Fatima Jinnah (left), Muhammad Ali Jinnah (middle), and Dina Jinnah (right) (Photo: National Archives, Islamabad)
The Irony of Fate – All of Jinnah’s Heirs are Indians!
Mustofa Khalid Ovi –
Once upon a time, there lived a Brahmin Hindu fish vendor, named Meghjibhai Tagore, in a village called Paneli Moti in the State of Gujarat in India. He had a successful business and earned a lot of money. Looking at his success, the local priests started criticizing why a Brahmin would be involved in a fishing business! Then one day all of a sudden, he was outcasted from all sorts of social and religious activities because of his business and consumption of fish.
Being under intense pressure, Meghjibhai wrapped up his fishing business and tried to comply with the priests’ demands. Yet he and his family members were kept as outcasted. Being infuriated with such treatment, one of Meghjibhai’s sons, Punjalal Tagore, along with his 4 sons converted to Islam and migrated to Bombay (now Mumbai). We all know his second son, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
This article is not about Muhammad Ali Jinnah. It is about his only heir and daughter Dina Jinnah.
Dina was born on 15th August 1919 to Jinnah and Rattanbai, who belonged to a wealthy Parsi family and later converted to Islam during her marriage. At the age of 19, Dina fell in love with a Parsi man named Neville Ness Wadia, an heir to the wealthy Wadia family. Though Jinnah himself got married to a non-Muslim, he could never accept the fact that his daughter would marry a non-Muslim. Jinnah was going to be the all in all of the Muslim state, Pakistan. Hence it was a big shock to him. Going against her father’s wish, Dina married Wadia in 1938.
This marriage did not last long and the couple got separated in 1943. However, they never formally got divorced because divorce was not legalized in India at that time. After the separation, Dina started living in Bombay at her father’s house with her children Nusil Wadia and Diana Wadia.
Later after the partition and independence in 1947, lots of people started migrating from one side to the another. Being the mighty Governor General of the newly formed Pakistan, Jinnah asked his daughter Dina to come to Karachi to live with him. Denying her father’s wish once again, Dina asked, “What about my mother? Can you take her grave to Pakistan from Bombay?” She clearly stated that she would not leave India. Till her death, Dina always used to say, “Bombay is my city”. Dina visited Pakistan only a few times – first in 1948 during her father’s funeral and then twice to meet her aunt Fatima Jinnah who took care of her after the death of her mother. Her last visit to Pakistan was in 2004 when she was accompanied by her son Nusli Wadia and grandsons Jehangir and Ness. During her stay in Pakistan, she visited the mausoleum of Jinnah, the Mazar of Fatima Jinnah, Flagstaff House, and Wazir Mansion, the birthplace of Jinnah. She also attended an ODI cricket match between Pakistan and India in Lahore.
Dina’s only son and Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s only grandson Nusli Wadia is an Indian billionaire businessman and the chairman of the Wadia Group, an Indian conglomerate. His two children are Ness Wadia and Jehangir Wadia, both involved in the family businesses. Ness is also the co-owner of the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket team Punjab Kings.
It is such an irony of fate – Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah whose continuous fight, struggle, and diplomacy gave birth to a separate Muslim nation named Pakistan, none of his bloodlines live in Pakistan. All of his heirs are Indians.
Mustofa Khalid Ovi is a Master’s student at the department of Physics and Astrophysics at the University of Delhi, India
