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Muhammad Ali Jinnah (?1876-1948)Pakistani leader. Born on 25 December 1876 (?) in Karachi, son of a prosperous merchant family, he was educated in Bombay and London, where he was called to the Bar in 1895. He returned to India soon after, and set up a law practice in Bombay in 1897. A passionate supporter of Indian independence, he joined the Indian National Congress, and was part of a delegation to London in 1905 that argued the case for self-government. Then, gradually, Jinnah became concerned about the Muslim minority in India and its desire for equal rights. He joined the Muslim League in 1913, and distanced himself from Mahatma Gandhi's more Hindu-oriented Congress party. Worried by the increasing violence of Indian politics, he tried to retire to London in 1931, but other Muslim leaders urged him to return, which he did in 1935. Now he focused his energies on achieving Indian independence with maximum guarantees for Muslims. Opposed by regional Muslim leaders, who wanted to preserve the privileges that Britain's colonial administration had granted them, Jinnah finally decided that only a Muslim homeland could solve the minority's problems. This electrifying idea had an immediate impact, and he polled 75% of the Muslim vote in the 1945-6 provincial elections. He hoped to use this mandate as a bargaining tool in his discussions with Pandit Nehru to secure extensive Muslim rights in an independent India. When talks broke down, however, he accepted the idea of partition with a separate Muslim state, consisting of what came to be called West Pakistan (now Pakistan) and East Pakistan (East Bengal, now Bangladesh). By the time Jinnah was appointed governor-general of Pakistan on 14 August 1947, the day before it became an independent nation, he was weakened by work and tuberculosis. He died before he was able to create a new constitution for the country. |
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