The nation is paying homage today to its Father and most beloved and revered leader and first Governor-General of Pakistan, Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, on his death anniversary, for his selfless services for the just cause of the South Asian Muslims.
However, no tribute to M.A. Jinnah's greatness, no matter how grandiloquently phrased, can be enough for his services as even after the achievement of a separate homeland for the Muslims of South Asia, he did not sit back but continued to the last breath his untiring and unceasing work to strengthen and consolidate the country and making Pakistan one of the greatest nations of the world. Throughout his life, he always held the cause of the Muslims dear to his heart and tried to improve their lot.
In the political annals of the South Asian Sub-Continent, Muhammad Ali Jinnah towers above his contemporaries. He was a pillar of moral strength, an apotheosis of probity in public life, which he regarded as a trust never to be betrayed.
He doggedly defied the insidious, wasting disease and continued to bend his declining energies to the Herculean task of resolving the formidable problems confronting the fledgling state. Jinnah had far-reaching vision, indomitable will, a steely determination, an unflinching resolve and steadfastness of purpose, and his state of health and physical condition failed to impede his determination to achieve his goal.
It would be a matter of public knowledge that from the 1930s till his death on September 11, 1948, he had to fight through bouts of illness. Jinnah's correspondence shows how much willpower he had to exert to keep his body going under these strains-one of the penalties of leadership. He never let his periodic illness dampen his spirit or weaken his resolve and determination.
In April 1938, he was complaining of `tremendous strain' on his nerves and physical endurance. In September of that year, he was seriously ill and constant overwork and strain brought about a breakdown. He rallied, but even in December, he was not feeling really well. In 1941, he was again sick while in July 1943, a difficult year, he was attacked by a Khaksar, and though in August he assured his inquirers that he was `speedily recovering'. He suffered another setback in September when he strained his back. In May 1944, he at last took a breather in Srinagar.
The rest and change had done him good and it was, as he wrote, after seven years that he had allowed himself a holiday. But back in Lahore in July 1944, he was overwhelmed with work. By August, he was laid up in Bombay (now Mumbai) under treatment for three weeks of Jal Patel. He remained for a few days treatment under another doctor but found it difficult to "get away" from work.
In the first half of 1945, he remained ill, and this news of his "persisting" illness disturbed many friends; and yet he assured his anxious friend Ispahani, there is nothing to be alarmed about but I am strictly ordered to have complete rest." On April 11, 1945, he had moved to Bombay from Delhi but was still attending to work. He left on the 19th April, 1945, for Matheran, a hill station near Bombay in search of rest. Up in Matheran his passion for work, his complete dedication to the cause drove him on, though he himself admitted that it was a very serious "breakdown" he had suffered, and yet he attended to official business as usual. Jinnah had been under Dr Dinshah K. Mehta's treatment for a few days after his return from Kashmir in October 1944.
He had hardly stayed in Matheran for two months when the approach of very heavy monsoon drove him down and brought him back to Mount Pleasant Road. From Bombay, he journeyed to Delhi on 22 June 1945, en route to Simla to attend the Simla conference (25 June to 14 July, 1945) all within 10 days at a time when he had been advised to take complete rest.
He was back in Delhi by the third week of July. Once again he felt "tired and far from being well." Earlier, he had been urged by his doctors to go to some temperate and dry climate, and they had recommended Quetta as the best place. Towards the end of the second week of September, he reached Quetta, where he stayed only for a month, but one month could have done little to his health.
The Quaid was in Karachi on 23 October, Ahmadabad on the 27 and Bombay on 29 October, where he addressed various public meetings, issued statements and gave interviews to the press and other bodies. He could have hardly rested and yet he always contrived to convey the impression of improved health. Back in Bombay, the election campaign made heavy demands on him: the strain is so great that I can hardly bear it, he wrote on 9 October, 1945.
The sense of strain of failing health is borne out by the medical reports and X-rays, preserved in his papers. Jinnah indeed suffered from occasional attacks of cough with phlegm accompanied by fever. Between 1940 and 1946, he had been treated by at least 9 doctors, including radiologists and pathologists, who diagnosed his illness as bronchiectasis. Despite the fact that M.A. Jinnah's health was deteriorating, yet he carried on most of his official engagements with determination and without complaint.
After a visit to Balochistan in February 1948, he undertook a nine-day tour of East Pakistan in March, during which he addressed a mammoth public meeting of over 300,000 people at Dacca, visited Chittagong for on-the-spot study of its problems. Following a whirlwind tour of the NWFP in April, he left for Quetta in May to finalise the formation of an Advisory Council for Balochistan, and then moved to Ziarat for rest and recuperation from where he came back to Karachi on July 10.
The frail body of the Quaid was beginning to wilt under these gruelling pressures. Fatima Jinnah has it that the event, which probably caused Jinnah's health to get worse, was a public meeting at Peshawar in April, 1948, when it began to rain but thousands of people kept sitting. She says "My brother could not disappoint them. He was drenched to the bone, but he sat throughout the meeting, braving the inclement weather. That night he had a running nose, cold and chill, cough and high temperature".
Miss Jinnah pleaded with him to leave Karachi for a place like Quetta or Ziarat with a salubrious climate and bracing air. His personal physician, Dr Rahman warned "unless he gave up work completely for at least two months and took complete rest, he would only be doing irreparable damage to his health". On 25 May 1948, he travelled to Quetta, where after a few days, there was a perceptible improvement in his health.
He was shifted to Ziarat on 17 June for a stay at the Residency. However, only fifteen days later, he decided to go to Karachi to perform the opening ceremony of the State Bank of Pakistan. Miss Jinnah tried to dissuade him because of the strain of travel to Karachi and back. His reply was: We must prove that we have the talent to run our country not only in the field of politics but also in finance and banking; so my presence is necessary. This effort took its toll and in the course of his speech, writes Miss Jinnah, he was "scarcely audible, pausing, coughing, as he proceeded with the text of his speech. When we returned to the Governor-General's House after the ceremony, he went to his bed with his clothes and shoes on.
He then returned to Quetta on way to Ziarat". In Ziarat, an eminent physician Colonel Ilahi Bakhsh, was called from Lahore. After a thorough examination he pronounced, "Sir, I am afraid results of the clinical tests show that you have an infection of the lungs." Jinnah heard the news quietly, almost impassively, and spoke after a few minutes' silence: This means that I am suffering from tuberculosis:
In the second week of August, doctors noted a swelling in Jinnah`s feet, which they feared might affect his heart. They also felt that the Ziarat height was rather too much and that the patient had better be moved to Quetta. However, as Miss Fatima Jinnah says, when it was decided to send him to Quetta on 13 August, the Quaid insisted that he would not travel in pyjama suit, saying he had never done that in his life - I brought a brand new suit, a tie to match, put the kerchief in his pocket and made him wear his shining shoes'. On 7 September, the doctors decided on shifting him to Karachi.
During this period, Miss Jinnah recalled, he rambled in his sleep about Kashmir, Constitution and refugees. It is worth mentioning that since the eruption of this problem, Quaid-i-Azam had been watching with increasing grief and concerns the orgies of violence in East Punjab, which had taken a heavy toll of Muslim lives and inflicted indescribable tragedies on hundreds of thousands of Muslims.
When he was being taken back to Karachi, he protested: "Don't take me to Karachi on crutches... I dislike being carried on a stretcher from the car to my room". The Quaid was flown to Karachi on 11 September in a precarious condition. His physicians recalled later that when Jinnah was being taken to his plane, the crew gave a salute, which he duly returned.
He had become so weak that he found it difficult to even "cough without an effort". The road journey from the airport to the Governor-General's House took several hours because the ambulance broke down on the way. The same night, the light that had shone so brightly for some five eventual decades went out after a last flicker. His sister was at his bedside when he breathed his last and witnessed his final moments." He made one last attempt and whispered `Fati, Khuda Hafiz...Laa Ilaha Illallahu Muhammadur Rasullullah'. His head dropped slightly to his right, his eyes closed". Thus, the bell tolled for the charismatic leader of the epic struggle that culminated in the emergence of an independent Muslim State in South Asia.
The mourning environment was prevailing throughout the newly independent country when the Founder of Pakistan, eldest in a family of seven siblings, born on 25 of December, 1976, at Wazir Mansion, Karachi, departed from us on this day in 1948 in the same city at 10.25 pm. There were scenes of acute grief and sorrow and people belonging to all walks of life, deeply touched and pained, were almost in tears at this national calamity, describing his death as an irreparable loss not only to Pakistan but to the whole of Islamic world. His death came as a staggering blow to Pakistan as the newly created country needed his inspirational leadership most to guide and enlighten us through the difficult period of our existence.
When the Quaid died of heart failure, his sister Miss Fatima Jinnah and three doctors were by his bedside. Drawn by ratings of the Royal Pakistan Navy, the gun carriage, bearing the body of M.A. Jinnah moved out of the Government House portals exactly at 3 pm followed by a vast crowd of mourners. A detachment of 50 civil police was at the vanguard followed by 50 Pakistan Naval ratings, 50 men of the Army, 50 of the Air Force and the Governor-General's bodyguard.
The Ministers of the Pakistan Government, high officials and members of the diplomatic corps had come to the hall at 2.30 pm, where the body was lying in state. The body was then moved to the adjacent room and placed over the bier. Foreign Minister Mohammad Zafrullah Khan gently held the bier and put it on his shoulder.
He along with Sardar Abdur Rab Nishtar, Liaquat Ali Khan, Pirzada Abdus Sattar, Sindh Premier Pir Illahi Bakhsh and Syed Miran Muhammad Shah carried the bier to the main gate, where a very large waiting crowd was reciting Kalama.
Over 200,000 mourning citizens reciting Kalma, uninterruptedly moved on slowly and in an orderly and impressive manner. The two-mile funeral procession reached at 4.30 pm. Exhibition Ground, the destination of the last journey of the Quaid-i-Azam. Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani led Janaza prayer. The Maulana, addressing the gathering of over 400,000 people after the prayer, said the Quaid's loss was not a loss of Pakistan but of the entire Muslim world and the Muslims of this land would remain grateful to him for all that he had done for them. The mortal remains of the great leader are enshrined in a grand mausoleum in Karachi around which the grateful nation has laid out a magnificent garden.
Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan in a broadcast to the nation in the evening on 12 September, 1948, said "the leader of our nation, the guide of our people and the architect of Pakistan is no more"; very few people have had the good fortune to undertake a tremendous work and complete it in their own life through their strength of will and wisdom.
Quaid-i-Azam placed before the Muslims not only the ideal of Pakistan but also worked for it so hard that he brought into existence the greatest Muslim State. The Quaid-i-Azam was one of those great personages who appear in this world very rarely".
One of the greatest world Muslim leaders and the architect of Pakistan in his speeches, statements and messages on different occasions had been laying special stress on strictly maintaining discipline and unity for furthering the national cause. We can well feel from the following assertions, how seriously he was concerned about the country.
M.A. Jinnah wanted to build Pakistan through national self-discipline and regarded indiscipline, as "more deadly than our external enemies" which would spell "ruin for us". He wanted constructive efforts, selfless work, steadfast devotion to duty and desired every Pakistani to vow to himself and be prepared to sacrifice his all, if necessary, in building up Pakistan as a bulwark of Islam and one of the greatest nations.
The Founder of the nation wanted the constitution of Pakistan to be "of a democratic type embodying the essential principles of Islam - equality, justice and fair play. He saw the opposition's role in a democratic order as a bulwark against tyranny, saying that "an opposition party or parties are good corrective for any party, which is in power.
Addressing the students of Islamia College, Peshawar, on 12 April, 1948, he advised that now that you have achieved your goal, there is a government of your own, and a country which belongs to you and in which you can live as free men, your responsibilities and approach to the political, social and economic problems must also change.
THE DUTIES REQUIRED OF YOU NOW ARE: develop a sound sense of discipline, character, initiative and a solid academic background.
Quaid-i-Azam in a statement on 24 August, 1947, said he wanted that Pakistan should be kept absolutely free from disorder because the outbreak of lawlessness is bound to shake its foundations and cause irreparable damage to its future." Let me warn Muslims to be aware of their enemies, who do not wish well to Pakistan and would not like it to grow strong and powerful.
In fact they would like to see it destroyed at its very inception and will welcome nothing better than that widespread disorders should break out within its borders, thereby causing administrative dislocation and impeding the work of national regeneration and reconstruction". He made it clear that those who unwisely think that they can undo Pakistan are sadly mistaken. Nothing on earth now will succeed in touching Pakistan, whose roots are now truly and deeply laid.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah in a message to the nation on the occasion of Eid-ul-Fitr on 27 August 1948 stressed the urgent need of discipline in our ranks, saying it is only with united effort and faith in our destiny that we shall be able to translate Pakistan of our dream into reality. He advised the nation that every Musalman should serve Pakistan honestly, sincerely and selflessly.
If we want to realise his grand and just vision, we as a united nation will have to galvanise ourselves into action as it is only with unremitting vigour, renewed commitment and unwavering dynamism that we can make his dream come true. We have to strive hard and ceaselessly to make Pakistani nation that has rediscovered the spirit of its historic struggle for freedom and honour and dignity, underpinned by faith, unity and discipline.
In view of the geo-political situation, regional crises and machinations of internal and external anti-Pakistan elements against the national security it is high time to make united, determined and courageous endeavours for the prosperity of the country and further strengthening its defence.
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