Mr and Mrs Jinnah, The Marriage that Shook India by Sheela Reddy

 

Mr and Mrs Jinnah, The Marriage that Shook India by Sheela Reddy

A Marriage Made in Hell?

India is even today, a poor country with a per capita income which falls in the lower half among the comity of nations. In the first decades of the last century, it was not only poorer, but was also ravaged by the inequities of colonial rule, disease (remember the 1918 flu pandemic), religious tensions, the fall out of the first world war, not to speak of the political unrest arising out of an increasingly belligerent freedom struggle. Even in such times, a small fraction of the population, rich Parsis among them, lived a life of fabulous wealth, owning luxurious properties in London and the French Riviera, travelling the world often with their pets, pet attendants, nurses and ayahs, and living both within India and outside in famous, expensive hotels.

Ruttie Petit (later Jinnah) belonged to such a family. The Petits owned several textile mills. M. A. Jinnah, the son of a bankrupt small time business man, rose to fabulous wealth, as a ‘Rolls Royce lawyer’ (his words) by combining his knowledge of law, with the timing of an actor (Gandhi, Rajmohan in Understanding the Muslim Mind) in the Bombay High Court. These were altogether different times when girls matured early, and could write letters about unrequited love when barely into their teens. Under such circumstances, it was not unnatural, though it was unusual, for a nearly forty year old Jinnah to fall in love with 14 year old Ruttie Petit. That he was a Muslim, and Ruttie a Parsi complicated life, and their marriage led to Ruttie’s excommunication from Parsi society.

This book, a conjoined biography of M.A. and Ruttie Jinnah provides the intimate details of their life together. The author has accessed a goldmine of correspondence carried on by Sarojini Naidu with her children (mainly her daughters, Padmaja and Leilamani), and Ruttie. There is enough in this book to give us a glimpse into the life of Sarojini. We have heard of Sarojini as the poet, the ‘nightingale of India’, though the naturalist M. Krishnan has a dim view of her poems (Guha, Ramachandra Ed., Nature’s Spokesman M. Krishnan and Indian Wildlife). What this book reveals is the wealthy life Sarojini led, living permanently at the Taj in Bombay on a monthly rent basis, entertaining lavishly, travelling world over (and within India) first class, and all this with funds provided by her husband, who we are told ran ‘a household of modest means’ (page 286). This ‘modest household’ could fund the expense of one daughter’s education at Oxford, one son and one daughter’s addiction to drinks, and another son’s medical education in Berlin, where he checks himself into a sanatorium to undergo therapy at a ‘nerve clinic’! It was in such company in both India and Paris, that Ruttie, ignored by her ageing, grim, and humourless husband, alienated from her family, ‘found her feet among the idle rich set’ with ‘funds Jinnah uncomplainingly provided’ (author’s words).

However, to be fair to Ruttie, what were her options in life? She is portrayed as an intelligent, politically aware girl, who read voraciously, wrote well and aspired to be a published poet. But these were not times for a woman of intelligence- as most professions were barred for women, if not legally, at least culturally. She could have chosen to marry a rich conservative Parsi, and lived an idle life of partying, shopping, holidaying, and socializing, spending her husband’s money (like her mother, Lady petit did) with no connect to the outside world, which was in constant churn. Alternatively, she could marry Jinnah, and be close to the very man who was causing the churn. She chose the latter option. But alienation in her marriage set in soon enough, as Jinnah turned increasingly to Muslim politics, and his conservative followers, bearded Mullahs among them, would yield no place for a woman in their midst, specially one who dressed in transparent diaphanous sarees with sleeveless blouses to top it all. This drove her to a ‘deracinated’ life of partying, shopping, holidaying, and socializing, spending her husband’s money with no connect to the outside world. She really had no choice like the poet in O. Henry’s “Roads of Destiny”. Therein lay her tragedy. Ultimately she takes her own life, although her death is not recorded as such.

There is one question about Jinnah that has occupied the mindspace of this Reviewer. How much was he influenced by Nazi politics? His call for a ‘homeland for Muslims’ resonates so closely to the Nazi call for ‘lebensraum’ (literally living space) for Germans, which meant the expulsion of Jews, Gypsies, and the Slavic people from what Nazis considered their homeland. What the Nazis achieved partially before their obliteration, Jinnah (and his political progeny) achieved fully when they drove out Hindus and Sikhs from what they considered their Holy land (today’s pariah, Pakistan). However this question is perhaps beyond the scope of the present book which concludes with Ruttie’s death in 1928.

In short, this is an interesting book.

There is an interesting tidbit in this book about Motilal's daughter (later Vijayalakshmi Pandit). This young lady supposedly fell in love with a young Muslim journalist. Motilal the doyen of modernism in his heyday, panicked, and immediately sent his daughter to Mohandas' (later Mahatma Gandhi) ashram, and latter, the greatest proponent, of Hindu-Muslim unity was horrified at the prospect of such a union and advised the young lady to treat her paramour as a brother and practice celibacy (preferably for the rest of her life). Fortunately for the young lady, she was only amused about the bizarre goings-on in the Ashram. However the combined might of Motilal and the future Mahatma made her give up her first love and she later married a Maharashtrian brahmin, by whose surname we now know her. The contemporary proponents of the theory of love-jihad will be happy to know that they have such eminent forbearers.