Book Review
By A.G. NOORANI
THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY
Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohammad Ali Jinnah
Jinnah Papers: Pakistan – Struggling for Survival, 1 January – 30 September 1948, Editor-in-Chief Z.H. Zaidi; Qauid-i-Azam Papers Project, Government of Pakistan; distributed by Oxford University Press, Pakistan; pages 835, Rs.750.
THIS volume appeared just about the time the Government of India decided to allow the Indian Council of Cultural Relations to occupy the magnificent Jinnah House at Mount Pleasant Road in Mumbai. A few years after Partition, the British Deputy High Commissioner (DHC) began to reside there. The most senior information officials at the DHC occupied the first floor. Both moved out in the early 1980s. Around this time India agreed to Pakistan’s request that it be allowed to buy or use Jinnah House to house its Consul-General and his offices, only to change its mind. For well over a decade no one lived there. The place went to seed; but never faded away from public memory or of those interested in the history of Partition and its aftermath.
For one thing, it was of undoubted historic significance. The Gandhi-Jinnah talks were held at this bungalow in September 1944. So were Jinnah’s talks with Subhas Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru who met him there last; ironically, on August 15, 1946, exactly a year before India became independent and was partitioned. The host became Governor-General of Pakistan and the visitor, Prime Minister of India. Astrologers might ponder over the fact that Jinnah’s only child, his daughter Dina, was also born on August 15, 1919.
Less famous was Jinnah’s house at 10 Aurangzeb Road in New Delhi where the Ambassador of the Netherlands now resides. Jinnah bought it, he did not build it, unlike the Bombay house. The house at 10 Aurangazeb Road was sold to Ramkrishna Dalmia for Rs.3 lakhs shortly before Partition. In contrast, Liaquat Ali Khan did not sell his house. He gave it to his country. “Pakistan House” at Tilak Marg, formerly Hardinge Road, is now the residence of Pakistan’s High Commissioner. Liaquat, born to wealth, died an impoverished man.
But it is not these “small” houses that we are here concerned with. Sunday Standard of June 14, 1981, had a detailed account of all that from one Adil Dastoor. Of greater relevance is Jinnah’s concept of the greater house he built, Pakistan, and of its relations with India. Pakistanis little realise that his dream was shattered with the exodus of non-Muslims from West Pakistan. For reasons more than one, not least the character of the state, he wanted them to live there. Events overwhelmed him. He had, obviously, not quite reckoned with the rancorous atmosphere to which he himself had made no small a contribution with his abrasive rhetoric, arrogance and, of course, the poisonous two-nation theory. Most in the Congress did not lag behind in this, either.
Partition was not a parting in amity, but in bitterness. How then does one explain Jinnah’s financial dealings on the eve of Partition and immediately thereafter? He prided himself on his sense of realism and rightly so. But hubris is a cruel master to those it possesses. It robbed Jinnah of that gift. Jinnah, it seems, thought that there would be no barriers between India and Pakistan.
His colossal fortune was not built up only from earnings from his lucrative practice at the Bar and the high fees he charged. He was a careful and persistent investor in shares and landed estates. By March 1947, both the Congress and the Muslim League were agreed that India would be partitioned. How then is one to explain Jinnah writing to share brokers and estate agents that very month buying 500 shares in Air India Ltd. And showing keen interest in the purchase of “Sandow Castle”, described as “a large property near Bombay with 18 acres of land and with an unrestricted view of the sea”. Its price was advertised at Rs.5 lakhs. He could have easily afforded to give 10 Aurangzeb Road in New Delhi to his country instead of selling it for Rs.3 lakhs.
Therein lies the relevance of this volume. A couple of documents it publishes would suggest that Jinnah liked to return to Bombay (as it was known then) and spend his last days in the house he had so fondly built. It confirms the account which India’s first High Commissioner to Pakistan, Sri Prakasa, gave in his memoirs Pakistan: Birth and Last Days (Meenakshi Prakashan; Meerut, 1965).
Nehru left the Bombay house undisturbed out of courtesy. But there was a shortage of accommodation and questions were asked. Sri Prakasa was directed to consult Jinnah’s wishes and the rent he wanted for letting it out. It may be recalled that the Administration of Evacuee Property Ordinance was promulgated in 1949 with retrospective application from March 1947. Travel restrictions (passports and visas) were imposed abruptly in 1948. Many were stranded on the wrong side of the frontier.
Jinnah was completely taken aback by Sri Prakasa’s inquiry “and almost pleadingly said to me: `Sri Prakasa, don’t break my heart. Tell Jawaharlal not to break my heart. I have built it brick by brick. Who can live in a house like that? What fine verandahs? It is a small house fit only for a small European family or a refined Indian prince. You do not know how I love Bombay. I still look forward to going back there.’
“`Really Mr.Jinnah!’ I said. `You desire to go back to Bombay. I know how much Bombay owes to you and your great services to the city. May I tell the Prime Minister that you want to go back there?’ He replied: `Yes, you may’.”
Sri Prakasa recalled this talk in a letter to Jinnah dated July 30, 1948. It bears quotation in extenso for it reveals a lot of Jinnah’s and Nehru’s civility. “You will perhaps remember the interview that you were good enough to grant me on May 14, when I asked for your permission, on behalf of the Government of India, to requisition your Bombay house, in view of the acute shortage of accommodation, particularly when the house was vacant for the preceding many months.
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