Book Review - Jinnah often came to our house - by Kiran Doshi.

 Read in May 2019

"he said that he was planning to retire in Bombay after finishing with his present job. He had no idea when that would be. So much needed to be done and everything had to be done by him. He could trust nobody." As narrated by a character in the book who is a top barrister of the time and colleague, friend and a fellow Muslim of Jinnah whose wife was much ahead of her time, secular, educationist and an ardent fan of gandhiji ( a fictional character with some resemblance to real people of that time)

"He said that he was looking for a tenant for his Malabar hill house. There was no point in keeping it vacant while he was busy in Karachi. He had sent a message to Jawaharlal Nehru, asking him to find him a suitable tenant."

This was the understanding Quaid-e-Azam about the partition that he so bitterly fought and got as a prize from British who always supported divide and rule.

" You are free to go to your temples, mosques or to any other place of worship in Pakistan. We are starting with this fundamental principle: that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State..Everyone of you no matter what community he belongs...is first, second and last citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges and obligations."

This is what Jinnah said while inaugurating the constituent assembly of Pakistan in Karachi soon after British agreed for the division and a week before the final independence on the intervening night of August 14th and 15th.

From a young barrister in Bombay soon after returning from London he hated British occupation and had said Hindus and Muslims are two eyes of this nation and you can't do without either, to a time when he got " corrupted" and blinded for power and told Hindus and Muslims are different and can not live in one nation. It's remarkable that he led the hard core Islamists for his selfish ambition since he was never a practicing Islamist whose grand father was a Hindu converted to take Islam and also a Shi'a ( a forward thinking and supposedly with modern outlook) who don't have acceptance from majority Muslims anywhere in the world except perhaps Iran, as we all know he never prayed and never had an evening without his whisky. But when he achieved his ambition of getting Pakistan he again turned to his own inner-self and talked about Hindu- Muslim amity.

"Jinnah often came to our house" by a retired diplomat Kiran Doshi is a wonderful gripping story that has woven facts and fiction so beautifully that you won't like to leave the book unfinished when you start. This is also a discription of India's freedom struggle history from the turn of the 20th century untill independence. A wonderful way to brush up that since that part of the book has real facts, for sure.