This is an extract from Shattered Lands by Sam Dalrymple, shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing 2026. Find out more about the book here, and get your copy here.
When the Simon Commission met Jinnah in the lobby of the Western Hotel in February 1929, everything about him belied the fact that he would soon found the world’s first Islamic republic: Pakistan. A reserved Gujarati barrister-turned politician who the New York Times described as ‘undoubtedly one of the best dressed men in the British Empire’, he drank whisky, ate pork and was renowned for chain-smoking cigarettes in his open-top limousine.
The question of how this man evolved into the founder of Pakistan is one that has puzzled historians for close to a century, and that the Simon Commissioners themselves would reflect upon repeatedly in the years to come.
Growing up in Hindu-majority Karachi, Jinnah had originally wanted to be a Shakespearean actor, but he proved unsuccessful and instead enrolled in a law degree, resolving never to fail at anything ever again. By the end of the Great War, he had become one of ‘the best paid lawyers in the country, an elected member of the Viceroy’s Imperial Legislative Council; the tallest leader in Muslim politics, and well on his way to becoming the most important Congress leader’. With his meticulous attention to detail, Jinnah could navigate himself precisely where he needed to be, a trait that often made him seem aloof. But those who knew him well found him to be warm and exceptionally intelligent. ‘Never was there a nature whose outer qualities provided so complete an antithesis of its inner worth,’ wrote Sarojini Naidu, the society hostess and nationalist poet who was a close friend of Jinnah. Jinnah, she believed, should be lauded as India’s primary ‘ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity’ even if his cold reserve meant you did ‘need a fur coat now and then’ She writes,
‘His accustomed reserve but masks, for those who know him, a naïve and eager humanity, an intuition as quick and tender as a woman’s, a humour gay and winning as a child’s. Pre-eminently rational and practical … his worldly wisdom effectively disguise[s] a shy and splendid idealism which is the very essence of the man.’
Jinnah’s rise had seemed unstoppable, but in 1918 he had scandalised Bombay high society by courting Ruttie Petit, the eighteen-year-old daughter of a Parsi baronet and one of the most ‘envied debutante[s] of her generation’. The patriarch of the family, Sir Dinshaw Petit, happened to be a vocal supporter of interfaith marriages, believing like many liberals at the time that they would be vital in gluing India into a single nation. When forty-two-year-old Jinnah had asked to marry his teenage daughter, however, Sir Dinshaw was horrified and banned the two from meeting. Jinnah and Ruttie continued their courtship, however, and Ruttie writes that Jinnah burned ‘storming passions into the very fibre of her being’. In his presence she appeared utterly radiant: ‘like a fairy,’ wrote one observer, and two months after her birthday they eloped, with Ruttie converting to Islam the day before the wedding.
‘Jinnah has at last plucked the blue flower of his desire,’ wrote Sarojini Naidu, who was closely following the scandal along with the rest of Bombay society.
‘It was all very sudden and caused terrible agitation and anger among the Parsis: but I think though the child has made far greater sacrifices than she yet realises, Jinnah is worth it all – he loves her: the one really genuine emotion of his reserved and self centred nature and he will make her happy.’
Sarojini’s optimism proved misplaced, however. Parsi society ostracised Ruttie, and her father summoned the couple to court, alleging that Jinnah had abducted her. Here Ruttie defiantly stood up and told the judge, ‘Mr Jinnah has not abducted me; in fact I have abducted him. But in the aftermath she was excommunicated from her community, banned from all Parsi social occasions and told she could never return to her childhood home. Having once dreamed a modern India would be able to move past divisions of religion and caste, Jinnah became disillusioned.
For Ruttie, meanwhile, it marked the start of a lonely new life. Her husband revealed himself to be a workaholic with an ‘aversion to holidays’ and a tendency to forget her birthday. He spent most of his time campaigning for India’s nationalist movement, and Ruttie ended up alone for months at a time Jinnah did love her of course, but as his legal assistant recalled years later:
‘They were poles apart … I remember her walking into Jinnah’s chambers whilst we were in the midst of a conference, dressed in a manner which would be called fast even by modern standards, perch herself upon Jinnah’s table, dangling her feet, and waiting for Jinnah to finish the conference … [Meanwhile] Jinnah carried on with his work as if she were not there at all.’
The rise of Mohandas Gandhi, who began to overshadow Jinnah as India’s leading nationalist politician, only added further difficulties to the Jinnahs’ tumultuous marriage. Jinnah was horrified by the way Gandhi brought religion into politics and felt that under Gandhi’s leadership the Congress Party was being transformed into ‘an instrument for the revival of Hinduism and for the establishment of Hindu Raj [rule]’. He considered Gandhi a diaspora upstart from South Africa who had merely returned to India to cosplay as a sadhu and lecture everyone about how to ‘fix’ Indian culture. But Gandhi’s religious politics proved far more popular than Jinnah’s own, and in December 1920 Jinnah was booed off stage for refusing to address Gandhi as the ‘Mahatma’ or ‘Great Soul’. In turn, Jinnah became increasingly convinced that Gandhi was ‘a fake and a demagogue’ and when Gandhi proposed a political boycott of British government institutions, he protested that such a move would only end up closing government schools and courts. He tried to rally nationalist leaders against Gandhi, but after months of despair, he finally announced that he was leaving the Congress altogether. ‘I will have nothing to do with this pseudo religious approach to politics,’ Jinnah wearily announced.
Outside of Congress, however, Jinnah’s political career began to decline and his relationship with Ruttie deteriorated. Depressed and alone, Ruttie sought solace in Bombay’s jazz clubs while Jinnah focused on building a political base in the Muslim League – a rival political party to the Congress. But his growing emphasis on his Muslim identity only alienated Ruttie more, and one day, when she drove to meet him at the town hall, he screamed at her for packing ham sandwiches.
(c) Sam Dalrymple
Explore the full list of 2026 Orwell Prize finalists, and read further extracts from the books, here.