New Delhi: On an April 1918 morning, Bombay’s elite industrialist Sir Dinshaw Petit sat down for breakfast. A headline jolted his morning calm as he unfolded Bombay Chronicle. The newspaper slipped from his palms.
“Muhammad Ali Jinnah marries Girl Rattanbai Petit.”
All the metropolis reeled. The person main India’s cost for constitutional reform had quietly married a 16-year-old Parsi heiress. The whispers had began two years earlier in Darjeeling.
That summer season, Sir Dinshaw had invited his lawyer pal, Jinnah, to hitch the household retreat. Jinnah was 40. Sharp-suited, sensible and bold. Already a storm within the courtrooms of Bombay. Rattanbai – Ruttie – was sixteen, radiant and free-spirited. The sort of magnificence that silenced rooms. Inside days, one thing stirred.
Darjeeling’s pine-lined silence, the white peaks and the tender laughter of evenings – all of them blurred right into a quiet bond. Earlier than the retreat ended, Jinnah had requested Sir Dinshaw what he considered interfaith marriages.
Sir Dinshaw answered with out hesitation, “They assist construct nationwide unity.”
Jinnah paused. Then calmly mentioned, “I need to marry your daughter.”
The reply was fireplace. Sir Dinshaw exploded. That very night time, he ordered Jinnah to go away. He barred Ruttie from ever assembly him once more. Later, he received a courtroom order forbidding any contact between them till she turned eighteen.
However love has its personal maps.
Letters crossed secretly. Glances stolen at golf equipment. Hidden conferences. A silver-haired patriarch stood guard on the gates, however the two hearts stored tempo with one another.
When Ruttie turned eighteen, she walked out of her father’s mansion with a single umbrella and a change of garments. Jinnah was ready. They went straight to Jamia Masjid. She embraced Islam. The following morning, the nikah was held.
The marriage surprised colonial India. A Muslim barrister and a Parsi heiress. A 24-year age hole. A lady who gave up her faith, her household, her inheritance for love.
Jinnah didn’t flinch. He didn’t desire a civil marriage. That might price him his legislative seat. As an alternative, he selected the Islamic route. Ruttie agreed. He gifted her Rs 1.25 lakh – a fortune in 1918. The marriage meher? A modest Rs 1,001.
For Bombay society, the scandal didn’t die down. Ruttie turned a social icon. Clear chiffon sarees. Lengthy cigarette holders. Laughter that rang like wind chimes. She was typically seen stepping down from a gleaming phaeton, drawing eyes wherever she went.
At events, she sparred with Viceroys. When one British lord scolded her for greeting him with folded palms as a substitute of a handshake, she smiled. “In India, we greet the British as Indians ought to.”
Jinnah adored her. Quietly. Stoically. When a Governor’s spouse tried to cowl Ruttie’s naked shoulders with a scarf, Jinnah stood up. “If my spouse is chilly, she is going to ask for it herself.” Then walked out. By no means returned to that home once more.
However politics waited for no love.
The years handed. Jinnah grew busier. Debates. Speeches. Petitions. Ruttie grew lonelier. Her letters turned heavy. As soon as, she wrote from a steamer on her approach again from France, “I’ve beloved you as no man has ever been beloved. Bear in mind me not because the flower you crushed, however because the one you as soon as plucked.”
On February 20, 1929, Ruttie died. She was simply 29. Some say sickness. Some say too many sleeping tablets.
Jinnah was in Delhi. A trunk name got here from her father. Ten years of silence damaged with a single sentence.
He took the practice again to Bombay. On the Khoja cemetery, mourners stood ready. As her coffin was lowered into the earth, somebody handed Jinnah a handful of dust.
He broke down. Shoulders shaking. Tears flowing.
It was the one time anybody noticed Muhammad Ali Jinnah cry in public.