Mr and Mrs Jinnah Read online

  But she need not have worried about the gossip getting around. By the time Sarojini reached Bombay, five months had elapsed since Ruttie’s dramatic end and no one seemed to care to even talk about it. Sarojini herself was instantly plunged into political activity, dragged against her inclination to Allahabad on Congress committee work. ‘This is the first moment since I arrived the day before yesterday that I am actually alone and able to write a line to you,’ she wrote to Padmaja on 24 July 1929 from the Taj in Bombay. ‘You can understand that I have been literally drowned since I returned in floods upon floods of welcome letters, telegrams and the aftermath of all the communal quarrels that have broken out during my absence. I wanted to revolt against Congress and not go to Allahabad but the combined appeals from Panditji [Motilal Nehru] and [M.A.] Ansari are more than I can resist. Not because of the stupid AICC but because of the Hindu–Muslim situation. I don’t want to go but I must and so I am going tonight.’ Adding: ‘Of course the day I arrived I went and saw Ruttie’s grave and put all my garlands upon it. She is not under that mound of earth. You can begin laying down a red rose plant to be placed among the other flowering plants round her grave. She loved red roses.’

  It was a whole month later before she met Sir Dinshaw and Lady Petit. They had aged visibly since she last saw them a year ago. As Sarojini wrote to Padmaja in her letter of 22 August 1929: ‘I am sending you a photograph of Ruttie which Lady Petit has given me for you with a special inscription. I saw her for the first time today as she has been away. She is old and perfectly white-haired. The old man is an even more pitiful sight and he broke down when he saw me quite frankly. Lady Petit was very pleased when I said you were going to send a red rose tree from our garden for Ruttie’s grave.’

  Two days later, she left for Simla on her political work, where she met Jinnah and Fatima, who had moved in with her brother. ‘Jinnah and Fatima dined here last night,’ she writes in her letter dated 24 August 1929 (from Mount Stewart, Simla). ‘Jinnah looked very worn and gray but Fatima full of society and new clothes and self-assurance living with her brother.’

  Despite looking so worn, Jinnah was resolved to carry on as before, firmly shutting out all memories of Ruttie. But there was a part of him that had changed forever, and the next time Sarojini met him in Bombay, he surprised her by exposing a new side of him. ‘Jinnah has acquired three magnificent dogs of the special breed that Paleale [illegible] produces,’ she wrote to Padmaja on 1 September 1929, from the Taj, Bombay. ‘He has come up with idiotic names like Edith, Assie and Montford. How Ruttie would have adored them! But Jinnah seems to have taken heartily to them himself and I think it will humanize him!’

  But he did not go with her to visit Ruttie’s grave. Returning from the Congress session in Lucknow, Sarojini made another trip to the Khoja cemetery in Mazagon, this time carrying the special rose bush Padmaja had sent from Hyderabad to be planted there. ‘Yesterday I visited Ruttie’s grave to take your rose-tree and put it near her head,’ she wrote to Padmaja on 21 October 1929. ‘Dr Masson went with me. It’s been eight months exactly since she passed away. I miss her terribly, now and more I think as time goes by.’

  Curiously enough, the child is not mentioned anywhere in either Sarojini’s correspondence or that of her daughters for almost another year. This may have had something to do with Lady Petit stepping in and taking charge of the child, now nine, and suggesting to Jinnah that since he was mostly away in Delhi or Simla, she would be better off in a boarding school than at home alone. She even recommended the right convent school for her in the nearby hill station of Panchgani, where all Bombay’s fashionable families sent their children. Jinnah not only submitted docilely to her suggestions, but was relieved to have the decision taken out of his hands, trusting Lady Petit henceforth with all major decisions regarding the raising of his only daughter. Although Lady Petit had not met her granddaughter till Ruttie’s separation from Jinnah, the bond between grandmother and granddaughter was close and lasting. Still nameless, the child decided on her own to take her grandmother’s name, Dina. And to this day, Dina tells her friends of how much she loved her grandmother and her deep gratitude for the way ‘she took over completely and brought me up’ after her mother’s death.

  By the following year, when Leilamani visited Panchgani and went to see her at her boarding school, Dina appears to have happily settled into her new life. On her first visit to the school, Leilamani could not meet Dina. ‘Dina Jinnah is away for a couple of days but I will surely see her before I go or else have her here to spend the day,’ Leilamani wrote to Padmaja on 9 September 1930 from Rasheed Manzil, Panchgani, the summer home of a family friend, Lady Abbas Ali Baig. The following week, on 15 September, in a postscript to another letter to Padmaja, she adds: ‘Dina Jinnah spent the day here yesterday. She makes me nervous to look at her cos she’s so much like Ruttie.’

  But in temperament, Dina was nothing like her mother. Instead of killing herself trying to break through the icy walls of her father’s reserve, Dina very soon learnt how to handle her ‘Pop’ without looking for anything more than he could give her. He was an indulgent father, denying her nothing except his time and of himself, but she did not seem to mind, describing him later in her life as ‘affectionate but undemonstrative’. Two years later, when he moved to England with Fatima and set up home in Hampstead, Dina, too, moved with him but not to live at home with them. He had found a small private school for her in Sussex, run by a Mrs Frances Browne, where she quickly settled down, spending five happy but academically unsuccessful years—she failed the school certificate examination but learnt ‘some self-reliance and poise’—until she had to leave suddenly, much to her distress, because the school abruptly closed down on account of Mrs Browne’s health and financial problems.

  But while Dina was at Mrs Browne’s, she did spend her holidays with her father, who if he did not give her time, did give her the freedom to tease him. Dina took to calling him ‘Grey Wolf’ because of a book he was much taken with around this time—Grey Wolf: An Intimate Study of a Dictator on the life of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The story of Ataturk, born around the same time as Jinnah and rising from similar circumstances to create an independent Turkey, resonated so deeply with Jinnah that he could talk of nothing else but Ataturk for days and he even thrust the book on Dina, who at thirteen knew her own mind. She began chafing him about his passion for Kemal and nicknamed him ‘Grey Wolf’, and then ‘cajole[d] him into putting a brief aside, with the plea, “Come on, Grey Wolf, take me to a pantomime; after all, I am on my holidays.”’

  But that was about the only time in their life that he had the leisure to bond with her in whatever limited way. When they returned to India, Jinnah having sold his house in Hampstead and wound up his practice in London, he was again full of his great mission, and she was relegated once more to the margins of his life, allowed to do as she pleased, so long as she did not distract him at his work. At fifteen, alone at home with an aunt she did not get along with and no one to talk to except the servants, she spent her time visiting her grandmother, often staying overnight. Sir Dinshaw had died while they were in England, removing the last of any restrictions that Lady Petit might have had in receiving her granddaughter in her home. And when Dina was not at her grandmother’s, she was out shopping—‘roamed from one shop to the other for hours’. When she returned, Fatima used to take the driver aside to find out where she’d been and what she had bought. But Jinnah let her do as she pleased and spend as much money as she liked, his only restriction being to try and stop her from driving the car, which she did on the sly.

  The only time father and daughter had a falling out was when she announced her decision to marry Neville Wadia, born into a Parsi family and heir to a fortune in textile mills, who had converted to Christianity. To have his only child marry a Parsi Christian would be a serious political embarrassment for Jinnah, and he tried to dissuade her. But finding her adamant, he then threatened to disown her. Instead of relenting, it only
made her more stubborn and she moved into her grandmother’s home, determined to go ahead with the marriage even at that cost. He collapsed under the emotional strain, succumbing to one of his rare bouts of sickness. ‘For two weeks,’ one of his drivers later recounted to Urdu writer Saadat Hasan Manto, ‘he would not receive visitors. He would just keep smoking his cigars and pacing up and down in his room. He must have walked hundreds of miles in those two weeks.’

  But soon he was back in control. ‘After two weeks he resurfaced,’ the driver said. ‘There was no sign of grief on his face, nor any tension.’

  But something about this quarrel with his daughter seems to have reopened his old wound which he still refused to examine. At such times, the only thing that gave him some relief, according to the driver, was to ‘ask for a certain metallic chest to be brought to his room and unlocked’. It was full of Ruttie’s clothes. ‘The clothes would be taken out and sahib would gaze at them without saying a word. His gaunt, transparent face would become clouded. “It’s all right, it’s all right,” he would say, then remove his monocle, wipe it and walk away.’

  But there was no walking away for him, ever. In fact, according to Kanji, her death left such a deep wound that he changed completely, turning from a ‘cheerful, pleasant and social friend with a dry sense of humour’ to someone ‘egocentric and sensitive to criticism’. He reacted to his wife’s death so severely that he not only never mentioned her name ever again, but became so bitter that ‘he could not stand abuse, ridicule, misunderstanding and misrepresentation of his actions and never forgave those who, unwisely and unjustly indulged in them’. It was Jinnah’s bitterness, born out of his personal loss and disappointment, which travelled into his political life. ‘This, I feel,’ writes Kanji, ‘is the correct analysis of Jinnah’s political bitterness which lasted throughout the nineteen years he lived after his wife’s death, and influenced his political life and opinions.’ If Ruttie had been alive, Kanji was convinced, Jinnah would never have turned communal. Chagla, while agreeing to a certain extent—that Ruttie ‘kept Jinnah on the right track so long as she was alive’—goes one step further in his memoir by holding Fatima at least partly responsible for Jinnah’s transformation. ‘She [Fatima] enjoyed Jinnah’s diatribes against the Hindus, and if anything, injected an extra dose of venom into them.’

  It was true, of course, that Jinnah leaned on Fatima for everything—even while playing billiards, according to the driver who spoke to Manto. Whenever Jinnah felt the urge to play this only indoor sport he enjoyed, Fatima had to come into the room with him to watch him play. ‘If the shot went through as planned, he would smile triumphantly at his sister.’

  But even Fatima was powerless when it came to influencing Jinnah’s opinions. Once his mind was made up, as Chagla himself points out elsewhere, nothing in the world could divert him from his chosen objective: ‘No temptation, no bribe, no pressure had the slightest effect.’ He had taken up the cause of the Muslims as his mission and stopped only after he won. The effects of what he had done only sunk in later. Jinnah wept when he saw the refugees in the country he had just created almost single-handedly. But the tears were less for the refugees than for what he had just done—destroyed yet again that which he loved the most.

  Notes

  Chapter One

  Details of Sir Dinshaw Petit’s ancestry and family history and wealth, from Memoir of Sir Dinshaw Manockjee Petit—First Baronet by S.M. Edwardes (printed by Frederick Hall at the Oxford University Press, 1923).

  Ibid for the history of Petit Hall with photographs.

  An account of Sir Dinshaw’s private estates and portrait of his son and heir in Dropping Names by Manohar Malgonkar (New Delhi: Roli Books, 1996).

  Sir Dinshaw’s resume, including business, year of marriage and accession to title, charitable works and membership to clubs, from Indian Year Book 1930.

  Lady Petit’s family tree and history, from Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy: The First Indian Knight and Baronet by Jehangir R.P. Mody (published by Jehangir R.P. Mody, Bombay, 1959), and monograph on his successors at the K.R. Cama Oriental Institute, Mumbai.

  Jinnah’s role in the famous ‘Extortion Case’ filed by Sir Dinshaw (before he succeeded his grandfather to the title) is taken from The Works of Quaid-i-Azam 1893–1912, vol. 1, edited by Riaz Ahmad (published by ‘Chair on Quaid-i-Azam and Freedom Movement’, 2002).

  Ibid for Sir Dinshaw’s alleged vanity, on which a British member of the Bombay municipal committee had this to say on the witness stand: ‘I think it was vanity. Sir Dinshaw felt slighted because we asked the eldest sons of Sir Jamsetjee and Sir Jehangir Cowasji first (to join the British-approved list of representatives for the municipal elections). Sir Dinshaw would have gladly joined if we had asked him earlier.’ Cited in ‘Justices’ Election Case—Three Petitions (17 March–6 May 1907)’, Bombay Gazette Summary.

  Sir Dinshaw Eduljee Wacha’s comments on Sir Dinshaw Petit, from Enduring Legacy—Parsis of the Twentieth Century, edited by Nawaz B. Modi (published by Nawaz B. Modi, 2005).

  Sarojini Naidu’s remarks on Petit Hall, from her letters dated 3 and 15 March 1917. Sarojini’s correspondence found in Padmaja Naidu Papers in Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML) archives.

  Sir Dinshaw’s schooling at the Fort High School, Bombay, finds mention in Representative Men of the Bombay Presidency (published by C.B. Burrows).

  On the navjot ceremony among modern Parsis, Sarojini Naidu’s comment in her letter of 9 March 1917 is illustrative: ‘Tomorrow there is a friend’s Navjot ceremony for his little daughter [and] the whole world seems invited, about 800 people!’

  Details of R.D. Tata’s marriage to French Soonibai are noted in Beyond the Last Blue Mountain: A Life of J.R.D. Tata by R.M. Lala (New Delhi: Viking, 1992).

  Court case filed by Dinshaw Petit on the right to conversion is cited in Zoroastrianism in Judgements—Petit vs Jeejeebhoy 1908 (Mumbai: Parsiana Publications, 2005).

  Account of Jinnah’s marriage proposal, from Roses in December: An Autobiography by M.C. Chagla (New Delhi: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1973).

  Chapter Two

  All quotes of Kanji Dwarkadas on Jinnah and Ruttie in this chapter are taken from his Ruttie Jinnah: The Story of a Great Friendship (published by Kanji Dwarkadas, 1963).

  Jaisoorya Naidu’s comments on Ruttie are from his letters of 19 August 1917 and 30 December 1917 to Padmaja Naidu, found in Padmaja Naidu Papers (NMML archives).

  Sarojini Naidu’s description of Jinnah, from Mohomed Ali Jinnah, An Ambassador of Unity: His Speeches and Writings 1912–1917 (Madras: Ganesh & Co., 1918).

  From K.H. Khurshid’s Memories of Jinnah (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1990). The episode about the hot-water bottle appears in the same as told to him by Jinnah as happening to a fictitious young man newly arrived in England.

  In response to a question if he had once acted on the English stage, Jinnah ‘stretching his long legs to the full limits of comfort, said smilingly in slow, measured and dramatic tones, as always: “Yes I know that part of my life has been widely publicized but the real truth about it is not told yet.”’ Quote taken from Jinnah and His Times by Aziz Beg (Lahore: Allied Press, 1986).

  Sarojini Naidu’s letter to Chagla, from Sarojini Naidu: Selected Letters by Makarand R. Paranjape (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1996).

  Horniman’s defamation case, from Bombay Chronicle, 2 April–11 May 1916, cited in The Works of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah 1916–1917, vol. 3, edited by Riaz Ahmad (published by ‘Chair on Quaid-i-Azam and Freedom Movement’, 1997).

  Ruttie’s letters and poems, from the Padmaja Naidu and Leilamani Naidu papers (NMML archives).

  Details of Sarojini’s marriage and courtship, and Edmund Gosse’s quote, from Sarojini Naidu: A Biography by Padmini Sengupta (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1966).

  From the Oral History Transcript of K.L. Gauba (Account No. 76, NMML archives).

  On the appropriate age for girls to switch over to saris, Sarojin
i writes to her girls, aged fifteen and a half and thirteen, on 13 May 1916 (from the Padmaja Naidu Papers in the NMML archives): ‘I hope you girls will wear your saris for every big occasion like the Fancy Sale and the Prize-giving.’

  Ruttie’s books with marking in pencil from Jinnah’s collection, now in the Karachi University Library.

  Chapter Three

  For Jinnah’s undisputed position as the foremost leader of Congress, see, among other newspaper reports, Gandhi’s speech at the Bombay provincial conference proposing Jinnah for president of the conference because he was ‘the right man for the right post’ and the editorial in the Bombay Chronicle of 23 October 1916 (cited in The Works of Quaid-i-Azam 1916–1917).

  Sarojini Naidu’s letter to Padmaja, dated 19 May 1916, from the Padmaja Naidu Papers, in the NMML archives.

  On the random education given to girls even from rich and progressive homes, The Scope of Happiness: A Personal Memoir by Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit (New York: Crown Publishers, 1979) is insightful: ‘. . . there was no supervision and no plan. Studies were haphazard, and because there was no competition they were also rather dull. Beginning with a governess, lessons were later conducted by a series of tutors . . . I knew more than the average school-going child of my age, but there were subjects with which I had only the slightest acquaintance. The mental discipline which a formal education imposes was lacking and I am always conscious of what I missed.’