M. A. JINNAH: THE FORMATIVE PHASE

Abstract

There are very few statesmen, other than Mohammad Ali Jinnah whose early political activity contrasted so sharply with their later political career. Jinnah began his political career in the Indian National Congress, he was the leader nominated as head of the Committee formed to receive Mahatma Gandhi on his return from South Africa to India 1915. When Jinnah’s term as President of the Indian Home Rule League was coming to an end, in 1919, he nominated Mahatma Gandhi to succeed him. At the last stages of British rule, we see Mohammad Ali Jinnah as the Quaid-i-Azam, the Great Leader of Indian Muslims, engaged in a struggle to have a partition of India and form a new state, Pakistan as a homeland for the Muslims. To trace such a transformation, it is necessary to see what were the formative influences on such a figure; and how his temperament interacted with political developments, that had step by step led the Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity to become the founder of Pakistan.