebears who had left their mark on their ancient history’.

  The second resolution laid down the punishment to be meted out to the guilty. And for the first time, the priests set down a severe penalty not just for the girl who had dared to marry outside the community, but her parents as well, holding them equally culpable in her crime. In the resolution the priests issued a warning to the parents of such girls, threatening to excommunicate them, along with their daughter if they tried to reconcile with their daughter or even continued to ‘stay with or keep a close relationship with such a woman’ after her marriage. In such a case, no Parsi priest would be allowed to perform any religious ceremony for them, including the death rites, according to the resolution.

  That was only the beginning. The meeting of the priests in Bombay, although thinly attended, was so widely publicized that Parsi panchayats in other towns such as Deolali held similar meetings supporting the priests’ resolutions. In fact, the press coverage of the meeting, especially by the Parsi-owned newspapers Kaiser-e-Hind and Jam-e-Jamshed, was so intensive that nearly every man in the community was soon persuaded to believe that it was his religious duty to stop ‘these sort of marriages which do harm to the Parsi community’.

  Encouraged by the popular response to their call, the priests held another meeting of their clan, much larger than the one held in the Dady Seth fire temple. The priests at the first meeting, although they had been severe in their condemnation, had carefully couched their injunctions as mere recommendations to the community. They could not forget that they were, after all, dependent on these fabulously rich Parsis, who had in the past bribed their way into being permitted to bring their foreign brides into the fire temples. But now, after the relentless press campaign, they felt more emboldened. This time they decided to crack the whip on those in their own profession who might be tempted to cooperate with their rich clients. Besides barring a priest from performing any religious ceremony for the erring girl or her near relatives who refused to disown her, even priests who unknowingly ended up at a Parsi home where the culprit was present would be severely punished, they declared in a new resolution. ‘If you find in this gathering a Parsi who has married a non-Parsi or even her husband or both are present,’ the resolution said, ‘then the priest should not perform the ceremony and should get up and leave.’ And the penalty for neglecting to do so? Excommunication, of course.

  Nothing seemed to appease the priests or the community at large. Even Sir Dinshaw’s unusually bold step of publicly disowning his daughter and son-in-law in a courtroom could not mollify them. Now the people began to press for a general public meeting of the whole community where the issue could be thrashed out. It was a rare thing, to hold a meeting of the Zoroastrian Anjuman, the entire adult male population of Parsis in Bombay. No one could remember when such a meeting had last been held, not even when a new member of the panchayat’s board of trustees was elected to replace someone who had just died. But the situation now seemed to demand it—or at least that was what the head of the Parsi panchayat, Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy, thought.

  A first cousin of Lady Petit’s and inheritor of her father’s baronetcy and estates, the fifth Sir Jamsetjee was no friend of the Petits. There was, in fact, an intense rivalry between the two baronets fighting for the coveted post of president of the Parsi panchayat’s board of trustees. The rivalry had begun during the lifetime of the fourth Sir Jamsetjee, Lady Petit’s uncle and successor to her father’s baronetcy. Sir Dinshaw had filed a legal case against him as far back as 1906 (the same case in which he had championed the rights of R.D. Tata to marry an outsider according to Parsi rites and allow her to enter the fire temple as a convert to Zoroastrianism), challenging Sir Jamsetjee’s right to head the Parsi panchayat’s board of trustees as if it was an inherited right. By the time the case was settled, in 1908, the fourth Sir Jamsetjee was dead and his son had taken his place as president of the panchayat’s board of trustees. And while it was Sir Dinshaw who won the case in principle, Sir Jamsetjee never vacated the chair because he was in any case acknowledged by all Parsis as their pre-eminent leader, with or without a proper election. After that their relations were anything but cordial.

  And now this interloper cousin-in-law was taking the initiative in calling a public meeting to humiliate him further.

  But Sir Jamsetjee was not wrong about the public anger against his niece’s marriage. Around 8500 Parsis had signed up for calling a meeting of the community. For such a large gathering assembled at the venue, there were not enough chairs, leaving only standing room for many in the crowd. There was utter pandemonium, with many people wanting to speak at the same time. After trying to force order, Sir Jamsetjee finally adjourned the meeting. But the crowd left only after he promised that he would call a meeting of the general body of the panchayat, which would take measures to prevent such marriages in the future and to mete out fitting punishment to the culprits.

  Sir Jamsetjee kept his promise. He accordingly sent out a requisition notice to be signed by all the members of the panchayat’s board of trustees, summoning a meeting of the panchayat. Except Sir Dinshaw, all the trustees signed the notice, including the latter’s cousin, Jehangir Petit.

  It was even worse than what Sir Dinshaw had feared: to the last man, they agreed that it was their duty to stop marriages like Ruttie’s. They declared her excommunicated and stripped her and her unborn children o
f all rights as Parsis, and warned that ‘under no circumstances should she be allowed to enter the Parsi community again’. This included banning her from Parsi ‘weddings, navjots and social occasions’. And as if that was not disgrace enough, the panchayat ordered that their resolutions be circulated to all Parsi communities across India to be held up as a warning to other Parsi parents and their daughters.

  Never before in the history of the Parsis had there been such a savage witch-hunt. And yet, great care had been exercised both in the deliberations of the priests and the community to never once directly mention the names of either Ruttie or Jinnah. But stripped of its more civilized veneer, the impact was similar to medieval sanctions: the newly-weds may just as well have been paraded naked on the streets with their heads shaved for their crime of marrying for love.

  Chapter Nine

  Outwardly, Ruttie gave no sign of the humiliation she was undergoing. She resolutely ignored her extensive family of relatives and friends, avoiding the places where she was likely to meet them. The Willingdon Club, of course, being predominantly Parsi, was now enemy territory. Likewise, Jinnah resigned from the Orient Club, the only club he had ever belonged to, where he used to go occasionally to play billiards or meet his friends. While the Orient Club, a gentlemen’s club, was not a Parsi ghetto like the Willingdon, it was still predominantly made up of Parsis, including her own uncle, and it became yet another place for the Parsis to show their hostility to him. In fact, the Parsis’ hate campaign against them had become so widespread that for the first time in his life, Jinnah could find no one prepared to propose his name when he applied for membership of the Western India Turf Club. And Ruttie could not join even the Ladies Gymkhana, which was again run mostly by the Parsi women of her mother’s circle.

  The women, especially the younger girls, hated her even more than the men. They were now all coming under pressure, including the Willingdon Club set, just because of what she had done. With the orthodox Parsis attacking them on all sides, the anglicized Parsis had become defensive about their lifestyle, especially the way they were bringing up their daughters. There was even some talk of girls being forcibly pulled out of school and forbidden to step outside their homes. Whether or not any of these strictures would actually have been enforced, Ruttie and Jinnah found nearly all Parsi doors shutting on them. And those few loyal friends Jinnah still had among the Parsis did not let it be known abroad that they were still friends with him. As for Ruttie, she refused to go anywhere where she might bump into one of her parents’ circle—which was nearly everyone who was anyone in Bombay.

  She could have, of course, done what K.L. Gauba’s wife, Husna, did two years after her, when she too found herself isolated by even the so-called cosmopolitan circles of Lahore, where they lived, on account of her Hindu–Muslim marriage. That is, set herself up aggressively and systematically as a popular society hostess whose invitations were so sought after that no one with social pretensions could afford to ignore her, no matter what they privately thought of her. But that was a survival strategy beyond Ruttie’s capacity or even inclination, given her sheltered background and wrapped up as she was in Jinnah, wanting to belong in his world, uncaring, unaware even, of what it could do to her, to be banished thus from everything she had known so far.

  For Jinnah, it did not matter that much, in fact, it even worked to his advantage. Far from upsetting his rather grandiose notion of himself, it only enhanced his image as a role model for progressive Indians, with the courage to take on a whole community’s wrath to marry whom he desired. With a pride everyone considered more than justifiable, he declared publicly, on the floor of the legislative council, that Indians like him, modern and English educated, ‘cannot simply sit quiet’ while a community ‘outcasts him or her for marrying outside their caste’. While he was indeed the epitome of the admirably progressive Indian, fighting for his right, and of others like him, to choose his own mate, it did not seem to occur to him that somehow it was Ruttie who was paying the price. After being worshipped as ‘the Blue Flower’ of Bombay, the admired and envied debutante of her generation, she had turned overnight into the city’s most notorious outcaste.

  It was true that Jinnah wasn’t given to divining other people’s emotions, and especially not his own bride’s. But even the most perceptive of Ruttie’s friends found it impossible to penetrate her lively, self-confident exterior and discover what she actually felt. She seemed to be as airily unperturbed by the Parsi panchayat’s excommunication order as she was by her mother’s total withdrawal. Perhaps following orders from her husband, Lady Petit had made no move so far to get in touch with Ruttie. Quite apart from his rage at his daughter’s rebellion, Sir Dinshaw was afraid of making matters worse by inviting the community’s wrath on his own head, or jeopardize his three sons’ future by seeming to support Ruttie in secret. But whatever turmoil Ruttie might have been undergoing inwardly, she who had so far never left the protection of her powerful family circle even for a single day, faced the world now with a pride that matched Jinnah’s, stubbornly refusing to play the victim.

  In fact, even the one member of her family who did meet her went away without a clue to her inner distress. This was her brother Fali, the future baronet. Just a year apart in age, they shared the same high spirits that made them the life and soul of every party. They had been very close but now it was as if an invisible wall had suddenly sprung up between them. In later years their close resemblance, both in temperament and tastes, became more apparent—that same puckish sense of humour and impetuosity and generous instinct, the compulsive need to prick the bubble of the pompous and the vainglorious, and bring them down to earth, the love for dogs and books and all things exquisite, especially jade, and above all, an almost divine unconsciousness of money that only the very rich can have. But at seventeen, Fali was still unformed and more important, dependent on his father. For Ruttie, the leader of their childhood escapades and games of Three Musketeers, what could be more natural and gallant than to let him go on believing that all was well with her. At any rate, he was not going to remain at home for much longer, only waiting for the War to end so that he could go up to Cambridge, as his father had planned for him. Till then, they did keep in touch, however brief and covert these meetings might have been, and he must have surely come to bid her goodbye before leaving for Cambridge, for two years later, he makes a brief appearance in one of her letters. ‘By the bye,’ Ruttie wrote to Leilamani in a letter dated 18 April 1920, on a frivolous note, ‘since you [intend] to marry him some day in the near future, it might interest you to know that Fali is leaving for England.’

  It wasn’t just Fali who was fooled by her response to her excommunication. She maintained such careless indifference in the face of the new indignities that she ended up shocking her acquaintances instead of winning their sympathy. And when she scoffed at the Parsi community and its absurd, childish prejudices, boasting gaily of wanting to ‘wake it up’, they mistook it for flightiness, hating her even more because it could have so easily been one of them in her place.

  It would have been easier perhaps, especially in those first heady months of her freedom, if she had something to take her mind away from what she was going through. Perhaps then the insults would not have rankled so much. Why should she care so much that she and Jinnah were the only ones of their large circle of acquaintances not to be invited for a navjot dinner in the home of a family friend. Or mind that her aunt and cousins and grandmother, in spite of living right next door, had neither called nor invited them over. If only there had been more to do . . .

  But there was so little happening at South Court. The house ran on well-oiled wheels, managed by the indispensable ‘Visan’, Jinnah’s valet, accountant, bearer and housekeeper rolled into one, who had been with him since his earliest days in Bombay and knew exactly how to cater to his master’s comforts. Jinnah ‘had only to instruct Visan so many guests were to come for lunch or dinner on so and so date’, according to one biographer,
G. Allana, ‘and he would make all the necessary arrangements’. Not the least of Visan’s invaluable assets was, according to another biographer, Rizwan Ahmad, that ‘he knew where every file and book was kept’. The cook, too, must have been around for years, considering how little his master required of him in terms of meals, and that too of the boiled and bland variety.

  But he was a conscientious husband, punctiliously handing over the reins of the household to her, and determined not to question her on how she ran it and what changes she wanted to make, however perturbed he was inwardly by her extravagance. He had resolved to give her a free hand and he would not go back on it, no matter how shocked he was to see her throw away vast sums of money so casually on inessentials. Nor did he ever betray his feelings to her or anyone else, not by a word or gesture.

  He gave up his old bachelor habits as well. When his sister Fatima had lived with him, as she had done for the last eight years since she passed out of her convent boarding school, he had come home as late as he pleased. Apart from having breakfast with Fatima and driving her to his other married sister Shirin’s home on his way to the courts, Jinnah had not felt obliged to spend any time with her. He did not frequent the Bar Gymkhana like his other colleagues, wasting his time drinking and playing poker and bridge. But he loved to linger late in his chambers, talking to those of his young admirers who dropped in for a chat. He would willingly interrupt a legal conference with a client if one of them dropped in unexpectedly and seldom returned home from his chambers until late in the night, especially in the last two years when his political activity had outstripped his legal work.