The founder of Pakistan, Quaid i Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, is commemorated with a blue plaque at 35 Russell Road in Holland Park, where he lived in about 1895.

LONDON YEARS

Jinnah was born in Karachi, now in Pakistan, but then part of British-ruled India. He travelled to England in 1892 and studied law for 4 years at Lincoln’s Inn, becoming the youngest Indian to be called to the bar in England at the age of just 19. During some of this time, and certainly in 1895, he lodged at 35 Russell Road, the home of a Mrs Page-Drake.

While in London Jinnah developed an interest in politics. He assisted in the 1892 campaign of Dadabhai Naoroji, who became the first Asian to win a popular election to the UK parliament, and watched his maiden speech from the gallery in the House of Commons.

He also harboured an ambition to play Shakespeare’s Romeo on stage, and briefly joined a London theatre company before returning to his legal career.

FOUNDING OF PAKISTAN

When Jinnah returned to Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1896, he was already a convinced nationalist, and by the second decade of the 20th century he was at the forefront of Indian politics. In 1909 Jinnah was elected as the Bombay Muslims’ representative on the legislative council, and four years later joined the All India Muslim League. The league had been formed to represent the interests of Muslims in a predominantly Hindu country, and Jinnah remained strongly connected with it for the rest of his life. He also played an important part in founding the All India Home Rule League in 1916.

From 1937 Jinnah was increasingly known as ‘Quaid-i-Azam’, or ‘Great Leader’. The first formal demand for a partition of India and the creation of a Muslim state of Pakistan was made in 1940 at a Muslim League in Lahore. Jinnah had hoped for Hindu-Muslim unity, but as relations between the two religious groups deteriorated, he came to view partition as necessary.

As a result of his negotiations with the British government and other Indian leaders including Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi, the state of Pakistan was formed on 14 August 1947, with Jinnah instated as the country’s first Governor–General.

Just over a year after the founding Pakistan, Jinnah died of tuberculosis. He is buried in Karachi at the Mazar-e-Quaid, also known as the Jinnah Mausoleum, which is now one of the city’s most iconic landmarks.