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Mr and Mrs JINNAH The Marriage that Shook India Sheela Reddy 9780670086436 Books

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Mohammad Ali Jinnah was forty years old, a successful barrister and a rising star in the nationalist movement when he fell in love with pretty, vivacious Ruttie Petit, the daughter of his good friend, the fabulously rich baronet, Sir Dinshaw Petit, a prominent Parsi mill owner. But Ruttie was just sixteen and her outraged father forbade the match. But when Ruttie turned eighteen, they married and Bombay society, its riches and sophistication notwithstanding, was scandalized. Everyone sided with the Petits and Ruttie and Jinnah were ostracized. It was an unlikely union that few thought would last. But Jinnah, in his undemonstrative, reserved way was unmistakably devoted to his beautiful, wayward child-bride as proud of her fashionable dressing as he was of her intelligence, her wide reading and her fierce commitment to the nationalist struggle. Ruttie, on her part, worshipped him and could tease and cajole the famously unbending Jinnah, whom so many people found intimidating and distant. But as the tumultuous political events increasingly absorbed him, Ruttie felt isolated and alone, cut off from her family, friends and community. The unremitting effort of submitting her personality to Jinnah s, his frequent coldness, his preoccupation with politics and the law, took its toll. Ruttie died at twenty-nine, leaving her daughter, Dina and her inconsolable husband, who never married again. Sheela Reddy, well-known journalist and former books editor of Outlook magazine, uses never-before-seen personal letters of Ruttie and her close friends as well as accounts left by contemporaries and friends to portray this marriage that convulsed Indian society, with a sympathetic, discerning eye. A product of intensive and meticulous research in Delhi, Bombay and Karachi and based on first-person accounts and sources, Reddy brings the solitary, misunderstood Jinnah and the lonely, wistful Ruttie to life. A must-read for all those interested in politics, history and the power of an unforgettable love story.

Mr and Mrs JINNAH The Marriage that Shook India Sheela Reddy 9780670086436 Books

Thoroughly enjoyed this book. There is such a dearth of information about Jinnah's personal life, and practically none about his beautiful and bold wife, Ruttie. Sheela Reddy does a fine job of diligently poring over volumes of letters between Ruttie and Naidu family and interpret them to create a compelling image of Ruttie and Jinnah's marriage. The reader can never be certain about the accuracy of her interpretation but one tends to agree with her.
Thus far, history has been completely mute about Ruttie's terminal illness and the cause of her death. The author's conclusions about those events, well supported by her research, are shocking.
As good as this book is, this reader was left wanting for more information about this remarkable lady. And how is it that such a high profile couple has not a single photo together?

Product details Hardcover 464 pages Publisher Penguin/Random House India (May 1, 2017) Language English ISBN-10 0670086436

Tags : Mr. and Mrs. JINNAH: The Marriage that Shook India. [Sheela Reddy] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Mohammad Ali Jinnah was forty years old, a successful barrister and a rising star in the nationalist movement when he fell in love with pretty,Sheela Reddy,Mr. and Mrs. JINNAH: The Marriage that Shook India.,PenguinRandom House India,0670086436,History Asia
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Mr and Mrs JINNAH The Marriage that Shook India Sheela Reddy 9780670086436 Books Reviews

A lot of us are familiar with Sheela Reddy. She is a prolific journalist and a political commentator and in her last avatar was the books editor of Outlook magazine. She was always known for her racy style of writing and also her meticulous research..

In India, one feels sorry for the amount of negative press that Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of modern day Pakistan gets. The pipe smoking, Saville Row suited booted lawyer whom we are always reminded that he ate pork and enjoyed his scotch ( both not so kosher things to do for someone bargaining for a country based on Islam as its unifying force) and how his personal ambitions to be the boss led to the creation of Pakistan and later the greatest tragedy of modern times – the mayhem due to the partition of India into the Hindu dominated India and the Muslim Pakistan where millions died on both sides…..As Indians, most of us have read enough books on the uber westernized Jinnah and his run ins with our ever so Spartan and Saintly Mahatma…..

Between this Indian narrative of Jinnah as a villain and his image in Pakistan as the father of the nation (actually Jinnah is more Indian / Guju / Mumbai boy than Pakistan…he hardly lived in Pakistan…..succumbing to Cancer within a year of Pakistan’s formation ) possibly lies he truth. Sheela Reddy does not write a political biography but writes on Jinnah the person – his early child-hood, his love life and marriage and its slow disintegration finally culminating in his wife’s premature death.

With painstaking research, she creates a compelling tale of a poor indigent Gujarati Muslim who is sent to London to work, finds that if he has to work his way up in life, he needs to be something more than a clerk in a trading house, completes his law degree against all odds and comes to India to set up a flourishing legal practice and gravitates into politics. A lot of this was revealing as I was always under the impression that he was born rich and lived richer…the popular Indian narrative never focused on his humble background and his remarkable efforts to reach above his station thru hardwork.( A totally self-made man unlike our much loved Nehru who seemed to have got everything laid out by his father).

Enter Russie Petit. Bon vivant,bohemian….born into Parsi aristocracy ( her father was amongst other things ….a Baronet) and all of 18 years old and her doomed attraction towards the successful widowed lawyer ( a child marriage story is part of the Jinnah background), their subsequent marriage, the run ins with the Parsi community ( she gets ex-communicated and her wealthy father also files a case of abduction against Jinnah), their complicated relationship and the final separation and later her untimely demise forms the crux of the story.

Apparently Ruttie Jinnah nee Petit was a prolific letter writer. Her correspondence with Sarojini Naidu ( a minor aside During the independence struggle, Mrs Naidu was housed permanently in a suite in Taj Mumbai !) and her two daughters….Padmaja and Leelamani unspools her life as they were apparently her good friends, confidantes and her extended family after she was disowned by her own family and ostracized by the Parsi community.

While the Indian Independence, the rise of Jinnah as a politician, his disillusionment with the Congress forms part of the context and backdrop of the book, it is the human story of Jinnah the son / lover / doting and indulgent husband to begin with and later the much older and wiser man trying to restore sanity and stability into his ill fated marriage which is heart wrenching,

The tragic story of the mismatched couple (he was 42 and she was all of 18) who eloped and got married, the early strains in the relationship as Jinnah got more and more busy with his legal career and his political life, the unstated expectations on both sides which were not fulfilled in the relationship, the souring of their bond, frequent separations (where she used to move into the Taj with Sarojini Naidu who was like her surrogate mother), their reunions, her trips abroad looking for meaning and purpose in life, not to speak of the numerous undefined relationships that she got into, the drug binges, the attempts at reconciliation – both by her and also Jinnah forms the main story line.

One gets to see a different side of Jinnah…the book ends much before partition….so one is spared the blood and gore of partition…..it is mostly Jinnah’s childhood, the roaring success he makes of his life as a lawyer and a freedom fighter and the doomed love story and marriage…..we walk away with a different image of Jinnah than what we have been fed all our life thru our desi-biographers.

Very interesting book….at times….some parts seems like a chic-lit…but one has to indulge the author here as her base material was letters exchanged between the young Ruttie Jinnah and the teenaged children of Sarojini Naidu…….but converted effectively into a very readable story by the author. ….Jinnah the man ….is an interesting one to know.
The career of Mohammed Ali Jinnah founder of Pakistan, and leader of the Indian Moslems,has long been a topic of discussion and controversy for journalists and historians. In contrast, little been written about Jinnah’s personal life. In Pakistan, Jinnah has been transformed into a national symbol. To create it memories of Jinnah the man have been carefully withheld and censored. This has not happened or at least not happened to the same extent, to his adversary Mahatma Gandhi.
Organized amnesia was easier in Pakistan. Gandhi left behind volumes of his prose. Jinnah did not like to write. Gandhi left behind his disciple, his adoptive family. Jinnah left behind staff. His direct descendants live in India and are not Moslems.
Our main source of biographical information is his sister Fatima to only member of the family to follow him to Pakistan. Fatima hated Liaquat Ali Khan the first prime minister of Pakistan and Jinnah’s most important political ally. She hated his wife Rana'a. It is perhaps for this reason she refused to collaborate with his official biographer Hector Bolitho, appointed by the government of Pakistan in June 1951.When the book was published she wanted to sue the government. Bolitho had written among other horrors, that their father had traded in hides and that her brother had played marble in the street. No! Their father had traded in gum arabic and her brother’s favorite game had been horseback riding.The years she spent at convent school, at Calcutta University, as the consort of her brother in Great Britain and in India, had not taught her that westerners --the intended audience of Bolitho's biography-- that in the West you don’t lose caste for dealing in hides. She discouraged the friendly curiosity of nosy and progressive foreigners such as Vera Brittain and Eleanor Roosevelt who would have been in very good positon to nuance the caricatures coming from the Indian side of the border. Her own biography, “My Brother”, published after her death, does describe the family's background. Otherwise it is chiefly the story of her brother's increasingly frequent bouts of illness endured with saintly forbearance while being nursed by the gentle, attentive yet anxious Fatima, sister and disciple.
For a reader who had stopped hoping for a biography that neither a tearful hagiography nor a silly cartoon, Sheela Reddy "Mr and Mrs Jinnah", is a pleasant surprise. She has aggregated all the material about the Jinnah marriage dispersed in books and newspaper articles with new material. Most of this new material comes from the Nehru Museum and Memorial Library. Most importantly it includes letters exchanged between Ruttie and Sarojini Naidu and her daughters Padmaja and Leilamani. She interprets this material to write portraits of Mrs Jinnah, Mr Jinnah and the Naidu family. One doesn’t have to completely agree with Sheela Reddy’s interpretation of the material to find these portraits convincing.
There are gaps. There are endnotes but no index. Everyone who writes about Ruttie, who has written about Ruttie, discusses her appearance and her dress, and most describe her as beautiful. So it is frustrating that only four pictures of the adult Ruttie have come down to us. Two of these pictures are used in this work. I wish Sheela Reddy had attempted to explain this. However, in the end this evocation of the anglicized nationalist elite of a century ago,left me wanting more.
Very interesting and historical
Thoroughly enjoyed this book. There is such a dearth of information about Jinnah's personal life, and practically none about his beautiful and bold wife, Ruttie. Sheela Reddy does a fine job of diligently poring over volumes of letters between Ruttie and Naidu family and interpret them to create a compelling image of Ruttie and Jinnah's marriage. The reader can never be certain about the accuracy of her interpretation but one tends to agree with her.
Thus far, history has been completely mute about Ruttie's terminal illness and the cause of her death. The author's conclusions about those events, well supported by her research, are shocking.
As good as this book is, this reader was left wanting for more information about this remarkable lady. And how is it that such a high profile couple has not a single photo together?