Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Biography

Muhammad Ali Jinnah was born Mahomedali Jinnahbhai in Karachi in 1876, the eldest child of a Gujarati merchant. He trained as a barrister at Lincoln's Inn in London, being called to the bar in 1895, and then practised at the Bombay High Court. He entered politics through the Indian National Congress and in 1909 won a seat on the Imperial Legislative Council as Bombay's Muslim member, resigning in 1919 in protest at the extension of wartime restrictions.

In his early career he worked for Hindu-Muslim unity. As president of the All-India Muslim League he helped bring about the 1916 Lucknow Pact with the Congress, and he was a leader of the All India Home Rule League. He left the Congress in 1920, objecting to Gandhi's campaign of satyagraha, and later set out fourteen points to protect Muslim political rights.

Jinnah went on to lead the Muslim League, and in 1940 the League adopted the Lahore Resolution, which embraced the two-nation theory and is seen as the moment he committed to a separate Pakistan. When independence came in August 1947 with the partition of British India, he became Pakistan's first governor-general and president of its Constituent Assembly, where on 11 August he gave a speech promising freedom of worship. He organised the new state and refugee relief until his death in Karachi in September 1948. Pakistanis revere him as Quaid-e-Azam, the 'Great Leader'.