Jinnah and glamour

Sheikh Amer Hassan is a fashion graduate from the prestigious London College of Fashion and Bournville College of Art in England. Now living between Karachi, Lahore and London, he is one of the pioneers of fashion in Pakistan and famous as a designer, socialite and a social worker

I learnt so much about Jinnah during the making of my film Jinnah, the man of style shown on Indus Television on August 14, as my special gift to Pakistan and to our nation on its 61st birthday. It took me exactly eleven years to collect all the material for my research that left everyone who saw it completely intrigued and enlightened with facts and information. I also felt that Mohammed Ali Jinnah had to be reintroduced as a modern man with vision and integrity. He lived only a few decades ago, not a million years and the wayhe has been portrayed to us is as if he lived centuries past. For God’s sake, he was a real man who is a perfect ideal for every Pakistani to follow. Almost everything about him has been from us. The truth had to be shared with everyone; these things have never been shown before only because we have been kept deprived about the real facts deliberately over the years and also kept distant from the great man himself. I cannot understand why it is so, but as I started my research, so much became apparent. Reasons started becoming more obvious, from his personal elitist self to his liberal philosophy. It is all way too different to what is actually being done to our country.

Jinnah was a modern man with education, knowledge, class, style and lineage. None of the cartoons struggling for the powerful chair would possibly have been around had Mr. Jinnah been alive himself. He was a small, slender, quiet, reflective man who commanded respect and honour. He was honest, incorruptible, solid and focused. This new breed of power-hungry status conscious lot, that we now refer to as politicians, are the ones responsible for distorting and destroying the historical facts and information about the founder of the nation and the real meaning of Pakistan. Our beloved country was to be a non-secular state, free for all.

In my collection today, I have over eighty or more photos of Jinnah, his friends and family, through various stages of his personal and professional life. The film footage that was shown in my documentary contained scenes that people had never seen before, both in colour and black and white. Anyway, the film contains several most outstanding interviews and original scenes too. Jinnah’s own daughter, Dina Wadia, born through Ruttie Petit-Jinnah, who lives between Bombay and New York, spoke for the first time on camera in her entire life. Her first words were, “My father never really wanted partition, he never really wanted to break-away.” But as history tells us, it wasn’t really meant to be that way in the end. Much changed with the passage of time and gave shape to later events resulting in the division between the people who were similar except their religious views. If I can remember quoting him correctly, Jinnah himself said upon taking charge as the first Governor General, “You will see that with time, Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims. Not in the religious sense, because it is the personal belief of everyone. But, in a political sense we all must work together in harmony towards the progress of our country. You are free to go to your mosques, your temples or any other place of worship.” It is important and useful for us to learn all the facts of history to be able to judge things for ourselves. This is a country that belongs to us. Why is our government always trying desperately hard to confuse and frighten the public? Why this suspense? Why this insecurity? Why this fear? We need the real facts and the freedom of expression. Right or wrong, this is the basic right of any human being. Also, there seems to be no respect of human life in our country. That also varies, like a lot for other things, upon one’s social status and personal connections. Sad! Just like most of the information and truth that is distorted before reaching us, the public. In fact, most of it is erased as if it just never existed. I hope one day we will be an enlightened and moderate nation with tolerance and love for one another. Here is a rather interesting fact for everyone who did not know it before; the roots of our founder are now connected to Bollywood. Ness Wadia is Jinnah’s great-grandson and also the other-half of the leading Bollywood beauty Priety Zinta. Jinnah’s only daughter Dina married Neville Wadia, a Parsi industrialist in Bombay. They divorced later. Dina has a son called Nusli who has two sons with his catholic wife Maureen. His sons are Jeh and Ness. The Wadia fortune is based mainly on Textile mills and shipbuilding. Preity Zinta and Ness Wadia have been going out for a while and often seen splashed across the society pages’ glamorous glossies. Keep the glamour alive!