Sir: When Jinnah left India on August 7, 1947, Vallabhai Patel said, ‘The poison had been removed from the body of India’. But, the Quaid said, ‘The past has been buried and let us start afresh as two independent sovereign States’. In his interview with General Ismay, Chief of Staff to the Viceroy, he told a story of two litigant brothers (one being Jinnah’s client). They hated each other as poison. `Two years later Mr Jinnah met his client and asked how he was getting on and how was his brother, and he said: ‘oh, once the case was decided, we became the greatest friends’. Till his last breath, the Quaid remained an ardent supporter of rights of minorities as equal citizens of Pakistan. Our ministers and other dignitaries shun rituals and customs of minorities. But, the Quaid participated in Christmas celebrations in December 1947 as a guest of the Christian community. He declared: ‘I am going to constitute myself the Protector General of Hindu minority in Pakistan’. One member of his post-partition cabinet was a Hindu. A Jewish scholar, Mohammad Asad, who embraced Islam, held important positions in post-partition period in Pakistan. Many ‘religious’ scholars copy from his works copiously. Immediately after independence, Jinnah sent a telegram to Sir George Cunningham, inviting him to resume his vacated post as Governor General North West Frontier Province. Just before his death, he proposed a joint defence pact with India. MOHAMMAD SA’AD MALIK Rawalpindi Published in Daily Times, February 5th 2018.