Mr and Mrs Jinnah Read online

  Their photographs appeared regularly in English journals, especially the one that specialized in ‘native’ celebrities called Men and Women of India. And there, among the prominent Parsi couples of Bombay, they invariably are: Lady Petit, seated amidst the leading wives of Bombay, a member of the working committee (women’s section) of the industrial exhibition held in Bombay in December 1904. And again, when the Prince and Princess of Wales (later, King George V and Queen Mary) visited Bombay in 1905, she was part of the ‘reception committee of Indian ladies’, chosen to open the ceremony organized for the Princess of Wales in the town hall. There she stood on the steps, dressed in her English lace blouse and French chiffon sari and sporting a single string of pearls, stockinged and shoed, her diaphanous sari pallu draped minimally over her permed black hair and held with a diamond pin, a perfect blend of the East and the West, showing her mastery in the art of adapting her Parsi dress to suit their modern, English tastes. And she had that same flexibility with Parsi ritual as well, judging by her role in the ceremonies that day. She waved an Indian sweet around her royal highness’s head three times, performing the Parsi ritual of welcome for the princess, explaining in English what it signified: ‘seeking for her life to be filled with sweetness’; then broke a coconut at the royal feet, ‘with a prayer that all difficulties may so part and fall away from her’. There is Sir Dinshaw too, dressed if a little less picturesquely, chin downwards, an English gentleman in his stiff collar and cravat, the neck and cut of his coat English, but on his head, the loaf-shaped Parsi hat, and the whiskers neither here nor there—a mere shadow on his face. Both figure in the Royal Visit Souvenir: he as one of the six members of a committee in charge of building the Prince of Wales Museum, present as the prince plastered with a golden trowel the foundation stone of the new building; and she with the ladies’ reception committee.

  Sometimes the children appear too—a studio portrait of the older three, for example, where Ruttie is perched in the centre with a bold, impish look in her six-year-old eyes, her two little brothers clinging to her on either side. And it is here, for all to see, how far the Petits have travelled from their orthodox Parsi community. Gone are the little Persian caps on the boys’ heads and the Parsi coat with its closed neck; gone too the tinselled and gem-embroidered coat that Lady Petit’s ancestress wore several generations ago, covered with gold and diamonds from head to chest, or even the ghastly ‘frocks’ that little girls in Sir Dinshaw’s family still wore until they graduated to saris. These could be the viceroy’s children, so flawlessly English do they look in their dress and manner—Ruttie in a long dress of exquisite lace, with a matching lace flower in her flowing black hair, her brother Framji, heir to Sir Dinshaw’s title, in a dark velvet coat with a lace bib and knee-length trousers, stockings and brass-buckled shoes, his long, black mop of curls parted on one side and bare of any headgear, and the younger one, Manek, a toddler dressed in the English fashion in an infant’s long dress, his curls left uncropped. Their last child, another boy named Jamshed, was still five years away, his birth commemorated with a gift from Sir Dinshaw to his eleven-year-old daughter of the complete collection of Tennyson’s poems.

  They gave their children the best of everything, and were overprotective about their health, and ambitious for them, but distant. Following the fashion of the times, Lady Petit left her children’s upbringing entirely in the hands of foreign professionals. Ruttie, like her brothers, grew up with English nannies, nurses and governesses, and French maids; was taught to ride at an early age, and was sent like her brothers to an English school. And while the children may have heard Gujarati and even spoken it to their only surviving grandparent, Lady Petit’s mother, the only language commonly heard in Petit Hall was English. In religion, they were more comfortable with Annie Besant’s Theosophy than with the ancient Avestan prayers they recited without understanding. It was a cosmopolitan home in other ways: even the navroz for each of their children, the thread ceremony where a child is initiated into Zoroastrian prayers by a Parsi priest, became less a religious occasion than a grand celebration, attended by 800 or more guests, their friends from all communities. They were also, like other rich Parsis in their circle, very liberal parents: no mandatory visits to the fire temple; and at thirteen or fourteen, when most of Ruttie’s schoolmates had their marriages arranged by their parents, Ruttie was allowed out of the schoolroom into her parents’ social circle. And other than hiring a governess—English, presumably, from her name, Irene—and insisting she get home before dark, and wear saris all the time—unless she was going riding when she could wear a riding habit—there seemed few rules for Ruttie once she left the schoolroom beyond those that apply to a young lady in polite society. That is, rules of polite English society. She was allowed to go out on her own to the exclusive shops on Hornby Road where she could sign for whatever she needed on her father’s account; entertain her admirers at home, regardless of which community they belonged to; go dancing in the clubs or at the homes of their friends; accompany them for at-homes, garden parties and the races; volunteer with other ladies of her mother’s circle for war relief work and accompany them on their travels, now limited to inside the country because of the War.

  It was during one of these holidays that Ruttie and Jinnah fell in love, and following what he thought was the modern custom, Jinnah approached Sir Dinshaw with his marriage proposal, shattering both their friendship and Sir Dinshaw’s peace of mind forever. The baronet did not see it coming, although his beautiful daughter had spent the entire summer holiday in Jinnah’s company, either riding or reading or dining or talking politics with him. She was, after all, not yet sixteen, an age when modern parents of the new century did not expect their daughters to rush into marriage, although in more conventional homes girls were either betrothed or already married by that age. Sir Dinshaw’s only sister, Hamabai, after having gone to a French boarding school in Nice for her baccalaureate, was still single at twenty-nine and not an eyebrow was raised. So, Sir Dinshaw could hardly be blamed for thinking that his daughter was too young to consider marrying.

  But it was not her youth that was the most preposterous part of Jinnah’s proposal, in Sir Dinshaw’s eyes, or indeed the world’s. According to the norms of even liberal Indian society, while it was all right to aspire to be English in all ways, whether it was dress or food or manners or speech, one simply did not cross the line by marrying out of one’s community. It was the unspoken rule that the older generation understood very well, although younger people were beginning to challenge the establishment. Surprisingly, Sir Dinshaw himself had something of a reputation as a staunch champion of intercommunity marriages. He was not only among the progressive Parsis who had come out publicly in support of Ratan D. Tata (‘RD’ to his friends) when he brought his French bride to Bombay and insisted on marrying her according to Parsi rites after converting her to Zoroastrianism, but also brought the community’s wrath upon his head by dragging the issue into court. RD was the first Parsi to marry out of the community, but as long as he lived outside the country, there was no opposition to the marriage. In fact, he received the blessings of both family and friends. His uncle, the industrialist Jamsetjee Tata, not only readily gave his consent to the marriage but attended the wedding in Paris, and followed it up by hosting a reception for the newly-weds aboard a luxury steamer on the Thames. It was attended by the ‘largest gathering’ of Parsis west of the Suez Canal, including the Parsi British members of the House of Commons, Sir Muncherjee Bhownageree and Dadabhoy Naoroji, and other towering leaders of the community who hailed the marriage as ‘progressive’ and a sign of the ‘social advancement of the community’. But when RD decided to bring home his French wife, rename her as Soonibai, and marry her according to Parsi rites, after first converting her to the Zoroastrian faith, there was an uproar in the community. There was already mounting disapproval among the more orthodox Parsis against the westernized lifestyle of the richer set, and this attempt to gain sanctity for the mar
riage by buying over the priests brought the differences between the orthodox and the unorthodox Parsis into a pitched battle. So heated did the controversy become that when the wedding did take place, with a high priest officiating and sixty dasturs in attendance, many of RD’s friends stayed away for fear of trouble from the orthodoxy. But Sir Dinshaw, instead of staying out of the firing line as other westernized Parsis had wisely done, deliberately courted trouble by taking the issue to the law courts. The case, questioning the authority of the Parsi panchayat to stop a non-Parsi from converting to the Zoroastrian faith and becoming a Parsi, involved a lengthy trial of two years, from 1906 to 1908 in the high court, costing lakhs of rupees in lawyers’ fees. While it was a landmark judgment that defined the rights and identity of the Parsis, Sir Dinshaw personally got nothing out of it except a reputation for unorthodoxy—vastly exaggerated, as it turned out eight years later when Jinnah approached him for his daughter’s hand in marriage.

  It was not an enviable situation for any suitor to be in. Jinnah was not only twenty-four years older than Ruttie but had known her almost from birth and not shown more than an avuncular interest in his host’s lively young daughter until then. To break the news to the unsuspecting Sir Dinshaw was not easy, but Jinnah was not a man to be easily daunted. Realizing that the best way would be to take Sir Dinshaw by surprise, he used his courtroom skills in cross-examining witnesses to try and put his host at a disadvantage. He began by asking Sir Dinshaw innocently what his views were on intercommunity marriages. The unwary Sir Dinshaw walked right into the trap by giving the stock answer that all modern Indians felt was expected of them: intercommunity marriages would, he said glibly, ‘considerably help national integration and might ultimately prove to be the final solution to inter-communal antagonism’. Thereupon, we are informed, Jinnah calmly told him that he wanted to marry his daughter. And in what seems like a classic case of understatement, a contemporary described Sir Dinshaw as being ‘taken aback’. The baronet had not realized, according to M.C. Chagla, a former chief justice of India who had once worked under Jinnah, ‘that his remarks might have personal repercussions. He was most indignant and refused to countenance any such idea which appeared to him absurd and fantastic.’

  How true is this account of what transpired between the two men will never be known. Jinnah did not confide in anyone; nor did Sir Dinshaw ever speak of it. But certainly, the story about Jinnah’s proposal acquired a life of its own—by the time Jinnah returned to Bombay, it had already spread like the proverbial wildfire. It went on in the years to come to become almost a legend, told and retold, always with the same mix of admiration and glee, surviving almost half a century through word of mouth until it was finally etched in print in Chagla’s memoir, Roses in December. For all its dryness, the story evoked in the minds of anyone even slightly acquainted with the two men, a picture of them, so stiff and proper and mature, until they trip and collapse under the weight of their own contradictions—so amusing and yet so resonant of an entire generation torn between their British heads and Indian hearts; unable to bridge the chasm between their progressive, modern ideas and what they really felt.

  Chapter Two

  By the beginning of June, before the rains started to swell the rivers and make the roads impassable, all of Bombay’s rich and well-to-do returned home to their city in fashionable flocks; and with them returned the Petits and Jinnah, separately. Almost instantly, the strange and fascinating story of Jinnah’s and Ruttie’s romance began to do the rounds. Within a fortnight, even a stranger attending a public meeting in Bombay heard about their love story. After being introduced to Jinnah at a public meeting at the Bombay Presidency Association, Kanji Dwarkadas, then a young man of twenty-four, found out the gossip doing the rounds of the city on why the otherwise reserved Jinnah was currently in such unusually high spirits: ‘The reasons for Jinnah’s cheerfulness at the Association’s meeting—I found later. He had spent the two months of summer vacation in Darjeeling with Sir Dinshaw and Lady Dinbai Petit and there he fell in love with their 16-year-old beautiful daughter, Ruttie. As they returned to Bombay in early June, all Bombay heard of their impending marriage but the parents did not like the idea of their daughter marrying a Mohammedan. Ruttie was a minor but she was determined to marry Jinnah.’

  Kanji, like every other young man of his circle, had worshipped Ruttie from a distance since his student days. Walking on a cold afternoon two years ago across the Bombay Oval, he had caught sight of Ruttie riding in a small carriage driven by a pony. He could not take his eyes off the fourteen-year-old beauty, and watched the carriage and its occupant till they disappeared from sight. He never forgot her face, and discovered who she was from a photograph that appeared in a newspaper three months later. As for Jinnah, Kanji knew of him as a popular leader, without having ever seen him before. Which is why when Kanji saw a dashing man ‘in check trousers, black coat, hair parted on the side and moustache, addressing the meeting with great confidence and everybody listening with rapt attention’, Kanji turned to his neighbour to ask who this impressive figure was, earning the retort: ‘You don’t know Jinnah?’

  Clearly, Sir Dinshaw’s snub had not cooled Jinnah’s ardour, which was again very unlike the Jinnah the world knew. He had never been known before to chase a woman, especially not one as young and enchanting as Ruttie, preferring to avoid them at the few parties he attended, where he hated the dancing and music, choosing instead to retreat to a quiet corner and engage any man who was interested in what was so far his only passion: politics. But now here he was, wherever Ruttie appeared—at the races, at parties and even the fashionable Willingdon Club where everyone went for the dancing and the live music—talking to her openly, oblivious to people’s looks and whispers. How much his persistence had to do with Ruttie was a matter of guesswork, because she now seemed to be doing all the chasing, going up to him and looking up at him with such open adoration that it would have been beyond even Jinnah’s iron will to resist her had he wanted to. They became the talking point of all Bombay—he for having the audacity to stand up to her father and she for her forwardness. In hindsight, it was hardly surprising that fashionable Bombay was so excited about what could, after all, have fizzled out as a mere teenage crush. But Bombay wanted their love to be something more than a passing fancy. The city with its cotton market and cloth mills had become by then not just the richest in the country but also the most cosmopolitan. Here students and professionals from across the country came to make their fortune and name, confident that doors would open to them, regardless of the old barriers of caste and community.

  It was a dynamic, modern city, proud of its sons like Jinnah. He had come to the city penniless from Karachi, the eldest of seven children of a failed businessman of the Khoja Muslim community, and within the span of two decades, had clawed himself upwards as one of Bombay’s best-known and wealthiest lawyers. A star politician, he was known for his luxury cars and fashionable clothes, able to hold his own with the best in the court as well as in the Imperial Legislative Council, where he was about to be re-elected for his third term. And for the young men who aspired to be like Jinnah, and others wary of his arrogant confidence, the outcome of Jinnah’s matrimonial hopes became a matter of pressing interest. No one, not even in Bombay’s mixed society, had dared so far to cross the matrimonial divide among the Hindus, Parsis and Muslims. There were men, of course, usually fresh out of Oxford or Cambridge, who had returned from overseas with French or English wives, but to go as far as Jinnah was intending to go was unheard of. It touched a chord in the English chattering classes, and not just in Bombay. ‘I got news today that there was much noise in Bombay about Ruttie Petit wanting to marry Jinnah,’ wrote Sarojini Naidu’s elder son, Jaisoorya, to his sister, Padmaja, from his student digs in Bangalore.

  Jaisoorya had only heard of Ruttie so far. But as the eldest child of liberal, English-educated parents like Sarojini and her doctor husband, who themselves had an inter-caste marriage eighteen years
ago and had raised all four of their children in a cosmopolitan home, exposing them from childhood to nationalist ideas and culture, one would have expected Jaisoorya to be on Ruttie’s side. And indeed he did not dispute her right to marry a Muslim. His issue was with the age of her suitor. ‘What put it into her silly little head to suddenly fall in love with a man old enough to be her father,’ Jaisoorya wrote from his room in Bangalore’s YMCA, urging Padmaja to stay out of it.

  It was a mystery that exercised others besides Jaisoorya. In his student circle, scattered across Bombay and Poona and Hyderabad, even Lucknow, Ruttie had been worshipped from afar for her charm and elegance, with young men exchanging snippets about her doings and movements without ever meeting her. So intimidating was the social distance between the Petits and ordinary people that Jaisoorya felt too shy to call on Ruttie even when he moved to Poona later that year to start his college even though he had heard so much about her from the rest of his family. ‘I hear Ruttie Petit is in Poona,’ he wrote to Padmaja on 30 December 1917, from Yeravada, Poona, ‘but I do not know that young lady and she most probably would not care to see such a poor person as myself. And I do not care to go and see big barons who wish to patronize me.’ And to now find that teenaged idol throwing herself away—not because the man was a Muslim, for that was quite besides the point for young men like Jaisoorya Naidu; but on a man who was not only famed for his coldness and reserve, but was also around her father’s age. It was more than disappointing—it was baffling.