‘Gandhi’s coterie did not let Dalmia prevail upon Jinnah on Partition’
Dalmia and Jinnah, though not pitted against each other, were both tragic casualties caught in a war of unequals.
Qaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah (18761948) and Ramkrishna Dalmia (1893 to 1978) were both iconoclasts of the last century, born seventeen years apart, had developed an unlikely friendship of polar opposites, bound by stark dissimilarities, not least of which was a deep religious divide.
A fascinating study in contrasts, linked together by their abiding love for their motherland and a common loathing for Jawaharlal Nehru, they were both in their own right, vital players in the fight for freedom from the British in the last century.
Jinnah was born in Karachi to a wealthy Khoja Muslim textile merchant on Christmas Day. A Vaishnav Bania by birth, Dalmia came into this world in Chirawa, a desert village of Rajasthan.
Jinnah hated his studies, Mathematics being his vilest bug-bear, whereas Dalmia’s Marwari brain with finance a vital part of his genetic mapping, was a natural mathematical wizard.
Dalmia had little formal education, having schooled in local vernacular institutes for short stints. Jinnah, who was given to playing hooky during school hours for secret horse-riding jaunts, was sent to London to study law where he acquired a barrister’s degree, along with the finesse of a British aristocrat that he wore proudly on his sleeve till the day he died.
While Dalmia set out with a brass lota and blanket, in search of his fortune, from the dusty tracks of his primitive village, to the enticing city of Calcutta that would help him realise his dream, Jinnah was honing his acting skills with local theatre groups that staged plays by Shakespeare, a passion he indulged for long years of his stay in England.
Both Dalmia and Jinnah married early. Jinnah at 15, on the eve of his departure to London, married a nubile 14-year-old Parsi girl, EmiBai of Paneli. His parents erroneously believed that this would ensure his return to India after he finished his studies. Dalmia at 11 was wed to Narbada, a child bride from Nawalgarh, who was a year older than him. EmiBai died a few months after Jinnah left for London, of unknown causes and Narbada succumbed to tuberculosis 18 months after she was wed.
Jinnah was known to be an avid meat eater. The choicest fare of pork and beef adorned his ostentatious table for every meal in his sprawling colonial home. He smoked expensive Cuban cigars and made no pretense of his scorn for anything that was less refined. His penchant for the finest Bordeaux and all things Italian in his sartorial choices was hardly in sync with his base demand for a state that purported to be only for the disciples of Islam. A far cry from the garb of his Muslim brethren, dressed in his sharp linen suits with his signature monocle, he neither looked nor behaved like any of them, styling himself on colonial aristocrats native to the very country from which they sought release.
Dalmia, on the other hand, was a staunch Hindu who abhorred the killing of animals for food. He worshipped the Goddess Durga and modelled his life on the lines of ancient Vedic kings. A man in a hurry, he strove for salvation by purporting to redeem his earthly karmic debt in the span of one lifetime. Bordering on megalomania, he believed he was the last avatar of a paigamber and his mission on earth was to deliver mankind of all sin. He wore only khadi and practised his own brand of high thinking and simple living, albeit in the confines of his many mansions spread over acres of prime land across the country, with his many wives.
With no formal education to boast of, he had pinnacled the heights of fame, earning the title of “Silver King” after his spectacular success in the bullion forward trade. He soon assumed the position of the second richest man in the country, after the Birlas.
An inveterate gambler, he believed in breaking all rules of man and god, which he did with impunity. But fate betrayed him when his last gamble went horribly wrong and proved to be his undoing, after which Nehru, his most rabid detractor, did him in.
To quote Khushwant Singh, “Having risen like a meteor on the Indian firmament in a blaze of glory, he was soon reduced to ashes of ignominy in a prison, unfairly convicted of fraud.”
Despite his liberal religious sanction, Jinnah was a monogamist. An introverted loner, not inclined to the company of women, he married his much younger second wife, a Parsi lady of high breeding, 18-year-old Ratti Bai Dinshaw years after his return to India.
Unlike Jinnah, Dalmia was a flagrant polygamist also by religious sanction. A man with a heightened libido on the quest for the perfect woman and male child, he took six wives who bore him 18 children, out of which six were males.
Jinnah had only one child, a girl by the name of Dina who married a wealthy Parsi industrialist, Neville Wadia. She stayed back in India after the country was torn apart by Partition. She was the only one of Jinnah’s kin who was not present to witness the hoisting of their national flag while the jubilant people of Pakistan would hail him as Quaid-e-Azam, the father of their nation.
Dalmia’s friendship with Jinnah, the Muslim pariah, a man who scorned all convention was much maligned. But unmindful of the treacherous anti-Hindu tag that had stuck to Dalmia, he never failed to advise him as a true friend, often admonishing him for his incongruous fanaticism and rigidity.
Contrary to what rumourmongers decreed, Jinnah’s sister Fatima, a reticent, unobtrusive, self effacing woman was not the binding factor between her brother and Dalmia, the two men in her life. Despite being tarnished by accusations of an amorous liaison with the Muslim woman, who was freely accessible to Dalmia, and given his propensity for sexual adventure, the friendship of the two men withstood the test of time and Fatima left India with her brother, a single and unattached woman, never to return.
In the highly charged atmosphere of the country in the 1930s thick with reverberating cries for self-rule, Dalmia and Jinnah had come together on a common platform, striking up a promising bond of patriotic fervour. Both were passionate about freeing India.
Dalmia believed that Jinnah was a man of towering vanity and unassailable personal honesty, therefore completely incorruptible and his claim for the highest post of Prime Minister of undivided India was justified. Even though Dalmia harboured personal ambitions of becoming a political leader, he unabashedly supported Jinnah’s demand to become the first Prime Minister of a free nation, a futile exercise that not only angered the powerful clique, but also led to his ultimate destruction, on the instance of a smarting and revengeful Jawaharlal Nehru.
Jinnah trusted Dalmia implicitly and it may be injudicious to suggest that he could have succeeded in getting Jinnah to withdraw his demand for a separate Muslim state; but Dalmia being Dalmia, deserved at least one chance to prevail upon his unyielding friend. Unfortunately, the coterie around Mahatma Gandhi, which included Nehru and the last Viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, forcibly stymied it and India was mercilessly sliced into two before being handed over to her people.
Jinnah departed from Indian soil on the eve of independence, a triumphant 71-year-old, carrying with him the burden of a fiercely guarded secret that could have changed the course of history. His lungs ravaged by virulent tuberculosis, he was flying out to his newly formed homeland Pakistan that he would lead for a very short time before his illness slayed him.
On the eve of that glorious day, the nation gripped with euphoria, waited for Nehru’s first address to the people of a free India from the ramparts of the historic Lal Quila. Not far from the sacred precincts of that Fort, on the lawns of Jinnah’s erstwhile home, which Dalmia had bought from his departing friend, after his last ditch effort to prevent partition had been foiled, he hoisted a green flag, symbolic of his vociferous demand for the nationwide ban of cow-slaughter.
A quirky paradox indeed, for Jinnah who had flayed every rule in the book that defined the tenets of Islam, to have insisted on extorting a separate state for his fellow-men and then to have sold his last claim on Indian soil to Dalmia, his dearest and only Hindu ally.
Dalmia would not even wait for the ink on the sale document to dry before hoisting the symbolic flag of his passionate mission.
Dalmia and Jinnah though not pitted against each other, were both tragic casualties caught in a war of unequals.
One despite his supreme monetary power and whole hearted support to the Congress party in their struggle for freedom, could do little to prevent the bloodiest genocide recorded in the history of mankind or his own subsequent annihilation; and the other, succumbed to a losing battle with an incurable disease, as the short-lived leader of the Muslim state of his own making.
While the truth lies interred in the dust-laden cenotaphs of history that have faded into oblivion with passing time, the winners who chronicled this shall continue to propagate the tales of their victory and valour for the world to review and the names of Dalmia and Jinnah, tied together by their aberrant pasts shall continue to evoke controversy and opprobrium, until they are forgotten. Ramkrishna Dalmia was the first Indian owner of the Times of India. Archana Dalmia is the daughter of Ramkrishna Dalmia. An elected member of the All India Congress Committee, she heads their grievance cell.
Dalmia deserved at least one chance to prevail upon Jinnah. Unfortunately, the coterie around Gandhi — Nehru and Mountbatten — stymied it. Dalmia supported Jinnah’s demand to become the first Prime Minister of a free nation, a futile exercise that not only angered the powerful clique, but also led to his ultimate destruction, on the instance of a smarting and revengeful Nehru. Contrary to what rumour-mongers decreed, Jinnah’s sister Fatima, a reticent, unobtrusive, self effacing woman, was not the binding factor between her brother and Dalmia, the two men in her life.