Mr and Mrs Jinnah Read online

  It was common among rich and anglicized Indian families to adopt the prevailing custom of the British memsahibs to hand over their children entirely to the hands of a large staff of trained personnel, while they accompanied their husbands to different locations on work. The ‘Wanted’ columns of English newspapers like the Pioneer were full of advertisements such as this one on 18 April 1918: ‘Wanted an experienced English Nurse to take baby from the month of August to Srinagar. Ayah kept.’

  ‘Do you know,’ Ruttie writes in a letter to Padmaja on 3 March 1920: ‘I ordered a sari in November, just a day or so after my return from England, and I haven’t yet received it.’ Cited in the Padmaja Naidu Papers (NMML archives).

  The proceedings of the Muslim League and Congress sessions in Amritsar, from the Bombay Chronicle, 27 December 1919–January 1920, reproduced in The Works of Quaid-i-Azam 1919–1920, vol. 5.

  The Ali brothers, Shaukat and Mohammed Ali, made their first public appearance after their release from prison at the Amritsar session of the Muslim League (29–31 December 1919), and the regular proceedings were disrupted amid emotive scenes.

  Ruttie’s letter describing the Hyderabad ‘I have never seen, only dreamt of’, to Leilamani Naidu, dated 24 November 1916.

  Padmaja’s letter to Ranadheera ‘Miniman’ Naidu (undated): ‘Ruttie has been staying here for over a fortnight and how the poor kid has been enjoying herself. Jinnah has been writing and begging her to return . . .’ Cited in the Padmaja Naidu Papers (University of Hyderabad).

  The phrase ‘your over-tuned senses’ is from Ruttie’s letter to Jinnah on 5 October 1928 (National Archives of Pakistan, QAP-F-890).

  From Sarojini Naidu’s letter to Padmaja, 20 January 1928: ‘. . . she says “Don’t force me back into slavery. Let me be free. Let me be free . . . Poor child . . . restless and longing to be free of all her shackles. She says her youth is going and she must live . . .’ Cited in the Padmaja Naidu Papers (NMML archives).

  Chapter Fourteen

  K.H. Khurshid, who worked as Jinnah’s personal secretary in the 1940s, asserts he never saw Jinnah angry but he could be irritated sometimes. And he gives an example: ‘The power supply suddenly went off, plunging his room into darkness. Gul Mohammed, the watchman, must have done something while trying to fix the fuse because suddenly the entire house went dark. Mr Jinnah, who was waiting for the light to come back, on noticing what had happened, got angry. His anger was controlled. In Urdu, he said to Gul Mohammed: “Tum gadha hain. Tum bewakoof hain. Tum tumhara kaam kahe ko nahin karta? (You are an ass. You are a fool. Why don’t you do your work?)” He said this twice and then returned to his dark room.’ Quoted in Memories of Jinnah.

  Description of the Naidu’s home by Margaret E. Cousins, author and a friend of Annie Besant’s, who broke her journey from Poona to Madras in June 1916 to spend a few days with Sarojini Naidu at ‘The Golden Threshold’. Quoted in Sarojini Naidu: A Biography by Padmini Sengupta.

  On the Golden Threshold’s garden, as M.G. Naidu wrote to Padmaja in a letter dated 12 April 1914: ‘I like to see a garden well filled with the most beautiful flowers and shrubs and then allowed to relapse into wildness . . . I have no fancy for well-trimmed lawns, for terraces made to measure and flower beds in geometrical patterns.’ From the Padmaja Naidu Papers (NMML archives).

  M.G. Naidu’s views on discharging one’s responsibilities were very strict, as this letter of 16 July 1918 to Padmaja shows: ‘Your mother’s devotion to the cause of her country does I fear often lead her to the neglect of her other duties . . . We are born into the world with certain responsibilities—these we cannot evade. Others we incur after we are born. Once incurred it is but right—nay it is imperative—that we should discharge them at all costs.’ Quoted in the Padmaja Naidu Papers (NMML archives).

  My Own Story by Emmeline Pankhurst (Eveleigh Nash, 1914), part of Jinnah’s collection of books (Karachi University Library).

  Dr M.G. Naidu’s letters to Jaisoorya Naidu, 20 and 27 January 1920, from the Jaisoorya Naidu Papers (NMML archives).

  Undated letter from Padmaja Naidu to Ranadheera Naidu on Ruttie’s visit to Hyderabad, from the Padmaja Naidu Papers (University of Hyderabad).

  Ruttie’s letters to Padmaja Naidu dated 9 and 25 February and 3 March (1920), from the Padmaja Naidu Papers (NMML archives).

  Jinnah did not like dogs to touch him but they loved him. As Khurshid writes: ‘They never took liberties with him, but always liked to be near him without actually touching him.’ Quoted in Memories of Jinnah.

  Ruttie’s letters to the Naidu girls up to 1920 are liberally sprinkled with quotes from ‘De Profundis’, a long letter from prison written by Oscar Wilde, an author she seems to have admired for his modern, epigrammatic style, and whose other books too she read but none that left as deep an impression on her as ‘De Profundis’.

  Begum Liaquat Ali Khan said of Jinnah: ‘It was his clearness that stirred one’s astonishment and admiration—his complete lack of humbug. I seem to remember someone writing about “twin lamps of truth”. Jinnah’s eyes were “twin lamps of truth”. Only the honest could look him straight in the eye.’ Quoted in Jinnah: Creator of Pakistan.

  Jinnah could be exasperatingly penny wise over small things—the rationing of tea to his staff, the price of a tie, the amount of petrol used in his car—but there was no rancour or pettiness in his heart, as Bolitho writes in Jinnah: Creator of Pakistan.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sarojini Naidu’s quotes on Fatima Jinnah are taken from her letters to Padmaja from 17 Park Lane, London, dated 27 January 1914 (Padmaja Naidu Papers) and to Leilamani, dated 6 June 1928 (Leilamani Naidu Papers, NMML archives).

  Ruttie’s copy of Charlotte Bronte’s Shirley (New York: Thomas Y Cromwell & Co.) is inscribed: ‘To dear Ruttie from Manek, Feb. 18, 1912’. Quoted in Ruttie Jinnah: Life and Love by Shagufta Yasmeen (Islamabad: Shuja Sons, 1997).

  Ruttie’s letter to Padmaja on 3 March 1920.

  Details of Jinnah’s early life and family details, from Rizwan Ahmad’s Quaidi Ibtedai Tees Saal.

  Jinnah’s mother gave birth to four sons but two died, one in infancy and the other at birth, according to Rizwan Ahmad’s biography of Jinnah, Quaidi Ibtedai Tees Saal. Ahmed Ali, born in 1886, was his only surviving brother. He had four sisters—Rahmat (b. 1878), Maryam (b. 1882), Shirin (b. 1888) and Fatima (b.1893).

  Apollo Hotel, where Jinnah stayed in his early years in Bombay, also ran a provision store, Apollo Hotel Stores, ‘entirely under European management’, where cuts of ham, bacon and cheese brought in ‘fresh consignment by the through fortnightly mail’ were sold. (From an advertisement in the Times of India, 3 April 1917.)

  Sir Cowasjee Jehangir, eminent Parsi millionaire, recounted to Bolitho: ‘I knew Jinnah as far back as early 1901. He was poor then, but his clothes already had distinction. He was a member of Orient Club and I used to see him there. He was even more pompous and independent during those lean years than later on.’ Quoted in In Quest of Jinnah.

  While the Muslim community was scandalized by Jinnah’s decision to put Fatima in a convent boarding school, he nevertheless seems to have made it fashionable among a certain small Muslim elite in Bombay to send their girls to the convent school run by Belgian nuns. By 1906, St Joseph’s Convent, Bandra, had not only become ‘one of the most celebrated and successful schools in the Bombay Presidency’, an ‘admirably built and appointed school with its spacious grounds near the seashore’, but also boasted of several Muslim students among its 120 boarders and day school students belonging to all communities—Catholics, Protestants, Parsis, Mohammedans, Hindus and Jews, with an assurance that ‘no religious belief be interfered with’. Cited in the Times of India Directory and Yearbook, 1906.

  About Fatima Jinnah’s early life and schooling, and living with her brother, from Fatima Jinnah: Hayat-o-Khidmat by Agha Hussain Hamadani (National Institute of Historical and Cultural Research, Pakistan).

  Mohammed and the Rise of Isl
am by D.S. Margoliouth (G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1905), signed ‘M.A. Jinnah’. Some words on the first page are heavily marked with pencil: ‘anathematized’, ‘sterater’, ‘doughty’ and ‘courage’.

  Gauba recounts how he invited Jinnah to pray in a mosque for the first time, in 1936. When Jinnah demurred that he would ‘not know how to act in a mosque’, Gauba said: ‘Just follow others.’ Cited in the Oral History Transcript of K.L. Gauba (Account No. 76, NMML archives).

  Jinnah came into the lounge of the Cecil Hotel in Simla, accompanied by Sikander Hayat Khan and a moulvi with a long beard. They sat down and were offered a drink by Diwan Chaman Lal. Jinnah asked for a whisky soda while Sikander, keeping one eye on the moulvi, asked for a lemonade. Jinnah then turned to Chaman Lal and said: ‘You know, I am not the religious leader of the Muslims. I am only their political leader.’ Cited in the Oral History Transcript of Diwan Chaman Lal (Account No. 220, NMML archives).

  Sarojini Naidu, in a letter dated March 2 1920 to Padmaja, complained of the several shocks ‘too hard to bear for a forty-one-year-old mother with a weak heart’, one of them being ‘Ruttie and Arlette—minus Jinnah and Baby’ arriving with Leilamani to England. Cited in the Padmaja Naidu Papers (NMML archives).

  Kanji Dwarkadas writes of Jinnah closeted in a meeting with Annie Besant for several hours and emerging exhausted. When asked how the meeting had gone, he replied: ‘My dear fellow, never argue with a woman!’ Cited in India’s Fight for Freedom.

  Ruttie’s letter to Leilamani from West End Hotel, Bangalore, dated 18 April 1920, saying she is on her way up to Ooty. Cited in the Leilamani Naidu Papers (NMML archives).

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘Mr and Mrs Gandhi Entertained By Gurjar Sabha-Jinnah On South African Problems’, from the Bombay Chronicle, 15 January 1915, and reproduced in The Works of Quaid-i-Azam 1913–1916, vol. 2.

  Gandhi himself admitted later that Jinnah was shocked when in his reply to the address of welcome, he described Jinnah as a fellow Muslim Gujarati and not as an Indian. Cited in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. XIII, and quoted in Secular and Nationalist Jinnah.

  Hansa Mehta, who later became a devoted disciple of Gandhi, recalls how unimpressed she was by Gandhi when she first saw him at the Bombay Congress session in 1915: ‘He spoke in a very low voice and his dress was peculiar—turban and all that. He did not interest me then.’ Cited in the Oral History Transcript of Hansa Mehta (Account No. 43, NMML archives).

  Kanji Dwarkadas writes: ‘[We] approached Gandhi for assistance to get Mrs Besant out. Then Gandhi started his first talk of Passive Resistance and suffering in India. He wanted 100 volunteers, true and faithful, to walk from Bombay to Coimbatore . . . where Dr. Besant was interned and he said this would help in her release . . . After his return from Champaran in October 1917, Gandhi was asking for volunteers to go to Champaran for social work, which included removal of night soil from the streets.’ Cited in Gandhiji through My Dairy.

  Letter from Gandhi to Jinnah dated 4 July 1918: ‘“Can you not see that if every Home Rule League became a potent Recruiting Agency, whilst at the same time fighting for constitutional rights, we should ensure the passing of the Congress–League Scheme . . .” Seek ye first the Recruiting Office and everything will be added unto you.’ Cited in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 17.

  Ian Bryant Wells writes: ‘During the War years he [Gandhi] had actively recruited for the British, while Jinnah’s view was that if the British wanted Indians to join the army they “must make the people feel they are citizens of the Empire, and the King’s equal subjects”. Gandhi placed no such restrictions on his loyalty to the British war effort, and Jinnah had been shocked by Gandhi’s suggestion that support of the recruiting programme would bring political reforms for India.’ Cited in Ambassador of Hindu–Muslim Unity: Jinnah’s Early Politics.

  In November 1917, Montagu travelled to India to meet leaders of the various political parties and wrote of them in his diary. On Gandhi, he wrote, ‘A social reformer with a real desire to find grievances and to cure them, not for any reasons of self-advertisement, but to improve the conditions of his fellow men.’ On Jinnah, he wrote: ‘. . . young, perfectly mannered, impressive looking, armed to the teeth with dialectics, and insistent upon the whole of his scheme . . . Jinnah is a very clever man, and it is, of course, an outrage that such a man should have no chance of running the affairs of his own country.’ Cited in Jinnah: Creator of Pakistan.

  According to Ajeet Jawed, ‘Gandhi sat on a platform without chairs and asked Jinnah to sit down next to him. Jinnah who was dressed in his Western suit and had long legs reluctantly sat hanging his legs over the edge of the platform. When Jinnah started speaking Gandhi interrupted him. He protested against the use of English in a Gujarati gathering and asked Jinnah to speak in Gujarati, a language Jinnah did not know . . . Jinnah felt humiliated and “considered this a rude request and an unkind cut”. Perhaps this was the beginning of the rift between the two as Gandhi himself admitted later that Jinnah never forgave him for this and took it as a personal insult.’ Cited in Secular and Nationalist Jinnah.

  Jinnah voiced his view on English versus Indian language during a speech he gave to students in Bombay on 14 March 1920. As reported in the Bombay Chronicle of 17 March 1920: ‘He said, personally, he would be glad to speak in Urdu or any other national language instead of a foreign one. But under the present circumstances they could not help it. However, if they had to speak in English and if they had to conduct their proceedings in English they must speak as good English as an Englishman might speak.’ Quoted in The Works of Quaid-i-Azam 1919–1920, vol. 5.

  Jinnah was not the only leader to buck at Gandhi’s orders to conduct public meetings in an Indian language. Sarojini Naidu’s biographer Padmini Sengupta relates how in 1917, at the Bihari students’ conference in Bhagalpur, when Sarojini was asked by Gandhi to speak in Hindustani, she said in an aside to one of the organizers: ‘Gandhiji does not want English to be spoken. I don’t know how I am going to speak in Hindustani. I tell you what, when I get up, ask the students to shout “English! English!”’ But Sarojini, who had been educated in the Nizam’s state of Hyderabad, where the medium of instruction was Urdu, ended up speaking in high-flown Persianized Urdu. Cited in Sarojini Naidu: A Biography.

  Letter to M.A. Jinnah dated 28 June 1919, in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 18.

  Letter to Mrs Jinnah dated 30 April 1920, in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 20.

  The All-India Muslim League session and the Khilafat Conference, Amritsar, from the Bombay Chronicle (30–31 December 1919, 1–2 January 1920 and 5 January 1920), and mentioned in The Works of Quaid-i-Azam 1919–1920, vol. 5.

  Young India, 12 May 1920. Also in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 20, 1999.

  Letter from Jinnah to Syed Zahur Ahmad, joint secretary of the All-India Muslim League, dated 1 May 1920, from the AIML Papers Council Meetings, cited in The Works of Quaid-i-Azam 1919–1920, vol. 5.

  Letter from Zahur Ahmad to Jinnah dated 27 May 1920, from the AIML Papers Council Meetings.

  Letter from Jinnah to Brelvi dated 19 May 1920, from the Bombay Chronicle, 12 June 1920.

  Padmaja’s quote on Ruttie from her letter to Chagla dated June 1929, from the Chagla Papers (NMML archives).

  The journey and events in the Calcutta special session of the Congress in September 1920. Cited in India’s Fight for Freedom; Ruttie Jinnah: Story of a Friendship; Mahadev Desai’s diary, Day to Day with Gandhi, vol. 3 (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House); the Bombay Chronicle, 6 September 1920, cited in The Works of Quaid-i-Azam 1919–1920, vol. 5; and Ambassador of Hindu–Muslim Unity: Jinnah’s Early Politics.

  Jinnah’s protest over the revision of the Home Rule League’s constitution and his open letter to Gandhi (signed by nineteen others), from the Bombay Chronicle (5 October 1920 and 7 October 1920), and cited in The Works of Quaid-i-Azam 1919–1920, vol. 5.

  The events dur
ing the Nagpur Congress session and after, from the Bombay Chronicle, 29–30 December 1920, and cited in The Works of Quaid-i-Azam; as also in the Oral History Transcript of Shankerlal G. Banker (Account No. 153, NMML archives).

  V.R. Bhende, member of the Home Rule League and secretary to Vithalbhai Patel, relates how Ruttie was thrown out of the Congress session in Nagpur, because she was Jinnah’s wife: ‘Some Madrasi delegates sent a chit to the president of the session, C. Vijayaraghavachariar, objecting to Ruttie’s dress [although] she was wearing a beautiful saree and an armless blouse. The president passed on the chit to Mr Jinnah and Mrs Jinnah had to withdraw [from the session].’ Cited in the Oral History Transcript of V.R. Bhende (Account No. 158, NMML archives).

  Chapter Seventeen

  Letter to the editor titled ‘Non-Cooperation in Practice’ under the initial ‘R’ in the Times of India, 13 January 1921.

  A Gujarati magazine in Bombay, Vismi Sadi, put a list of eight questions to Jinnah which he answered in his own hand in Gujarati, and appeared in the May 1916 issue of the monthly. The questions and answers: 1) What quality is admirable in a man? Independence; 2) What quality is admirable in a female? Loyalty; 3) What do you believe is the success of life? To acquire [the] love of masses; 4) What do you like for recreation? Riding a horse; 5) Which flower do you like? Lily; 6) Which writer do you like? Shakespeare; 7) Which book do you like? Monte Cristo [sic]; and 8) What is your motto? Never to be disappointed. Cited in the Rare Speeches and Documents of Quaid-i-Azam edited by Yahya Hashim Bawany, and quoted in Ruttie Jinnah by Khwaja Razi Haider.