Pakistan, one of the largest Muslim states in the world, is a living and exemplary monument of Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. With his untiring efforts, resolute will, and dauntless courage, he united the Indian Muslims under the banner of the Muslim League and carved out a homeland for them, despite stiff opposition from the Indian Congress and the British Government.
Quaid-e-Azam was born on 25 December 1876 in Karachi, now in Pakistan, but then part of British-controlled India. His father was a prosperous Muslim merchant, named Jinnah Ponja.
After being taught at home, Quaid-e-Azam was sent to the Sindh Madrasat al-Islam in 1887. Later he attended the Christian Missionary Society High School in Karachi, where at the age of 16 he passed the matriculation examination of the University of Bombay (now University of Mumbai). On the advice of an English friend, his father decided to send him to England to acquire business experience. Quaid-e-Azam, however, had made up his mind to become a barrister. In London he joined Lincoln`s Inn, one of the legal societies that prepared students for the bar. In 1895, at the age of 19, he was called to the bar.
Quaid-e-Azam first entered politics by participating in the 1906 session of the Indian National Congress held at Calcutta (Kolkata), in which the party began to split between those calling for dominion status and those advocating independence for India. Largely to safeguard Muslim interests, the All-India Muslim League was founded in 1906. But Quaid-e-Azam remained aloof from it. Only in 1913, when authoritatively assured that the league was as devoted as the Congress to the political emancipation of India, did Quaid-e-Azam join the league.
Quaid-e-Azam`s endeavors to bring about the political union of Hindus and Muslims earned him the title of "the best ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity", an epithet coined by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, the eminent Maratha leader. In 1915 the two organizations held their meetings in Bombay and in 1916 in Lucknow, where the Lucknow Pact was concluded. Under the terms of the pact, the two organizations put their seal to a scheme of constitutional reform that became their joint demand to the British government. Muslims obtained one important concession in the shape of separate electorates, already conceded to them by the government in 1909 but resisted by the Congress until then.
Meanwhile, a new force in Indian politics had appeared in the person of Mohandas K. Gandhi. Opposed to Gandhi`s non-cooperation movement and his essentially Hindu approach to politics, Quaid-e-Azam left both the league and the Congress in 1920. When the failure of the non-cooperation movement and the emergence of Hindu revivalist movements led to riots between Hindus and Muslims, the Muslim League began to lose strength and cohesion, and provincial Muslim leaders formed their own parties to serve their needs. The elections of 1937 proved to be a turning point in the relations between the two organizations. The Congress obtained an absolute majority in six provinces, and the league did not do particularly well.
At this point, Quaid-e-Azam emerged as the leader of a renascent Muslim nation. On March 22 - 23, 1940, in Lahore, the league adopted a resolution to form a separate Muslim state, Pakistan. Pitted against Quaid-e-Azam were many influential Hindus, including Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. British government seemed to be intent on maintaining the political unity of the Indian subcontinent but Quaid-e-Azam led his movement with such skill and resolve that ultimately both the Congress and the British government had no option but to agree to the partitioning of India. Pakistan thus emerged as an independent state in 1947.
Quaid-e-Azam became the first head of the new state. Faced with the serious problems of a young nation, he tackled Pakistan`s problems with authority. He was not regarded as merely the governor-general; he was honored as the father of the nation. He worked hard until overwhelmed by age and disease in Karachi, the place of his birth, in 1948.