Of  precious memories 

BENGALURU : On 14 August 1947, Mohammad Ali Jinnah took over as the first governor general of Pakistan. He was already in an advanced stage of terminal illness by then. The highly revered leader died in less than thirteen months. Subsequently, every aspect of Jinnah’s life was recorded and documented in hundreds of books and biographies, some commissioned by the government, othe r s w r i t t e n independently. A whole lot of government agencies, such as the National Archives of Pakistan, the Quaid-i-Azam Pap e r s P r o j e c t (QAPP), the Jinnah Memorial Trust and Quaid-e- Azam Mazar Management Board, were tasked with conserving papers and documents related to him, and his personal effects, from his coats, hats, pens and monocles to his houses and limousines.

The curators were tasked with salvaging and preserving countless portraits and photographs. Jinnah’s mortal remains are preserved in a grand mausoleum in Karachi. When completed in 1970, it was the highest tomb, including the height of its pedestal, of any twentieth-century political figure anywhere in the world. However, all of this paled against his towering personality. Mrs Jinnah had always been sanguine that her husband was destined to rise high and leave an enviable legacy behind.

Her untimely death did not let her witness and share that glory. And when he died, her contribution to his legacy went unnoticed. Curiously enough, somewhere along the way, Mrs Jinnah and everything associated with her, or with Jinnah’s marriage, went missing. How could it be that not a single portrait of the Jinnahs together was found—nothing related to the wedding, such as the wedding ring or gi f ts, could be traced and none of the wife’s fabulous dresses found their way into any museum.

And this, despite the fact that Jinnah had made sure that all his trunks carrying every little thing associated with his wife were transported to Pakistan. After the passing away of Mrs Jinnah, the role of companion for Jinnah was filled by his sister, Fatima, the youngest of his four sisters. So, for the next nineteen years, until Jinnah died, Fatima assisted her brother in all his political commitments, and personal care of his health, household matters and needs.

When Pakistan was created, it was obviously Fatima, rather than Mrs Jinnah, who enjoyed Jinnah’s acclaim and witnessed his stately honours. Fatima would share the horse-drawn state coach escorted by the governor general’s mounted cavalry guard with her brother. Fatima’s contribution was nationally recognized; she was awarded the title of Madar-e- Millat (Mother of the Nation), and her birth and death anniversaries are officially observed to this day in Pakistan.

The brother and sister duo had an age difference of seventeen years. It is interesting to note how Fatima became the closest sibling to her brother after Mrs Jinnah’s death. Guardianship of the Jinnah Sisters: Shirin and Fatima Jinnah, born in 1876, was the eldest of the seven siblings (three brothers and four sisters); Fatima was the youngest. She was the only sibling to yet have been born when Jinnah left for England for higher education in 1892. Fatima was born the following year, in 1893.

When Jinnah returned to Karachi in 1896, he was already twenty, and the newest arrival in the family, his sister, was three years old. Fatima, a toddler then, became his darling sister. Since their father’s business wasn’t doing well, it fell on Jinnah to take care of his six siblings. Jinnah married off the two elder sisters, Rahmatbai and Mariambai in 1897 and (probably around) 1901, respectively, while their brother Banday Ali Jinnah passed away at a young age. Rahmatbai moved to Calcutta with her husband and Mariam moved to Bombay with hers.1 When their father died in 1902, Jinnah had no choice but to take his remaining three siblings to Bombay, where he was practising law.

He got his brother, Ahmad Ali Jinnah, admitted to an Islamic boarding school while the two sisters, Shirin and Fatima, stayed with him in his Colaba apartment. For the first few months, he would take both his younger sisters, aged fourteen and nine, respectively, in his carriage to drop them off at Mariam’s house on the way to work. In the evenings, he would pick them up and bring them home. Extracted from Ruttie Jinnah by Saad S. Khan and Sara S. Khan with permission from Penguin Random House