(1876–1948), Indian politician, longtime leader of the Indian Muslim League, who became the founding father of Pakistan and its first governor-general (1947–48).

Jinnah was born in Karachi on Dec. 25, 1876. At the age of 16 he was sent to England to study law at Lincoln's Inn, and on his return in 1896 he started a law practice in Bombay. Turning to politics, he joined the Indian National Congress in 1906, and in 1910 he was elected to the Imperial Legislative Council. Three years later he also joined the Muslim League and became known as an “ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity”; he became president of the league in 1916.

Jinnah broke with the Congress in 1920 over Mohandas Gandhi's policy of noncooperation with the British. Still committed to settling Hindu-Muslim differences, he articulated his 14-point compromise proposal (1929) and attended three round-table conferences (1930–32) in London. Frustrated in his efforts, he then remained in London to practice law, returning to India only in 1934, when elected permanent president of the Muslim League.

In the general elections of 1937 the Congress, led by Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, won a majority in 7 of 11 provinces and refused to form coalition governments with the Muslim League as Jinnah had proposed. This proved to be the final Hindu-Muslim break. When World War II began in 1939, and the Congress governments resigned to protest India's participation in the war without British commitment to the country's freedom, Jinnah declared it a “Day of Deliverance” for the Muslims. The following year the league passed the Pakistan resolution, demanding a separate state for Indian Muslims.

Jinnah accepted a 1946 British plan guaranteeing regional autonomy to the Muslims within a territorially united India, but the plan failed, and the British were forced to create a separate Pakistan (Aug. 15, 1947). Jinnah was revered as Qaid-i-Azam (“Great Leader”). He died in Karachi on Sept. 11, 1948.        H.M., HAFEEZ MALIK, Ph.D.