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00:00In the early 1930s, Jinnah's adoption of such beliefs was yet to come.
00:06He was living in self-imposed exile in London.
00:09Prospering as a lawyer, he tried to enter Parliament, standing unsuccessfully as a candidate first for Labour, then for the Conservatives.
00:19Meanwhile, in the unlikely setting of suburban South London, a group of Indian students went even further than Iqbal,
00:25coming up with the revolutionary idea of a separate state for Muslims.
00:55The enthusiastic students took their new plan to Jinnah, now living in Hampstead with his sister Fatima and his daughter Dina.
01:25So, at that time, he was still absolutely committed to an Indian union?
01:56But in the 1930s, some Muslims in India were becoming worried by Congress.
02:10They believed Gandhi, now India's political superstar, was turning it into a Hindu-dominated organisation, a charge Congress and its Muslim members fervently denied.
02:21So, I was deeply affected by what the Congress was doing, what Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was doing, what Mahatma Gandhi was doing, so it was a natural reaction on my side, and I joined the struggle in 1930, when I was a student of the Rabat University.
02:45Did you feel, as a Muslim, that Congress represented you as much as it did the Hindus?
02:52Oh, yes. I had no doubt in my mind. In fact, this seldom occurred to me. I thought the Congress was a nationalist organisation, comprising of all nationalities and all communities.
03:08And I reacted spontaneously when the struggle started.
03:15The Surbiton students were followed by a succession of Muslim leaders, pleading with Jinnah to return to India and revive the Muslim League.
03:24When Jinnah did go home to India, he still wanted to work as an ally of Congress against the British.
03:31His plans were wrecked by the elections of 1937. The Muslim League got a paltry 21% of the Muslim vote. Jinnah lost any muscle to force an accommodation with Congress.
03:43The day he realised that, and he injected Communalism in politics, Mr Gandhi, I say, and Mr Jinnah resented that, and he says, you are trying to Hinduise politics.
04:00He felt the Hindu being in perpetual majority, they will wipe out the Muslims, and Muslims will remain only serfs, and will be totally dominated by the Hindu majority.
04:15Under Congress' rule, many Muslims would complain of discrimination and a rise in communal violence.
04:22The victorious Congress leader, Jawaharlal Nehru, insisted his party alone represented the Indian people, and saw no reason to share power with Jinnah.
04:32The charges also laid against Nehru, that if he had included the representatives, possibly the demand for partition wouldn't have arisen.
04:43Well, it is not easy to foresee events. Assuming we knew that this would result in the partition of the country, we could have taken a different line.
04:57Nehru addressed a convention of Congress members, and he said that there are only two powers in the land, the British and the Congress.
05:08Then Qazi Azam said, no, there was a third party, and that's Muslims.
05:14Zia-ud-Din Suleri used to go to Muslim League meetings to hear Jinnah speak.
05:20He saw how Jinnah, defeated in the election and rejected by Nehru, now embarked on a new mass strategy to build up Muslim support.
05:28His rallying call became Islam in Danger.
05:31Jinnah symbolically discarded his Savile Row suit, and appeared in traditional Muslim dress.
05:37He advocated the two-nation theory, and turned to exactly the kind of populist religious politics which had once caused him to fall out with Gandhi.
05:47At the 1938 Muslim League conference in Patna, Jinnah accused Congress of being only a Hindu body.
05:55The speech that Jinnah made there was a bitter attack on Congress, so bitter that Gandhi was obliged to make a reply.
06:10And I think, to my mind, that was the beginning, Patna was the beginning of the mass movement of the Muslim League.
06:18Popular response was tremendous, there's no question about it, because, you see, he gave the impression that here is the saviour of Muslims, from Hindu domination.
06:32Because of his brilliance, because of his cleverness, because of his incorruptible style of functioning, he was highly respected.
06:48The League was now turning into a mass movement of Indian Muslims, thanks to Jinnah's new line.
06:55It had a particular appeal for the young.
06:59We went to the racecourse, and there we saw this stately-looking person.
07:05We were introduced, and when he heard that we were from part of Quetta, he said that,
07:11I'd like you to come and have lunch with me tomorrow, and we can discuss more.
07:16Then he asked if there was a Muslim League in Quetta, which I said, no, there wasn't.
07:21So he says, well, that's something you've got to get about, forming a Muslim League in Baluchistan.
07:26And we went to lunch the next day, and a great deal was discussed, and a great deal was said, how it should be opened, and what should be done to form a Muslim League in Baluchistan.
07:37Piyari Rashid's husband, Qazi Issa, became Jinnah's key man in Baluchistan, and his host.
07:45During that period, my father from Bhopal had sent a special cook to make luxurious dishes for him, but of course he wouldn't participate.
07:54And whenever you asked him what he'd like for a dessert, he always said, I'd like to have some baked custard.
08:00He was very fond of baked custard.
08:02You could have it twice a day at every meal, if it was possible for him to do so, I think.
08:18When the Second World War broke out in Europe, London declared that India too was at war.
08:24But Congress was divided, and Nehru and Gandhi spent much of the war in prison.
08:29The British turned to the Muslim League for support.
08:32And asked Jinnah what he wanted in return.
08:35Jinnah was uncertain. He asked his political secretary for some ideas.
08:39He said, could you please give me a sort of brief for your own ideas on this?
08:48And I knew what the lines that the demand for Pakistan, or the idea of Pakistan was following.
08:56And I prepared about, I think it was two or three pages of notes, mainly based on that file.
09:03And I gave it to him.
09:05My father, along with his advisors and members of the committee, spent hours with him,
09:13trying to persuade him to understand the benefit of Pakistan coming into being.
09:20And that was the argument which went on for hours and hours at my home in Karachi.
09:27So in other words, he was persuaded by events rather than taking initiative.
09:32Yes, he was forced by the events which took place.
09:36This is a real, straightforward truth.
09:43Jinnah was being pushed towards a destination he'd never originally sought.
09:49In 1940, Muslims from all over India gathered in Lahore for a momentous session of the Muslim League.
09:56Jinnah took the train from Delhi.
10:19I would call it a Pakistan special or something.
10:32The entire leadership being carried in one train.
10:36In the center there was a compartment in which he, his sister, Ms. Fatima Jinnah, and myself.
10:43And the train pulled up.
10:46And the Muslim leaders who had come to receive him, they were pushed by the volunteers in the crowd.
10:51Nobody knew who was where.
10:53He stood at the door.
10:55And he said, look, if you don't behave, I'm going to go back.
10:58And then he shouted, discipline!
11:00And the entire lot was absolutely silent.
11:02And I'm sure a number of those people did not even know what discipline meant.
11:06I mean, English words.
11:08Jinnah addressed the crowd at Lahore's Minto Park for nearly two hours.
11:12But the future founder of Pakistan could only speak fluently in English.
11:18My father was explaining to me what he was saying.
11:22And I did ask him, I said, he's speaking in English.
11:26And do the people understand?
11:28He said, they have trust in him.
11:30So they know what he's saying.
11:32This old man was asking, do you know what he's saying?
11:34He's talking in English.
11:35I don't know what he's saying, but I know for definite whatever he's saying is the right thing.
11:40He was explaining at that time that the only answer is a separate homeland for the Muslims of India.
11:48We have tried all kinds of solutions with the communities and with the British.
11:52But unfortunately it has not come to anything.
11:55And we have come to this conclusion that now the final solution is that there should be two states.
12:01Muslim India and Hindu India.
12:04And people understood.
12:07The Lahore session passed a resolution demanding that areas in the northeast and northwest of India,
12:13where the Muslims were a majority, should become independent states.
12:17But the resolution was deliberately vague as to whether these states should be inside or outside of federal India.
12:33It just partially advocated the concept of a separate Muslim state,
12:40but there were so many loopholes in it.
12:43And these loopholes indicated that there was still time
12:47if there could be any rapprochement between the Hindus and the Muslims.
12:52While his followers believed he was talking about a separate Pakistan,
12:57for Jinnah it was more of a maximum demand.
12:59He was now called Qaid-i-Azan, the great leader.
13:03By employing the imagery and symbolism of Islam, he had found he could fire the Muslim masses.
13:09But how orthodox a Muslim was he?
13:12He was not a religious man, but he wasn't irreligious either.
13:17There was no big religious thing.
13:22I asked Mr. Jinnah to say the prayers.
13:26He was a bit nervous about it,
13:30because there were hundreds of thousands of people looking at him all the time.
13:37We tried to explain to him that prayer is much more important to the masses,
13:43because they feel that if we are talking of a Muslim homeland, religion should come first.
13:50And that's how Mr. Jinnah accepted the position.
13:56Some Mullahs were suspicious of Jinnah's new commitment to Islam.
14:00They opposed the Pakistan idea, because they feared it would be un-Islamic,
14:04and even issued fatwas against some League members.
14:08They thought Pakistan, when it is established, it will be a secular state like Turkey,
14:12because all those who are supporting this movement for Pakistan,
14:16their approach, according to them, was not really purely Islamic.
14:21It was the westernized version of Islam.
14:24In other words, that Islam was safer within an undivided India than it was within a Muslim state.
14:29Yes, exactly. This is what their impression was,
14:32and that's why they opposed the Pakistan movement.
14:35Much of the movement's dynamism was coming from the Muslim University at Aligarh,
14:40birthplace of the two-nation theory, and now the centre of Muslim League youth activity.
14:46When I went to Aligarh, I think it was for the first time that I saw Mr. Jinnah.
14:51Tall, handsome, confident, bold.
14:59I was definitely attracted by his personality.
15:04He galvanized the Muslim masses.
15:09He awakened their consciousness.
15:12He awakened their consciousness and spirit,
15:18and a sense of destiny and identity.
15:24He declared that Aligarh especially was the arsenal of Muslim India.
15:29And most of us, most of the students, not only from Aligarh but from other colleges and universities,
15:36Muslim students, were trained in special camps
15:40so that they could contact each and every voter for the battle that was to be fought.
15:47The Pakistan idea was spreading into the markets and mosques of Muslim India.
15:52Some young enthusiasts distributed news sheets to convince the Muslims
15:57that they were being done down by the Hindus.
16:00This was the beginning of a new movement,
16:04a movement that would spread to the rest of the Muslim world.
16:07The Pakistan idea was spreading into the markets and mosques of Muslim India.
16:12Some young enthusiasts distributed news sheets to convince the Muslims
16:16that they were being done down by the Hindus.
16:19We were trying to tell the Muslims that their economic situation
16:24and all their trade is in the hands of the Hindus,
16:27who are the British's own people, and the poor are getting poorer and poorer.
16:31In small villages, the Hindus used to give things to the Muslims on loan.
16:39They used to give money to the farmers and take interest on it.
16:45So the Hindus had taken a lot of land from the Muslims in exchange for that loan.
16:52So the people here hated this act of the Hindus, they complained a lot.
17:02In 1942, with the fall of Singapore and Rangoon, the war reached India's doorstep.
17:09The British government, desperate for India's help,
17:11sent Cabinet Minister Sir Stafford Cripps to win over Congress and the Muslim League.
17:17And we hope that the Indian leaders will give the help they have already promised us
17:22as regards the mobilisation of that great people in the protection of their own country.
17:32In exchange for Jinnah's cooperation,
17:35Cripps conceded that any province could opt out of a future independent India.
17:41But Jinnah, now raising the stakes,
17:44rejected the offer on the grounds that Pakistan was not explicitly named.
17:48Jinnah was talking tough, but his purpose was still unclear.
17:53Did he want his Pakistan to stay within India, or to become a new, separate state?
18:03Meanwhile, Jinnah's daughter, Dina, had announced that she wanted to marry a non-Muslim.
18:08Though Jinnah himself had married a Parsi,
18:11the Qaid-i-Azam could not accept his own daughter behaving likewise.
18:14He wasn't too happy because I think it was a crucial time, all round.
18:21And he would have preferred it in some ways if you'd married a Muslim?
18:25Most probably, yes, absolutely.
18:28Did it lead to any change in your relations with him?
18:32Yes, it did. He was very disproving and we didn't speak for a few years.
18:37The breach between father and daughter was only healed
18:41after a member of a rival Muslim party tried to murder Jinnah,
18:45having talked his way into the house in Bombay.
18:48In 1943, it was in July, when an attempt was made on his life.
18:54That was about 1 o'clock or 1.15.
18:58I used to come at about 2, and I did come at 2 o'clock,
19:02and I learned that Jinnah was a Muslim.
19:04And I did come at 2 o'clock, and I learned that he had just escaped
19:08and doctors had bandaged him, and he was resting in the bedroom.
19:12I went there.
19:14He fought off the man, and what happened was that this man came with a knife,
19:19and my father was struggling with him, so the knife got him,
19:23and the chauffeur, the driver was in the driveway, ran,
19:28and he was a big baton, and he just got him off.
19:30The first thing he again inquired from me is to ensure
19:34that the press statement has been released that the assassin was a Muslim.
19:39He said otherwise there could be riots.
19:42Then, all of a sudden, Jinnah came in,
19:47and straight went to his bedroom.
19:50They were closed for about 20 minutes or half an hour,
19:53and then she left. That's the first time that I saw her.
19:57In September 1944, the house on Malabar Hill
20:01was the scene of lengthy negotiations between Jinnah and Gandhi,
20:05his old adversary, who had recently been released from detention.
20:09The Mahatma journeyed to Jinnah,
20:11still hoping to persuade him back into the all-India fold.
20:15I think like two stalwarts doing a case,
20:21each recognised the merit of the other,
20:23and was trying to find a weakness in the point of view of the other.
20:29I think Gandhi realised that he was up against a sort of rock, as it were,
20:35who wasn't going to budge.
20:37And Jinnah realised he was up against a very clever fellow, which he was.
20:44And both were a match for each other.
20:46For example, the famous incident where in the very first day,
20:50Mr Gandhi said,
20:52you have mesmerised the Muslims.
20:55Mr Jinnah retorted, you have hypnotised the Hindus.
20:59But the talks got nowhere.
21:02The two men stuck to their old positions.
21:05Gandhi refused to accept that India contained two nations,
21:08of Hindus and Muslims.
21:10Jinnah insisted on their separateness.
21:14Mr Jinnah claimed that he will only represent the Muslims.
21:17And Mr Gandhi said he's representing the whole of India.
21:20And Mr Jinnah cornered him and said,
21:23no, you cannot.
21:25You can at the most say that you are representing the Congress.
21:28And Congress in turn represents predominantly the Hindus.
21:31It was another stumbling block in our way.
21:34Now we couldn't say that Congress is a Hindu organisation.
21:39It was impossible for us to say it because we were not a Hindu organisation.
21:43Congress was a nationalist organisation.
21:45Comprising of all nationalities and all communities.
21:49If I participated in the struggle for freedom,
21:53it is as an Indian, not exactly as a Muslim.
21:56The talks may have failed,
21:59but Jinnah's status was heightened
22:02simply by the Mahatma's public recognition of him.
22:05Jinnah's secretary, Sharifuddin Pirzada, was present throughout.
22:10Mr Jinnah's point was that
22:12he will make his best efforts
22:15to convince Mr Gandhi
22:18about the possibility of establishment of Pakistan.
22:22At least he should accept the principle.
22:25Then the details can be worked out subsequently.
22:28So Mr Jinnah was able to project Pakistan in this way.
22:32And these talks more or less received international notice.