A DISILLUSIONED ARDESHIR COWASJEE!

My Letter and his Response

Who could know Mohammad Ali Jinnah better than his Zoroastrian friends. Zoroastrians whom we call Parsis in Pakistan. Although Jinnah was himself a Khoja Ismaili Asna Ashari Muslim but instead of weddinging any Muslim girl, he preferred to tie knot with a young Parsi damsel, Rattanbai Petit. His close friends were either Parsis, Hindus or Britishers. He was a very intelligent person. Firstly, he became an intelligent highest paid lawyer of British India and then he decided to enter into the politics representing the Muslims of India – the best job he could perform in the vacuum of any competent Muslim leader at par with Hindu leaders like Gandhi and Nehru.

An event which best defines M. A. Jinnah was the one which Pakistani children used to read in their schoolbooks, when I was a child. One late night when an aunt of young Jinnah woke up, she saw that the light of his room was turned on. She went to his room and found him studying. She asked Jinnah why he didn’t sleep since it was very late at night. Jinnah instantly replied that he had to study because he wanted to be a great man. This one sentence describes Jinnah’s lifetime obsession. He wanted to be a great man and eventually he became one by carving out a new country out of the Indian Subcontinent. A colossal and gigantic task that he did single handedly. Creation of Pakistan was a one man show. Once Jinnah himself said that “Myself, my secretary and his typewriter made Pakistan”.  

Ardeshir Cowasjee (1926 – 2012) belonged to an influential business family of Karachi. His family was in shipping business for generations.  Cowasjee family was one of those Zoroastrian families who participated in building Karachi as one of the leading port cities of Indian Subcontinent. One of the main affections that he shared with Mohammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, was an intense attachment with the city of his birth, Karachi – the jewel of Arabian Sea.  

Cowasjee was a writer and a prolific columnist. He was fearless, bold and unstoppable. His favorite subjects were Karachi and Jinnah. He fought lengthy battles to protect and defend his two beloveds. No one could doubt his sincerity and commitment to the cause he fought for. His main lifetime grief was the disfigurement and defacement of his darlings. In January 2009, I shared with him my anxiety on the incorrect, ill-intentioned and misconstrued projection of Jinnah and the raison d’etre of his envisaged Pakistan, as done officially as well as publicly. Despite having health conditions and preoccupations he spared time to respond and endorsed my faith but with advice which showed his utter disappointment with the state of affairs and the incorrigible mindset of the nation. Here in the following is my brief correspondence with Mr. Ardeshir Cowasjee ….