By Michael Fathers
Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Pakistan's founder and Quaid-i-Azam, or great leader, was the exact opposite of Gandhi. Cosmopolitan, a successful and wealthy barrister, a fastidious dresser, alone and aloof, speaking mostly English, Jinnah dismissed his great rival as "that Hindu revivalist." He was appalled by Gandhi's mass agitation campaigns because they were illegal and unconstitutional, appealed to popular emotion and, in Jinnah's eyes, led only to chaos and division. His personality demanded a cool, cerebral response, working through legal and constitutional channels to bring about an end to British rule.
His icy determination galvanized a community into following him toward his goal, Pakistan. It was the same determination, seen this time as obduracy, that so infuriated Gandhi, Nehru and Louis Mountbatten, Viceroy of India, who eventually accepted the division of Britain's greatest imperial possession into two sovereign countries--Pakistan and India. "Failure is a word unknown to me," Jinnah once commented.
