Quide Azam Monograph V3
Quaide Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah: A Khoja Shia Ithna Asheri Luminary ndia became Independent in 1947 when the country was divided as India and Pakistan. Four men played a significant role in I shaping the end of British rule in India: The British Viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Indian National Congress leaders Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, and the Muslim League leader, Mohamed Ali Jinnah. Jinnah led the Muslims of India to create the largest Muslim State in the world then. In 1971 East Pakistan separated to emerge as Bangladesh. Much has been written about the first three in relative complimentary terms. The fourth leading player, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, founding father of Pakistan, lovingly called Quaid-e-Azam (the great leader) has been much maligned by both Indian and British writers. Richard Attenborough's hugely successful film Gandhi has also done much to portray Jinnah in a negative light. Excerpt from Endangered Species | 4 The last British Viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, spared no adjectives in demonizing Jinnah, and his views influenced many writers. Akber S. Ahmed quotes Andrew Roberts from his article in Sunday Times, 18 August,1996: “Mountbatten contributed to the slander against Jinnah, calling him vain, megalomaniacal, an evil genius , a lunatic, psychotic case and a bastard, while publicly claiming he was entirely impartial between Jinnah’s Pakistan and Nehru’s India. Jinnah rose magisterially above Mountbatten’s bias, not even attacking the former Viceroy when, as Governor General of India after partition, Mountbatten tacitly condoned India’s shameful invasion of Kashmir in October 1947.”1 Among recent writers, Stanley Wolport with his biography: Jinnah of Pakistan, and Patrick French in his well researched Freedom or Death analyzing the demise of the British rule in India come out with more balanced portrayal of Jinnah - his role in the struggle for India’s independence and in the creation of Pakistan.
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