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He was born on 25th of December 1876 in Karachi. He opened his eyes in a mercantile family. His father Jinnah Ponja was a businessmen. Quaid’s family was basically from Rajkot India they migrated towards Karachi to find better business opportunities. Mister Ponja was a prosperous merchant and he wanted his son to get the best education available.
Muhammad Ali, started his education from Sindh Madrasatul Islam, then he went to Bombay for more education. After this he went to England where he studied law at lincoln’s Inn. Quaid e Azam later told that he applied in Lincoln’s Inn because he saw Holy Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him’s name at the reception of the college.
This shows the love Quaid e Azam had for Holy Prophet and Islam. Since the early days of his youth he was always a neat and clean boy. He was very well mannered, punctual and disciplined. He was a born leader and had all the essentials for a leader since his childhood.
After completing his education he practiced law in Bombay and instantly became the most well known and reputed lawyer in Bombay. It was his commitment to his profession and his view of legal system. He always worked hard, that’s why once he said in his address to Pakistanis ” work, work and work. Work with honesty and responsibility for your country. “
Quaid e Azam’s first contact with politics was in 1906, when he acted as private secretary to Dadabhai Naoroji, president of the Indian National Congress. He joined Congress instead of Muslim league because of two reasons:
1. Muslim league was new at that time.
2. Secondly he thought that the political power and secular agenda Congress has would be good
enough for Muslims of south Asia.
He was symbol of Hindu Muslim unity. But when he worked with Congress he found that Congress is neglecting the Muslim minority of the country. Specially the way Congress fought for Hindi instead of Persian and Urdu. Differences reached at the top when Congress started non-cooperation movement. Jinnah disagreed profoundly with the movement and resigned from the Congress. Jinnah advocated a moderate approach of cooperation with the British and gradual transfer of power.
Political Struggle:
So many leaders led their nations to get freedom from British rule. But Jinnah created a nation and then demanded a separate homeland for them. This part of his life is the toughest and caused changes in the geography, culture and every aspect of life in South Asia.
In the year 1906 All India Muslim League was founded but Quaid e Azam joined league in the year 1913. The policies Congress carried out during Khilafat movement and no cooperation movement changed his minds. He observed that Gandhi is exploiting the religion and using the congress for political terrorism.
He then concentrated on reorganizing of Muslim League. He established an structure of the party with hundreds of branches across the subcontinent. He organized Muslim league from streets to schools and colleges. He organized a women’s wing of Muslim league and shaped Muslim league as one of the most well organized and powerful political parties in India.
He pleaded with provincial Muslim leaders to sink their differences and make common cause with the League. He exhorted the Muslim masses to organize themselves and join the League. He gave coherence and direction to Muslim sentiments on the Government of India Act, 1935. He advocated that the Federal Scheme should be scrapped, as it was subversive of India’s cherished goal of complete responsible Government, while the provincial scheme, which conceded provincial autonomy for the first time, should be worked for what it was worth, despite its certain objectionable features. He also formulated a viable League manifesto for the election scheduled for early 1937. He was, it seemed, struggling against time to make Muslim India a power to be reckoned with.
Despite all the manifold odds stacked against it, the Muslim League won some 108 (about 23 per cent) seats out of a total of 485 Muslim seats in the various legislature. Though not very impressive in itself, the League’s partial success assumed added significance in view of the fact that the League won the largest number of Muslim seats and that it was the only all-India party of the Muslims in the country. Thus, the elections represented the first milestone on the long road to putting Muslim India on the map of the subcontinent. Congress in Power With the year 1937 opened the most momentous decade in modern Indian history. In that year came into force the provincial part of the Government of India Act, 1935, granting autonomy to Indians for the first time, in the provinces.
The Congress, having become the dominant party in Indian politics, came to power in seven provinces exclusively, spurning the League’s offer of cooperation, turning its back finally on the coalition idea and excluding Muslims as a political entity from the portals of power. In that year, also, the Muslim League, under Jinnah’s dynamic leadership, was reorganised de novo, transformed into a mass organisation, and made the spokesman of Indian Muslims as never before. Above all, in that momentous year were initiated certain trends in Indian politics, the crystallisation of which in subsequent years made the partition of the subcontinent inevitable. The practical manifestation of the policy of the Congress which took office in July, 1937, in seven out of eleven provinces, convinced Muslims that, in the Congress scheme of things, they could live only on sufferance of Hindus and as “second class” citizens. The Congress provincial governments, it may be remembered, had embarked upon a policy and launched a programme in which Muslims felt that their religion, language and culture were not safe. This blatantly aggressive Congress policy was seized upon by Jinnah to awaken the Muslims to a new consciousness, organize them on all-India platform, and make them a power to be reckoned with. He also gave coherence, direction and articulation to their innermost, let vague, urges and aspirations. Above all, the filled them with his indomitable will, his own unflinching faith in their destiny.
Struggle for Pakistan:
The attitude congress showed after the elections of 1935. Most Muslims felt that their future is not safe in united India. Congress not only refused to accept Muslim league’s cooperation but also refused to protect muslim minorities by providing them legislative guard.
As a result of Jinnah’s ceaseless efforts, the Muslims awakened from what Professor Baker calls(their) “unreflective silence” (in which they had so complacently basked for long decades), and to “the spiritual essence of nationality” that had existed among them for a pretty long time. Roused by the imapct of successive Congress hammerings, the Muslims, as Ambedkar (principal author of independent India’s Constitution) says, “searched their social consciousness in a desperate attempt to find coherent and meaningful articulation to their cherished yearnings. To their great relief, they discovered that their sentiments of nationality had flamed into nationalism”. In addition, not only lhad they developed” the will to live as a “nation”, had also endowed them with a territory which they could occupy and make a State as well as a cultural home for the newly discovered nation. These two pre-requisites, as laid down by Renan, provided the Muslims with the intellectual justification for claiming a distinct nationalism (apart from Indian or Hindu nationalism) for themselves. So that when, after their long pause, the Muslims gave expression to their innermost yearnings, these turned out to be in favour of a separate Muslim nationhood and of a separate Muslim state.
In March 1940 Jinnah presided over a Muslim League session at Lahore, where the first official demand was made for the partition of India and the creation of the state of Pakistan, in which Muslims would be a majority. During three decades of political life, Jinnah had believed in the possibility of Hindu-Muslim unity, and it was with the utmost reluctance that he came to the view that partition was essential.
“We are a nation with our own distinctive culture and civilization, language and literature, art and architecture, names and nomenclature, sense of values and proportion, legal laws and moral code, customs and calendar, history and tradition, aptitudes and ambitions; in short, we have our own distinctive outlook on life and of life. By all canons of international law, we are a nation” Quaid-e-Azam
After the historic day of 23rd March 1940, Quaid-e-Azam never looked back. Now the struggle was to get a piece of land for a newly invented nation and to get it from people who were not ready to accept Muslims of South Asia as a nation. He visited every part of sub continent to tell Muslims that why a separate homeland is demanded. The whole nation was with him. Like once he was presiding to a Muslim league meeting at Lahore some one asked the listeners “Can you understand what he is saying?” as Quaid was talking in English and some of the people in the room were unable to understand it. The guy replied “Yes I know what ever he is saying is good for us.” He was the greatest Muslim leader sub continent ever had. People were behind him they knew that it is Jinnah who can lead them to their homeland. They were looking for freedom and Jinnah was fighting their fight. His tenacity through constitutional discussions between the league, the Congress, and the British government in 1942, 1945, and 1946 made partition certain.
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