Written by: Dr. Dushka H. Saiyid
Posted on: December 24, 2018 | 
Rattanbai 'Ruttie' Jinnah and Muhammad Ali Jinnah
Ruttie and Jinnah, to quote Shakespeare, are the “star-crossed lovers” of Sheela Reddy’s story. While Jinnah has left his mark on the map of India by single-handedly carving out Pakistan, Ruttie has been relegated to a small footnote of history. To Reddy goes the credit for recognizing that Jinnah’s story was incomplete without a discussion of his married life, although the marriage lasted for only a decade or so.
It is a well-researched book, but has the disadvantage of not having Jinnah’s point of view. This is not surprising since Jinnah was an intensely private man, and has not left behind any memoir, autobiography or letters about his personal life. Reddy has relied heavily on the letters of Sarojni Naidu and her daughters, who were very close to Ruttie, and on what she could glean from the writings of the few people who knew the couple closely, like Kanji Dwarkadas.
Reddy discusses Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s return from London as a young twenty year old barrister in Bombay, and how he cut an imposing figure: tall, handsome, impeccably attired and oozing self-confidence. After an initial period of struggle, Jinnah soon emerged as not just a pre-eminent lawyer of Bombay, but a rising star on the political firmament. She describes how Jinnah’s friendship with Sir Dinshaw Petit, an extremely wealthy and westernized Parsi baronet, resulted in the blossoming of his romance with Ruttie, his daughter. According to Reddy, the Ruttie-Jinnah romance began in 1914, when they were together on a holiday in Pune. Ruttie was exquisitely beautiful, stylish, a charming and effervescent personality, with an avid interest in nationalist politics. The magnetic pull seems to have been overwhelming, because two years later Jinnah formally proposed to Sir Petit for his daughter’s hand, only to be turned down and an injunction served to prevent the two meeting.
Ruttie being of an independent spirit was not to be deterred in matters of the heart. Reddy gives interesting details about the marriage: when Ruttie turned eighteen two years later, she quietly went with Jinnah to the Jamia Masjid and converted to Islam, and the next day, 19 April 1918, she walked out of her parents house to Jinnah’s and got married, never to return again. They were both defying all social norms by marrying for love and outside their religious communities. The wide age gap of twenty-four years between the two, only added grist to the gossip mills.
The disparity in age, and differences in personality could not be overcome by the initial flame of love and passion. Ruttie had been bred on a fare of romantic novels and poetry, a sensitive creature who had sacrificed all for this handsome man with a compelling personality, whose speeches in the imperial legislature she would go to hear. As Jinnah became increasingly consumed with his work, both legal and political, she suffered loneliness and depression. Her sense of isolation was compounded by being excommunicated by her family and the Parsi community.
Reddy traces the increasing gulf between the couple with diligent but tedious detail, and Ruttie’s resort to psychics, séances and theosophy to find solace in an empty marriage. Giving birth to a daughter just over a year after marriage on 14 August 1919, does not seem to have helped cement the marriage. In the whole saga of the Ruttie and Jinnah relationship, the daughter Dina, is only given short shrift. The author mentions how the baby was left entirely to the care of nannies as Ruttie had little interest in her, and the Naidus are mentioned as feeling sorry for the neglected baby, but that’s about it. As a post-script, after Ruttie’s death, Reddy mentions how Jinnah was happy to let Lady Petite take decisions about Dina’s schooling in Bombay, and later took her with him to London and admitted her to a boarding school.
Loneliness, depression and dependency on barbiturates seem to have accelerated Ruttie’s poor health. To quote the author, “her pain and despair so overwhelming that only sleeping pills could provide some relief... the fatal cycle of dependency and overdose”. According to Reddy, the only barbiturate available at that time was Veronal, and that its lethal side effects on the liver and other organs were only discovered half a century later.
When Ruttie had decided to leave Jinnah in January 1928, it had come as a rude shock to him. The book gives first real insight into the specifics of Ruttie’s disillusionment with the marriage when she confides in Sarojni Naidu that, “her youth is going and she must live, that Jinnah cannot satisfy her mind and soul. He stifles her by his lack of understanding and his lack of the spirit of the joy of life”. She had gone to London with her mother, and then proceeded to Paris on her own, but fell seriously ill. Jinnah who had arrived in London in May rushed to her side, staying at the clinic with her and nursing her for over a month, although he was under great pressure to return for the all-parties conference scheduled for August 27, 1928 in Lucknow. Any hopes that Jinnah had of reconciliation were dashed when Ruttie chose to return to Bombay with her mother rather than Jinnah, even before she had recovered fully.
Ruttie passed away on her birthday, the 20th of February, at the age of twenty-nine. Jinnah broke down at her burial and wept profusely. Dwarkadas Kanji, who was visiting Ruttie to the last days of her life, is quoted by Reddy as saying in an interview that she chose to die on her birthday with an overdose of sleeping pills. Like a Greek tragedy, a union born of love and passion unraveled on the rocks of incompatibility: the young, romantic and bored socialite, and the rational man with steely determination who would brook no distraction to his political struggle and outmaneuvered both the imperial masters and the majority party to create a homeland for his people.
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