Tomorrow is the Royal Wedding and the rumour is that Priyanka Chopra may be a bridesmaid, which would be huge.
At any rate on our Pakistani Literati group this was circulated around and I found the initial bit about Quaid e Azam (personally using Jinnah is like using Holy Prophet without the PBUH; there is a sliver of me that is a parochial Paki) about wanting to be an actor is fascinating.
I find the trope of QeA not wanting Partition to be a tiring; then why didn’t the Master Negotiator back down from his demands if he found them so unreasonable. If QeA and his ilk hadn’t messed it up; the HM the Queen’s Bahu would have probably been a desi and Harry would have been short for Harinder!
How Pakistan ended up trapping Muhammad Ali Jinnah
Jinnah’s close friend Kanji Dwarkadas agreed that Jinnah was not in earnest in his demand for Pakistan. After a 90-minute talk with Jinnah on August 28, 1942, Kanji wrote: “Jinnah was not thinking in terms of Pakistan. Nor did he think of becoming the head of a new state of Pakistan. In fact, Jinnah never imagined that Pakistan would ever come into being.”
When Kanji asked Jinnah about Pakistan, the latter replied: “My dear Kanji, one gesture, one friendly gesture was all that I was asking for and it was not forthcoming from the Congress. If the Congress would make this gesture, the whole problem would not be difficult to solve.”
Feeling trapped into accepting a Pakistan he had no intention of creating, Jinnah was yet too proud to call it off. Instead, he put up a brave front, as he told a Hindu friend in Karachi, Hashoo Kewal Ramani, an industrialist: “Look here, I never wanted this damn Partition! It was forced upon me by Sardar Patel. And now they want me to eat humble pie and raise my hands in defeat.”
The Quaid-i-Azam was the role of a lifetime that Jinnah found hard to turn down. But once he took on and played the part so convincingly, the “mad mullahs and extremists”, as Jinnah disdainfully called them, made sure he would never slip out of it again, keeping him a “virtual prisoner in his palace” and censoring all lines that went contrary to the script they had in mind.
