Jinnah, Mohammed Ali

Jinnah

(credit: Courtesy of the Pakistan Embassy, Washington, D.C.)

(born Dec. 25, 1876, Karachi, India—died Sept. 11, 1948, Karachi, Pak.) Indian Muslim politician, founder and first governor-general of Pakistan (1947–48). He was educated in Bombay (now Mumbai) and London, where he became a lawyer at age 19. After returning to India, he practiced law and was elected to India's Imperial Legislative Council in 1910. Committed to home rule for India and to maintaining Hindu-Muslim unity, he joined the Muslim League in 1913 and worked to ensure its collaboration with the Indian National Congress. He was opposed to Mohandas K. Gandhi's noncooperation movement and withdrew from the Congress. In the late 1920s and early '30s, he was seen as too moderate by some Muslims but too Muslim by the Congress Party. From 1937, when the Congress Party refused to form coalition governments with the Muslim League in the provinces, Jinnah began to work for the partitioning of India and on creating a Muslim state. Pakistan emerged as an independent country in 1947, and Jinnah became its first head of state. He died in 1948, revered as the father of the nation.