By Dr. Afzal Mirza
Soon after Mr. Jinnah’s death in 1948, Col. Ilahi Bakhsh and Riaz Ali Shah, the two physicians who attended to his fateful illness in Ziarat, came out with their accounts of the Quaid’s last Ziarat days in their books. The former wrote in English and the latter in Urdu. Of the two, Riaz Ali Shah was known to be a T.B. specialist while Col.Ilahi Bakhsh was a general physician and was the principal of King Edward Medical College, Lahore.
The death of Mr. Jinnah had shocked the nation to a degree that both the books became bestsellers. At that time the general public had no inkling of Mr. Jinnah’s illness during the Pakistan struggle because its details were kept secret by his personal physician Dr Patel. When these two specialists were commissioned to treat Quaid-i-Azam who had by then become governor general of the newly created Pakistan the illness was already in an advanced stage because his Bombay doctor had given him a limited life span. According to the authors of ‘Freedom at Midnight’: “The terrible disease a Bombay doctor had discovered on Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s lungs ended his life in September 1948….barely three months after the expiration of the death sentence that his friend and physician had pronounced on him.. ….At ten minutes to ten that evening his doctor bent close to dying Quaid and whispered, ‘Sir, I have given you an injection. God willing, you are going to live.’ Jinnah fixed his unwavering glare on the last sight his eyes would ever see, his doctor’s face.’No, I am not,’ he firmly replied. Half an hour later he was dead..’’
The disease was actually discovered by his friend and physician Dr J.A.L.Patel in June 1946 when he X-rayed his lungs. In May1946 while sojourning in Simla he had an attack of severe bronchitis and had to be taken to Bombay by train. His condition was quite bad and Dr Patel had him whisked away from a suburban railway station to avoid the grand reception waiting for him at the Bombay Central Station. The Quaid remained in hospital for some time. His doctor wanted him to rest in a sanatorium for recovery but he was at that time in the thick of battle and could not afford to abstain from leading the Muslims of India at that critical juncture. Thus doctor promised to keep the disease secret and reluctantly let him go to his residence. The Quaid was always a frail person. Before war he had been treated in Berlin for complications of pleurisy. Thus after that discovery in 1946 and a year after the partition of the sub-continent he mostly survived due to his enormous willpower. At that stage it was in the fitness of things to keep the whole thing secret and Dr Patel religiously kept his promise. If Mountbatten had sniffed out the secret at that stage the destiny of the Muslims of India would have been different.
The question now arises as to why the Quaid chose to be the first governor general of Pakistan when he was so sick and Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India, was keen to be the governor general of both the newly independent countries of Pakistan and India. There could be two possible explanation for this decision. Firstly, there was the all-important question whether Muslims, as a matter of principle, were prepared to accept Mountbatten as the GG? With his biased behavior against the Muslim League in general and Mr. Jinnah in particular Mountbatten had lost the confidence of Muslims as a nation. Therefore, the Muslim League was reluctant to accept him as the GG. Secondly Pakistan was going to be an independent country free from any Indian domination which was not possible if there was one GG for both the countries. There were arguments in favor of Mountbatten’s candidature as well. There was the huge task of division of assets between India and Pakistan, both material and human, which Mountbatten could facilitate. The rejection of his wish to preside over the division could have resulted in fortifying his prejudice in favor of India and jeopardize Pakistani interests. Thus he desperately tried to get his wish fulfilled. He argued with the Quaid that according to the British parliamentary system it is the prime minister who rules the roost while the governor general is a ceremonial head. According to the authors of ‘Freedom at Midnight’ Quaid-i-Azam replied that he would issue orders and the prime minister would carry them out. Here the question arises whether Quaid who was a democrat through and through would give such a reply. It was August 1947- almost a year after the discovery of his serious illness. In a year’s time his health had further deteriorated and it was disastrous for him to choose such a demanding role for himself after achieving the primary target of getting an independent Pakistan.
Unfortunately the role he chose for himself further affected his fragile health. Pakistan at that time was confronted with many problems, including those created by Mountbatten following the refusal of Pakistan to accept him as GG. India had inherited a developed official infrastructure whereas in Pakistan it had to be started from the scratch with practically no resource available. Thus by engaging himself in the nerve-wrecking problems faced by the country Jinnah played with his own health. Being aware of the limited span of his life he wanted to do the maximum for putting the country on firm ground to disprove the misconception of Pakistan’s detractors who had predicted its immediate collapse.
In 1948, Jinnah’s health further deteriorated. It was only his sister Fatima who shared the secret of his disease. No one else in the country had an inkling of it till he was moved to Ziarat and T.B. specialists were summoned. Even his daughter Dina did not have any clue to it thanks to the strong character of Dr J.A.L.Patel. Ziarat was chosen perhaps due to its proximity to Karach because the other health resorts were far removed from Pakistan’s capital Karachi and frequently important functionaries had to shuttle between Karachi and Ziarat to get Mr. Jinnah’s advice on important matters. When the doctors lost all hopes of Mr. Jinnah’s recovery he was allowed to be shifted back to Karachi. The break own of the ambulance at Mauripur airport became known to the general public through the account of the doctors raising suspicions, including a bizarre theory of a conspiracy to kill theQuaid.. Famous writer Saadat Hasan Manto also mentioned it in his sketch of Jinnah entitled ‘Mera Sahib’ based on his interview of Quaid’s driver of Bombay days named Haneef Azad. in which Azad says, “ Sahib was used to smooth driving. I wonder what would have he felt when his ambulance broke down on his way from the airport.. I wish I were there to drive Sahib on his last journey.”
Many explanations have been given for this act of negligence by the bureaucracy. In a recent article in quarterly ‘Al-Aqreba’, Islamabad, Syed Hashim Raza who was at that time the Administrator of Karachi has given his own version of the happening. He writes, “When on 10th September Quaid-i-Azam and Miss Jinnah left Quetta Airport for Mauripur no one except the pilot knew where the plane would land. Those days I was the administrator of Pakistan’s capital Karachi. Whenever Quaid-i-Azam would depart from Karachi as administrator I used to be present at the airport to see him off. Similarly, whenever he would arrive in Karachi it was my duty to receive him. But no one had a clue to the arrival of this plane. When I asked Quaid’s military secretary afterwards that why I was not informed about it he told me that Miss Jinnah had ordered him that no one should be informed about the arrival of the plane except Mr. Liaquat Ali Khan with the instructions that he should not come at Mauripur Airport. When the Military Secretary rang up Jinnah Hospital to send an ambulance he did not tell them for whom the ambulance was required. This ambulance got stuck up at some distance from the airport. Some fault had occurred in its engine that could not be rectified by any one and another ambulance was called from Jinnah Hospital. For one hour Quaid-i-Azam’s nurse kept warding off flies in that sultry heat. When the second ambulance arrived then Quaid was driven to the governor general house and was made to lie in his bed room. His doctor has written in his book that he died at twenty past ten the same night.” This account shows that the whole thing was mismanaged. Was an enquiry ordered into the happening? Why a faulty ambulance was sent to the airport on a call from the military secretary to the governor general and even if hospital authorities were not told for whom the ambulance was needed at the airport it seems they had no sympathy for a patient in emergency and distress. It shows that our ways have not changed even after half a century.