Jinnah Try asking any Pakistani to name the country’s most iconic woman and it will not take long to get the answer, Fatima Jinnah. It is the consequence of spending decades at the core of Pakistan’s foundational tale, and then continuing to be a part of it even after the story ends.
Fatima Jinnah was born in 1893 in Karachi. She studied dentistry at the University of Calcutta and became one of the few women from South Asia who entered any profession in that era, especially in sciences. In the 1920s, she established her own practice in Bombay, which in itself was a remarkable achievement at that time for any woman. From that perspective, she had already led a respectable life before entering into politics.
Then, her brother, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, became a widower, and Fatima Jinnah decided to take a decision which was going to shape her whole life ahead. She abandoned her practice and went to live with him, becoming his companion, confidant and ultimately his political partner. Her act of taking care of her widowed brother slowly developed into something much bigger, as she became his closest advisor during those days when the dream of Pakistan was yet an unfulfilled dream, still contested and uncertain.
The amount of effort that Fatima Jinnah gave to the struggle for independence can be easily underestimated owing to the fact that most of the work she carried out was in the shadow of her brother’s limelight. She went around with him everywhere and attended all the important political gatherings of the time, and at the same time she facilitated the involvement of women in the Muslim League.
She established the Women’s Muslim League and fought tenaciously to move women out of their domestic shells and into the realm of politics in the run-up to Partition. It wasn’t just an empty gesture; women who took part in public meetings, who campaigned, who championed the cause of Pakistan creation in their localities, did so largely due to the space opened up to them by Fatima Jinnah. She knew that a newly created nation required its entire people, not just half of them.
When Pakistan got independence in August 1947, she was standing next to her brother, known as Quaid-e-Azam, as one of the very few people who had been there to witness all of the hard work and effort that it took through the whole process. The loss of her brother less than a year after that in September 1948 would certainly have been enough to end any public career for her.
After Jinnah’s death, Fatima found herself playing a part of the custodian of his legacy in a nation yet unsure of itself. She fought hard for years to protect his legacy from the corrupting influence of politicians who, in her opinion, were twisting it to suit themselves. She spoke and wrote about her brother in many places, especially in her book My Brother, where she gave a highly personal and often contentious version of her life with him.
There is one thing that can be said about her from this time period. She did not settle to be a mere footnote in history books or a figure that would be paraded around for special occasions. She felt strongly about how the country of Pakistan was being run, and she to spoke out about it.
That openness to express herself led her to make the move that people remember her for challenging General Ayub Khan, who was the military dictator at that time, in the presidential elections held in 1965. According to political principles, this was a huge gamble. General Ayub had full control of the government, and the press was largely controlled by the regime, while the voting system in the country worked on the principle of basic democrats’ voting.
Fatima Jinnah went ahead with her bid regardless. Her campaign centered on bringing back parliamentary democracy and reducing the accumulation of power in the hands of the military elite. Her rallies attracted huge crowds, although she was old and despite all the structural weaknesses she had. Although she lost the election, there are a lot of questions surrounding its outcome among historians, yet the important thing is that an elderly woman had dared to stand up against a dictator.
Fatima Jinnah died in 1967, only two years after her participation in the elections. It is not her closeness to power or her participation in any single event, but rather an entire series of actions and decisions through her life that make her the most iconic woman in the country, from the decision to place the meaning of her existence above the comfort to not allowing herself to be cast into oblivion either because of her brother or any general.
Today she is known by the epithet ‘Madar-e-Millat’ of Pakistan. However, one might say the simple truth is that Fatima Jinnah did not just see the creation of Pakistan. She willed its birth into being and then spent her life fighting any memory of its ideals from slipping away.
