Father
Of The Nation Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad
Ali Jinnah
Father of the Nation Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad
Ali Jinnah's achievement as the founder of Pakistan, dominates
everything else he did in his long and crowded public life
spanning some 42 years. Yet, by any standard, his was an eventful
life, his personality multidimensional and his achievements
in other fields were many, if not equally great. |
Indeed, several were the roles
he had played with distinction: at one time or another, he
was one of the greatest legal luminaries India had produced
during the first half of the century, an `ambassador of Hindu-Muslim
unity, a great constitutionalist, a distinguished parliamentarian,
a top-notch politician, an indefatigable freedom-fighter,
a dynamic Muslim leader, a political strategist and, above
all one of the great nation-builders of modern times. What,
however, makes him so remarkable is the fact that while similar
other leaders assumed the leadership of traditionally well-defined
nations and espoused their cause, or led them to freedom,
he created a nation out of an inchoate and downtrodden minority
and established a cultural and national home for it and all
that within a decade.
For over three decades before the successful
culmination in 1947, of the Muslim struggle for freedom in
the South-Asian subcontinent, Jinnah had provided political
leadership to the Indian Muslims: initially as one of the
leaders, but later, since 1947, as the only prominent leader-
the Quaid-i-Azam. For over thirty years, he had guided their
affairs; he had given expression, coherence and direction
to their legitimate aspirations and cherished dreams; he had
formulated these into concrete demands; and, above all, he
had striven all the while to get them conceded by both the
ruling British and the numerous Hindus the dominant segment
of India's population. And for over thirty years he had fought,
relentlessly and inexorably, for the inherent rights of the
Muslims for an honorable existence in the subcontinent. Indeed,
his life story constitutes, as it were, the story of the rebirth
of the Muslims of the subcontinent and their spectacular rise
to nationhood, phoenix like. |