Mr and Mrs Jinnah Page 23

  But this time, Ruttie hardly minded the distraction because she too had grown extremely attached to the kind English editor who had become more Indian than most Indians. She too immersed herself in the campaign to get Horniman back, made more confident by having Jinnah’s full approval. While he was mostly busy sorting out the affairs of the Bombay Chronicle, Ruttie even attended a trade union congress held for the first time where she moved a resolution protesting against Horniman’s deportation. The congress was a big gathering of important men, but sitting quietly by herself in a side-box, Ruttie not only moved the resolution but spoke from her heart, ‘fluently and faultlessly’, according to eyewitnesses, for five minutes—so important was the issue for her personally. But after that, for reasons that she could never explain even to herself, she never found the drive or the conviction to ever speak in public, considering that as exclusively Jinnah’s sphere.

  In all this renewed political activity the baby was quite forgotten, although it was due to arrive in less than three months. Instead of making plans for her confinement in Bombay, they now set off on a sea voyage to England for an indeterminate period. The Home Rule League leader Annie Besant had made an offer Jinnah could not refuse. She asked Jinnah to join her delegation to England to discuss the Montagu–Chelmsford proposals before Parliament in return for making all the arrangements to get him there. Since the War had ended, a passage to England was hard to arrange, even with all the money in the world, because the soldiers were going home. For Jinnah, it was an opportunity he could not miss. Having fallen foul of the local government, he wanted to appeal to his friends in higher authority in England who he was convinced would help Horniman to get back his passport and return to Bombay. The journey by sea would last at least twenty days and since Parliament would not start its hearings for at least another two months, it meant that he could not return in time to be there for the childbirth. There was no way he could leave her behind, cut off as she was from her own parents and family. Loath to lose this opportunity and yet a dutiful husband and would-be father, he took a risk that few would have dared in his place: dragged her along to England with him. Not that Ruttie needed any dragging—she was overjoyed at the prospect of this trip abroad, their first since they had married. Once they were in England, perhaps they would be as she had imagined their life together to be. As for the baby, she did not want to think about it as yet.

  Chapter Twelve

  It had been almost six years since Ruttie had been on a ship. The last time she had been a mere schoolgirl of thirteen, accustomed to going on summer vacations abroad with her parents and brothers and the large retinue of servants that accompanied them everywhere. It was the custom for rich families to go abroad for their summer holidays, and the Petits, with their own estates in the south of France and a summer residence in England, were more privileged than most. Coincidentally, Jinnah had been travelling on the same steamer, on his way to England, like them, for his summer vacation. But then she had been nothing more to him than the young daughter of his friend, with whom he might have occasionally stopped to converse if they ever met on deck. At thirteen, she was still something of a tomboy, more interested in playing pranks with her brothers; and when she tired of their games, retreating into her own world of books. And in the excitement of travelling abroad she had lost her taste for the long political talks that she occasionally had with Jinnah when they met in Bombay. He too had other things on his mind, primarily to use the journey to hold political talks with Gokhale who was also travelling on the same ship. In fact, Jinnah had made sure his travel plans coincided with Gokhale’s trip to England so that they both would have the leisure for uninterrupted political discussion during the journey, as Sarojini told Gokhale in a letter she wrote to him on board. And apart from paying his usual courtesies in his old-world manner to the Petit ladies, he wasted no time on them or anyone else. It turned out to be her last trip abroad as Miss Petit, with the War starting the following year.

  If the War had not lasted so long, they would have surely gone abroad for their honeymoon. Ruttie had been longing to escape from the country, not just to get away from all the unpleasantness and scandal, but so that she could get Jinnah away from the politics that was consuming him. In England they could at last be themselves, as she felt they were meant to be—a loving, smart, social couple, with their passion for politics leavened with visits to the opera, art shows and the Broadway. Life wouldn’t be just about staying home and eating alone by themselves, but full of dinner parties, travel, fun. Once they got away from Bombay, Jinnah would surely be that old self that she had once briefly glimpsed while they were courting. Her spirits rose at the prospect, making it easier to ignore the fact that they had barely two months’ time to themselves before the baby arrived.

  To add to her eager expectation of the joys ahead, Sarojini had also decided to join them on the same ship, S.S. Merkera. Having waited futilely for weeks to find a passage to England to consult doctors on her heart condition, she had finally managed to find a berth by becoming, like Jinnah, part of Annie Besant’s delegation going to England to appear before the parliamentary committee on the reforms bill. For Ruttie, this was even better than going to England with Jinnah, who, in any case, would get caught up in talking politics non-stop with other members of the delegation while they were on their voyage. She, who had tried and failed to get Sarojini’s undivided attention while they were in Bombay, had a whole stretch of twenty days now to look forward to, with no one intruding on her time alone with her favourite person—just lying down on a deckchair next to her doing nothing more strenuous than reading and talking and snoozing between meals.

  But that turned out to be yet another vain hope. Ruttie was in no condition to enjoy the voyage or Sarojini’s company. During the first half of the journey, until Aden, she lay prostrate in her cabin, overcome by the extreme heat and rough seas. They did not go ashore at Aden, on their midway stop, but as Sarojini remarked in a letter home from the ship on 15 June 1919, there was plenty to see and enjoy, including ‘the funny little roaming boats coming alongside full of curly-headed negro boys selling all sorts of wares—desert wares—of ostrich eggs, coloured baskets woven of date leaves, bundles of dates, cigarettes, buckskins, beads and shells’. But always oversensitive to heat and the rocking of boats on rough waters, made worse by her present condition, Ruttie was in no state to enjoy the floating market or anything else for that matter.

  Jinnah, too, may as well have not been there with her. Although he was physically in the same cabin with her, his mind was far away in Bombay, where his real concerns were. The government had not yet lifted its pre-censorship orders on the Bombay Chronicle. He had tried everything, seeking appointments with the governor and his officials and meeting every term and condition that the government laid down, but they kept changing their terms and conditions, making it impossible for him to escape the suspicion that the government was determined to send him into political oblivion by whatever means they could. And finally tiring of their dilatory tactics, he gave up and resumed publication of the newspaper without the editorial pages. This was only a week before his departure and it made him anxious about leaving Bombay at such a time. He had little faith in the ability of those he had left in charge of the newspaper’s affairs to handle the government, especially the assistant editor, S.A. Brelvi, who had taken Horniman’s place. He was nagged by worry throughout the journey and by the time they reached Port Said, he could no longer contain his anxiety. He sent off a letter from the port, which would have amused Ruttie who knew only too well how much Jinnah loathed writing letters. But she was feeling far too ill to appreciate the irony. The letter was brief and displayed all his hidden anxiety to know what was going on in Bombay during his absence: ‘Dear Mr Brelvi,’ it began stiffly, ‘This is just a line to inform you that we have now reached Port Said.’ And then without wasting time on further civilities, Jinnah asked for news of what was going on in Bombay: ‘I shall feel greatly obliged if you will send
me [the] Bombay Chronicle to my address.’

  Then, without willing it, he revealed himself, exposing his real motive for writing the letter: ‘How are things getting on? I am anxious to know. Please keep in touch with what is going on in Bombay. I wonder whether the order of pre-censorship continues.’ And having said what he wanted, he probably felt that some small talk was in order: ‘We have had a nice voyage on the whole,’ he wrote, an observation that Ruttie could hardly agree with. ‘We almost escaped the monsoon and it has been quite pleasant all along,’ signing off abruptly with ‘Hoping you are well, Yours sincerely, M.A. Jinnah.’

  The other letter he wrote on board was equally forced out of him by his need for news from home. This letter was to Gandhi, requesting him to send him news of political developments, including Gandhi’s own views on the reforms bill. Gandhi replied promptly, but instead of discussing the reforms or giving him the political news that Jinnah craved, he sent some gratuitous advice to him, suggesting he learn Gujarati and Hindi before he returned to India, and asked Ruttie to join the spinning classes that had now started in Bombay under his supervision.

  Sarojini, on the other hand, with none of Jinnah’s anxiety to know what was going on in India during their absence, and with a sturdier stomach than Ruttie’s, could afford to sit back and enjoy herself during the voyage. ‘How the sharks follow the ship for the garbage and how the porpoises play all round taking leaps into the air and then diving into the sea. Such a pretty sight,’ she wrote from the ship to her daughters back home. She had plenty of time to look around her and enjoy the various human dramas on board the ship: ‘The humour on board . . . are many and varied—and as I sit in my corner all day—quite aloof and quiet, I can watch all the fun. People have by now divided themselves into natural groups and rather sniff at one another—the bridge players, the snobs, the flirtatious, frivolous—the dowdy and domestic and the rag-tag and bobtails generally are herded together! But, of course, there are some very nice and interesting people . . . I do nothing all day long but lie in my chair and dream, read or sleep. I hardly talk to anyone except for a few minutes and I get to bed by 8.30 or latest by 9 o’clock.’

  ‘Every now and then we pass a ship and that marks an event in the day,’ she wrote in another letter. ‘We reach Suez tomorrow and Port Said, which is like a city of the Arabian Nights, on Friday and then we get into the Poets’ Mediterranean, the sea of song.’

  After crossing Aden, according to yet another letter home from the sea, there was a respite from the oppressive heat. ‘We expected blazing heat after Aden and everyone turned out in their thinnest summer clothes, prepared to be uncomplaining and cheerful martyrs to the Red Sea of tradition. But such a strong head wind started directly we set going again that everyone was glad of wraps and rugs and sheltered caverns.’ And here Sarojini gives her only news of the silently suffering Ruttie, valiantly struggling against the heat, and her seasickness: ‘Even Ruttie has begun to respond to the beautiful cool weather and comes up in the evening all glimmering like a mayflower and all the women gape at her because she looks so fragile and lovely—and fantastic.’

  Nor did it get any better for Ruttie after they landed. Jinnah had, of course, the practical sense to rent a house for the duration of their stay in London. He would have preferred undoubtedly to have lived in a hotel, taking his usual suite in his favourite hotel in London, the Ritz, but had decided that it wouldn’t do, especially with Ruttie’s confinement approaching. But having installed her in their temporary home, he took off almost instantly, feeling his husbandly duties were done.

  There was much to keep him busy and away from home. He had arrived in London not prepared to take it easy like the other delegates arriving in various deputations waiting their turn to give their evidence before the committee. His sense of duty drove him to meet as many people of influence as he could because he felt he had ‘arduous work to do for the cause of India’, as the Bombay Chronicle put it. They had reached London well ahead of some of the other Indian deputations. The committee was to begin its sittings nearly a month later, in the first week of August 1919. But first, he had to go meet Montagu in the hope of getting him to use his influence to release Horniman’s passport and lift the deportation order against him. There was also the matter of the Rowlatt Act that he wished to discuss with the secretary of state, confident that he would side with him on the issue.

  But his confidence in Montagu proved misplaced on both counts. For one thing, Jinnah’s refusal to heed personal gossip had left him clueless about the changing power equations in London. Montagu’s star was now waning. This was partly due to his fading health which reduced his previously formidable style of debating; but it was mainly because the government’s attitude to India had lost its liberal hue after the Jallianwala Bagh incident. Montagu himself was no longer as sympathetic to Jinnah as he had been two years ago when he was in Bombay interviewing national leaders on the contents of the reforms bill. The good impression he had then formed of Jinnah had been entirely dissipated by both the present governor of Bombay, Sir George Lloyd, and his predecessor, Lord Willingdon, who turned him against Jinnah, with Lloyd even writing to Montagu warning the secretary of state about Jinnah’s unreliable character. It was Lloyd who had engineered the deportation of Horniman and the temporary closure of the Bombay Chronicle in order, he claimed, to calm the unrest in Bombay and undermine the position of Bombay’s extremists, of whom he considered Jinnah to be the prime leader. And now, with Horniman’s removal, Lloyd was able to convince Montagu that he had achieved calm in Bombay by removing the ‘daily ration of sedition’ that Horniman was providing his readers through the newspaper.

  Clueless about what was really going on under the surface, Jinnah busied himself setting up meetings with both Montagu and other people of note in London. What little time he spent at home went into reading newspapers. He had been starved of news from back home on the long voyage to London and was now eager to catch up with all that he had missed. He went through not just the day’s newspapers, both from India and in London, but carefully read old issues as well, making copious markings and issuing clarifications and press statements whenever he felt they were necessary. The news famine had also made him uncharacteristically social, inviting any young Indian student he met to his Pall Mall home so that they could talk politics with him.

  By the end of July, his attention shifted to the reforms bill. All the Indian deputations had arrived by now and receptions were being held in their honour by unofficial organizations friendly to India’s political aspirations. Being the best known among the Indian representatives, Jinnah, naturally, was invited to address the gathering. Now he took on yet another self-imposed mission that kept him busy at all hours of the day and night. Believing that it was important to show the British government that Indians were united in their demand for self-government and wanting to dispel the general impression in England that only a ‘few educated agitators and lawyers’ were demanding the reforms, he held long discussions with all the Indian deputations to persuade them to speak in one voice. But this was yet another wasted effort on his part. Despite his strenuous efforts, neither the Congress nor the Liberals were willing to give up their extreme positions on whether the reforms were workable or just rubbish. While he succeeded in getting Mrs Besant’s Home Rule League team to sign a joint memorandum on the bill, the Congress and the Liberals stuck to their position at both extremes of the middle path he was suggesting.

  There was no time in all this to pay much attention to what was going on in his own home. Even less to wonder what Ruttie felt about having a baby abroad with no support except what his money could buy. Ruttie herself felt as if she had exchanged one place of solitary confinement for another. England, especially after the War, was ‘no place for anyone without a definite purpose’, as Sarojini put it. The London of Ruttie’s girlhood memories no longer existed. The house that they had settled into was in Pall Mall, which was a convenient address for both their interests, with
in calling distance of Jinnah’s various work appointments and close to the shops in case Ruttie wanted to go shopping by herself. But there was so little to see or shop for, with all the post-War shortages, including even of coal and food. Nor did she know anyone she could go and call on. The few acquaintances from her maiden days were all associated with her parents’ circle, and therefore to be avoided. Once again, there was only Sarojini to turn to, but she had decided to use the one month before the committee began its sitting, to go on an extensive tour of the Lake District and Ireland.

  Jinnah, on the other hand, was focused on his upcoming interview with the joint select committee, and sent out summons to several young Indian students he knew to visit him at his flat so that he could discuss with them the questions likely to be asked by the select committee’s members. Diwan Chaman Lal recalls being ‘summoned’ by Jinnah to his flat near Regent’s Park and ‘hardly had got down to my cup of tea with a [half-] bitten sandwich in my hand’ when Jinnah got down to discussing what was on his mind—how to answer a question he was anticipating from the committee on India’s low literacy, which Chaman Lal was delighted to be able to provide an answer to, with all the confidence of a fresh Oxford graduate. Chagla, an Oxford undergraduate then, similarly recalls Jinnah receiving him warmly when he went to call on him and ‘talked to me about politics and what was happening in India and what was likely to come out of the labours of the Joint Select Committee’.