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— Kshama Sawant
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Gandhi in Lancashire, January 1, 1931: Indian nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, 1869 – 1948) is greeted by a crowd of female textile workers during a visit to Darwen, Lancashire. PHOTO/Keystone/Getty Images/ Architectural Digest
Seventy-seven years ago on Jan 30, 1948, a right-wing militant assassinated M.K. Gandhi in retaliation for his solidarity with Muslim victims of post-partition riots. A few days earlier, Gandhi broke his last fast after obtaining commitments from religious community leaders that India’s Muslims would be protected and those forced to leave their homes allowed to return.
He paid for his commitment to religious co-existence in independent
India with his life. One would think that his support for Muslims would
give him a high stature in Pakistan, but this is not the case. During
riots in 1950, his statue opposite the Sindh High Court in Karachi was
pulled down. Gandhi’s role as leader of Congress and his opposition to
partition have meant that his teachings have no place in our history
books.
This is a pity because there is much we can learn from the unique
South Asian leader. Many aspects of his outlook were problematic, and
some of his great contemporaries such as the Dalit leader B.R. Ambedkar
and progressive writer Rabindranath Tagore disagreed with many of his
views. But Gandhi’s insights into the effects of Western imperialism,
the role of spiritual morality in public life and the dark sides of
modernity continue to have relevance, not only for South Asians, but for
a world that is becoming increasingly difficult to theorise using
well-worn paradigms of social analysis in the left or the right.
We can learn from the unique South Asian leader.
I discuss three of these insights: first, Gandhi’s approach to
accommodating radical diversities within society, second his rejection
of Western models of economic growth, and finally his commitment to
non-violent political resistance.
How should the many layers of religious and cultural diversities in
India be accommodated? This was a major challenge to pre-1947 Indian
politics and it remains an existential one in South Asia today. Gandhi
believed that radical diversities could coexist in independent India as
they had for millennia prior to European colonisation. In Hind Swaraj,
he writes that the essence of India’s national identity and the basis
for its continuity is its “faculty for assimilation”. For Gandhi,
removal of religion from public life was neither possible nor desirable
given the deeply religious ethos of India’s people. He believed in
drawing from the spiritual ethics of all religions to shape a shared
political morality.
Second, Gandhi believed Western models of economic growth could not
be sustained by the planet. He understood that rapid large-scale
industrialisation in the Global South would intensify inequalities and
deplete natural resources. He advocated for localised growth driven by
self-sustaining villages organised on a cooperative basis, and led
campaigns boycotting Western industrial goods.
Gandhi’s rejection of the West had its critics. Tagore wrote that
such rejection amounted to parochialism and called for a “true meeting
of the East and the West”. After independence, India did not adopt
Gandhi’s economic vision and moved towards industrialisation and
centralisation. Even though Gandhi’s prescriptions may seem quaint, in
this era of climate catastrophe it is striking to see how contemporary
calls for environmentally sustainable economies and a return to
smaller-scale, localised production echo his proposals.
Finally, his commitment to non-violent resistance inspired activists
everywhere. He advocated non-violence for its own sake, as a principle
consistent with respect for life, while demonstrating that non-violence
is also an effective tactical tool. European imperialism justifies
itself as a ‘civilising’ mission. Discrediting this façade was crucial
to end its dominance. The Dandi March led by Gandhi in 1930 to retrieve
salt from the seashore in defiance of the salt tax became a
world-famous example of non-violent resistance through direct
action.
Sharp criticism of Gandhian non-violence comes from Arundhati Roy who
notes that the performative power of non-violent resistance is
unavailable to marginalised people without an audience. While we should
consider perspectives from different struggles, it is clear that
Gandhi’s message of non-violence inspired movements as diverse as Bacha
Khan’s Khudai Khidmatgars and the 1960s civil rights movement in the US.
Martin Luther King Jr said that Gandhi’s non-violent resistance was the
“only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in
their struggle for freedom”.
1910 watercolor portrait of Belle da Costa Greene by Laura Coombs Hills. IMAGE/ The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, gift of the Estate of Belle da Costa Greene.
“Just Because I am a Librarian doesn’t mean I have to dress like one.”
With this breezy pronouncement, Belle da Costa Greene handily differentiated herself from most librarians.
She stood out for other reasons, too.
In the early 20th century – a time when men held most positions of
authority – Greene was a celebrated book agent, a curator and the first
director of the Morgan Library. She also earned US$10,000 a year, about $280,000 today, while other librarians were making roughly $400.
She was also a Black woman who passed as white.
Born in 1879, Belle was the daughter of two light-skinned Black Americans, Genevieve Fleet and Richard T. Greener,
the first Black man to graduate from Harvard. When the two separated in
1897, Fleet changed the family’s last name to Greene and, along with
her five children, crossed the color line. Belle Marion Greener became
Belle da Costa Greene – the “da Costa” a subtle claim to her Portuguese
ancestry.
When banking magnate J.P. Morgan sought a librarian in 1905, his nephew Junius Morgan recommended Greene, who had been one of his co-workers at the Princeton Library.
Henceforth, Greene’s life didn’t just kick into a higher gear. It was
supercharged. She became a lively fixture at social gatherings among
America’s wealthiest families. Her world encompassed Gilded Age
mansions, country retreats, rare book enclaves, auction houses, museums
and art galleries. Bold, vivacious and glamorous, the keenly intelligent
Greene attracted attention wherever she went.
I found myself drawn to the worlds Greene entered and the people she
described in her lively letters to her lover, art scholar Bernard
Berenson. In 2024, I published a book, “Becoming Belle Da Costa Greene,” which explores her voice, her self-invention, her love of art and literature, and her path-breaking work as a librarian.
Yet I’m often asked whether Greene mentions her passing as white in
her writings. She did not. Greene was one of hundreds of thousands of
light-skinned Black Americans who passed as white in the Jim Crow era.
While speculation about Greene’s background circulated in her lifetime,
nothing was confirmed until historian Jean Strouse revealed the
identities of Greene’s parents in her 1999 biography, “Morgan: American Financier.” Until that point, only Greene’s mother and siblings knew the story of their Black heritage.
“Passing” can often raise more questions than answers. But Greene did
not largely define herself through one category, such as her racial
identity. Instead, she constructed a self through the things she loved.
‘I love this life – don’t you?’
In my view, any consideration of Greene’s attitudes toward her own
race must remain an open question. And uncertainty can be acknowledged –
even embraced – with judgments suspended.
The Morgan Library & Museum currently has an exhibition
on Greene that will run until May 4, 2025 – one that’s already
generated debates about Greene and the significance of her passing.
His Higness the Aga Khan: Reminiscenes of over six decades
by DR. SEYYED HOSSEIN NASR
Prince Karim Aga Khan IV with his daughter Princcess Zahra IMAGE/Getty Images/Duck Duck Go
As we reflect on the life of His Highness the Aga Khan, we share this essay by the eminent Muslim scholar, Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, about their many decades of friendship.
His Highness the Aga Khan passed away on February 4th, 2025. This tribute by Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr on the occasion of the Aga Khan’s Diamond Jubilee originally appeared in Sacred Web 41, published in June 2018.
In the Name of God, The Most Merciful, The Most Compassionate
I
am grateful to be given this opportunity to write a few words about
reminiscences concerning His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan on the
occasion of his Diamond Jubilee.
Winning projects of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 2022 cycle.
I have known him personally for over six decades and have met him in places as far apart as Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the USA, Aiglemont, Gouvieux, in France, and Tehran in my home country of Iran. The trajectory of the meeting of the lines of his noble family and mine goes back to even before Prince Karim and I met in the mid-1950s at Harvard. When Pakistan became independent, my uncle, Seyyed Ali Nasr, became Iran’s first ambassador to the newly founded nation and soon became close friends with His Highness Sir Sultan Mohamed Shah, Aga Khan III, Prince Karim’s grandfather, to the extent that later when Sir Sultan Mohamed Shah and the Begum would come to Iran, they would visit the Nasr family home in Tehran.
The Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Canada is the first museum dedicated to Islamic art & architecture in North America.
When I went to Harvard in 1954, I founded the Harvard Islamic
Society, the first Islamic Society to be established in an American
University. Among its seven original members was the late Prince
Sadruddin Aga Khan, Prince Karim’s uncle with whom I became good
friends. Shortly thereafter, when as a teaching fellow at Harvard I was
giving a lecture on Islam, I met the young Prince Karim who was then a
student in my class. We became close friends and he would occasionally
even visit our home where my mother, who was then residing in the Boston
area, would cook Persian food for him which he appreciated like most
other things Persian.
It was in this period that during a university holiday he was called away to Europe to visit his grandfather, Sir Sultan Mohamed Shah, during his last illness, and on his passing on July 11, 1957, Prince Karim was, according to the hereditary customs of the Shi’a Imami Ismaili Muslims, appointed by the Last Will of the late Imam to succeed to the title of ‘Aga Khan’ and to be Imam and Pir of his community. He was 20 at the time. When the young Prince Karim, now Imam and Aga Khan IV, returned to Cambridge, we continued our discussions but on a deeper level about Islam, its art and philosophy, Twelver Shi‘ism and its relation to Ismailism and the whole question of im?mah or the Imamat in addition to many other related subjects. I would often speak to him about the fact that Ismailism was and remains a part of the totality of Shi‘ism and therefore of Islam, and I was very glad to see that soon he added the name Shi‘a to the official name of the branch of Ismailism of which he was now the Hadir Imam.
When I returned to Iran in 1958 my relation with His Highness continued. He wanted to have a new generation of Ismaili intellectual leaders trained and, to that end, he sent several very gifted Ismaili students to Tehran University where I was teaching and they completed their doctorate under my care. His keen interest in the Islamic intellectual tradition combined with devotion to Islamic art and architecture was and is unique among major Islamic leaders.
The early Sixties were the hey-day of Arab nationalism, both
Nasserism and the Ba‘th movement, the latter led ideologically by
Christian Arabs such as Michel Aflaq and Constantine Zurayk, who was a
professor at the American University of Beirut (AUB), which was then the
intellectual seat of Arab nationalism. It was at the AUB that such
famous Jordanian and Palestinian nationalists as Nayef Hawatemah and
Yasser Arafat as well as many Lebanese and Syrian political figures had
studied, and where there was the attempt both to secularize Islam or to
reduce it to a part of Arab nationalism. His Highness Prince Karim
decided very wisely that it was there, precisely because of the AUB’s
influential position, that he would seek to establish a Chair of Islamic
Studies, and he indicated that he wanted me to apply for it and to go
to the AUB in Beirut to found the Chair. At the time, I was very busy in
Iran and did not want to leave my country for a whole year, but I
obliged to follow His Highness’s suggestion and when the invitation came
from AUB to apply for the Aga Khan Chair, I sent them my CV and
publications, and soon afterwards I was informed that I had been chosen
for the Chair. And so, I spent the whole academic year of 1964 – 1965 in
Beirut as Aga Khan Professor, a year that was one of the most difficult
and at the same time most fruitful of my life.
The opposition among many members of the faculty to Islam being taught by a Persian who was at the same time a Shi‘ite was more than I had imagined. It had been easier for me to teach Islamic subjects from a Muslim point of view at Harvard where I had been visiting professor just two years earlier than to teach such subjects in Beirut. But I had the full backing of His Highness and that support gave me strength in carrying out his wishes to sink the roots of Islamic studies in the soil of the intellectual heart of modern Arab nationalism and modernism.
Prince Karim Aga Khan IV passed away in Lisbon on February 4 after having held the Imamate of the Nizari Ismaili community, as the 49th Mawlana Hazrat Imam, since 1957. As far as I know, the Narendra Modi government has issued no official condolence message. This is not only an insult to the memory of the prince, but also an insult to the 1.5 million-strong Indian Ismaili community he led for the last 68 years. It not only ignores the Padma Vibhushan awarded to the prince, but also neglects that it was in the Prime Minister’s home State of Gujarat that Aga Khan IV started and has until now sustained the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, the precursor to the worldwide Aga Khan Development Network which deals with healthcare, housing, education, and rural economic development.
The
guiding principle of the Aga Khan’s life has been to recognise that his
followers live among others of different ethnicities and religions.
Therefore, he devotes a significant portion of his vast wealth to
“improving the quality of life for individuals and communities across
the world” as he wished to do so “irrespective of their religious
affiliations or origins”.
I go for a walk whenever I can to Sunder Nursery in central New Delhi. It used to be an unkempt jungle until the Aga Khan Trust for Culture took charge of it. While preserving, conserving, restoring, and renovating the numerous Mughal-era monuments that dot the park, the Aga Khan Trust has converted the wilderness into an arresting Mughal Gardens with a profusion of flowers in full bloom as winter turns to spring. The greenery is enhanced by the numerous trees and the woods at its periphery, home to many birds and small animals.
And because Sunder Nursery is close to Muslim residential areas,
Muslim families and students, young men and women in wooing mode, and
newly married Muslim couples holding hands wander at ease through its
enchanted gardens and waterways, the way they do along the sea-face at
Mumbai’s Marine Drive.
Aga Khan Trust’s contribution
It is one place in Modi’s India where our major minority community can have a sense of belonging, where their identity is unquestioned, their heritage (which is also ours) is lovingly celebrated. The open-air auditorium is a magnificent setting to display the composite civilisation that defines the Idea of India, especially in poetry, music, and dance—and true spirituality. Is that why the current Indian establishment shuns this UNESCO-recognised site, although it was Vice President Venkaiah Naidu, a former BJP activist, who inaugurated the park?
Right next to Sunder Nursery is Humayun’s Tomb. It was
neglected and run-down till Prince Karim turned his attention to it.
Today, it stands rejuvenated, its surrounding greens and lawns perfectly
manicured and with a world-class museum that explains and celebrates
that period of our history. A fitting tribute to Humayun whose father,
the Mughal emperor Babur, left him a letter emphasising that if he
wished to keep the empire he was inheriting, he must remember not to
forcibly convert to Islam the inhabitants of the land. This injunction
resulted in only a quarter of India’s population being Muslim after 666
years of Muslim sultans and badshahs ruling from the throne of Delhi
(1192-1858). India was where Islam learned to co-exist with other
religions. Elsewhere, Islam was either totally triumphant (from
Afghanistan and Iran to West Asia and North Africa, Central Asia, and
much of South-East Asia down to Indonesia, the most populous Muslim
nation in the world) or totally defeated (as at the Pyrenees that
separate Spain from France and at the gates of Vienna).
Islamic contact with India may have started with invasions and bigotry but very quickly turned to mutual respect and cultural synthesis. Right opposite Sunder Nursery is a large sign proclaiming, “I LOVE NIZAMUDDIN”. The reference is not to the great Sufi spiritual leader, Nizamuddin Auliya, but to the upscale post-Partition residential colony named in an earlier more tolerant and accommodating period of independent India. It was here, at what is now his dargah, that Nizamuddin Auliya, spiritual adviser to the Khiljis and the Tughlaqs, persuaded Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq that Alauddin’s resort to merciless armed conversions was not the way the sultan should adopt, leading to Ghiyasuddin’s imperial decree to leave non-Muslims free to believe in and practise their faith. It is here that lie the origins not only of modern India’s secularism but also its national language, Hindi. For it was here that Nizamuddin Auliya’s renowned disciple, Amir Khusrau, fused the vernacular Braj Bhasha with imported words, phrases, and expressions from Turkish, Persian, and Central Asian dialects into a language he called “Hindawi”, from which contemporary Hindi was derived.
This was also the locale of the Sufi movement that evolved in India
parallel to the Bhakti movement and led to the intertwining of the
spiritual ecstasy that is the essence of both Sufism and Bhakti. Where
in its heyday the dargah of Nizamuddin Auliya rested in expansive
surroundings, it is now enclosed in a warren of narrow streets and
dilapidated buildings. The Aga Khan Trust for Culture has made the
renovation and upgrading of the Nizamuddin basti and its numerous
imposing structures, as also that wondrous architectural masterpiece,
the tomb of Abdur Rahim Khan-e-Khanan, another focus of its generous
attention.
It is no surprise that non-Islamic, secular India is
where Prince Karim Aga Khan IV concentrated his efforts. I only met him
once—when he visited Karachi in 1981, where I was serving as India’s
first-ever Consul General, to present his annual award for architecture
to a highly talented Pakistani architect, Yasmeen Lari, who had
brilliantly designed a hotel in India incorporating Islamic motifs with
modern ones. Her fellow awardee was an Indian Christian named Charles
Correa.
The chairman of the Aga Khan Trust, Rajeshwar Dayal, a
former High Commissioner to Pakistan, was also present. Prince Karim was
not concerned that a Hindu was heading his Trust. (One amusing but
telling fallout of that visit was that the Jama’at-e-Islami Mayor of
Karachi found himself being pushed down the reception line by higher-ups
from Islamabad. Indignant, he rang me the next day to ask where the
Mayor of Mumbai stood in the warrant of precedence. I was much taken by
the fact that he did not think the position of the Lord Mayor of London,
or the Mayor of New York, relevant. He instinctively understood that
his case would be strengthened only by an Indian example. The Aga Khan
was sensitive to the nuances of such a relationship between Pakistan and
India!)
Champion of justice
His ecumenical (in the sense of all-embracing) and inclusive approach was also evident when Aga Khan IV took up the cause of Asians being expelled from East Africa, especially from Uganda under Idi Amin. Having himself been brought up as a boy in Kenya, Prince Karim championed his campaign of justice for all uprooted Asian communities, not only Ismailis, in those tense and difficult times, using his wide network in the West, particularly his friendship with Canadian premier Pierre Trudeau, to resettle thousands of refugee families in Canada.
It is surely churlish of the government of India to not issue a
statement of condolence on the passing away of so noble an international
Muslim leader with numerous followers in India and the recipient of
India’s second highest civilian honour. But then the Modi-Amit Shah-Yogi
Adityanath trio was preoccupied at the time of his passing with
covering up the Mahakumbh stampede that killed uncounted numbers of
Hindu pilgrims in the narrow alleys leading to the bathing ghats at
Prayagraj, with those who escaped death being welcomed into mosques and
madrasas that had thrown open their doors to offer hospitality and
succour—although the triumvirate had let it be known that no Muslim
would be allowed into the sangam (river confluence) during the Mahakumbh.
The irony of this is lost on no one.
Postscript:
After the column was uploaded, I learned that the Prime Minister had in
fact put out a condolence message on X (formerly Twitter). While
apologising for not knowing this, I do wish to add that, given the
stature and contribution of Khan, and India’s significant Indian Ismaili
community, I believe more prominence should have been accorded to the
sad event.
Who are Ismaili Muslims and how do their beliefs relate to the Aga Khan’s work?
by SHARIK SIDDIQUE
Some 53 nurses and 98 midwives from Ghazanfar Institute of Health Sciences, supported by The Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, and the United States Agency for International Development, attend a graduation ceremony in Kabul, Afghanistan, on March 29, 2009. IMAGE/Massoud Hossaini AFP via Getty Images
Prince Karim Aga Khan, who died on Feb. 4, 2025, served as the religious leader of Ismaili Muslims around the world since being appointed as the 49th hereditary imam in 1957. He came to be known around the world for his enormous work on global development issues and other philanthropic work.
As a scholar of Muslim philanthropy, I have long been impressed by the philanthropic and civic engagement of the Ismailis.
“Dr Yasmin Amarsi, Founding Dean, Aga Khan University School of Nursing and Midwifery, East Africa, has been awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree by McMaster University, Canada. This prestigious award is bestowed on individuals who have made noteworthy impact in public service or other areas at national or international levels.” IMAGETEXT//The Aga Khan University
Ismaili religious beliefs
Following the death of the Prophet in A.D. 632, differences emerged
over who should have both political and spiritual control over the
Muslim community. A majority chose Abu Bakr, one of the Prophet’s
closest companions, while a minority put their faith in his son-in-law
and cousin, Ali. Those Muslims who put their faith in Abu Bakr came to
be called Sunni, and those who believed in Ali came to be known as Shiite.
Like other Shiite sects, Ismailis believe that Ali should have been selected as the successor of the Prophet Muhammad. They also believe that he should have been followed by Ali’s two sons – the grandsons of Muhammad through his daughter Fatima.
The key difference among other Shiites and Ismailis lies in their
lineage of imams. While they agree with the first six imams, Ismailis
believe that Imam Ismail ibn Jafar
was the rightful person to be the seventh imam, while the majority of
Shiites, known as Twelvers, believe that Imam Musa al-Kazim, Ismail’s
younger brother, was the true successor. They both agree that Ali was
the first imam and on the next five imams, who are direct descendant of
Ali and Fatima.
The Ismaili sect split into two branches in 1094. Aga Khan was the leader of the Nizari branch, which believes in a living imam or leader.
The second branch – Musta’lian Tayyibi Ismailis – believes that its
21st imam went into “concealment”; in his physical absence, a vicegerent
or “da’i mutlaq” acts as an authority on his behalf.
Like all Muslims, Ismailis believe that God sent his revelation to
the Prophet Muhammad through Archangel Gabriel. However, they differ on
other interpretations of the faith. According to the Ismailis, for
example, the Quran conveys allegorical messages from God, and it is not
the literal word of God. They also believe Muhammad to be the living
embodiment of the Quran. Ismailis are strongly encouraged to pray three
times a day, but it is not required.
Ismailis believe in metaphorical, rather than literal, fasting.
Ismailis believe that the esoteric meaning of fasting involves a fasting
of the soul, whereby they attempt to purify the soul simply by avoiding
sinful acts and doing good deeds.
In terms of “Zakat,” or charity – the third pillar of Islam, which
Muslims are required to follow – Ismailis differ in two ways. They give
it to the leader of their faith, Aga Khan, and believe that they have to give 12.5% of their income versus 2.5%.
Pluralism and its embrace
Ismaili history has a strong connection to pluralism
– part of their philosophy of embracing difference. The Fatimid Empire
that ruled over parts of North Africa and the Middle East from 909 to
1171 is said to have been a “golden age of Ismaili thought.”
It was a pluralistic community, in which Shiite and Sunni Muslims, as
well as Christian and Jewish communities, worked together for the
success of the flourishing empire, under the rule of the Ismaili imams.
In the modern period, Ismailis have sought to further pluralism
within their own communities by arguing that pluralism goes beyond
tolerance and requires people to actively engage across differences and
actively embrace difference as a strength. For example, Eboo Patel, an
Ismaili American, has established the nonprofit Interfaith America as a
way to further pluralism among faith communities.
Over a hundred years ago, on February 20, 1918, she escaped from her
parents house to unite with her love. Two months later, on April 19, at
her sweetheart’s huge house atop Malabar Hill in Bombay, she got
married and went to Nainital for honeymoon.
All over India, the news of their wedding caused a huge uproar and
spread fast – it became the main talk of the town for many reasons:
The girl was Parsi;
the man was Muslim;
she was 18;
he was 41;
she was the daughter of one of the richest man in India then;
he was a self-made wealthy person – a very successful lawyer;
the girl’s family broke all relations with her;
the man was estranged from his;
she was expelled from the Parsi community;
he had already left his religious sect Nizari Ismaili;
the girl was at ease in western or local stylish clothing;
the man was well known for his well-tailored English suits.
The girl was Ruttie Petit; her husband was M. A. Jinnah.
They both were nationalists and wanted an end to the British colonial
rule in India. Both were handsome with great sense of dressing,
albeit, pricey.
Ruttie’s beauty and dressing had impressed many personalities:
“Her attire was a Liberty scarf, a jewelled bandeau, and an emerald necklace. She is extremely pretty, fascinating, terribly made up. All the men raved about her, the women sniffed.”
and
“Very pretty, complete minx. A tight dress of brocade cut to the waist back and front, no sleeves, and over it and her head flowered Chiffon as a Sari.”
Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, Some Aspects of Quaid-I-Azam’s Life” (Islamabad: National Commission on Historical and Cultural Research, 1978, p. 50.)
“[Mr. Jinnah was]one of the handsomest men I have ever seen; he combined the clear-cut, almost Grecian features of the West with Oriental grace of movement.”
“Wanted: Jinnah’s Pakistan,” Dawn, July 31, 2009 ( https://www.dawn.com/news/887761/wanted-jinnah-s-pakistan )
Mrs. Freeth, (wife of British Major-General G. H. B. Freeth, Deputy
Adjutant-General) wrote to her mother how much she was impressed by
Jinnah, whom she met at the viceregal dinner in Simla in May 1929.
“After dinner, I had Mr. Jinnah to talk to. He is a great personality. He talks the most beautiful English. He models his manners and clothes on Du Maurier, the actor, and his English on Burke’s speeches. He is a future Viceroy, if the present system of gradually Indianizing all the services continues. I have always wanted to meet him, and now I have had my wish.”
Akbar S. Ahmed, “Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: The Search for Saladin,” The New York Times (https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/a/ahmed-jinnah.html?_r=2).
Ruttie
Ruttie was born as Rattanbai <1> in an orthodox Parsi (Zoroastrian) <2> family on February 20, 1900, one of four children, the only daughter of Sir Dinshaw Petit (1873-1933) <3> and was affectionately called “Ruttie.” Today is her 125th birth anniversary.
Ruttie was a bold, brilliant woman who was well versed in
many subjects, including literature and politics. She didn’t get the
recognition she deserved either in India or in Pakistan. mostly due to
her marriage to Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan.
The Pakistani governments have ignored Ruttie because she was not a
Muslim and the Indian governments, particularly the current Modi
regime, have avoided mention of anyone/anything associated with Jinnah.
Even decades after the creation of Pakistan, authorities wouldn’t consider a suggestion for naming an area — Ruttie Jinnah Grove in Karachi!
The young, bubbly, and vivacious Ruttie was interested in politics
and the British colonial rule in India. Accompanied by her maiden aunt,
Hamabai Petit, a multimillionaire philanthropist, she used to attend
public meetings in Bombay.
M. A. Jinnah, a close family friend, often spoke <4> at these gatherings.
Jinnah
Jinnah’s parents Mithibai and Jinnahbhai Poonja hailed from Paneli, Gondal, in Kathiawar part of Bombay Presidency then, but now a part of Gujarat state. In 1875, they moved to Karachi where a year later Mohammed Ali Jinnahbhai was born on 25 December 1876. Karachi, a small Indian town then, is now Pakistan’s largest city.
In his teens, in 1892, his father’s English business associate
Frederick Leigh Croft offered Jinnah a London apprenticeship with his
firm, Graham’s Shipping and Trading Company,
which Jinnah accepted. To prevent him from not getting tempted to
marry an English girl, Jinnah’s mother got him married to 14-year-old
Emibai, the daughter of a wool businessman, and a distant relative.
After a few months at Graham’s, Jinnah got bored with routine work; quit his job, and got himself admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, in order to study law. He then informed his father about the admission with a promise he wouldn’t ask for any more money.
Some friends of Jinnah took him to a theatrical company where the
manager asked him to read some extracts from Shakespeare’s collection.
The manager and his wife were extremely delighted. Jinnah was invited to
work and he signed the contract but then due to his father’s letter and
a stern warning, especially the sentence, “Do not be a traitor to the
family”, he left acting. (Stanley Wolpert, Jinnah of Pakistan. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984, p. 56.)
Less than a year after Jinnah left, Emibai died of cholera, and a
few months later, his mother died during childbirth. His mother’s
demise was a great loss for Jinnah but he determinedly held on and
passed the bar exam, becoming the youngest Indian to achieve such feat.
M. A. Jinnah (he shortened his name in London), upon return to
Karachi in 1896, discovered his father was bankrupt. A year later,
Jinnah left for Bombay where he had once lived as a teen with his
paternal aunt Manbai. The first three years were an immense struggle.
The beginning of the new century was a good omen for him. John
Molesworth MacPherson, the acting Advocate-General of Bombay offered
Jinnah work in his chambers. Jinnah was the first Indian ever,
according to Sarojini Naidu, to be granted such a favor. (Hector
Bolitho, Jinnah: Creator of Pakistan, p. 15. https://archive.org/details/jinnah-creator-of-pakistan-by-hector-bolitho_202307/page/15/mode/2up)
In early 1900, he got a recommendation letter from MacPherson and
became a temporary Presidency Magistrate. In 1901, Sir Charles Olivant
offered Jinnah a salary of Rs 1,500 (Bolitho, p. 17)
a month. He refused the offer saying he was confident that very soon he
could make that much in a day, which proved to be true.
A liberal non-practicing Khoja Muslim, Jinnah left Shia Nizari Ismaili <5> branch when Imam, Sir Sultan Mohammed Shah (Aga Khan III) (1877 – 1957), refused to bless his sister’s wedding <6> because she had married an outsider.
Soon, Jinnah became very successful, had a huge house, and looked after his siblings
and relatives, but preferred to live alone. He brought his little
sister Fatima and another sister Shirin, who was fourteen years old, to
live with him. Shirin stayed with Jinnah till her marriage a few years
later.
Jinnah, who had been associated with the Indian National Congress
(INC) since 1904 became an official member in 1906. In 1913, he joined All-India Muslim League
(AIML). Many Muslim leaders, including Aga Khan III, had wanted this
brilliant and successful lawyer to join the League <7> for a long
time.
The Affair
Jinnah used to hang out with crème de la crème of the Bombay society.
Many of his clients were wealthy Hindus, Parsis, and Muslims. Parsis
also let Jinnah into their exclusive club. Many club members were his
clients, including Sir Dinshaw Petit, who was also a personal friend.
In summer 1916, the Petit Family invited Jinnah for a vacation at their residence in Darjeeling.
Ruttie and Jinnah spent a lot of time together during these two months
at the Petit chateau, which was 7000 feet high, with view of Mount
Everest. Jinnah and Ruttie indulged in horse-riding and other
activities.
Poetic portraiture:
Romance in the lap of the Himalayas
the beautiful Darjeeling the aesthetic hill station the intellectual exchange the mutual attraction Jinnah’s long road of loneliness and Ruttie’s erupting adulthood brought them closer, and closer the air emitted fragrance of love her talk enraptured Jinnah his personality awed Ruttie
in the lap of the Himalayas the romance blossomed
she was almost sixteen he was thirty-nine love found them vows bonded them she was Ruttie for him and he was “J” for her
no hindrance was the different age no worries about that social-cage custodians were left to worry that lovers were unfurling a joint page
Jinnah approached Ruttie’s father with a question about his views on interfaith marriage. Sir Petit thought it would do good:
“[Interfaith wed-locks would]considerably help national integration and might ultimately prove to be the final solution to inter-communal antagonism.”
Jinnah asked for Ruttie’s hand. Not expecting such a question, Sir
Petit got caught off-guard, but then gathered composure and refused
Jinnah’s proposal. Ruttie was 16 so she and Jinnah decided to wait till
she turned 18. Sir Petit was against this union, and went to the length
of getting a court injunction in June 1917 against Jinnah, restricting him from meeting Ruttie.
They, however, stayed in contact through correspondence conducted via intermediaries, and met when they could.
Meanwhile, Ruttie kept abreast of Jinnah’s efforts with Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856 – 1920), the efforts culminated in the Lucknow Pact confirmed December 29-31, 1916 and helped form cordial relations between Indian National Congress and Indian Muslim League to fight the British jointly.
A. G. Noorani, “Jinnah in India’s History” (Frontline, August 12, 2005). https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/article30205784.ece#! )
To attend this important Lucknow session, Ruttie had traveled by
train to Lucknow with her aunt Hamabai and Barrister D. N. Bahadurji
(Jinnah’s Parsi friend, whose wife was a Hindu Brahmin.) In Lucknow, Ruttie met Jinnah.
(Interestingly, they heard vendors at the train station shouting: “Hindu chai” (tea), “Mussulman chai,” “Hindu pani” (water), Mussulman pani.” )
Hamabai
Hamabai was a very wealthy philanthropist. Her relations with Ruttie
were very good. With her brother Sir Dinshaw (Ruttie’s father) she was
very close but when it came to the Ruttie/Jinnah affair, she avoided
siding with either her brother or Jinnah. During this time, she offered
her free services to Jinnah, who was president of the Home Rule League
then, later she became the honorary vice president of the League.
She did her baccalaureate from a French boarding school in Nice. She
was her own person and married in her thirties to a nephew of late Sir
Pheroeshah Mehta (Jinnah’s friend), who was one of the founding members
of Indian National Congress. Sir Dinshaw didn’t like that Hamabai’s
husband was not wealthy.
Ruttie’s romantic turmoil
Back in Bombay, Ruttie had changed, as witnessed by her letters to
friend Padmaja, daughter of poet/politician Sarojini Naidu (1879 –
1949). One letter written on 27 January 1917, expresses her state of
mind:
“Life has been such a medley of wild excitement and cold depression!” “And yet it has been so full–so full because of its hollowness! So empty because of its fullness!
“I am joyous and I am sad. But they are the emotions of the soul–and not of the heart! By soul I mean temperament–I long for peace and yet I dread the very idea of it. I revel in the storming passions which burn and tear at the fibres of my being till my very spirit writhes in an agony of excitement. And yet were I asked the cause of all this I could only answer by that one word–temperament! Ay, you may almost call it a form of hysteria.”
Quoted in Sheela Reddy, Mr and Mrs Jinnah: The Marriage That Shook India (Gurgaon, Haryana: Penguin Randon House India, 2017, p. 53.)
Much has been gleaned from journalist/author Sheela Reddy’s book Mr and Mr Jinnah: The Marriage That Shook India
as the content of letters exchanged between Ruttie, Sarojini Naidu,
Padmaja and Leilamani (Naidu’s two daughters) exhibit Ruttie’s
innermost thoughts. The book throws new light on many aspects, hitherto
unknown, on Ruttie and Jinnah’s relationship, and exposes the anguish
she was experiencing. The book has shortcomings <8> including
chapters without headings and it has no index.
Ruttie shared her poems with Padmaja and younger sister Leilamani:
Why should I weep / Or groan in despair / While the stars still peep / At a world so fair?
A flower came to me one day in its natural lovliness and it told me the secret of its colours and then faded.
…
Sorrow came to me with its black robed beauteous form, but it has not forsaken me. I have drunk deep of its cup of gall and I taste it when I wake and when I sleep; when I smile and when I weep.
Sorrow knows no satiety!
Ibid. 33, 34.
Marriage
Ruttie and Jinnah waited two years to unite through marriage. On
February 20, 1918, Ruttie’s 18th birthday, in Bombay’s Taj Mahal Hotel
with Frederic Chopin‘s “So Deep is the night” being played in the ballroom, Ruttie proposed marriage, Jinnah accepted, and they decided to get married.
Ruttie Jinnah (left) and M. A. Jinnah PHOTO/BBC/Duck Duck Go
Sir Dinshaw filed another lawsuit against Jinnah accusing him of abducting his daughter. But Ruttie told the court,
“Mr. Jinnah had not abducted me; in fact I have abducted him; so there is no case and he should be immediately exonerated of all charges.”
Ajeet Jawed, Secular and Nationalist Jinnah (New Delhi: Kitan Publishing House, 1998, p. 14.)
Ruttie and Jinnah wanted a civil marriage but for that Jinnah would
have had to resign from the Central Legislative Assembly where he was a
member.
… the Civil Marriage Act at that time was rigid and stipulated that those marrying under the Civil Marriage Act had to affirm solemnly that they belonged to no religion. This would have made it impossible for Jinnah to remain Member of the Central Legislative Assembly representing a Muslim Constituency.
Kanji Dwarkadas, Ruttie Jinnah: The Story of a Great Friendship (Bombay: Kanji Dwarkadas, year not given, p. 12).
Ruttie converted to Islam in presence of Maulana Nazir Ahmad
Khujandi, a day before the wedding, in Jamia Masjid. The Muslim name
given to Ruttie was Maryam. (Pirzada, Some Aspects of Quaid-i-Azam’s Life.)
Saad S. Khan in his book, Ruttie Jinnah: The Woman Who Stood Defiant, (written with his wife Sara Khan), falsely claims:
This is not true as post marriage, neither Ruttie nor Jinnah started
praying or going to the mosque. She remained Ruttie to all. Nothing
about her changed: she wore what she wanted to, smoked cigars and drank
alcohol like Jinnah, who also heartily ate pork, prohibited in Islam.
After the wedding, Ruttie’s clothes, books, and jewelry were
transferred to South Court, Jinnah’s huge house at Malabar Hill, Bombay.
The Statesman announced:
“Miss Ruttenbai, only daughter of Sir Dinshaw Petit, yesterday underwent conversion to Islam, and is to-day to be married to the Hon. Mr. M. A. Jinnah.“
On April 19, 1918, in Jinnah’s South Court home, the wedding ceremony was conducted according to Shi’a rites. Ruttie’s name on Nikahnama document (in Persian)
read “Ruttenbai.” Shariat Madar Aqai Haji Mohammad Abdul Hashim Najafi
signed the marriage contract for Jinnah. For Ruttie, Maulana Mohammad
Hasan Najafi signed it. Things were moving fast and Jinnah forgot to
get a ring for Ruttie so Raja gave his ring to Jinnah which he then
presented it to Ruttie. The witnesses and attorneys present were Raja
Mohammad Ali Mohammad Khan of Mehmudabad, Sharif Devji Kanji, Ghulam
Ali, and Umer Sobhani. Jinnah accepted just 1,001* rupees as a dowry, a
symbolic gesture. His gift to Ruttie was 125,000 rupees.
(*Some outlets falsely reported Jinnah received dowry of Rs 30 lakh or 3 million. Pirzada, p. 47.)
In a letter to Dr. Syed Mahmud (a fellow Congressite), the noted poet/politician and Jinnah’s friend Sarojini Naidu observed:
“So Jinnah has at last plucked the Blue Flower of his desire. It was all very sudden and caused terrible agitation and anger among the Parsis; but I think the child has made far bigger sacrifices than she yet realises. Jinnah is worth it all – he loves her; the one really human and genuine emotion of his reserved and self-centred nature. And he will make her happy.”
“[Ruttie was] … a very vivacious person and full of life. She often used to be in the mood of shocking people, which some persons did not approve of, but those who knew her well laughed over it. She was fascinating young lady, had beautiful hands and made lovely gesture, and was always dressed in elegant saris of the latest fashion.”
Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit writes:
“Ruttie was a friend of mine. We were the same age but brought up very differently. She was spoiled, very beautiful, and used to having her own way. She was much younger than Jinnah and it was certainly not a “love match.” But Jinnah was a Muslim, and the Parsis were, in those days, a very conservative group. This in itself seemed reason enough to Ruttie to shock the community — ‘Wake it up’, as she was fond of saying. ”
Vijaya Laxmi Pandit, The Scope of Happiness: A Personal Memoir (New York: Crow Publishers Inc. 1979, p. 201.)
(It was a cheap shot at a friend, a very mean one. <9>.)
But this time Ruttie, along with Jinnah, had woken up very many people.
Several Muslims were angry, and for many Parsis it was “Black Friday” leading to a Parsi version of a fatwa against the couple.
She was cut off from her family for a long time.
Even decades later, in 1946, some Muslims hadn’t forgiven Jinnah; Majlis-e-Ahrar’s Maulana Mazhar Ali Azhar accused Jinnah of being an infidel:
“ik KAfirA ke wAste Islam ko chhorA yeh Quaid-e-Azam hai keh hai KAfir-i-Azam”
Ruttie and Jinnah were very happy. Ruttie bought decorative things
for their house. She also changed the look of Jinnah’s moldy Law Court
rooms by getting them brightly painted and fitting them with classy
furniture and flowers. Jinnah resigned from the Orient Club, where he
used to play billiard and chess to spend time with Ruttie. This was the
happiest time for both of them. Ruttie’s extravagant financial expenses
were met by Jinnah. She bought her clothes from the exclusive Emile
Windgrove tailor’s shop.
Finally, he had:
a wonderful companion to discuss politics and the British Raj,
But when Jinnah’s old pals would drop by to discuss politics it didn’t please Ruttie at all. She wanted to be alone with Jinnah.
Willingdon affair
Jinnah was a renowned politician, a respectable lawyer, an important
member of both the Congress Party and Muslim League, and a member of
the Imperial Legislative Council. He and Ruttie were invited for dinner
by Lady and Lord Willingdon (1866 – 1941), the Crown Governor of Bombay.
Ruttie was wearing a low-cut dress. Lady Willingdon didn’t like this;
she asked her servant to bring a wrap because Mrs. Jinnah “must be
feeling cold.” Jinnah didn’t like it at all and retorted:
“When Mrs Jinnah feels cold, she will say so, and ask for a wrap herself.”
Wolpert, p. 56.
He stood up and left with Ruttie.
Jinnah did the same when Begum of Bhopal reminded Ruttie that she should dress as a Muslim. Jinnah was extremely displeased; he walked out with Ruttie.
One more incident about Ruttie’s dressing. In 1924 when Jinnah was
the Muslim League President and Mahomedali Currim Chagla (1900 – 1981)
was the secretary, a meeting was convened in Bombay’s Globe Cinema.
Chagla was arranging things when Ruttie, dressed in her usual style,
walked in and took her seat by the platform. The bearded ones were mad.
Chagla described in his book how he handled the situation.
“The hall was full of bearded Moulvies and Maulanas and they came to me in great indignation, and asked me who that woman was. They demanded that she should be asked to leave, as the clothes she flaunted constituted an offence to Islamic eyes. I told them that they should shut their eyes as the lady in question was the President’s wife, and I could not possibly ask her to leave the hall.”
M. C. Chagla, Roses in December: An Autobiography (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1975, p.121), via Internet Archive.
Coming back to Willingdon, sometime before the dinner incident, five days after their marriage, a manifesto in Bombay Chronicle
had Jinnah’s and others’ names in it. The manifesto demanded a
“responsible government” for India before it commits itself to World
War I efforts. Jinnah’s words:
“Let England pledge herself definitely to redeem the promise by accepting here, as in Ireland, that which our leaders have asked for in the Congress and League Pact, and we will work heart and soul to save Britain, India and the Empire…. … “But let us fight under the banner of liberty, for nothing less than that will nerve our men to fight and our women to sacrifice.”
This was not a challenge of some revolutionary who was questioning
British presence in India, but was a request from a moderate
constitutionalist. Willingdon couldn’t digest even such meek demand by
Jinnah and others. The rift between the two widened.
(Willingdon, like his successor, George Lloyd, next Governor of Bombay, wanted Jinnah, Gandhi, and others to be deported to Burma, now Myanmar.)
Clash with Willingdon
When the Willingdons were leaving India, a farewell party was set up
for December 10, 1918. Ruttie, Jinnah, and his supporters weren’t in
favor of such a party. So they decided to protest. On the night of 9th,
three hundred followers of Jinnah camped out near Bombay’s Town Hall.
In the morning when Ruttie and Jinnah came, there were seats kept for
them. Ruttie encouraged many to follow Jinnah in the Town Hall, while
she succeeded in climbing up on a side-box of the balcony to address the
audience. She shouted:
“We are not slaves.”
Reddy, p. 165.
People listened to her speech. The police commissioner Mr. Vincent
asked Ruttie “to stop addressing the crowd for they were making a lot of
noise.”
Ruttie countered:
“Mr. Vincent, first of all you have no right to stop me from lecturing because I have a right to speak as a citizen of Bombay. Secondly, whatever you may do I am not going to move from here.”
Ibid. p. 166.
Ruttie, Jinnah, and the people gathered were targeted with water
hoses. Undeterred, she kept on addressing. The party was called off.
Jinnah and many others were roughed up by police. This was the first and
only time Jinnah encountered such a situation. Ruttie must have
experienced pride her love made Jinnah fight on the streets, outside
legislative councils. Ruttie was on his side when Jinnah addressed the crowd:
“Gentlemen, you are the citizens of Bombay. You have today scored a great victory for democracy. Your triumph has made it clear that even the combined forces of bureaucracy and autocracy could not overawe you. December the 11th is a Red-letter Day in the history of Bombay. Gentlemen, go and rejoice over the day that has secured us the triumph of democracy.”
(Tens of thousands of rupees were provided by his supporters to build The People’s Jinnah Hall to mark that action. See Heritage Times (https://www.heritagetimes.in/hundred-years-of-jinnahs-protest-at-bombay-town-hall/.)
Ruttie’s bold nationalism
Ruttie didn’t mask her feelings and views; she expressed them frankly. In 1918, Lord Chelmsford
(1868 – 1933), Viceroy of India, threw a dinner party at Viceregal
Lodge in Simla. Ruttie and Jinnah were invited. When Ruttie was
introduced to Lord Chelmsford, she shook hands, then, instead of
curtsy, folded her hands as if saying “namaste.”
The Viceroy’s ego was hurt. He started a conversation with Ruttie when he found an opportunity to be alone with her.
“Your husband, Mrs. Jinnah, has a great future awaiting him, and you should not mar his chances. You did not greet us in the manner customary at the Viceregal Lodge. In Rome you must do as the Romans do.”
G. Allana, Quaid-E-Azam Jinnah: The Story of a Nation (Karachi: Ferozsons Ltd., 1967, p. 170.)
Ruttie bluntly replied:
“Your Excellency, that is exactly what I did. You are in India and I greeted you the way Indian women do.”
Ibid.
Ruttie and Chelmsford never came face to face again.
With another Viceroy Lord Reading (1860 – 1935) she didn’t mince words, either. Lord Reading
was Viceroy and Governor-General of India. At a luncheon in New Delhi
in 1921, Ruttie was sitting next to him. Reading expressed sadness as
he felt nostalgic about Germany where he had spent sometime. He
expressed his helplessness to her:
“Mrs. Jinnah, how I wish I could go to Germany. I very much want to go there. But I can’t go there.”
Dwarkadas, p. 17.
Ruttie asked:
“Your Excellency, why can’t you go there?”
Ibid.
Reading replied:
“The Germans do not like us, the British, so I can’t go.”
Ibid.
Ruttie availed every chance she came across to remind the British
they were unwanted in India. In one sentence, she summed up the
feelings of most Indians. Ruttie questioned him gustily:
“How then did you come to India?”
Ibid.
The Viceroy wisely changed the subject.
Ruttie and Jinnah attended a party at the Viceregal Lodge in 1925.
Reading told Jinnah that the British Government wanted to honor his
“excellent services” with knighthood but he declined the offer because
he preferred to be “plain Mr. Jinnah.” So Reading tried to gauge
Ruttie’s temptation for high honors: “Mrs. Jinnah, would you like to be
addressed as Lady Jinnah?” Ruttie’s fearless nature shot back:
“If my husband accepts knighthood, I will take a separation from him.”
(Years later in 1942 Jinnah refused
an honorary doctorate from Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). AMU was
also a beneficiary of Jinnah’s 1939 Will, which remained unaltered till
Jinnah’s death. For Jinnah’s Will in its entirety, see Khwaja Razi
Haider, “Ruttie Jinnah: The Story Told and Untold” (Karachi: University of Karachi, Appendix IV, pp. 155-7.))
On her visit to Kashmir in 1926, when the authorities asked the
reason for her visit, Ruttie, without a second thought, replied:
“The purpose of visit is to spread sedition.”
Ironically, Kashmir is now under torturous boots of Hindu communalist Narendra Modi’s military.
Nagpur Session
There were times when Ruttie had to restrain her boldness. One such
incident happened when she and Jinnah were traveling in a train after
attending the Nagpur session of Congress in December 1920.
The Nagpur session witnessed Jinnah being humiliated and hooted for
not adding prefixes “Mahatma” (Great Soul) and “Maulana” (Muslim
scholar) to the names of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869 – 1948) and
Mohammad Ali Jauhar (1878 – 1931), respectively; instead he addressed
them as “Mr. Gandhi” and “Mr. Mohammad Ali.” Jinnah was “howled down
with cries of ‘shame, shame’ and political imposter.’” (Wolpert, p. 71.)
Gandhi’s hold over Congress was absolute; he could have prevented
the rowdy elements from disrespecting Jinnah and could have asked them
to listen what Jinnah had to say; but he didn’t. Jinnah left the
Congress Party.
(Gandhi, a strong believer of Hinduism, had joined hands with strong believers of Islam, the Ali brothers, to save Ottoman Caliphate
in Turkey. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1888 – 1958) and the Ali
Brothers, Maulana Shoukat Ali Jauhar (1873 – 1938) and Maulana Mohammad
Ali Jauhar who wanted to save the institution of Muslim caliph from
being ended by the British had, as Aijaz Ahmad points out, misread the
internal dynamics of Turkey and the evolution of its political system
during the nineteenth century. Turkey had gradually reduced the
dependence on the Muslim sharia law and had come to depend more and more on the civil and criminal courts. When the Turks themselves ended the caliphate,
the major leaders of the Khilafat Movement such as Ali Brothers and
Azad were “utterly dumbfounded” and the movement “petered out in
confusion. (Aijaz Ahmad, Lineages of the Present: Ideology and Politics in Comtemporary South Asia (London & New York: Verso, 2000, pp. 85-9.))
Ruttie wrote a letter to The Times of India, under the letter “R” to prevent Jinnah from knowing the real author:
“At Akola [train station], Mr. [Maulana] Shoukat Ali delivered a short lecture to those who had assembled on the platform; and at the end of the lecture, he incited them to hoot Mr. Jinnah, who was seated in the first class compartment, with cries of ‘Shame’. Sir, this sort of thing is the negation of non-cooperation of which non-violence is the essence.”
K. M. Munshi reminds us in his book “Pilgrimage to Freedom” that
“Jinnah, however, warned Gandhiji not to encourage fanaticism of Muslim religious leaders and their followers.”
Cited in H. M. Seervai, Partition of India: Legend and Reality (Bombay: Emmenem Publications, 1989, 13)
Gandhi later admitted this to Richard Casey, the Governor of Bengal:
“Jinnah had told him that he (Gandhiji) had ruined politics in India by dragging up a lot of unwholesome elements in Indian life and giving them political prominence, that it was a crime to mix up politics and religion the way he had done.”
Ibid.
Dina
Some Indian leaders, including Jinnah, were required to appear before
the Joint Select Committee of House of Commons and House of Lords (British Parliament) to give evidence on Montagu Bill, named after Edwin Samuel Montagu
(1879-1924), the then Secretary of State for India. Jinnah and Ruttie,
who was pregnant with Dina at the time, reached London in May 1919 to
attend this and rented a flat near Regent’s Park.
While Ruttie and Jinnah were in a theater, she went into labor and
was taken to a clinic, where after midnight of August 15, she gave birth
to their only child, Dina.
Kanji noted:
“This is a strange coincidence, as 14th and 15th August are respectively Pakistan’s and India’s Independence Days.”
Dwarkadas, p. 18.
Jinnah’s biographer Stanley Wolpert put it thus:
“Their only child, a daughter named Dina, was born in London shortly past midnight on August 14-15, 1919, oddly enough precisely twenty-eight years to the day and hour before the birth of Jinnah’s other offspring, Pakistan.”
Wolpert, p. 63.
As was the custom among the rich, Dina was given a governess and
other helpers to take care of her. Ruttie was raised in a similar
manner, too.
Ruttie couldn’t handle her own life so it was out of question that
she would take care of Dina. (Years later, Dina spent time with the
Petit family.)
For whatever reason, Dina was ignored. Was Dina an unplanned baby? We
don’t know. One thing is sure: Ruttie was not ready for motherhood
yet. In July 1921, Mrs. Naidu visited South Court to see Dina who had
come back with servants from a vacation in Ooty. Ruttie and Jinnah were
not there as they had left for Europe.
“I went to see the Jinnah baby this morning.” “It returned from Ooty in its pathetic servant fostered loneliness. It looked so sweet, fresh from its bath. I stayed and played a little with it, poor little pet.”
Reddy, p. 248.
In Oxford Jinnah gave a talk and then he and Ruttie left for London.
Ruttie invited Leilamani who was studying at Oxford to join them. They
stayed at Ritz for two months. Jinnah was busy with his political work
while the girls were enjoying their life. Leilamani also accompanied
them to Paris. The Jinnahs went back to India after five months. The day
they came back, Ruttie rushed to Taj Mahal to see Mrs. Naidu.
Fatima Jinnah
Fatima Jinnah (1893 – 1967) was Jinnah’s youngest sister. After his
father’s death in 1902, Jinnah brought her to live with him, and had her
admitted to St. Joseph Convent school at Bandra. It was
inconceivable then for a Muslim girl to join a convent school; their
relatives and many other Muslims tried to deter Fatima who became the
target of their gossip and criticism. Jinnah’s support made her stick
to the decision.
On Sundays, Fatima would join her brother at his place. Ruttie didn’t
like this because that was the day Jinnah would be off from work, and
Ruttie wanted to spend time with Jinnah alone. Besides, Fatima was a
serious person, or as Ruttie would say, “deadly serious” and no fun to
be around. Fatima had turned religious and carried a copy of the Qur’an
with her.
One could imagine a typical Sunday in the Jinnah household: Jinnah
would be into his newspapers and books while Fatima, with a copy of
Qur’an in hand sitting quietly watching her brother. For Ruttie it
must have felt like a prison, where she was sentenced to a day of
silence, no doubt a very tough situation for a bubbly person like her.
On one such day, Ruttie teased or rather tormented Fatima in front of
her brother about her spinster status at the age of twenty six. Ruttie
later communicated the tense atmosphere in her letter to Padmaja:
“By the bye, I told Fatima that I went to Hyderabad to look up some eligible man for her and I showed her Taufiq’s photo as being one of them..”
Reddy, p. 207.
Despite very little talk between the sister and brother, they were
close to each other. Of all his siblings, Fatima was the closest to
Jinnah. They didn’t like the teasing at all; Jinnah’s displeasure
discouraged Ruttie from continuing further.
Even in general conversation, Ruttie felt Jinnah inclined towards
Fatima which hurt her. In yet another letter to Padmaja, on 3 March
1920:
“Fatima’s deadly reason quite upset the last Sunday. She was reading the Quran, so I told her that it was ‘meant to be talked about and not to be read.’ So in all seriousness she asked me ‘how one could talk about a book one hadn’t read.’”
Reddy, p. 214.
It seems Ruttie was employing the Socratic method to get Fatima into debate to show her that religious rituals and scriptures are simply a waste of time.
Fatima didn’t like Ruttie, and vice versa. Jinnah had to find some
solution. He urged Fatima to join Dr. Ahmad Dental College at the
University of Calcutta. She complied. In 1923, after finishing her
studies, Fatima Jinnah became the first woman dentist in British India; she then started her own dental clinic in Bombay, another unusual step for a Muslim woman. In the evening, she used to volunteer at Dhobi Talau Municipal Clinic in Bombay.
Trade unions
In May 1919, under president Lala Lajpatrai, the First All-India
Trade Union Congress was held at the Empire Theatre, Present on stage
were B. P. Wadia, Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 – 1964), S. A. Brelvi, N. M.
Joshi, Kanji Dwarkadas, and Dewan Chaman Lal (1892 – 1973). Ruttie,
who was sitting in the side box, came on stage, moved a resolution
protesting deportation of Benjamin Guy Horniman <10> (1873–1948), the editor of Bombay Chronicle, and spoke for five minutes.
Ruttie was interested in trade unions and Dewan Chaman Lal had
offered her a position of a vice president but she didn’t accept it.
Women sex workers
In later years, she started taking a more active role on social
problems. Ruttie and Jinnah were aware of Kanji’s work on these issues.
In August 1927, Ruttie who was interested in the welfare and well being
of women working in brothels visited many of them with Kanji and Miss
Davis and saw first hand the condition of women. Kanji did great work
getting a law passed which prohibited children under 16 working in such
places.
Animal welfare
With Kanji, Ruttie was also involved in the welfare of animals and
would visit pinjrapoles or animal shelters in Bhuleshwar (South Bombay),
Chembur (a Bombay suburb), and Kalyan and made many recommendations
to better condition of animals and of shelters. They wrote a letter to
Indian newspapers in September 1927 complaining that the drinking water
had the same foulness observed on previous visits; only 5 dogs out of
26 were infection-free; etc. Another letter, that included Mrs.
Naidu’s letter with her report on the condition of animals, was
published in The Indian Daily Mail. The authorities
subsequently looked into the matter and improved the conditions in those
animal shelters. Ruttie herself had many pets.
Fissures in marriage
Time seems to be an eternal enemy of purpose-oriented people. Most
juggle with time to fulfill and achieve their aim while maintaining
balanced and harmonious relations with people who need them most. Jinnah
was too constrained for time; he couldn’t keep himself in the newly
married mode for too long.
It was as if Jinnah was following the philosophy of Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s yet unwritten couplet <11>:
aur bhi dukh hai zamAne meiN, muhabbat ke sivA / rAhateiN aur bhi hai, vasl ki rAhat ke sivA
there are other sorrows, besides those of love / there are other comforts, beyond the comfort of union
Whereas, it seems, Ruttie was moaning the words Sahir Ludhianvi wrote decades later <12>:
even if you don’t remember me, which you have a right to / in my case, it’s different, because I have loved you
Also, there were some serious differences between them.
Jinnah strictly followed punctuality and worked and lived in a
very well organized manner. Ruttie, on the other hand, was a carefree
person.
Ruttie liked spicy food whereas Jinnah’s preference was bland food.
Ruttie
preferred people but Jinnah was used to being alone — except where
politics was concerned then he wouldn’t mind a gathering. Even at home,
Jinnah would be into newspapers from all over India and Ruttie would
be left to herself.
Kanji was their mutual friend who would
join them. Ruttie met Kanji quite regularly in the evenings. Sometime
Kanji’s elder brother Jamnadas (Jinnah’s lieutenant) would join them
too. Another mutual friend Sarojini would visit them or only Ruttie,
and Sarojini’s children Leilamani, Ranadheere, and Padmaja (1900 –
1975) would sometime visit her too. Motilal Nehru, when in Bombay,
would join them or just Ruttie for food and drink. Another frequent
visitor was Raja of Mehmoodabad (1878 – 1931).
People would gather at Jinnahs’ place when some political issue needed to be discussed or handled.
Ruttie liked dancing and parties whereas Jinnah preferred billiard.
In 1920, Ruttie and Jinnah were invited to a “grand dinner” at Mirza
Abol Hassan Ispahani’s uncle’s place in Putney Hill. Ispahani (1902 –
1981) was heir to the financial and commercial empire in Calcutta.
Ruttie’s brother Jamshed Petit who was Ispahani’s Cambridge classmate
and friend was also there. Jinnah and Ispahani went to a billiard room
to play whereas the rest went for a dance. Ruttie and her brother did
the Charleston,
a jazz dance, originally a black folk dance from the US South.
(Wolpert p.145.) Instead of playing billiard, Jinnah could have stayed
with Ruttie and others and if not joining them (it’s a fast dance, here and here
and requires great stamina), then at least make a few dance moves then
just sit and watch Ruttie, Jamshed, and others dance; it would have
made Ruttie happy.
Jinnah’s first biographer Hector Bolitho is not off the mark when he writes:
“For Jinnah, married life was a solemn duty: for his young wife, it was also an opportunity for pleasure.”
Times were changing fast with new technological and scientific
discoveries and inventions. People born or grown up amidst these times
of feature films (1906), Ford Model T
cars (first affordable car, 1908) and so on, had different
expectations and attitudes towards life. Ruttie was born in these times
whereas Jinnah’s time was older and a different outlook. Ruttie was
born in money whereas Jinnah was looking for a job in his twenties.
Jinnah became a very successful lawyer so Ruttie’s financial needs were
never unmet. Once when they visited Kashmir, Ruttie spent Rs. 50,000 to
decorate a boat they were going to stay on – a very huge amount then.
The problem was Jinnah’s inflexibility in other matters. (In our times,
look at Gen Z, the Zoomers, who grew up in the internet era are different from millennials.)
In the evenings, Ruttie used to stay home looking forward to be with
Jinnah, but then in 1924 this changed. She started going out alone to
hotels for dance which Jinnah didn’t approve.
Another difference: Ruttie didn’t care about her status. One example:
In August 1927, Ruttie and Jinnah came to Simla for Jinnah’s
Legislative Council Session. Every evening, Ruttie would go out with her
dog in a rickshaw to the Mall and from Hussain Baksh General Merchants
she would buy chocolate for her dog. Then from the Lower Bazaar – a
totally different world from the Mall – she would eat chAt,
a spicy South Asian snack. It was served on a large leaf. Once, one of
Ruttie’s friends objected to her eating from a street vendor in the
Lower Bazaar. Ruttie said, “I do it to tease people like you.” Jinnah
would never eat chAt on a leaf from a street vendor!
But it must be said of Jinnah, when craving for chAt Ruttie would sometimes make him get out of the car to get a plate of chAt for her, he would oblige.
The deteriorating relations between Ruttie and Jinnah reached an
impasse where no room for reconciliation was left due to a wall of
silence between them. The love was there but they sorely lacked
communication. Ruttie wanted time, attention, and affection which Jinnah
could not provide. There were incidents over a period of time which
were performed with good intentions but they backfired. A couple of
such incidents.
Ruttie, wanting to spend time with Jinnah, would bring lunch for him.
One day she came to the Town Hall with a tiffin and asked Jinnah to
guess the contents; he expressed ignorance so Ruttie told him: “I have
brought you some lovely ham sandwiches.”
Jinnah was mad:
“My God! What have you done? Do you want me lose my election? Do you realise I am standing from a Muslim separate electorate seat, and if my voters were to learn that I am going to eat ham sandwiches for lunch, do you think I have a ghost of a chance of being elected?”
Ruttie felt disheartened and left. What was more sad was that Jinnah,
with M. C. Chagla, went to a restaurant and ate ham. <13>
Since December 1920 when Jinnah was shouted down by supporters of
Mohammad Ali Jauhar and Gandhi, bitterness between Jinnah and the
younger Ali brother had spilled over in public on the pages of Bombay Chronicle.
Jinnah’s refusal to counter Ali’s personal attacks led Ruttie to
request Ali through the editor of the newspaper to stop writing “as this
would create bitterness.” When Jinnah learned through editor as to
what had happened, he was incensed, “Ruttie had no business to
intervene.” (Reddy, p. 281.) Ruttie was not wrong in intervening
because the war of words, oral and on pages of the Chronicle,
was not solving anything. On the other hand, Jinnah, a self-made man,
was a very independent person who wanted to fight out his battle
himself.
When things were sorted out and Fatima moved out, the Jinnahs went to
Ooty, a hill station in Tamil Nadu, for a month and a half vacation.
However, Jinnah could neither savor Ooty’s beauty nor could concentrate
on cementing his relations with Ruttie because Gandhi was always
looming in the background. He had sidelined Jinnah from the national
platform and had now joined hands with the Ali brothers whose Khilafat
Movement was successful in rousing a significant number of Muslims and
Hindus. Jinnah was worried about his Muslim base.
The love between Ruttie and Jinnah, however, was not lost; they
always had those feelings in their hearts till the end. But somehow
things were not working out.
Jinnah’s endurance
Jinnah was a serious uncomplaining person who rarely exhibited anger,
in itself not a bad trait – but it could become heavy liability because
the other party, noticing no reaction, could fail to curb her/his
actions beyond a certain limit; this could exert a great toll on the
relationship. Jinnah paid all Ruttie’s bills, rarely voicing opposition
– the rare occasions when he complained about the money were Ruttie’s
trip to Hyderabad visit and her nine month sojourn in Paris. Ruttie had
problems handling and converting currencies. British India had several
currencies, including, Hyderabadi rupee. (Hyderabad State was under the rule of Nizam but indirectly under British rule.)
In 1923, there was a conference in Jinnah’s chamber attended by M. C.
Chagla, among others. In the middle of a conference, Ruttie entered
the room and sat herself comfortably on the table-top near her husband.
She seemed anxious for the conference to end and kept swinging her
feet. Jinnah exhibited no anger, and continued his meeting as if Ruttie
wasn’t there. Once the conference was over, they walked out together.
Chagla sympathized with Jinnah:
“But I must say in fairness to Jinnah that no husband could have treated his wife more generously than he did, although she supplied him the greatest provocation throughout their married life.”
In Simla, Jinnah and Ruttie were invited for a dinner with the governor. On their way, Bolitho writes,
“She stopped the carriage and bought a roasted corn-cob from a man beside the road. She began to eat it as they came near Government House.”
Quoted in Reddy, p. 281. The above passage was deleted from Bolitho’s biography of Jinnah because it was an official biography.
Bolitho wrote that Jinnah “accepted the foolish hurt in silence.”
Jinnah suffered quietly without a word. Jinnah’s political life saw
times when he was at the peak, as during the Lucknow Pact,
and at other times without many supporters, but he survived through
determination and a certain image he had created of himself. That image
wasn’t enhanced by Ruttie’s corn-cob eating. This was an open warfare
on Ruttie’s part.
Kanji Dwarkadas
There were two people who later became close to Ruttie. Both of them
were close to Jinnah, too. They were Kanji Dwarkadas (1892 -1968) and
Sarojini Naidu. Kanji first saw Ruttie in 1914, when she was fourteen,
at the Oval:
“I could not take my eyes off this girl and watched the carriage and its occupant till it disappeared from sight. I could not forget her face. Three months later, I found from a photograph in a newspaper that this girl was Ruttie, daughter of the … Sir Dinshaw Petit, Bart.”
Dwarkadas, p. 9.
Kanji was associated with Jinnah in his political work which brought
him to Jinnah’s house where he came to know Ruttie well. They became
very good friends. Ruttie cared for Kanji and vice versa.
Ruttie was an ocean of energy whose waves knew no halting; always on
the move to explore, learn, experience, at the same time, trying to
understand and control her inner turmoil. She was also inclined towards
literature and art and was a great romantic. She needed a partner in a
way that Jinnah was not free to provide. Although initially, he
devoted a lot of time to his marriage, later on he was unavailable due
to his heavy law and political work. Ruttie was disillusioned. The
distance between Jinnah and her increased. Ruttie’s immense energy and
inquisitiveness had either to be suppressed or used. She had to find
some solace. She sought it in mysticism, spirituality, telepathy, and
such. Ruttie’s friend Kanji accompanied her in these activities as he
was into it too so it became easier for Ruttie to pursue these. Kanji
was a very good friend, and Ruttie felt safe with him. Kanji:
“Ruttie was intensely interested in contacting the non-physical world and she made difficult and dangerous experiments to verify her beliefs and convictions. She wanted first-hand knowledge. She thought she could get it through Seances with the help of mediums or table-tapping.”
Dwarkadas, p. 27.
This 21 November 1924 letter to Kanji shows Ruttie’s quest:
“… Lately I have been very much drawn towards the subject of Spirit Communication and I am most anxious to know more and to get at the Truth. It is such an elusive Subject and the more I hear of it the more puzzled do I become, though still more passionately interested. I have some sort of an idea that you must be cognisant of spiritual circles in our City, whose Seance one may join. I don’t profess any creed nor do I subscribe to a belief, but of late willy-nilly I have been propelled towards the study of so called spiritual phenomenon and I am too deeply immersed in the matter now to give it up without some personal satisfaction for I cannot content myself with other peoples’ experiences, though I fully realise that in a matter of this nature one doesn’t always get the evidence one seeks.
“Anyway I wonder whether you can assist me in this matter by recommending me as a ‘medium’ or ‘Clairvoyant’ professional or otherwise. I would prefer my identity, however, to remain unknown while you make enquiries. And I sincerely hope that you will be able to assist me. With my kind regards to your wife and yourself.”
“P.S. Mrs [Annie] Besant might know of some reliable ‘Medium’.”
Ibid, p. 28.
Besant had told Kanji seances were not safe. He didn’t want to let
Ruttie down but wanted to help her and so requested Mrs. Margaret
Cousins to see Ruttie in December 1924, during the Theosophical
Convention in Bombay. Mrs. Besant, J. Krishnamurti, and Curuppumullage Jinarajadasa were also in attendance. She saw Mrs. Margaret Cousins and was “most inspired” with the address by Jinarajadasa.
Letter to Kanji April 1925:
My Dear Kanji,
Yes, I know of the dream travels of which you speak. But I do all my dreaming in my waking hours. I am not being waggish. There is nothing I would welcome with greater rejoicing than an experience of the sort to which you refer in your letter, but in my heavy druglike sleep there is no redeeming feature …
My soul is too clogged! … I am feeling peculiarly restless and wish one with psychic powers could come to my assistance.
My proud soul humbles before the magnitude of this subject and in my estimation those of us with Second Sight and other such psychic powers should rank with the world’s poets and songsters for their gift if more intelligible is also more divine. The seers and the saints should stand among the world’s prophets. After all we are at present too blind and unseeing to comprehend what the psychics would reveal to our half demented senses. But what the mind often revolts at, and refuses to accept, the intrinsic self within us admits with certain ease which makes the more thoughtful ponder; as though it had some ancient and original knowledge of its own.
…
Yours Sincerely, Ruttie.
Dwarkadas, pp. 31-32.
In July 1925, Ruttie was to accompany Kanji, his wife and their four
year old son on a visit to Adyar (Madras) but couldn’t so she joined
them later. Ruttie wanted to join the Theosophical Society but the
morning meeting with Universal Prayers and recitation from scriptures
of different religions put her off. She told Mrs. Besant that she was
perturbed by this religious slant. Mrs. Besant understood Ruttie’s point
and told her that a sincere person like her doesn’t need to formally
join the Society.
After meeting Ruttie, Mrs. Besant told Kanji: “Look after your great
friend, she is unhappy.” he was taken aback, so she further clarified:
“Don’t you see unhappiness in her eyes? Look at her.” (Dwarkadas, p.
41.)
In 1926, Ruttie was accompanying Jinnah on a four-month study-tour of
Europe, the United States, and Canada, and to attend meetings of the
Sandhurst (Army) Committee in England.
Ruttie asked Kanji:
“Kanji, I am going away to Europe and U.S.A. for a few months. You will not be with me to protect me and help me. Do please, therefore, magnetise something for me to keep me in touch with you.”
Dwarkadas, p. 43.
Kanji hesitatingly magnetized a precious jade with “thoughts of love
and protection with particular reference to protecting her from any
adverse effects of seances” for her.
When Ruttie and Jinnah were back, she met Kanji and asked him: “Good
God! What kind of thoughts you put in that jade?” as she had made three
appointments with seances but none happened because at first she missed
the train, second time the medium didn’t show up, last time she didn’t
remember that she had to see the medium.
Jinnah didn’t believe in these spiritual and medium nonsense; he
would just laugh it off. He was thankful to Kanji for helping Ruttie to
get out of the harmful futile chase.
Kanji seemed truly gentle natured and Ruttie appreciated him:
“You are a dear!–and the more I think on it, I feel you had no business to be born into the world with ‘Dhoti [men’s sarong like lower garment].’ The correct setting for a nature of such fine sensibilities is a Sari–or a Skirt as the case may geographically require.”
Dwarkadas, p. 46.
Kanji on Ruttie:
“She was a source of inspiration in my work and next to Mrs. Besant she was a most helpful and healthy influence on me and my work.”
Ibid, p. 53.
When Ruttie was away, she would ask Kanji to see if Jinnah was doing alright. A 25th September 1922 letter:
“… And just one thing more–go and see Jinnah and tell me how he is–he has a habit of habitually over-working himself, and now that I am not there to bother and tease him he will be worse than ever.”
Kanji, p. 26.
Sarojni Naidu
Sarojini Naidu (1879 – 1949) was the other person with whom Ruttie
had very warm relations. Mrs. Naidu was a progressive poet/politician
who hailed from Hyderabad but her political work necessitated her
prolonged stays in Bombay. This provided Ruttie with a person in whom
she could confide some of her inner thoughts. Two of her five
children, daughters Padmaja (born the same year as Ruttie) and
Leilamani, younger than Padmaja, were close to Ruttie too.
Ruttie would vent her anger, frustration, helplessness, and sarcasm
in person or letters to Mrs. Naidu, Padmaja, and Leilamani. Mrs. Naidu
sometimes lent support to Ruttie, at other times she complained to her
daughters about Ruttie taking up her time. Mrs. Naidu pitied Ruttie
and extended her sympathy. Ruttie never asked for Mrs. Naidu ’s help to
reconcile her and Jinnah’s differences.
Once when Ruttie was in Hyderabad, she bought a horse but Jinnah
disapproved it because it was not vetted in the manner it should have
been. The letter of 25 February 1920 to Padmaja, Ruttie’s wit and anger
against Jinnah was obvious:
“It is rather a shame about the horse.” “I wish the owner had succeeded in his ruse of bribing the vets. At any rate I do hope J won’t be idiotically sensible about it. After all, I never had him vetted before I married him! But horses I suppose are far more valuable!”
Reddy, p. 209.
It seems Ruttie had flown into the marriage cage too early; this can
be detected from Mrs. Naidu ’s letter of 20 January 1928 to Padmaja:
“Don’t force me back into slavery. Let me be free. Let me be free … Poor child … restless and longing to be free of all her shackles. She says her youth is going and she must live …”
Reddy, p. 405.
Ruttie’s health
Ruttie liked spicy food very much. She just couldn’t resist it
although it didn’t suit her stomach, and would make her sick for days.
She herself cooked food when a friend would visit her. She couldn’t
offer that food to Jinnah, as he preferred non-spicy food. During
childhood, once in a while, Ruttie would get nauseated and had stomach
cramps, but the nannies and nurses were always there at Petit Hall to
take care of her. Also, her mother kept an eye on her to see that she
didn’t overindulged in fried and spicy food, and sweets.
But at South Court, there was no one to stop her from fulfilling her
craving for foods she wanted to eat. That had been going on for almost
the last four years.
At the end of December 1921, Jinnah had arranged a conference of
nationalists from all over India at his house. Prior to the conference,
Kanji came for two nights and all three of them had dinner and talked
late into the night. On the third day, Ruttie was bedridden because of
the stomach ailment. All during the set up of and the conference
itself, the overwhelmingly tired and sick Ruttie stayed in bed. Doctors
were unable to figure out what was wrong with her and advised her to
get out of India’s “unhealthy tropical clime.” The next time the three
of them got together and Ruttie fell ill again, she took much longer to
recover. Her illness was recurring.
5 June 1925 letter to Kanji:
“I have been ill again, so almost any evening will find me at home.”
Dwarkadas, p. 38.
Insomnia was another issue that bothered Ruttie a lot. She used to
take Veronol, a barbiturate, which gradually turned into an addiction.
Without any restrain, the doctors were prescribing Veronol for any kind
of sleeplessness. (Reddy, pp. 289-290.)
Sandhurst
On 10 April, 1926, Ruttie and Jinnah, a member of the Sandhurst Committee, sailed to England for a study tour in order to set up a military training school in India.
The April 8 and 10 (1926) letters from Mrs. Naidu to Padmaja and
Leilamani described Ruttie “is the wreck of herself in body and mind!”
“She is looking just the very shadow of herself–a wreck of what was
once a beautiful and brilliant vision.” Mrs. Naidu believed:
“I don’t think she will be more than a very few days in England but spend her time in Paris and go to Canada and America with Jinnah, when the Skeen Committee goes there.”
Mrs. Naidu was right. Once Jinnah’s work of interviewing military experts for the Skeen Committee was over, the Jinnahs were to go to Paris. But Ruttie dashed off to Paris ahead of Jinnah. What was her urgency to rush to Paris?
ENDNOTES:
<1> The Gujaratis attach suffixes such as “bhai” (brother) and
“bai” (lady) or “ben” (sister) to their names. Among Pakistani
Gujaratis, this practice has disappeared. In India, it’s declining
gradually.
<2> Parsees
had escaped Muslim conquest of Iran and had settled in the Indian
subcontinent between 800 and 1000 CE. There are only 25,000 Zoroastrians
left in Iran and live under a great many restrictions. See Zoroastrians: Iran’s Forgotten Minority ( https://asiatimes.com/2020/10/zoroastrians-irans-forgotten-minority/ ) and Persecution of Zoroastrians ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Zoroastrians )
<3> Her great grandfather Manockjee Petit is credited with
founding India’s first successful cotton mill. Her grandfather, her
father’s namesake, persuaded the British to legally recognize the Parsi
Succession and Marriage Acts. After his death, Ruttie’s father took
over the religious and business duties.
“ I have always maintained that no
nation can ever be worthy of its existence that cannot take its women
along with the men. No struggle can ever succeed without women
participating side by side with men. There are two powers in the world;
one is the sword and the other is the pen. There is a great
competition and rivalry between the two. There is a third power
stronger than both, that of the women.“
to reporters in Srinagar on admitting Ahmadiyya Muslims into Muslim League:
“Any Muslim could do so, irrespective of his creed or sect.”
on racist comment made by Lord Salisbury (who served thrice as
Britain’s prime minister) against the Grand Old Man of India, Dadabhai
Naoroji when he announced his plan to run as a liberal candidate from
Central Finsbury, Salisbury said:
“I doubt if we have yet got to the point of view where a British constituency would elect a black man.” Bolitho, p. 10.
Jinnah, who at that time was in England as a student, experienced the election fervor. Later he told Fatima:
“…If Dadabhai was black, I was
darker.” “And if this was the mentality of the British politicians,
then we would never get a fair deal from them. From that day I have
been an uncompromising enemy of all forms of colour bar and racial
prejudice.” Wolpert, p. 11.
in support of Bhupendranath Basu’s Special Marriage Bill in the Imperial Legislative Council:
“No doubt, Sir, as far as I see,
the Hindu law or the Mohammedan law, whichever you take… , does create a
difficulty in the way of a Hindu marrying a non-Hindu or a Mohammedan
marrying anyone who is not ‘Kitabia’; … Therefore, if there is a fairly
large class of enlightened, educated, advance, Indians, be they
Hindus, Mohammedans or Parsis, and if they wish to adopt a system of
marriage which is more in accord with modern civilization and ideas of
modern times, more in accord with the modern sentiment, why should that
class be denied justice unless it is going to do a serious harm to the
Hindus or Mussalmans in one way or the other.”
when revolutionary Bhagat Singh
and other prisoners had gone on hunger strike demanding that Indian
prisoners should be accorded the same treatment which European prisoners
are provided with, Jinnah defended Singh and others in the Central Assembly:
“Mind you, sir, I do not approve the action of Bhagat Singh,
and I say this on the floor of this House. I regret that, rightly or
wrongly, youth today in India is stirred up, and you cannot, when you
have three hundred and odd millions of people, prevent such crimes
being committed, however much you deplore them and however much you may
say that they are misguided. It is the system, this damnable system
of government, which is resented by the people.”
“… there is a much more
freakishly ironic flavor about the name and personality of the chief
Muslim opponent of the stand which we took.”
“Who then was our
doughtiest opponent in 1906? A distinguished Muslim barrister in
Bombay, with a large and prosperous practice, Mr. Mohammed All [sic]
Jinnah.… he came out in bitter hostility toward all that I and my
friends had done and were trying to do. He was the only well-known
Muslim to take this attitude, but his opposition had nothing
mealy-mouthed about it; he said that our principle of separate
electorates was dividing the nation against itself, and for nearly a
quarter of a century he remained our most inflexible critic and
opponent….”Aga Khan, The Memoirs of Aga Khan: World Enough and Time ( http://heritage.ismaili.net/node/30608 )
The founders of the Muslim League were Muslim nobles and wealthy landowners whose aim was to prepare Muslims to be loyal subjects of the British.
<8> See A. G. Noorani’s review, “Non-Fiction: Of Human Tragedy and Consequences”
in Dawn (August 13, 2017) where he critiques certain points in the
book. “To fill the gaps in the narrative, she [Sheela Reddy] speculates
and makes trite and absurd comments. On the political aspect, she
has not been wise in her choice of sources.” (
https://www.dawn.com/news/1351154/non-fiction-of-human-tragedy-and-consequences
)
<9> In her book, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit wrote about Ruttie as
“spoiled” and “used to having her way” and that the Parsis were “a very
conservative group” which allowed Ruttie to “shock the community.”
Whether Ruttie’s marriage to Jinnah worked out or not is a different
matter but, at least, Ruttie had the guts to marry the person she
liked and loved. Syud Hossain, a Muslim journalist, was associated
with Pherozeshah Mehta’s newspaper Bombay Chronicle who in 1919 joined Motilal’s newspaper The Independent
and fell in love with his daughter Swarup (also known as Nan), later
Vijaya. When her family arranged her marriage somewhere else, she rushed
to Hossain and they got married in the presence of a Muslim cleric.
Nehru family sought Gandhi’s help to separate them and both Vijaya and Hossain were sent to Gandhi’s Sabarmati Asharam in Ahmerdabad. Hossain was pressured to annul the marriage
by giving in writing to Gandhi. Then he was sent to England and
subsequently to US to present India’s case–a long forced exile.
Gandhi’s lecture to Vijaya is quiet enlightening about the “Mahatma” or
“Great Soul.”
“How could you regard Syud in any
other light but that of a brother – what right had you to allow
yourself, even for a minute, to look with love at a Mussalman. Out of
nearly twenty crores of Hindus couldn’t you find a single one who came
up to your ideals – but you must pass then all over and throw yourself
into the arms of a Mohammedan!!!”
“Sarup (Nan’s given name
before her marriage), had I been in your place I would never have
allowed myself to have any feelings but those of friendliness towards
Syud Hossain. Then supposing Syud had ever attempted to show admiration
for me or had professed love for me, I would have told him gently but
very firmly – Syud, what you are saying is not right. You are a
Mussalman and I am a Hindu. It is not right that there should be
anything between us. You shall be my brother but as a husband I cannot
ever look at you.”Minhaz Merchant, “Mrs Jinnah’s love jihad in Mahatma Gandhi’s time” ( https://www.dailyo.in/politics/mr-and-mrs-jinnah-gandhi-nehru-vijayalakshmi-pandit-16465 )
Vijaya didn’t say, as Ruttie used to say: “Wake it up” either to
Gandhi or to her father or brother Jawaharlal (first Prime Minister of
independent India) — both considered progressives.
<10> Benjamin Guy Horniman
was a courageous British journalist who supported India’s
nationalism. He brought the Jallianwala Bagh massacre tragedy (Amritsar,
Punjab on 13 April 1919) to the people of Britain and the world by
smuggling photos of the tragedy out of India. There was a feeling of
repulsion among the British. Just thirty seconds after entering
Jallianwala Bagh, Brigadier-GeneralR. E. H. Dyer ordered firing on an unarmed peaceful gathering without warning. The official figure listed 379 dead and more than 1,000 injured.
Dyer was in a killing mood as the following sentence makes it crystal clear:
“I think it quite possible that I
could have dispersed the crowd without firing but they would have come
back again and laughed.”
Sadly, India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s last foreign secretary Y. D. Gundevia has in his book In the Districts of the Raj defended Dyer, the “Butcher of Amritsar,” as “inherently decent Englishman” who had “panicked momentarily” because he was “called upon to act in an emergency.”
Horniman was arrested and deported to London. He was able to come back to India in January 1926.
Dyer died in 1927. The Tories, who were in power then, accorded him a hero’s funeral.
<11> Faiz‘s famous poem mujh se pehli si muhabbat mere mehboob na mANg
(My beloved, don’t ask me for the love I once had for you) was part
of the book of poems published in 1943. The other sorrows he’s talking
about is misery, violence, oppression etc., whereas Jinnah’s woes were
of a political nature.
Listen to expressive reading by actress Zohra Sehgal.
Jyoti Mamgain recites few lines of Faiz and then questions him with her
poem as to what happened that made him turn away from love. It is
powerfully written and passionately rendered.
<12> The song is a duet sung by Sudha Malhotra and Mukesh. The male lead replies thus in Mukesh’s voice:
zindagi sirf muhabbat nahi kuchh aur bhi hai
/ zulf o rukhsAr ki jannat nahi kuchh aur bhi hai / bhookh aur pyAs
ki mAri hui is duniyA mein / ishq hi ek haqeeqat nahi kuchh aur bhi
hai / tum agar Ankh churAo to ye haq hai tumko / maine tumse hi nahi
sabse muhabbat ki hai
life is not just love, its more than that / it’s not a paradise of
tresses and cheeks, its more than that / in this world full of hunger
and thirst / affection is not the only truth, its more than that / you
have a right to ignore me, if you want to / not only you but I also
love all others
<13> Jinnah’s daughter Dina was threatened by General Zia-ul-Haq’s government.:
Jinnah’s daughter Dina, living in
New York, was secretly asked to deny that Jinnah ever drank alcohol or
ate ham, but she refused to oblige, after which she was threatened
with “disclosures” about her private life if she ever made it public
that she had been approached. She was never officially invited to visit
Pakistan.… Khaled Ahmed, “The Genius of Stanley Wolpert“
Zia came to power after overthrowing, and later hanging, Zulfiqar Ali
Bhutto. Among the four military dictators of Pakistan, Zia was the only
one who was possessed with Islam. The US governments supported him with
money and weapons to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. In the
process, Pakistan got over three million refugees, plenty of weapons and
drugs. Prior to Zia, Pakistan was almost free of drugs.
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com
Acclaimed scholar and activist Tariq Ali joins us
for a wide-ranging conversation. In Part 1, he responds to Trump’s
support of the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, the U.S.’s capitulation to
Israeli aggression in the Middle East and the rise in right-wing
authoritarianism around the world. Ali says Donald Trump is “the most
right-wing president in recent years” and exposes “in public what his
predecessors used to say in private.”
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to renew
Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip, saying the Israeli military will
return to, quote, “intense fighting” unless Hamas agrees to release all
remaining hostages by Saturday noon. This comes after President Trump
said “all hell is going to break out” if the hostages aren’t freed.
Hamas has accused Israel of repeatedly violating the ceasefire.
Meanwhile, Trump on Tuesday met with Jordan’s King Abdullah at the
White House, where Trump repeated his threat to take over Gaza and
displace the entire Palestinian population. Reporters questioned Trump
about his Gaza proposal.
REPORTER 1: Mr. President, you said before that the U.S. would buy Gaza, and today you just said we’re not going to buy Gaza.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:
We’re not going to have to buy. We’re going to — we’re going to have
Gaza. We don’t have to buy. There’s nothing to buy. We will have Gaza.
REPORTER 1: What does that mean?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP:
There’s no reason to buy. There is nothing to buy. It’s Gaza. It’s a
war-torn area. We’re going to take it. We’re going to hold it. We’re
going to cherish it.
REPORTER 2: Mr. President, take it under what authority? It is sovereign territory.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Under the U.S. authority.
AMY GOODMAN:
That was President Trump, sitting next to a grimacing King Abdullah of
Jordan, who later wrote that they will not accept the ethnic cleansing
of Gaza. And the president of Egypt, President Sisi, canceled his trip
to the White House next week after these comments.
We’re joined now by Tariq Ali, Pakistani British historian, activist, filmmaker, editor of the New Left Review, author of over 50 books, including, just out, You Can’t Please All: Memoirs 1980-2024.
Welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with
us on this side of the pond. But I do have to ask you: Mick Jagger wrote
that Rolling Stones song for you, “Street Fighting Man”?
TARIQ ALI:
Yeah, he wrote it and sent it to me, a handwritten version, saying,
“Could you put this in the paper? I just wrote this for you.” I edited a
radical newspaper at the time. “And the BBC are refusing to play this song.” So, we did publish the song. And, of course, a few weeks later, the BBC
did play it. I mean, that was a time when politics and culture, radical
politics, radical culture, were very mixed up together, in a good
sense.
AMY GOODMAN:
So, let’s go back to Gaza. You have President Trump doubling, doubling,
tripling, quadrupling down, saying he doesn’t even have to buy Gaza,
he’ll have it, he’ll take it. He’s also said, originally said, “The
world’s people will be there, yes, including Palestinians,” now, “No,
Palestinians have no right of return.” Your response to what’s going on
there?
TARIQ ALI:
It is so appalling, Amy, what is going on now. Trump said, says it in
public, what his predecessors used to say in private, that, effectively,
they are going to let Israel have its way, both in Gaza and, believe
you me, in the West Bank. They will both be ethnically cleansed. That
has been Israeli policy for decades, and now they feel they’ve had
leaders in the United States. Trump is, of course, shameless and open
about it. Biden did exactly the same thing. For six months, Hamas had
agreed to the ceasefire plan. Netanyahu didn’t want a ceasefire, and
Biden backed him.
So, one problem we have today, that the reason you have Trump is
because the previous administration was so weak-willed and so
weak-minded, incapable of doing anything, whereas in this very country
we had Reagan, Bush, Truman calling Israel to heel when they exceeded
what was considered to be decent, honorable, according to United States
policies. When they refused to obey, they were called to heel. Neither
Biden and now Trump calling these people, “Enough. The whole world has
seen what you’re up to. Enough. We will not tolerate it.” Netanyahu
threatening to break the ceasefire, and the response of the United
States president is what? The response is nothing to do with the
ceasefire, but “We’re going to take Gaza. We can.” The Israelis have got
it for you by killing over 100,000 people. “And now we’ll do with it as
we please.”
I mean, if this is the way the United States Empire is going to carry
on functioning, there will be more and more — not immediately — there
will be more and more resistance. If even the king of Jordan and Sisi in
Egypt, who have so far backed the United States, are getting slightly
scared, it’s not because they’ve changed greatly. It’s they are scared
there will be an uprising in their countries. Jordan is three-quarters
Palestinian anyway. And the Egyptian masses are seething. So, you have a
really extremely serious situation building up in the Middle East,
where they publicly, in front of everyone, want to expel the
Palestinians. No cover-up. Netanyahu says, “We’re going to do it.” The
U.S. president supports him.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Tariq,
the famous Palestinian American intellectual Edward Said was a friend
of yours. You’re write about him in your memoir. Said was prophetic in
many ways in terms of his skepticism of the possibility of a two-state
solution. What is your sense of how he would have responded to what’s
happening today?
A team of Chinese researchers has successfully raised a mouse (left) with two biological fathers. IMAGE/ Zhi-kun Li et al. / CC BY 4.0
Scientists in China have successfully created and raised a mouse with
two biological fathers, marking a breakthrough in genetic research that
could enhance understanding of reproductive biology and genetic
disorders.
The study, conducted by Zhi-kun Li of the Chinese Academy of
Sciences, utilized advanced stem cell techniques to generate egg-like
cells from male embryonic stem cells. These artificial eggs were
subsequently fertilized with sperm from another male and implanted into a
surrogate female.
In previous experiments, attempts to create offspring using male
cells resulted in severe developmental defects. However, the new method
has produced healthier mice that have survived into adulthood. Despite
this progress, the mice remain sterile, and many embryos still fail to
develop properly.
Overcoming a major reproductive barrier
Scientists have struggled to bypass the biological need for an egg in mammalian reproduction
for decades. Unlike sperm, which are highly specialized and cannot
divide into other cells, eggs contain essential nutrients and cellular
mechanisms required for early development.
The process of creating bi-paternal blastocysts. IMAGE/ Zhi-kun Li et al. / CC BY 4.0
Efforts to create embryos using only male cells encountered a
significant genetic challenge: imprinting abnormalities. Normally, when a
sperm fertilizes an egg, specific genes from each parent are naturally
activated or deactivated to ensure proper development.
In Water on the Moon,
Frederick M. “Skip” Burkle, Jr., MD recounts his life from childhood up
to 2024, when he was 83. Having been drafted during the Vietnam War,
his first overseas assignment was as a combat physician on the
frontlines. There he also treated Vietnamese civilians (dealing with
bubonic plague) in the surrounding area as well as wounded North
Vietnamese Army soldiers. While treating one such soldier, Marines
entered the triage bunker and ordered him and the other medical
personnel out. Burkle objected that under the Geneva Conventions, the
U.S. military was obligated to treat the wounded who are out of combat.
The Marines forced him out at gunpoint. When he re-entered the bunker,
the Marines were waterboarding his patient. Burkle radioed base
headquarters and objected to a commanding officer that torture was a
violation of the Geneva Conventions. When he returned to the triage
bunker, the Marines were gone, and his patient was dead.
Burkle’s account led me to think that I
should remind myself of the what the Vietnam War was about. I finally
read a couple of books that I had been planning to read for some time.
Firstly, I read Nick Turse’s Kill Anything That Moves, a
book-length recounting of the sustained, mechanized, industrial-scale,
criminal assault on the Vietnamese people. I was struck by how the
methods of killing in Vietnam were, in many ways, similar to those
employed in the current genocidal assault on the Palestinian people. The
dehumanization of the victims is the same. The torture is the same. The
air assaults and search and destroy missions are the same. The weaponry
has been upgraded, but the profiteering by the arms corporations is the
same. The destruction of infrastructure and the environment by
bulldozer is the same. In 1995, the Vietnamese government estimated that
more than 3 million Vietnamese, including 2 million civilians were
killed in what they call the American War.
Also, going backward in history, there are
many parallels to the Philippine-American War: the same waterboarding,
the same intent to turn the countryside into a “howling wilderness.”
In what way was the U.S. invasion and occupation of Vietnam not a genocide? The United Nation’s definition of genocide
“means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in
whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as
such:
1) Killing members of the group;
2) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
The U.S. architects of the Vietnam War
cited the need to stop Communism or support democracy as the reasons for
the war. Nonetheless, as Turse points out, the metric for success was
the body count – supposedly the number of enemy combatants killed, but
in reality, “anything that moves.” Perhaps the only way in which the
U.S. invasion and occupation of Vietnam was not a genocide was the success of its architects in portraying it as something else. The stated
intent of the war was not the destruction of the Vietnamese people. So,
let us call the Vietnam War a series of crimes against humanity.
Generally, crimes against humanity are considered worse than mere war
crimes, since they are systematic and large-scale.
But, getting back to Skip Burkle’s memoirs .
. . in 2003, during the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, Burkle
served as the Interim Health Minister. While Donald Rumsfeld declared
that the U.S. had come as “liberators and not occupiers” – Burkle argued
that Iraq was undergoing a “public health emergency,” with the
implication that the U.S. needed to take responsibility for mitigating
it. Burkle was quickly replaced.
How many Iraqis died during the U.S.
invasion and occupation of Iraq (2003-2011)? Over a million. (Of course,
such estimates depend on the methodology, who is and who is not counted
as a casualty, etc.)
In his incisive 1946 essay
“Politics and the English Language”, George Orwell performs a brilliant
autopsy on the art and craft of writing and communication. He focusses
on how and what language manifests—or rather, fails to manifest—in
political discourse. The master satirist, never one to mince words
(though he’d be the first to appreciate the irony of that cliché),
dissects the tendency of political language to change straightforward
ideas into bloated, pretentious prose that obscures rather than
enlightens.
Towards the end of this long essay lies a powerful
statement: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful
and murder respectable”. Clearly, Orwell was talking about how
politicians and other public figures twist words to hide ugly truths.
When leaders want to justify terrible or unpleasant actions, they turn
to a vague, fancy vocabulary. Instead of saying “we killed civilians”,
they might say, “collateral damage occurred during military operations”.
This kind of cloudy language makes it harder for people to understand
what really happened or will happen.
Language shapes perception.
It defines how we see the world and the forces that power it. In an
ideal scenario, words like “development”, “reform”, and “progress”
should inspire optimism, suggesting a march towards a better future. But
in practice, these terms become euphemisms for destruction. Beneath
their hopeful facades, they have hidden environmental devastation, the
displacement of indigenous communities, and the widening gap between the
rich and the poor. If we strip away their idealistic veneer, we uncover
a history of exploitation and loss—one that continues to this day.
Today, “development” conjures images of gleaming skyscrapers,
bustling economies, and technological marvels. But its real cost is
hidden or deliberately obscured. In the name of development, entire
ecosystems have been decimated, indigenous lands have been seized, and
the poorest have been driven into deeper destitution. Take the Amazon
rainforest, dubbed the “lungs of the Earth”. Under Brazil’s uber-fast
development policies, deforestation surged by 60 per cent in 2019 alone.
That led to the loss of over 10,000 sq km of rainforest. Indigenous
tribes, such as the Yanomami and Kayapó, have been violently displaced.
Their unique cultures were destroyed, forever in most cases, in the rush
for economic gain.
Take “reform”. It implies improvement. Yet,
economic and political reforms worsen the problems they claim to solve.
In the 1990s, structural adjustment programmes imposed by the IMF and
World Bank promised prosperity for developing nations. We all know what
happened next. They gutted social welfare, privatised essential
services, and deepened inequality. In sub-Saharan Africa, these
“reforms” led to cuts in healthcare spending, resulting in the
resurgence of diseases like malaria and tuberculosis.
Now, progress. We all know it’s meant to signify advancement, yet
it is used as a justification for social and environmental harm. The
first and perhaps most important example is the Industrial Revolution.
Many hailed it as a milestone of human progress., but it was built on
the backs of child labourers, coal miners suffering from black lung
disease, and urban slums teeming with poverty. Today, Silicon Valley
promises a “new era of progress” through artificial intelligence and
automation, but there is increasing evidence to show that this vision
excludes millions whose jobs are being replaced by machines and
algorithms.
Climate change, the defining crisis of our time, is another
byproduct of unchecked “progress”. The top 1 per cent of the world’s
wealthiest individuals are reportedly responsible for more carbon
emissions than the poorest 50 per cent combined. Yet, who bears the
brunt of climate change? The poor and those least responsible for
it—coastal communities, subsistence farmers, and indigenous groups.
Greta Thunberg bluntly stated this truth when she said: “Our house is on
fire.” Yet we continue to throw fuel on the flames in the name of
economic growth.
In India, dear reader, the language of power and
policy follows the same pattern Orwell condemned. It hides unpleasant
truths behind a smokescreen of grand rhetoric. Successive governments
threw up into the air “development”, “reforms”, and “progress” to
justify sweeping changes. And history has taught us that these changes
ended up benefiting a few at the expense of the many.
“Economic
liberalisation” is arguably the funniest of them all. Since the landmark
1991 economic reforms, India has seen “growth”. Our GDP surged from
$266 billion in 1991 to $3.73 trillion in 2023. This spike made the
country the fifth largest economy in the world. But these figures also
tell a story that not many want to be told. Of the staggering inequality
that liberalisation has powered. According to Oxfam India’s 2023
report, the top 1 per cent of Indians own more than 40.5 per cent of the
country’s total wealth, while the bottom 50 per cent own a mere 3 per
cent. When our politicians and business leaders tout the country’s
“economic miracle”, they rarely mention that millions remain trapped in
precarious informal jobs with no social security, earning less than
Rs.100 a day.
Arundhati Roy’s Capitalism: A Ghost Story told us how
economic reforms in India have powered and propelled corporate interests
while displacing the marginalised. She chronicled how vast swathes of
land were seized for “industrialisation”, which forced Adivasi
communities—who make up more than 8 per cent of the country’s
population—into destitution.
As a student, this writer was a small
part of the movement that exposed the dangers behind the famed Narmada
Valley project. It was a chilling case in point. Marketed by many,
including the then Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, as a
“developmental success”, it submerged entire villages, displacing, by
conservative estimates, over 320,000 people, most of them indigenous.
[Ironically, this was a project where Modi agreed with the development
vision of his bête noire Jawaharlal Nehru—that of dams being the temples
of modern India.]
Similarly, the language of “urban renewal” has
been deployed to justify the forced eviction of slum dwellers in major
cities. Mumbai’s Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, sits on prime real
estate. Successive governments have used terms like “redevelopment” to
push for its demolition. They argued it would improve living conditions.
Yet, studies by many, including researchers from the Tata Institute of
Social Sciences, showed that the relocated families end up in distant
places, in poorly maintained housing projects with no access to
livelihood opportunities. The rhetoric of “better living standards”
conceals the brutal reality of dispossession.
If “development” has been, to use a term that’s become popular in
the social media age, “weaponised” to mask displacement, “reform” has
become the go-to euphemism for policies that disproportionately burden
the vulnerable. The 2020 farm laws, which the Modi government termed
“historic agricultural reforms”, triggered massive protests by farmers
who feared corporate exploitation. The government claimed these laws
would “empower” farmers, yet many studies, reports, and analyses by Frontline’s
own reporters found that small farmers, who constitute 86 per cent of
our agrarian sector, were at risk of losing price protections and
bargaining power.
P. Sainath in Everybody Loves a Good Drought
reminded me of another linguistic trick—the way bureaucratic jargon
renders suffering invisible. He exposed how official reports use phrases
like “distress migration” to describe desperate movements of people
fleeing drought and poverty. By making it sound like an economic choice
rather than a forced survival strategy, the state absolves itself of
responsibility.
India’s super-fast industrial expansion has led to
devastating impacts. Our mineral-rich tribal belts are prime targets.
The destruction of forests in Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and Jharkhand for
mining projects is defended as “balancing development with
conservation”. But statistics, even from the Forest Survey of India,
show that between 2015 and 2023, the country lost over 9,00,000 hectares
of forest cover. When activists protest, they are labelled
“anti-development”.
Dear Members of the Women and Equalities Committee,
Re: Session on Gendered Islamophobia
Please see below a written submission that we would like the Committee to consider as part of the session on ‘gendered Islamophobia’ on Wednesday 15th January 2025. Please note that this was written within a short time frame and we would appreciate the opportunity to address the Committee on these concerns. In our submission, partly due to the constraints of time and partly in the knowledge that our perspective on this issue will be underrepresented, we have chosen to focus on the ways in which the framing of anti-Muslim racism as Islamophobia closes down legitimate critiques of religion which impacts on women and LGBT rights and freethought and expression. We also point to the overlapping ways in which racism affects both Muslim women and other Black and minoritised women to conclude that an exclusive focus on Muslim women does not do justice to either group.
About us Southall Black Sisters was formed in 1979, at the height of the anti-racist struggle against fascist marches across the UK and the everyday reality of racist attacks. We continue to challenge racist violence and immigration controls and other state policies that question our right to live in the UK. We set up a not-for-profit, secular and inclusive organisation to meet the needs of Black (Asian and African-Caribbean) women to highlight and challenge all forms of gender-related violence against women, empower them to gain more control over their lives; live without fear of violence and assert their human rights to justice, equality and freedom. We have supported women to challenge all aspects of the intersection of racism, sexism and poverty.
In 2024, Southall Black Sisters expanded its support services, providing critical support to 5,472 callers through our national helpline and over 800 women through direct funded projects. Our dedicated team has worked tirelessly to offer legal advice, counselling, and emergency accommodation, ensuring that each woman receives the holistic wraparound support she needs to rebuild her life.
One Law for All was launched on 10 December 2008, International Human Rights Day, to call on the UK Government to recognise that Sharia and religious courts are arbitrary and discriminatory against women and children in particular and that citizenship and human rights are non-negotiable. The Campaign aimed to end Sharia and all religious courts on the basis that they work against, and not for, equality and human rights. One Law for All promotes secularism and the separation of religion from the state, education, law and public policy as a minimum precondition for the respect of women’s rights.
The international and local context
Developments in the UK in relation to the term ‘Islamophobia’ cannot be fully understood without reference to the international context. The coming to power of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran marks the moment of the rise of pan-Islamism, forces which have been privileged, funded and promoted by the US, a foreign policy which has been described as McJihad (Mitchell, 2017)1 in its attempt to contain the perceived threat of communism as we have seen in Afghanistan and across the Middle-East. This unleashed Islamic fundamentalism which sought to establish an ‘anti-imperialist’ hegemony in the name of religion through acts of terrorism around the world, mainly in Muslim majority countries but also in the West (e.g. 9/11 and 7/7).
This severely and adversely impacted the Muslim communities in countries where the brutal War on Terror launched by Western governments, has provided an additional justification and fillip to racist and anti-immigrant sentiments and narratives, the context of all non-white communities in post-colonial Britain.
The rise of Islamic fundamentalism globally, in particular, (although all religions have been heading towards fundamentalism) and a growing hostility towards migrants, has provided domestic far-right and racist groups the pretext to sharpen their rhetoric and attacks on Muslims and specifically in terms of their religion. Patterns of violence against Sikhs wearing turbans, however, have shown that fascists on the street are rarely able to distinguish between Muslims and other minorities that wear head coverings.
The experience of heightened racism and sophisticated fundamentalist mobilisations lies behind the increased assertion of religious identities, a response that has in turn benefited the growth of religious fundamentalism. We have felt the impact of these locally as minoritised communities have turned to the Right, pushing out important histories of secularism and ushering in new waves of religious conservatism and fundamentalism that seek to police women and children and subject them to greater mechanisms of control. In this encounter between the far-right and besieged Muslim communities, valid critiques of religion (as crushing women’s rights and the rights of sexual minorities) have been sidelined and dismissed as another manifestation of ‘Islamophobia’
