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Allama Iqbal / Quaid-e-Azam / Sir Syed Ahmed Khan

Early Life and Education
Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the first child born to Mithibai and Jinnahbhai Poonja in a Gujarati family in Karachi on December 25, 1876. He was a lawyer, politician and the founder of Pakistan. He is popularly and officially known in Pakistan as Quaid-e-Azam “Great Leader” and Baba-e-Qaum “Father of the Nation”. His grandfather, Poonja Gokuldas Meghji, was a Hindu from Paneli village in Kathiawar who had converted to Islam. The first-born Jinnah was soon joined by six siblings: three brothers – Ahmad Ali, Bunde Ali, and Rahmat Ali – and three sisters: Maryam, Fatima and Shireen. Jinnah was a great but restless student and studied at several schools: first at the Sindh-Madrasa-tul-Islam in Karachi; then briefly at the Gokal Das Tej Primary School in Bombay; and finally at the Christian Missionary Society High School in Karachi, where, at the age of 16, he passed the matriculation examination of the University of Bombay. During his stay in England, his mother pass away. In London, Jinnah soon gave up the apprenticeship to study law instead, by joining Lincoln’s Inn. In three years, at age 19, he became the youngest Indian to be called to the bar in England.

During his student years in England, Jinnah came under the spell of 19th-century British liberalism, like many other future Indian independence leaders. This education included exposure to the idea of the democratic nation and progressive politics.

Political Struggle and Achievements
Jinnah joined Indian National Congress In 1906, which was the largest Indian political organization. Like most of the Congress at the time, Jinnah did not favor absolute independence, considering British influences on education, law, culture and industry as beneficial to India. Jinnah became a member on the 60-member Imperial Legislative Council. Jinnah had initially avoided joining the All India Muslim League, founded in 1906, regarding it as too Muslim oriented. However, he decided to provide league to the Muslim minority. Eventually, he joined the League in 1913 and became the president at the 1916 session in Lucknow. In 1924, Jinnah reorganized the Muslim League, of which he had been president since 1916, and devoted the next seven years attempting to bring about unity among the disparate ranks of Muslims and to develop a rational formula to effect a Hindu-Muslim settlement, which he considered the pre-condition for Indian freedom. Jinnah broke with the Congress in 1920 when the Congress leader, Mohandas Gandhi, launched a Non-Cooperation Movement against the British, which Jinnah disapproved of. Unlike most Congress leaders, Gandhi did not wear western-style clothing, did his best to use an Indian language instead of English, and was deeply rooted in Indian culture. Jinnah criticized Gandhi’s support of the Khilafat Movement, which he saw as an endorsement of religious zealotry. Jinnah quit the Congress, with a prophetic warning that Gandhi’s method of mass struggle would lead to divisions between Hindus and Muslims and within the two communities. Becoming president of the Muslim League, Jinnah was drawn into a conflict between a pro-Congress faction and a pro-British faction. In 1941, Muhammad Ali Jinnah founded Dawn, a major newspaper that helped him propagate the League’s point of views. Jinnah felt that the state of Pakistan should stand upon true Islamic tradition in culture, civilization and national identity rather than on the principles of Islam as a theocratic state.

In 1937, Jinnah further defended his ideology of equality in his speech to the All-India Muslim League in Lucknow where he stated, “Settlement can only be achieved between equals.” He also had a contradiction to Nehru’s statement which argued that the only two parties that mattered in India were the British Raj and INC. Jinnah stated that the Muslim League was the third and “equal partner” within Indian politics. Jinnah became the first Governor-General of Pakistan and president of its constituent assembly. Pakistanis view Jinnah as their revered founding father, a man that was dedicated to safeguarding Muslim interests during the dying days of the British Raj. Most of the Pakistanis take Jinnah as hero for their personal lives.