147th Birth Anniversary of Jinnah: Get to know the two most challenging women in Quaid-e-Azam’s life

There is no dearth of text and scholarship Jinnah’s turbulent political life. However, not much has been written about his personal life, especially the women in his life. Jinnah married twice and had one daughter, his only child. He was very close to his second wife, Ratanbhai known as Rutti, and his daughter Dina, according to the book “Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: The Search for Saladin” by Akbar S Ahmed, a Pakistani-American academic and former diplomat.

Here’s a look at these two women and the kind of relationship they had with Jinnah.

Ratanbhai Jinnah

Ratanbhai, an eighteen-year-old Parsi woman, married Jinnah in early 1918 against her father’s wishes. Jinnah (42 years old) was not far from the ideal suitor, as he was not only the same age as her father, but he was also of a different religion.

“Sir Dinshaw Beatty (Rattanbhai’s father) was understandably angry when his friend Jinnah proposed to his daughter. “The Parsis were a wealthy and sophisticated Western community that dominated life in Bombay… and Ruti could choose the young men from her own people,” Ahmed wrote in his book.

Known as the ‘Flower of Bombay’, Ratanbhai was a stubborn woman, an avid reader, and a lover of poetry and fine arts. She campaigned for the abolition of brothels in Bombay and against cruelty to animals.

Rattanbhai “opened up to him (Jinnah) a new world of taste,” said author Sharif El Mujahid in his essay Jinnah: A Portrait, published in the Anthology Jinnah.

Within a year of their marriage, Jinnah became the president of the Muslim League in 1919. This meant that Ratanbhai would share the stage with the political leader during the general meetings of the Muslim League. Her Western-themed clothing often sparks controversy at such gatherings.

One such incident occurred at the 1924 annual session of the Muslim League at the Globe Cinema, Bombay. In their book Ruti Jinnah: The Woman Who Stood Defiant, Saad Khan and Sarah Khan write: “Some people asked the organizers who the woman was. Jinnah’s political secretary, MC Chagla, had to tell the objectors that she was the wife of the Muslim League president, so it would be better for them.” To keep their observations to themselves.

The incident points to the fact that Ms Jinnah was not just a passive companion cheering from the fence, but would also share the limelight.

Ratanbhai and Jinnah separated a few years after their marriage. They grew apart after Jinnah became distant and involved in his political career. However, the couple was united when Ratanbhai fell ill. While the cause of her death remains unclear, Mrs. Jinnah died in 1929 at the age of 29.

Ahmed wrote: “Rutti’s death devastated Jinnah… When Rutti’s body was lowered into the grave, Jinnah cried like a child, and his control collapsed… He would never be the same again; something died in him.”

In the valley

Dina was only nine years old when her mother Ratanbhai died. To help him raise her, Jinnah invited his sister Fatima and the three moved to London temporarily. During these years, Dina and Jinnah became close to each other.

According to Hector Bolitho’s book Jinnah: Creator of Pakistan (1954), the “stress-free environment, far from India’s disgusting politics” helped father and daughter build a good relationship.

Bolitho wrote: “She alone could tease her father—a gentleness which he had lacked all his life: only she could extend her hand—as slender and expressive as his own—and persuade him to put down a note, with the petition.”

But their relationship became fraught when Dina planned to marry Neville Wadia, a Christian who had previously been Parsi. Jinnah strongly opposed the proposal. In his book, Ahmed wrote that Jinnah “told her that there were millions of Muslim boys in India, and”

She can have anyone she chooses. Dina replied that there are millions of Muslim girls and he could have married one of them, so why did he marry her mother?

Eventually, Dina married Neville in 1938, causing Jinnah to disown her. Father and daughter kept in touch in later years and exchanged letters. But then partition happened.

Jinnah asked Dina to come to Pakistan and leave her life in Bombay. Dina chose to stay with her husband and children. She would never see her father again as he died of tuberculosis within the next year.

“The division of father and daughter may have been overshadowed by the greater partition of India, but in its tragedy it creates a powerful metaphor,” Ahmed wrote.

In her later years, Dina lived mostly in New York, making an annual trip to Mumbai to meet her family and friends. It was also involved in a court case over the legal possession of the South Court on Malabar Hill, now referred to as Jinnah House. Designed by architect Claude Batley in the European style, Jinnah lived there in the late 1930s.

Dina died at her home in New York on November 2, 2017, at the age of 98.