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Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Muhammad Ali Jinnah was a barrister, politician and the founder of Pakistan. Jinnah served as the leader of the All-India Muslim League from 1913 until the inception of Pakistan on 14 August 1947, and then as the Dominion of Pakistan's first governor-general until his death. He is revered in Pakistan as the Quaid-e-Azam Qaum ("Father of the Nation"). His birthday is observed as a national holiday in Pakistan on December 25.

Jinnah was trained as a barrister at Lincoln's Inn in London, England. Upon his return to India, he enrolled at the Bombay High Court, and took an interest in national politics, which eventually replaced his legal practice. Jinnah rose to prominence in the Indian National Congress in the first two decades of the 20th century. He proposed a fourteen-point constitutional reform plan to safeguard the political rights of Muslims in the Indian subcontinent. In 1920, however, Jinnah resigned from the Congress when it agreed to follow a campaign of satyagraha, which he regarded as political anarchy.

By 1940, Jinnah had come to believe that the Muslims of the subcontinent should have their own state to avoid the possible marginalised status they may gain in an independent Hindu–Muslim state. In that year, the Muslim League, led by Jinnah, passed the Lahore Resolution, demanding a separate nation for Indian Muslims. During the Second World War, the League gained strength while leaders of the Congress were imprisoned, and in the provincial elections held shortly after the war, it won most of the seats reserved for Muslims.

Ultimately, the Congress and the Muslim League could not reach a power-sharing formula that would allow the entirety of British India to be united as a single state following independence, leading all parties to agree instead to the independence of a predominantly Hindu India, and for a Muslim-majority state of Pakistan. As the first Governor-General of Pakistan, Jinnah worked to establish the new nation's government and policies, and to aid the millions of Muslim migrants who had emigrated from neighbouring India to Pakistan after the two states' independence, personally supervising the establishment of refugee camps.

The Two-Nation Theory

Two-Nation Theory a political doctrine rationalizing the division of India politically into two independent nations' India and Pakistan. The concept was propounded by Muhammad Ali Jinnah in the 1940s on the eve of the winding up of the British rule in India. Jinnah’s vision for Pakistan was based on democracy, rule of law, equality, derived from teachings of Islam where people of all faiths who lived side by side enjoying full equality and religious freedom.

Born
25 December 1876, Karachi, Bombay Presidency, British India
Died
11 September 1948 (aged 71) Karachi, Pakistan
Education
Sindh Madrasa-tul-Islam University, Lincoln's Inn
Fame
Founder of Pakistan
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