Word: jinnah
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...Jinnah was born on Christmas Day, 1876, the eldest son of Jinnah Poonja, a wealthy Karachi dealer in gum arabic and hides. The boy grew up in an atmosphere of wealth among a doting family. After going to school in Bombay and Karachi, young Jinnah, "a tall thin boy in a funny long yellow coat," as Poetess Sarojini Naidu described him, went to England. At the age of 16 he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn to read law. Soon after Jinnah returned to India, his father lost his money. Three hard, jobless years followed, until briefs and money...
...Unity. In 1940 Bombay Moslems elected him to the Supreme Legislative Council. Jinnah rose steadily in the councils of the nationalists and in the courtrooms of India. He revisited England and there, in 1913, enrolled in the Moslem League. "Typical of his sense of honor," wrote his rhapsodic biographer Naidu,* "he partook of it something like a sacrament . . . made his two sponsors take a solemn preliminary covenant that loyalty to the Moslem League . . . would in no way and at no time imply even the shadow of disloyalty to the larger national cause to which his life was dedicated...
During World War I Jinnah was a conspicuous worker for Moslem-Hindu unity, persuaded the Congress Party and Moslem League to hold joint sessions, used as his slogan "a free and federated India." In 1917 he could still attack the idea which later became his obsession. "This [fear of Hindu domination] is a bogey," he told League members, ". . . to scare you away from the cooperation with the Hindus which is essential for the establishment of self-government...
Party. When Gandhi began to turn the party, once the sounding board for polite talk about independence among a few cautious Indian leaders, into a powerful mass movement, Jinnah drifted out of the fold. Some Hindus think he lost his nationalist ardor when he lost his beautiful Parsi wife (he was 42, she 18, when they were married) after their only child, a daughter, was born. His wife had been a zealous worker for independence...
Even Poetess Naidu found little warmth in Jinnah: "Somewhat formal and fastidious and a little aloof and imperious of manner. . . . Tall and stately, but thin to the point of emaciation, languid and luxurious of habit, Jinnah's attenuated form is the deceptive sheath of a spirit of exceptional vitality and endurance...