Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Jinnah married Emibai Jinnah when he was just 16 years old and that too before he left for England in 1892. She died while he was still in England.

On one of his trips to Darjeeling he met the 16-year-old Ratanbai and married her after a couple of years on 19th April, 1918, when she was 18 and had converted to Islam. The couple had a daughter named Dina and they separated in 1928.

He passed away on 11th September, 1948 in Karachi almost a year after the creation of Pakistan. He was suffering from tuberculosis.

Born on the Christmas day in 1876 in Karachi, Mohammed Ali Jinnah was the son of a middleclass Guajarati Merchant, Jinnahbhai Poonja and Mithibai. His parents were from Paneli, Gondal and had shifted to Karachi just a year before his birth.

Second of his seven siblings, his family belonged to the creed of Ismaili Khoja of Shia Islam. However, he later became a staunch follower of the Twelver Shi'a teachings.

Initially enrolled at Sindh-Madrasa-tul-Islam at the age of six, he soon moved to Bombay with his aunt and is said to have attended either Gokal Das Tej Primary School or perhaps a madrasa. Later, he attended Cathedral and John Connon School.

He had always been an indocile and restless kid and within few months he returned to his parents in Karachi. There, he was enrolled in the Christian Missionary Society High School.

At the age of 16, when offered an opportunity to work as an apprentice in Sir Frederick Leigh Croft’s company, ‘Graham's Shipping and Trading Company’, he decided to move to London in 1892.

Before leaving, he reluctantly succumbed to his mother’s relentless insistence and got married to Emibai Jinnah. However, both his mother and Emibai died while he was in England.

An ambitious teenager, he later resigned from the apprenticeship of the shipping company and started pursuing law to become a barrister. He joined the Lincoln's Inn and in 1895 was called to the bar in England.

Jinnah started practicing law in Bombay at the age of twenty and his career as a barrister started to flourish after he received an invitation from the Advocate General of Bombay, to work from his chambers.

In 1900, he was also offered the position of the Bombay Presidency Magistrate, which he served for a short while. His fame as a lawyer surged exponentially after he fought the ‘Caucus Case’ in 1907.

Though, he failed to secure a bail for Bal Gangadhar Tilak on the charges of sedition in 1908, he assured an acquittal for him when he was charged again with sedition in 1916.