Jinnah: The Burden of Leadership

by Lawrence Ziring

Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s capacity to overwhelm his staunchest adversaries is observed in the comments of Ved Mehta, a perceptive contemporary writer on the South Asian scene. Mahatama Gandhi, according to Mehta, was presented with his greatest challenge by Muhammad Ali Jinnah. None of the other personalities that sought to test his resolve, whether British, Boer or Indian, either deflected him from his purpose or threatened his will. Jinnah, however, caused Gandhi to search his innermost thoughts, to make himself “potent – physically, mentally and spiritually” so as to be able ‘to vanquish Muhammad Ali Jinnah” and foil his plans for partition and a free Pakistan state.1 Gandhi, of course, failed to either blunt Jinnah’s popularity or dim his determination. Hundreds of millions of human beings would be drawn to Gandhi, tens of millions would dedicate their lives to him, and thousands would die for him, but Jinnah was singularly unimpressed. And Gandhi knew it. Indeed, he understood that in Jinnah he had faced his ultimate test and had lost. Mehta sums up this decisive confrontation as follows:-