Jinnah of Pakistan
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  December 22, 2005
Jinnah and women’s emancipation
Jinnah himself had always taken his sister, Fatima Jinnah, to Muslim Leaque sessions, and wherever she went with him, she walked beside him and not behind him — heralding a message loud and clear, for everyone within reach: the elevating message of gender equality, writes Sharif al Mujahid Absent in the brief historical mention of his wife and daughter is Jinnah’s unobtrusive and non-interfering self as a husband and a father. We fail to notice how a fiercely arrogant and unbending politician was an unimposing man. He did not confine his sister to his home to become his domestic appendage nor did he ever force his wife and daughter to stay with him to gain political mileage To quote Salma Tasadduque Hussain, a former member of the Punjab Assembly (1946-58) and a social worker, “It gave great encouragement to women to see that they could find a place of honour with men like Quaid-i-Azam....” In the meantime, at Jinnah’s instance, the Muslim Women Students Federation (1941) and the Women National Guards (1942) were launched, in a concerted attempt to mobilize the womenfolk alongside the menfolk in the struggle for Pakistan. All this signified the acceptance of an entirely new role for women, and the breaking down of the male-female segregation and stratification syndrome and, more important, of the male domination in vogue till then because of the patriarchal mindset and ethos, which had ruled the subcontinental Muslim societal structure for centuries. During the general elections (1945-46), the Muslim women  played a pivotal role. Women comprised almost one-third of the audiences in the election meetings in the Punjab, to quote Mian Mumtaz Daultana, the most dynamic Muslim League leader in the 1940s’. According to him, their role in getting the men voters to the polling booths was crucial, especially in the Punjab where the Unionist Ministry had put up all sorts of obstacles in the way of a favourable verdict on Pakistan.More significant was the women’s role in the burgeoning civil disobedience movement in the Punjab (January-February 1947) and in the NWFP (February-June 1947). Women took out processions in Lahore day after day for a whole month, undergoing all sorts of hazards, bravely facing teargas, lathi-charge, beatings, arrests, and imprisonment. One of the prisoners, the intrepid Mumtaz Shah Nawaz, made a green flag out of her own dupatta, surreptitiously climbed up the jail building and hoisted it on top, shouting “Allah-o-Akbar” (God is great) and “Pakistan Zindabad”. Two weeks later, when a mammoth women’s procession finally reached the imposing Punjab Secretariat building, the seat of Punjab bureaucracy, at the fag end of the Mall in Lahore, a 13-year-old girl, Fatima Sughra, suddenly climbed up the massive iron gate, pulled down the fluttering Union Jack, the living symbol of imperial power, and replaced it with the burgeoning green Muslim League flag, which she, too, had made out of her own dupatta. And all this in the presence of a strong police contingent. No less striking was the women’s performance in the NWFP, traditionally one of the subcontinent’s most conservative areas. During the civil disobedience movement, the usually timid and traditionally home-bound Pakhtoon women plucked up courage to a point that they cast off their veil and organized public processions and demonstrations, in defiance of Section 144. Like their compatriots in the Punjab, they also faced teargas, lathi charges, beatings, and even gunfire; they also scaled ladders and climbed up buildings to hoist the League flag at various public places. And on April 3, 1947, some 1,500 women resorted to picketing, for the first time in the NWFP history. More daring: they launched a secret organization called a “War Council”, and ingeniously set up an underground radio station called Pakistan Broadcasting Radio Station, which continued to be on the air till Pakistan’s emergence on August 14-15, 1947. Thus, within a brief spell of ten years (1937-47), the apathetic and timid, homebound, purdah-clad, and superstition-prone Muslim women had been able to transform themselves radically into a pro-active, vocal, highly motivated and mobilized group, supremely conscious of their latent potentialities for political and social action. Indeed, the Pakistan movement had enabled them to prove their ability to organize, demonstrate, mobilize, court arrest, face persecution, lathi-charges, and teargas, as well as to raise funds and organize relief work in time of crises.  Thus, they had raised sizeable funds during the Bengal famine (1943-44) and the 1945-46 general elections, and for the victims of the communal holocausts in Calcutta and Bihar (1946). They had also organized extensive relief work over there, as well as for the seven million refugees that had poured into West Pakistan during the partition riots in 1947.It’s always crisis that catalytically helps to actualize the latent potential in a community no less than in an individual, and the Muslim crisis in 1937, when Muslim India had reached its nadir in their chequered history since 1857, had helped to cause this gigantic transformation in the mindset, ethos and behavioural patterns of both men and women. It is an important fact that men gallantly went along with women in this emancipatory exercise — for the simple reason that the women could not have possibly donned this role without their full support. Thus Jinnah utilized the political mobilization route to put the male-female relationship on an even keel, and get women emancipated and empowered — to a point that it became routinized in Pakistan’s national life. Simultaneously, if only because of their role alongside their menfolk, they had won the right to vote, to receive education, and to own property. In their emergence as a vocal, pro-active group during the momentous 1937-47 decade, Jinnah had helped them the most. He also acknowledged their notable contribution in the freedom struggle. Upon Pakistan’s birth, therefore, he obviously felt that “In the great task of building the nation and maintaining its solidarity, the women have a valuable part to play -–– not only in their homes but by helping their less fortunate sisters outside.” And he saw to it that women were represented in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly, that they were included in the delegations to the UN and other international moots, and in the executive bodies of almost every organizational set up after Pakistan’s birth. Again, it was he who had inspired his own sister, Fatima Jinnah, and Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan, wife of Pakistan’s first Prime Minister, to found several institutions and organizations for the educational uplift, economic amelioration and professional training of women in Pakistan’s formative years. Thus, a new matrix of socially acceptable behaviour on women’s part was firmly laid, which, with the years, enabled women to work their way up into the upper echelons of the government, the professions, and the educational and political fields. It was, again, Jinnah’s benign influence that had emboldened Fatima Jinnah to contest against Field Marshal Mohammad Ayub Khan in the 1965 presidential election. Inter alia, her candidature had settled, once and for all, the thorny question whether or not a woman can be the head of an avowedly Muslim state, thus paving the way for Benazir Bhutto to become the first woman prime minister of a Muslim country, in 1988. Equally important, Fatima Jinnah was probably the first woman in the world to contest for the office of the president of a country.  In contesting the election in the most difficult circumstances, compounded by advanced and failing health, Fatima Jinnah had, in a sense, dramatized Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan.When asked, in 1942, by Geti Ara Bashir Ahmad, sister of Begum Shah Nawaz and daughter of Mian Mohammad Shafi, whether the “Foundations of our new State (would) be laid on conservatism or whether it would assume the shape of a progressive country”, Jinnah had categorically said, “Tell your young girls, I am a progressive Muslim leader. I, therefore, take my sister along with me to backward areas like Balochistan and NWFP and she also attends the sessions of the All India Muslim League and other public meetings. Pakistan will be a progressive country in the building of which women will be seen working shoulder to shoulder with men in every department of life.” The author was Founder-Director of the Quaid-i-Azam Academy (1976-89), and authored “Jinnah: Studies in Interpretation” (1981), the only work to qualify for the President’s Award for Best Books on Quaid-i-Azam. A niece remembers Gulshan Chandio, the grand niece of Quaid-i-Azam, remembers him fondly. The granddaughter of his sister Marium who was very close to him, Ms Chandio’s memories of Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Fatima Jinnah remain vivid to this day. “A day before Pakistan came into being we arrived at Karachi from Bombay and stayed at Central Hotel, now long demolished. My mother rang the Governor House and Jinnah’s ADC informed them that they were invited to tea by the Quaid. He was extremely busy as they were preparing for Independence Day but he made time for us. Invited again on August 14 at the Governor House he came towards my mother to greet her. Such was his regard for his family.” While residing in Bombay she and her family were regular visitors of Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Gulshan remembers wearing a western dress to lunch with her mother to the Quaid’s house. He asked her to wear a gharara and she happily agreed to it, wearing one when she next went to his house for lunch. Once she bought some jewellery and showed it to him and he advised her to buy one big thing rather than little sets, so she returned it the next day. A connoisseur of furniture he pointed out a shop where her parents could buy good furniture for her elder sister who was getting married. Gulshan remembers the honesty, integrity and caring for each other in Jinnah’s family. He didn’t like his relatives using his name to achieve their ends. Gulshan’s father firmly believed that Jinnah would be able to achieve the goal of creating Pakistan because of his honesty and principles. “Nehru and other leaders would come to visit him at his Bombay residence, he never went to them. People have misunderstood him saying he was distant, cold and arrogant but actually he was strong and principled,” she says. Gulshan recalls that Quaid-i-Azam encouraged women to step into different fields of life and he always encouraged Fatima Jinnah to take part in politics. She once accompanied Fatima Jinnah to a meeting arranged by the Muslim league in Bombay. When Gulshan heard that Quaid-i-Azam had died she was very sad and wanted to come to Pakistan right away but her father did not allow it as he felt that it would have created problems for the family in India. She did, however, visit Pakistan a few weeks later and stayed with Fatima Jinnah. Flagstaff House, she said, was like a home to her. After her marriage she came to Pakistan permanently in 1952, and grew very close to Fatima Jinnah who had moved to Mohatta Palace.—Khursheed Hyder The Quaid’s family life Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s first marriage was with Emibai in 1892. He was 16 and she was 14. Only nikah was solemnized and the rukhsati was to take place later on. Shortly after the marriage, Jinnah left for England. When he returned, his child bride had died. Struck by the tragedy, Jinnah didn’t marry for a long time. Years later in 1918, he married Ruttenbai Petit, daughter of Sir Dinshaw Petit. Ruttie Jinnah, as she came to be known after her marriage, was a firebrand a revolutionary like her husband. She was at his side during his struggle, braving police brutality when Jinnah led a demonstration against Lord Willingdon (the Bombay Governor). At a reception she greeted the viceroy in the native manner, the Viceroy told her: “In Rome, you must do as the Romans do”, to which she retorted: “That is exactly what I did your excellency, in India, I have greeted you the Indian way”.  Jinnah did not keep his wife under his shadow and in May 1919, she made her own speech protesting against the deportation of B.G. Horniman, Editor of the Bombay Chronicle. However, their marriage ran into difficulties. Why? We can perhaps gather a glimpse from her own words. She wrote to a mutual friend that “he has a habit of habitually overworking himself, and now that I am not there to bother and tease him, he will be worse than ever”.Jinnah could not give her the time she wanted. When she died, he opened his heart out to Kanji Dwarkadas, who wrote that Jinnah never recovered from this shock and lost his cheerful disposition forever. Their only daughter, Dina Wadia, was born on August 14, 1919. She married a non-Muslim against her father’s will; and for sometime there was estrangement. She phoned her father when he was attacked by an assassin in 1943. Later, she wrote to congratulate him on the achievement of Pakistan. She came to Pakistan on her father’s funeral and then, in 2004, after many years.–– Dr Mohammad Reza Kazimi A connoisseur with rich aesthetics While political aspects of the life of Mohammad Ali Jinnah have been well researched and documented, his personal life is still largely shrouded in mystery. Even less is known about his tastes and personal interests. For instance, most people are unaware of the fact that he was a collector of the most exquisite and classical carpets. Azhar Samdani, a foreign trained economist who developed rare expertise for restoring damaged period carpets, described him as a ‘connoisseur’ with rich aesthetics and an eye for quality. His opinion is to be taken seriously because all the carpets of Quaid-e-Azam displayed in Mohatta Palace were restored by him. Samdani’s expertise led him to the Quaid’s carpets that the Lahore-based economist inspected during a visit to Karachi. They were faded and frayed. He decided to undertake their restoration.  He spent over two years trying to convince concerned officials that the carpets could be revived but no one was interested. However, the then federal secretary culture awarded him the assignment.Jinnah, according to Samdani, owned about 120 carpets; each of them expensive Bokhara or Iranian piece of the finest quality, every carpet numbered and signed M. A. Jinnah; however, only 17 pieces were left by then. The other over 100 carpets had apparently been either stolen or plundered by officials, or so callously neglected that there was just no trace of them. He selected 11 carpets for restoration; the others had reached a stage where nothing could be done about them. It took him more than three years to complete the job. It was a challenging assignment because many carpets had ‘only borders or corners intact that provided an idea of the carpet’s design’. The carpets are now on display in Mohatta Palace. — Z. S. We've come a not-so-long way It’s become a common practise, when analyzing the state of the country’s affairs, to say how disappointed the founders of this nation would be with the country’s degeneration. Every year comes Jinnah’s birth or death anniversary, every commentator writes how he would have bemoaned the collapse of virtually every state institution or public sector had he been alive. The same is true for the status of Pakistani women on whom Jinnah placed a great deal of hope when he envisioned a progressive nation, where men and women would equally share the burden of building a strong and secure future for their country. While women have made great strides in various fields, on a socio-political front, their situation is deplorable —- and the onus of the blame lies with successive governments who did little to alleviate their lot. It is particularly disappointing given that women made many contributions in the freedom movement and had remarkable female role models like Fatima Jinnah and Rana Liaquat Ali Khan who inspired younger women to achieve the impossible. Then there was the women’s movement, born as a reaction to draconian laws created by General Ziaul Haq that relegated them to second-class citizens, which dared to challenge the system. Women’s groups in the 80s’ galvanized support across the country to rise together against such discriminatory laws, and while they may not have met success in overturning these laws they were able to raise awareness and make their voices heard. The two Benazir Bhutto-led governments heralded new eras of promise but sadly did not translate into the necessary action that could have alleviated their plight. While the two democratically elected governments of Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif had women in its assemblies, politics preceded women’s issues which were always relegated to drawing room discussions. When it came to crimes against women, for example, the right speeches were always made but when it came to changing discriminatory laws, nothing was done.  Oddly enough, it was a military dictator’s government which introduced the 33 per cent representation of women at local, provincial and federal governments that is bound to pave way for future generations of women. While this move, too, has not created any ripples as far as qualitative change is concerned, the mere fact that there are more women in parliament than ever before means that ultimately women’s issues will be forced into the foreground —- provided women parliamentarians are able to convince their male colleagues that their issues merit substantial consideration. As such, there is no powerful women’s pressure group or lobby that can challenge the status quo. Nonetheless, one lives on hope.Changing laws is only part of the solution, for according to the Constitution and Islam, women and men are accorded equal rights but rarely are those instances implemented. For real change to occur, society has to be integrated into a debate whereby men are taught on the ills that customs like honour-related crimes bring upon communities. It is a woman like Mukhtaran Mai who has initiated that debate by challenging the system. She symbolizes the very woman that Jinnah would have been proud of. She represents the perennial hope that can brighten the country’s future.–– M. Khan A man of principles Till today, we have not tired of making M. A. Jinnah’s personality elusive, creating a singular facet to introduce him only as a politician whose vision for this country has become a victim of self-interpretation. Historians have written about Jinnah’s politics, his statesmanship, often condescending mention is made of how Anglicized the country’s founder was. Not much is known, neither has the trouble been taken through academic research, to delayer and depoliticize the man who gave us an independent country on the world atlas. Talk on Jinnah mostly revolves around the kind of republic he envisioned, Islamic or secular running high on debate is a deliberate attempt to diffuse his perspective on what his position was on women and their role in Pakistan’s progress. The three most important women in his life, his sister, Fatima Jinnah, wife Ruttie and daughter Dina Jinnah are usually mentioned in stereotypes to under-emphasize their importance. Fatima Jinnah is forced to a somewhat higher level than the other two because she was his official companion, consort and confidante till the very end of life. The other two have become a series of disjointed historical anecdotes, not to be analyzed for fear of drawing out Jinnah’s human side as a distressed father and an estranged husband. Absent in the brief historical mention of his wife and daughter is Jinnah’s unobtrusive and non-interfering self as a husband and a father. We fail to notice how a fiercely arrogant and unbending politician was an unimposing man. He did not confine his sister to become his domestic appendage nor did he ever force his wife and daughter to stay with him to gain political mileage. A man whose goal was to get an independent state believed first and foremost in independence of mind and action. His wife Rattie left for Paris when his objective became bigger than familial considerations and his daughter went to stay with her maternal grandparents. Jinnah did not summon legal or moral prohibition to prove a patriarchal point. Jinnah’s firm non-distinction between a man and a woman was obvious on many occasions. Sarojini Naidu, the first woman president of the Indian National Congress and a nationalist poet, saw Jinnah “as a symbol of everything attractive about modern India”, (Mohammad Ali Jinnah —- ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity by J. Ahmed 1966). If Jinnah were an inflexible, dogmatic man given in to confer specific roles to women, a political force of Naidu’s stature would not have put down her praise in writing for him. Sharing her views on Jinnah’s liberalism, Tahira Mazhar Ali, daughter of Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan, leader of the Unionist Party and prime minister of the Punjab in 1937, now in her early 80s remembers the founder of Pakistan not only as a fastidious and extremely well-dressed man but also as an articulate person. “He used to come to visit my father quite often in Lahore. He wanted women to participate actively in politics just as the men. He drew no boundaries, restricting women to their houses. He encouraged women’s movement for Pakistan and their role as equal partners,” recalls Mrs Tahira Mazhar Ali.  As a 14-year-old Tahira Mazhar Ali bicycled her way to the Mamdot Palace in Lahore where he was staying to show him the pamphlet she was carrying for the Communist Party in which it had declared its support for an independent Pakistan. “I told the chowkidar at the Mamdot Villa to inform Jinnah that Tahira was there. He immediately asked me in and was amused to see a young girl carrying the Communist Party’s pamphlet. Not once did he make me feel inadequate or try to patronize me because of my age. He was very civil and nice and when I asked him if I was going to be able to meet my friends in India after partition his reply was very comforting. He said that I need not worry because I’ll be able to see my friends just as he was going to regularly visit his home in Bombay. That’s what he said! I remember it only too well! He was an upright, honest and fair person and not a conservative man against the progress of women as some would like us to believe,” asserted Mrs Mazhar Ali.Support of Mrs Tahira Mazhar Ali’s claim of how balanced Jinnah was can be found in Professor Akbar S. Ahmed’s Jinnah, Pakistan, and Islamic Identity, (1997). In the book, Professor Ahmed wrote about an incident related by Yahya Bakhtiar, a senator from Balochistan and a former Attorney General of Pakistan, which showed Jinnah’s non-compromising stance on the freedom of women. “….. in those days not even British male politicians encouraged their womenfolk to take a public role as Jinnah did. After Pakistan had been created he asked Fatima Jinnah to sit beside him on the stage at the Sibi Darbar, the grand annual gathering of Baloch and Pukhtun chiefs and leaders at Sibi. He was making a point: Muslim women must take their place in history. The Sibi Darbar broke all precedents……” After giving up dentistry to help her brother in creating a homeland for the Muslims, Ms Jinnah attended the League session in 1937 and all the annual sessions from 1940 onwards. “Her life was centred around her brother and she was all the time concerned about his health,” comments Mrs Sarwat Ahsan, daughter of Syed Muratib Ali. “My father was close to Jinnah and he would often come to Nashaiman, our house on the Davis Road in Lahore,” says the 81-year-old Begum Sarwat who was a good friend of Fatima Jinnah. Fortunate enough to have met Jinnah at the age of 17, Begum Sarwat makes an effort to invoke her first impression of the great leader. “He had invited my father and my brothers over for dinner at his house on Malabar Hill in Bombay. I also went because Fatima Jinnah was my friend. I can’t really remember what he and my father talked about, but I do remember Fatima by her brother’s side all the time. He treated her like a friend, somebody he could talk to and with whom he could discuss important issues,” recollects Begum Sarwar. “Fatima and I never discussed his wife and daughter, but she always spoke about how he encouraged her to be with him.” Merging Jinnah’s politics with his person, the matter of his slant towards women cannot be left to mere speculation. In a country built to protect an individual’s freedoms and beliefs, his reaction to the existence of discriminatory laws against women despite his categorical statements favouring their equal status would have been shocking. He would have been clear on that score because Jinnah did not separate practice from preaching.— Shehar Bano Khan
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All said and done, Quaid-i- Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah was a liberal, par excellence. To quote Hector Bolitho who had interviewed some two hundred persons who knew Jinnah personally, during 1952-54, “Jinnah told Dr K. M. Ashraf that during the last two years (1894-96) in London his time was ‘utilized for further independent studies for the political career’ he had already ‘had in mind’.”
Jinnah’s belief that women should be extended the opportunities available to men at various stages in their lives was amply reflected in his careful handling of the schooling and career orientation of Fatima Jinnah; his youngest sister and ward.
Till then, the Muslim women were mere shrouded, silent creatures, confined to the four walls of their homes, steeped in dogma and superstition and denied the fruits of modern education, health care and a career. Mohammad Ali Jinnah was the foremost Muslim to raise his authoritative voice against the pathetic conditions to which the Muslim women had been consigned for a long time, and against discrimination of all sorts.
When the question of purdah (veil) was raised by a section at Patna, Jinnah intervened to emphasize that “It is absolutely essential for us to give every opportunity to our women to participate in our struggle for life and death. Women can do a good deal within their homes, even in purdah.” On another occasion, Jinnah asserted, “No nation can make any progress without the co-operation of women. If women support their men as they did in the days of the prophet of Islam (PBUH) we should soon realize our goal.”
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