Love, Marriage and Mrs. Jinnah
They were Pakistan’s first couple; when Pakistan was just an embryo. When Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Ruttie Jinnah wed at the Jamia Mosque in Bombay in 1918, she had defied her wealthy Parsi family and he had taken on the onerous mantle of having to defend tying the knot to a woman who had not been born a Muslim. Like all couples that defy their families to make a life of their own, they thought they would make it. She became Muslim and took the name Maryam. He gave her free reign to his money and his means; both undoubtedly believed they were meeting each other half way. Reserved and resolute, he tried to open up a bit more, precocious and outspoken she tried to reign herself in just a bit. Compromise after all was the key to put longevity into love and what else but compromise was necessary to unite all the disgruntled groups of colonised Indians into a single opposition against domineering British.
The question at the core was one of difference? Were they, both the colonised children of British India, similar enough to transcend the differences in their background and form a single harmonious relationship? Was the conversion of one to the faith of another enough to forge such a bond? The fretted and fraught over by the newlywed Jinnahs nearly a century ago were familiar ones, still buzzing around every proposal and engagement and nikah in mixed up, urbanised, middle class modern Pakistan. How much difference is too much difference? Are the proponents of sameness, the champions of staying within the similar, status, sect, sense and security to be crowned oracles for future stable unions? Or should one put some stock in the newly individualistic, evaders of community and judge marital futures on the basis of passion and prudence; is there any melody in the marriage that is muddled and mixed?
Contemporary Western philosophers have changed their minds on the question of similarity and difference as an equation of co-existence. Problematic multiculturalism continues to occupy liberal theorists grappling with the relative value of salad bowls versus melting pots as the more apt culinary metaphors for the unromantic realities of angry parents and disgruntled communities, unwillingly pitched together when their progeny wed. A century ago, the Jinnahs faced just that. As documented in the biography written about her; Ruttie Jinnah’s doting father refused to speak to her when he heard of the marriage, eschewing any contact for years for what he perceived as her betrayal of the upbringing he had provided. More virulent criticism came from political quarters and quite unexpected ones.
Among the critics of Quaid-e-Azam’s marriage were the leaders of the Khaksar movement, both the leaders of the Majlis-e-Ahrar and of the Darul Uloom al Hind Deoband all of whom incorrectly said that the Quaid had been married in a civil court and whose marriage was therefore un-Islamic. Similar, if more subtle opposition to the idea of such marriages came from Mohandas Gandhi himself who while not having criticised Jinnah’s marriage (it took place before the two were political cohorts) refused to permit his own granddaughter to marry a Muslim man.
In contemporary terms, the ostracism of community has been theorised by philosophers as a significant cost to individual well-being. While purporters of individual freedom may have insisted that humans can be self-sufficient outside of society; recent communitarian theorists such as Charles Taylor have revived the Aristotelian idea that “man is a social animal” and asserted that freedom means not simply the freedom to choose but also to choose to live in a community. Applied to marriage and the issue of forming unions, this becomes the question that what a multicultural marriage may need is not simply the freedom to have one, but also the community to support one. In communitarian terms, the freedom to marry who you want may not be enough for an individual to realise freedom, the community must then support the choice made and nurture it.
In the case of the Jinnahs’ marriage on the eve of the epochal transformation that was Partition; the very concept of community was in flux. As India simultaneously shoved out the British and sectioned itself up into countries; the idea of difference was at the same time a means of unification (let’s all unite against the British) and a basis of difference (let’s not marry outside our communities). It is not surprising, then that their marriage became an intimate avenue of battling all these ideas of how much difference and how much unity was really permissible on the cusp of carving out countries.
One century later, the problems in Pakistan may not be cross-religious but they do boil down to the same question of difference even if it is now calibrated in the language of class, sect, caste, ethnicity instead of simply religion In the urban jungles of Lahore and Karachi and Faisalabad and Multan; potential couples meet on Facebook, at the workplace, at University or in crowded neighbourhoods where all sorts of origins and oddities are smashed together; the question they still face, like the Jinnahs’ is not simply whether they can get married but whether they will have the communities that would support the choice and hence, the marriage. Like those who first loved Pakistan, those that live and love in Pakistan must decide, just how much love can overcome?
Rafia Zakaria is a columnist for DAWN. She is a writer and PhD candidate in Political Philosophy whose work and views have been featured in the New York Times, Dissent the Progressive, Guernica, and on Al Jazeera English, the BBC, and National Public Radio. She is the author of Silence in Karachi, forthcoming from Beacon Press.
The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.
That was really a good information which i come to know about Jinnah now only….Very informative message it was…..
Why we Pakistanis are hunged up on some one’s personnel life. To marry or not to marry, who to marry is not our business. Leave their personnel life alone. What did he achieve for the nation is that what counts
I wonder if for the love of his life, Quaid would have chosen to become a Parsi instead. Rutee would have named him Boman or Darius or Rohington. Darool and Deobandis would have demanded his head; since he would be an Apostate. We Muslims would never have accepted him as the leader; ergo: no Pakistan, no nothing. Among all the things we are grateful for as Pakistanis, the decision of Rutee to convert to Islam ranks way up there, on par with Rehmat Ali, Allama and Lahore declaration!
Irrational Article. Please research quite a bit more before writing.
The problem is Islam. Convert my friends.
A person who could live disowning his own daughter for no crime she committed other than falling for a good looking, well educated gentleman from a very successful and rich business family, can not love anyone. Yes, had Mr Jinnah himself not married a non-Muslim woman and led a life of a pure Muslim, history could have been far more forgiving.
The legacy of duplicity and hypocrisy that Mr Jinnah left, is seen in present day Pakistan. Some Pakistanis say it is not Quaid’s Pakistan, I say it is very much Quaid’s Pakistan.
It just shows Jinnah was a human after all. He was capable of feeling all the pleasures and pains, as all the rest of us. What he was, and what he did for Pakistan, should be enough for us. We don’t worship him, but we are thankful to him.
The writer makes intellectually dishonest arguments and draws conclusions that demonstrate lack of rational judgment. There were many underlying issues to the break up of marriage with faith probably be a small part of it. The personality difference and Jinnah’s ambition to use religion to create a political movement, gave him little room to accommodate this marriage. And, the societies in India and Pakistan are generally backward and bigoted, which did not help the matters. Latest example is Imran Khan, he had to leave his Jewish wife since he wants to court religious right in Pakistan. Had Jinnah and Rittie lived a normal life in a civilized societies of West, they would have been fine.
Inter faith marriages prove difficult and if the marriage itself survives all the opposition but what faith the kids will belong too, Jinnah’s only daughter has never owned Pakistan and probably people here also will not accept her readily so children are uprooted and it becomes hard to survive in the world where more than 80% people belong to one faith or another.
Jinnah married the girl he liked and she liked him as well. She converted as per our religion. He could marry her as per our religion. Everything legal and fine. They had problems like every other couple around us. Their problems may not be exactly like them but every one has a different set of problems. You cant let go of a person just because what faith your children will have. Children become adults one day and should know what to chose. If everything is according to our religion then one must have faith in HIM in overcoming those problems.
Jinnah daughter never owned Pakistan because she didnt want to because of the differences she has with her father. And Pakistani people wont own her because they never own anything. The only thing that matters is your religion for its made according to our psyche every problem other than that is either because we are too coward to face that or too weak to handle that. But you cant say that those decisions are not right or shouldnt be taken.
Love is much more important than any religious faith.
Inter faith marriages do work as in the case of Shahrukh Khan and so many others in Bollywood. I’ve come across one or two ordinary people also with inter faith marriage working well.
It would have been appropriate for the author to point out that Mr. Jinnah was opposed to his daughter Dina marrying the Indian Parsi Neville Wadia. It is a more startling and appropriate example than that of Mr. Gandhi. It is startling because Mr. Jinnah himself married a Parsi, Dina’s mother. Mr. Gandhi’s opposition to his grand daughter marrying a Muslim, while unbecoming of his stature, is not really relevant.
Mr Jinnah married a Parsi lady who later converted to Muslim and it is quite acceptable Muslim practice .While Jinnah`s daughter Dina marrying a Parsi man is not acceptable in Islam, therfore Jinnah had problem with it as a Muslim woman can not marry a non Muslim
i agree with Alam. If that Parsi converted to a Muslim Jinnah would have no problem with that, as that is also allowed in Islam. Though our society is so ‘jahil’ to accept it.
You mean NOT to accept it?
Thanks for your honesty.
Very surprising…how is it irrelevant? Both opposed their daughters marrying a guy of another faith!!! The important fact is both fathers refused…had Gandhi allowed his grand daughter marrying a Muslim…
The statement made by author that Mohandas Gandhi refused to permit his own granddaughter to marry a Muslim man is completely untrue,check the facts before publishing.