He was 41 when he fell in love madly with the 16-year-old daughter
of his friend Sir Dinshaw Petit. It is said that lover-lawyer argued his case
with Dinshaw by first asking him innocuously his view on inter-community
marriages. Once the liberal Parsi Dinshaw had gushed proclaiming
inter-community marriages were the best way to solve the spreading communal
hatred in India, his friend pleaded his case "Give me your daughter
Ratanbhai's hand in marriage and live by your words on inter-community marriages".
Dinshaw was aghast and refused the proposal tooth and nail. So the lovers
decided to wait. Ratanbhai was from one of the most respected Parsi families in
India and was the only daughter of Dinshaw Petit (scion of the cotton mill
empire) and Sylla Tata (sister of JRD).
Two years later,
the day Ratanbhai aka Ruttie turned 18, she packed her bags and left her dad's
house to marry Mohammed Ali Jinnah. It is said that those were the days Jinnah
laughed a lot and was a romantic in love with his life. However, his first love-
power soon returned to take Ratanbhai's place and he was once again fighting
Nehru for the position of the supreme leader of India. Initially, the fight was
within Congress. The liberal-secular Jinnah gelled in well and was soon one of
the leading leaders of Indian National Congress. His tough schedule and
obsession for power took the toll on his relationship with is wife and in the
course of time, Ratanbhai left his side and his home.
Chroniclers of Taj
Mahal Palace Mumbai will tell you that every day Jinnah climbed the central
staircase to reach the top floor suite room to visit his beloved Ruttie when
she was on her death bed. She stayed in the hotel since she had left both her
father's and her husband's homes and was too proud to go back. The first ever
attached bathroom of Taj Mahal Palace hotel was built for Ruttie since she
couldn't walk to the bathroom area.
Ratanbhai died at
an age of 29 leaving Jinnah with their daughter Dina. Jinnah soon came out of
the grief of losing his wife and busied himself with political work and his
successful legal practice. However, he soon realised that he did not have any
future in INC with Nehru in his way. A devastated Jinnah went on a political
sabbatical. He moved to London with his daughter and soon established a successful
legal practice there.
Political power
was his first love and it was impossible for Jinnah to keep away from it. He
returned but this time as the orthodox head of a religious party: Muslim
league. The ideals of the party he now represented were at 180 degrees to what
Jinnah the individual believed in. That didn't matter to him; he saw an
opportunity to be the supreme leader through Muslim league and that's all that
mattered to him. He dusted out the idea of creation of a state for Muslim
community covering 5 Northern Indian provinces: Punjab-NWFP(Afghan)-KashmIr-Sindh-BalochisTAN,
a thesis put forward to him by a Cambridge student Rahmat Ali earlier; an idea
he himself had rejected in his secular days. The thesis suddenly presented to
him an opportunity to be the supreme leader of a state.
While Jinnah was
trying to create history, history was repeating itself in his life. His
daughter Dina fell in love with a Parsi Neville Wadia. The father by then was
deep into the act of proving himself as a pious Muslim and won't let the
inter-community marriage come in his way. Dina, like her mother, left her
father and packed off with Wadia. Neville Wadia had then just started a trading
firm called Bombay Burmah trading company. The company did well and soon
metamorphosed into a clutch of enterprises. The Wadia group today is chaired by
Dina's son Nusli Wadia and owns Britannia, Bombay Dyeing, GoAir among others.
When India became
independent, Jinnah flew to Islamabad alone leaving Bombay and his daughter's
family forever. It is said that he visited his beloved Ruttie's grave in Mumbai
with her favorite red roses on the day he flew out to the country he created
leaving everything he had.
Next: Parsi Elite of Bombay Part 2: The Phantom of Bombay House
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