Quaid-e-Azam as a successful lawyer
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Edgar Snow, the well known American author, noted that even if
one only appraised Jinnah as a barrister, it would be to acknowledge that
he had won the most monumental judgment in the history of the bar. He
had recognized in the romantic ideal of Pakistan, a case that could be
fought and won. Lord Denning, the Master of Rolls, in fact, Master of
Rulings, had recalled with pleasure the fact that the Quaid-i-Azam, the
Founder of Pakistan, had been a member of Lincoln’s Inn. President Bill
Clinton during his visit to Pakistan in the year 2000 at the lunch given in
his honour by the Chief Executive remarked that Mr. Jinnah was the
greatest constitutional lawyer of the Common Wealth. Jinnah’s
outstanding career as a Counsel is beyond any cavil or controversy
whatsoever. In a Broadcast from B.B.C., Sir Stafford Cripps spoke of
him as “a most accomplished lawyer outstanding amongst Indian lawyers
and a fine constitutionalist.” Last but not least, one might recall the
opinion of Mahatma Gandhi, who, in his letter to Lord Birkenhead,
described Mr. Jinnah and Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru as the two cleverest
lawyers of India.
In about 1892, the General Manager of Graham Trading Co.,
Karachi, an Englishman, who was a great friend of Jinahbhai Poonja,
offered to admit his son, Mohammad Ali, in the Head Office of the
Company in London, as an apprentice for three years, where he could
learn practical business administration to enable him to join his father’s
firm on return from London. Around January, 1893, Jinnah sailed for
England. It seems that within three months of apprenticeship of the
British Business Company, Jinnah decided to study law
Born at Wazir Mansion in Karachi, Jinnah was trained as a barrister at Lincoln's Inn in London. Upon his return to British India, he enrolled at the Bombay High Court, and took an interest in national politics, which eventually replaced his legal practice. Jinnah rose to prominence in the Indian National Congress in the first two decades of the 20th century. In these early years of his political career, Jinnah advocated Hindu–Muslim unity, helping to shape the 1916 Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the All-India Muslim League, in which Jinnah had also become prominent. Jinnah became a key leader in the All India Home Rule League, and proposed a fourteen-point constitutional reform plan to safeguard the political rights of Muslims. In 1920, however, Jinnah resigned from the Congress when it agreed to follow a campaign of satyagraha, which he regarded as political anarchy.
By 1940, Jinnah had come to believe that Muslims of the Indian subcontinent should have their own state. In that year, the Muslim League, led by Jinnah, passed the Lahore Resolution, demanding a separate nation. During the Second World War, the League gained strength while leaders of the Congress were imprisoned, and in the elections held shortly after the war, it won most of the seats reserved for Muslims. Ultimately, the Congress and the Muslim League could not reach a power-sharing formula for the subcontinent to be united as a single state, leading all parties to agree to the independence of a predominantly Hindu India, and for a Muslim-majority state of Pakistan.