[nukkad] Fw: Insight India 14 A

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 Dear friends,
1) Nusli Wadia of Bomaby Dyeing is the son of Naval Wadia who was the
 husband of the only daughter of Jinnah. Thus Nusli becomes the grand son of
Jinnah. Jinnah's wife Ruttie was the daughter of distinguished Parsee, Sir
Dinshaw Petit with whom Jinnah was on very friendly terms. Once on a trip to
Darjeeling as a guest to Petit family, Jinnah and Ruttie came in close
contact with each other and decided to marry. Dinshaw vehemently objected,
feeling betrayal of trust vested in a friend. Besides, Sir Dinshaw was a
very practical man and knew what difficulties lay ahead in store for them
due to much age difference between them (Jinnah was Dinshaw's age). Jinnah
chose to marry rather late in life. Had he married at the right age as per
the prevailing custom of the society then, his daughter would have been
Ruttie's age ! Adamant as he was, Jinnah did not concede and finally married
Ruttie. To formalize the marriage, Ruttie had to convert to Islam on
Jinnah's insistence( for name sake and on paper only, for all practical
purposes she continued living life as wealthy urban Parsees live). Sir
Dinshaw never saw the two again in life. A generation later history in the
family repeated, when their only daughter fell in love with Naval Wadia, a
Parsee of high fortune. This time it was Jinnah who strongly oppossed the
marriage and issued kinds of reprimands to them, but to no avail. The new
lovers had the precedent of old lovers in front of them ! However, a man of
Jinnah's  incorrigible nerves does not go by personal precedent, although
lawyers are always given to resort to legal precedents in their occupation !
Jinnah did exactly the same thing to Naval what Sir Dinshaw had done to him
years ago. He broke off all relations with his daughter and son-in-law.

2) Jinnah's sister Fatima, who had become widow at an early age and did not
remarry, had accompanied Jinnah to Pakistan. Ruttie too had died at very
young age while Jinnah was still in Bombay. Having been removed from his
near and dear ones except sister Fatima, Jinnah was depressed. Further many
of his loyal co-workers in politics had deserted him, for he was now openly
championing the cause of Muslim separate state. Under the compelling
circumstances, Fatima came to wield more and more influence on him. She was
a woman of fanatic religious ideas, had no high education, no general
reading worth mention and was sort of a person who likes to do things from
behind the curtain. She died in Karachi soon after passing away of Jinnah in
Karachi. Her husband's family which was Bombay based, chose not to migrate
to Pakistan and are still living a quiet life there.

3) Urdu poet Allama Iqbal was nationalist when he wrote 'Sare Jehan se achha
Hindustan hamara'. Besides Urdu he knew Persian and Arabic as well. For his
nationalistic render he commended high respect from all quarters. On many
occassions, without mincing words he lauded Indian civilization as the one
essentially more enduring and above other contemporary civilizations of
Egypt, China etc. What appears to be the reason for his sudden turn around,
atleast to me is that his grace had somewhat fallen with the rise of Tagore
as the National poet. Tagore won noble prize for literature and was a poet
of the highest intellectual order. Tagore wrote in both Bengali and English
and as well in either languages. This obviously brought him many an applause
from his British admirers. Since Iqbal had no knowledge of English writing
he was relegated to second position, or so he might have thought. The
situation worsened for Allama Iqbal, when another genius from Bengal, this
time a poetess, Sarojini Naidu captivated the minds of people and actively
enterted into nationalist politics. She wrote in Bengali, English and Hindi
and had considerable following of Englishmen who had hailed her as
Nightingale of India. Perhaps it was too much for a conservative Muslim to
concede to the superior poetic grace of a woman ! In a shameless manner,
totally unbecoming of a shayar, he altered the second stanza of his famous
poetry to " Sare jehan se achha, Pakistan hamara "

4) Jinnah was certainly fond of hard drinks, all sorts of food without any
taboo, nice car, leisure travels, going to expensive clubs and outings,
travel only first class (while going to Nagpur from Bombay to attend the
annual session of Congress, his last with Congress, he had engaged a whole
saloon car in the train), elegant parties, immeculately styled dresses etc.
Since he married at a late age, womanizing in his case is more likely than
not, which is generally regarded as commensurate with his tastes in life.
But I am not aware of any conclusive evidence established against him on
that score. It may be mentioned here for the sake of placing on record that
Mohammed Ali Jinnah never went to jail during the long and ardous freedom
struggle, even once, even for half an hour! One can imagine a nation's fate
in store, who had had such a founder.
Rohit Zaveri, Dubai






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