13/07/2017
Some interesting facts about Jinnah:
~ He enjoyed playing billiards.
~ According to his daughter his favorite dish was rice and curry.
~ His wife was known as 'Flower of Bombay' because of her beauty.
~ Apart from being a lawyer he was also a stock investor.
~ He apparently liked smoking Craven A ci******es.
~ He liked living off well and he accepted it and was proud of it.
~ Jinnah was the youngest Indian of his time to study and pass law in 1896, this was when he was in his teens.
~ He wished to do theatre and did it for sometime as well while he went to study in UK at very young age, during that time he was once told to kiss an English girl in the cheeks for a play, this was a huge thing for an Indian back then to be able to do such a thing with an English girl because of community discrimination and because of the fact that they were ruling the subcontinent and very much the whole world. So innocently he wrote a letter to his father asking for his permission to which he strictly refused and hence Jinnah dropped the play compromising his dream.
~ There is no childhood photo available of him. There is only one official photo of his father and probably none of his mother.
~ He was disgusted and annoyed by his wife's dog who loved animals but ironically after she died he petted not one but 3 dogs of different breeds, probably it was because of some kind of guilt as his wife during the final years of her life used to remain upset as he couldn't give her time or maybe they just reminded him of her.
~ One young man, belonging to the Khaksars, a religious party, attempted to assassinate him on 26 July 1943. Armed with a knife he broke into Jinnah's home in Bombay and succeeded in wounding him before he was overpowered. Jinnah publicly appealed to his followers and friends to 'remain calm and cool' (as reported in Stanley Wolpert's Biography of Jinnah)
~ You can say that he was a wealthy man and he liked spending his money on himself and his lifestyle, however it is important to mention that he was not 'insanely' rich and nor did he owned enormous wealth like our current politicians of ruling elite with dozens of mansions, factories, businesses etc but he earned well and lived well and he wasn't ashamed of it. He was a self made man and that obvious affluence was self-created. What he owned was made legally, out of his skills as a lawyer and a private investor. By the early 1930s he was reportedly earning 40,000 rupees a month at the Bar alone which was an enormous sum at that time. However he also not spendthrift and used to spend his money very carefully till the end of his life as clear from many examples.
~ On one occasion in Bombay, when Jinnah was arguing a case in court, the British presiding judge interrupted him several times, exclaiming, 'Rubbish.' Jinnah responded: 'Your honour, nothing but rubbish has passed your mouth all morning.' Sir Charles Ollivant, judicial member of the Bombay provincial government, was so impressed by Jinnah that in 1901 he offered him permanent employment at 1,500 rupees a month. Jinnah declined, saying he would soon earn that amount in a day. Not too long afterwards he proved himself correct.
~ He never courted titles. He had refused a knighthood and even a doctorate from his favourite university: In 1942, when the Muslim University, Aligarh, had wished to award him an honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws, he refused saying: 'I have lived as plain Mr. Jinnah and I hope to die as plain Mr.Jinnah. I am very much averse to any title or honours and I will be more happy if there was no prefix to my name.'
~ 11th August speech was not the only speech he ever made in his life ;-)
