Daily Times

As Mohammad Ali Jinnah walked into the Viceregal Lodge in Delhi to meet its new tenant, Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas Mountbatten, on April 5, 1947, history will always record that he was haughty and disdainful. Earl Mountbatten of Burma, as he was called, was a cousin of the King of England, and had only spent a couple of weeks on his new job that gave him absolute command over one-fifth of mankind. Jinnah was almost at the end of his patience. Ostensibly, Lord Minto was the first Viceroy he met in a Muslim League delegation in 1906, led by Aga Khan III, when the party did not have sufficient credibility, but was yet clamouring for assurances that in any political reforms they would be protected from an ‘unsympathetic majority’.

More than one hundred and ten years later, that stance is being validated with every passing day.

Mountbatten was the tenth viceroy Jinnah was meeting over the space of over forty years,almost entirely with the same set of arguments. There was a gap of a quarter century between the ages of the two men. Mountbatten was six years old when the All India Muslim League was formed, and Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah, Aga Khan III, had met Lord Minto. He had been only ten when during a parliamentary debate Jinnah clashed directly with Lord Minto when the latter objected to his using the word ‘cruelty’ in relation to the attitude of the British in South Africa, provoking Jinnah to say that he was inclined to use much stronger language.

On that April 1947 day, that particular exchange may not have figured in Jinnah’s thoughts. What was of greater significance was his agreement with the terms of the Cabinet Mission in 1946,whose proposals were rejected by the All India National Congress, and more specifically,by Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister of the interim government of India. Perhaps Nehru felt his acceptance would strengthen Sir Stafford Cripps’ chances of becoming the last Viceroy, while he was actively lobbying for the appointment of Louis Mountbatten. And what Mountbatten could not have guessed then, Jinnah had another thing on his mind.

Tuberculosis was just about to take his life in a year or two as his trusted Parsi physician had informed him. It turned out to be the best-kept secret in India during that year. Come what may, Jinnah was now determined to get Pakistan, as soon as practicable, and guide its destiny until fate would allow him to do so.

The first meeting was therefore a disaster. While Gandhi, Nehru and Patel were all thrilled at the appointment of Louis Mountbatten, and expected the best possible consideration from him, Jinnah was naturally both wary and weary towards the new Viceroy. It was only a group photo of his with Louis and Edwina Mountbatten that helped to break the ice, but his main message was sent across. Pakistan had to come into being! Actually, this was agreed to by all the leaders of India’s main political parties less than two months later in what came to be known as the ‘June 3 Plan’.

“If I had only known all this at the time, the course of history would have been different. I would have delayed the granting of independence for several months. There would have been no Pakistan.”

What was in fact not in the plan was the date for India’s independence. There was a lot of work required to be done prior to independence in order to ensure that the partition proceeded smoothly. Unfortunately, the vainglorious Mountbatten, who had the mandate to grant Indian independence by June 30, 1948, was guided by his personal ambitions. He hoped to continue on as Governor-General of the two independent dominions of India and Pakistan after relinquishing the Viceregal appointment that gave him more powers than the president of the USA who ruled or the king of Great Britain who reigned. He both ruled and reigned.

Therefore, when specifically, a correspondent asked Mountbatten about this date during his press conference, his mind went into a twirl. On the one hand, the date had not been fixed, yet he wanted to show that he was no weakling like his predecessor Lord Wavell, who had the British Secretary of State for India breathing down his neck. So to announce a date there became an imperative in an attempt to show that he was fully in charge. He remembered the day the Japanese had surrendered to him in Burma, and announced August 15, 1947 as the day for Indian independence and the creation of Pakistan. The date proved to be a disaster.

More than a million people would die, specifically on both sides of the line dividing the states of Punjab and Bengal, and generally, all over India because of the hasty move of preponing the date by ten months. The greatest travesty of all was that people in Punjab and Bengal would not know to which country they belonged until a few days after independence. Many would perish in the fires lit after the announcement of that unfortunate award. More importantly, India and Pakistan would never be friends thereafter, and would need to sacrifice their human development needs to address their existential threats.

It is also common knowledge now that Mountbatten and Jinnah had a bitter verbal duel when the latter refused to accept him as Governor-General of Pakistan. Irked by Jinnah’s rejection, Mountbatten yelled, “Do you know what this decision may cost you?” to which Jinnah replied, “Yes, a few thousand square miles.” Mountbatten retorted, “You may lose the whole of Pakistan.” All of this is on record in the India Office Library in London.

While on August 14, 1947, Mountbatten hoped, in his speech to the Constituent Assembly in Karachi,that Pakistan may live long he was working exactly towards the opposite in his own actions, guided by Prime Minister Nehru,and more significantly, his wife Edwina. Both husband and wife had low and erratic morals. While close to the fortieth anniversary of his assassination a few weeks ago, the American FBI has pointed to the evidence of Mountbatten’s lust for young boys,and his emotional devastation due to his wife’s love affairs were already well known. Suffice it to say that Pakistan was stifled at birth by an unscrupulous couple that would go to any lengths to pacify Nehru.

It is generally believed that still nursing his bruised ego, Louis Mountbatten gave a parting kick to Pakistan by tampering with the Radcliffe Award, in complicity with his military secretary Lord Ismay and Private Secretary Sir George Abell, and handed over Punjab’s Gurdaspur district to India, giving the latter a passage to Kashmir. Conscious of the Mountbattens’ amorous and political liaisons, Jinnah refused to intervene on a matter of principle, while Sir Cyril Radcliffe simply tore up the cheque containing his fees.

Jinnah’s main concern was the safety of the people and later, the refugees, although the migration of the minority populations was not foreseen in the ‘Partition Plan’.It was Mountbatten’s policies alone that made such a massive movement inevitable. Furthermore, the animosity between the two new dominions of the British Commonwealth was cemented by the struggle for Kashmir and would continue over seven decades later. Today, after 72 years, the whole world is taking greater cognizance of Jinnah’s correct apprehension as they watch the unparalleled ethnic cleansing and prejudices of India.

But let us go back in time. Dr Jal Ratanji Patel was a highly knowledgeable and a well-decorated Indian physician; he was Jinnah’s friend, and attended to him for his tuberculosis and other health problems. Dr Patel was a professor of pharmacology and therapeutics, and was later the dean at the prestigious Grant Medical College in Bombay. Some of my senior most teachers were amongst his students.

The other person involved in the ‘secret’ was Patel’s fellow Zoroastrian and radiologist, Dr Jal Daeboo. Both kept the medical files and X-ray films of Jinnah so confidential that neither the intelligence agencies nor the political parties had any knowledge of the illness. Pakistan perhaps owes its existence to the professional ethics of these two gentlemen.

It was much later when Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre were researching for their book Freedom at Midnightduring the early 1970sthat Dr Patel shared the confidential file with them.It was titled “M A Jinnah”; the X-ray film was sealed in an unmarked envelope, as mentioned by Dr Daeboo’s daughter, Homi. Jinnah was virtually under a death sentence while he went about bravely arguing his case for Pakistan at all forums with dignity and honour.

Lapierre would later recall: “One day we showed [Mountbatten] a report of our meeting with the Indian doctor who, in 1947, had treated the founder of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Reading it made him blanch suddenly. ‘I can’t believe it!’ he gasped. ‘Good God’. When he looked up again, the blue eyes that were usually so calm were shrinking with intense emotion. He swiped the air several times with our sheets of paper. ‘If I had only known all this at the time, the course of history would have been different. I would have delayed the granting of independence for several months. There would have been no Pakistan. Pakistan would not have existed. India would have remained united. Three wars would have been avoided.'” What the Earl didn’t know then was that both countries were well on their way to becoming nuclear powers.

So Jinnah got his coveted dream of Pakistan but there was one duty to perform. Alone as ever and immaculately dressed while all journalists searched for him all over Bombay, he remained seated, upright on a wooden bench for three-four hours, gazing silently, at the tombstone of his departed wife until it started getting dark. He silently conveyed to Ruttie Jinnah that he had fulfilled his ambition and vision of the ‘promised land’, which he had often discussed with her during her lifetime.

Jinnah landed in Karachi on the August 7, 1947, and literally worked himself to death, knowing better than anyone the fragile nature of his health due to tuberculosis. It was such a well-guarded secret that even his sister who lived with him had no inkling, and found out about it only at the end of July 1948.

Jinnah worked beyond his mandate. He presided over cabinet meetings, and guided the people now leading the country, never disguising his disappointment when they performed poorly. He went to Lahore where refugees had poured in. According to his official biographer, Hector Bolitho, he went to Lahore looking sixty and came back after a few weeks looking eighty. He had lost weight as well.

It is amazing and a credit to Jinnah’s craving for privacy that while precious little is known about his early life, the trend seems to have persisted even when he was apparently under the glare of significant publicity as the founder Governor-General of Pakistan. His last official event was the inauguration of the State Bank of Pakistan on July 1, 1948. And it was not until a whopping 20 days later that the secretary general of the cabinet ordered a physician to report in Ziarat for a patient. When the doctor asked him who the patient was, he was told it was Quaid-e-Azam.

No one will ever know what transpired in those 20 days. It is true that there was no medication for tuberculosis at that time; the first vials of Streptomycin were sent to Pakistan courtesy of our ambassador in the USA, M A HIspahani, to treat the founder of Pakistan. But who advised a pulmonary compromised person to travel to a hill station and make his breathing even more laboured will remain an unanswered question.

Colonel Illahi Bakhsh, belonging to the elite Indian medical service, equivalent of the Indian Civil Service in the sector of health, reached Ziarat on July 23, 1948, on the orders of Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, secretary general of the cabinet. Certain preliminary tests performed by his team confirmed pulmonary tuberculosis. On September 12, one day after our own 9/11 in 1948, the seemingly brave colonel would burst out crying as he heard a narrative of the funeral of the most distinguished citizen and the Great Leader of Pakistan over radio. Tuberculosis had struck once again and taken away the best of us.

In 1949, ColonelBakhshwould write a book on his experiences in Ziarat, Quetta, and Karachi with Quaid-e-Azam. In a few months’ time, it was banned.

In 1976, on the occasion of the centenary of Pakistan’s foremost founding father, Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto advised the Quaid-i-Azam Academy to publish some books. The ban on the colonel’s book was withdrawn yet mysteriously revealed very little. Fatima Jinnah’s book My Brother was also allowed publication, but only after two of its pages had been censored for being against the ideology of Pakistan. Those two pages are now quite well read having been published in another book.

Without dwelling too much on the uncomfortable details, the only thing that came out clearly in the two books was thetrust deficit between the Governor-General and his prime minister. The day after the prime minister and the secretary general of the cabinet came unannounced to see the Governor-General, Jinnah didn’t want to live anymore. There were tears in his eyes, signalling to Illahi Bakhsh that he was losing his patient. On 9/11, Military Secretary Colonel Birnie came to the airport with an ambulance that lacked either fuel or a nurse. Earlier, he had called the prime minister and told him not to come to the aerodrome. There was nobody else from the government of Pakistan. Under whose orders was the military secretary working and why is not known even to this day.

ColonelIllahi Bakhsh has expressed his helplessness as the driver fiddled with the engine for about twenty minutes, but the ambulance would not start in the oppressive heat and flies around the refugee camps. His nurse, Sister Phyllis Dunham, later recalled how she found a piece of cardboard and fanned Jinnah’s face to keep the flies away. “I was alone with him for a few minutes and he made a gesture I shall never forget. He moved his arm free of the sheet, and placed his hand on my arm. He did not speak, but there was such a look of gratitude in his eyes. It was all the reward I needed, for anything I had done. His soul was in his eyes at that moment.”

The plane had landed at Mauripur at 4:15 pm. It took two hours to reach the Government House. At around 9:45 pm, the colonel said reassuringly to Quaid-e-Azam, “Sir, we have given you an injection to strengthen you, and it will soon have effect. God willing, you are going to live.” True to his spirit, Jinnah shook his head and said faintly, “No, I am not.” Jinnah never spoke again. A few minutes later, he passed away. It remained for the unfortunate nation, kept in ignorance, to mourn his death. And the few who knew also wept with them.

As we observe the 71st death anniversary of our great leader, let us not forget the ravages of tuberculosis in our own national life. But for tuberculosis the course of our national life could have been much different, the foundations of the state laid along solid lines.It is a problem that we swept under the carpet for too long, and finally accepted it less than two decades ago. Even today, tuberculosisaffects over 500,000, and kills 58,000 of our countrymen every year. Although it can affect anybody, it is essentially a disease of poverty that further perpetuates poverty. We have pledged to address this public health menace in a summit meeting at the United Nations held in September 2018. Let us proceed to do so through more concrete affirmative action. If for no other reason, at least for the sake of our leader whom we will alwaysadmire and revere!

The writer is a senior public health specialist of Pakistan