Person1876 – 1948

Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Also called: Quaid-e-Azam

Leader of the All-India Muslim League who led the creation of Pakistan as a separate Muslim state and became its first governor-general

Born to a merchant family in Karachi, he qualified as a barrister in London. At first he worked in the Congress and was called the "ambassador of Hindu–Muslim unity", but he drifted away in opposition to Gandhi’s mass agitation. In the 1930s he revived the Muslim League and advanced the "two-nation theory" that Muslims formed a separate nation, demanding Pakistan in the Lahore Resolution of 1940. He became Pakistan’s first governor-general in 1947 but died of tuberculosis the following year. Pakistanis honour him as Quaid-e-Azam, "Great Leader".

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1 related event

  1. 1
    1942 – 1944Quit India Movementrelated figure

    During the Second World War the Congress demanded that Britain leave India at once and launched a mass campaign. Gandhi and the leadership were arrested immediately and the movement was crushed, but British rule became harder to sustain.

People who appear alongside

  • Mahatma Gandhi1869 – 1948

    Leader of the Indian independence movement who resisted British rule through non-violent civil disobedience grounded in satyagraha ("holding to truth")

  • Jawaharlal Nehru1889 – 1964

    Indian National Congress leader who carried the call for complete independence at Lahore in 1929 and became independent India’s first prime minister (1947–1964)

Themes this person appears in

  • National Movements in Asia and Africa1915 – 1948

    From the Hussein–McMahon correspondence to the founding of Israel — three decades in which India, West Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa, swept up in the tide of self-determination after the First World War, pressed toward independence and modernization