The Founder of Pakistan's Gujarati Hindu connection...

[SL Mandowara]

Roots of Muhammed Ali Jinnah...

Here are some interesting facts on the Lohana roots of Mohammad Ali Jinnah the founding father of Pakistan.

-He is the grandson of Premjibhai Thakkar (Gondal), a Lohana, who, to support his family, entered into the trading of fish in the coastal town of Veraval Gujarat).

His business, however, clashed with the strong (vegetarian) moral ethics of the Lohanas and as a result he was ostracized from the community.

He made enough money in this trade and attempted to rejoin the community. He also discontinued the fishing business. However, the Lohana leaders did not accept his request to rejoin the community.

-Premjibhai's son Punjalal Thakkar (Jinnah' s father) was enraged at his father's humiliation and reacted like any other Lohana - with equal and opposite force. He adopted Islam and changed the names of all his four sons. However, he continued to use his Gujarati nickname: Zino (pronounced Jinno in old fashioned Gujarati) which means 'skinny.'

-Jinno`s son, Muhammed Ali, changed his family name to Jinnah - the nickname of his converted father.

-Jinnah's first marriage in 1892 was the result of his mother urging him to marry his cousin Emibai before he left for England to pursue higher studies. However, Emibai died a few months later. His second marriage took place in 1918 to Rattanbai Petit, a Parsi lady who was 24 years his junior. Rattanbai converted to Islam when she married Jinnah and took on the name Maryam Jinnah. In 1919, she gave birth to their only daughter, Dina Wadia.

-Dina was born to Muhammed Ali Jinnah and Maryam Jinnah in London in 1919 - shortly after midnight on August 15, 1919,  "Oddly enough, precisely twenty-eight years to the day and hour before the birth of Jinnah's other offspring, Pakistan.", as Stanley Wolpert' s "Jinnah of Pakistan" records.

-Dina had a rift with her father when she expressed her desire to marry a Parsi-born Indian, Neville Wadia.

-According to M C Chagla in "Roses in December" , Jinnah disowned his daughter after trying to dissuade her from marrying Neville. Dina Wadia is the only direct living link to Jinnah and the nation of Pakistan which claims her father as Father of their Nation.

-Dina's descendants, including her son Nusli Wadia, who runs Bombay Dyeing, are part of the Wadia family and reside in India as she married and stayed in India after the partition of India. 

Possibly there would have been no Pakistan, if only the Lohana leaders had not had inflated egos and had allowed Premjibhai Thakkar to come back into their community !

 

S.L. Mandowara