Mohammad Ali Jinnah 1875-1913

Early Career Mohammad Ali Jinnah 1875-1913

Mohammad Ali Jinnah was born in Karachi in either 1875 or 1876. The school records mention his date of Birth 1875, while Sarojini Nayudu, who wrote his First Biography, records his date of Birth as December 25, 1876.

• His ancestors were Hindu Rajputs from Kathiawar in Gujarat and his grandfather had converted to Islam.
• He was a Shiya Muslim.
• He was educated in Karachi and Bombay.
• In 1892 he was sent to England to get apprenticeship in the Graham’s Shipping and Trading Company, the company in which his father had dealings.
• He studied law and became youngest Indian ever to be invited to the Bar of England at the age of 19 years.

  In 1896 he returned to India and settled at Bombay. Here he became Lawyer and practiced in the Bombay High Court.

• Jinnah defended Bal Gangadhar Tilak in the sedition trial in 1908, but he could not win the case and Tilak was sent to Mandalay.
• He had close relations with Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Pherozeshah Mehta and Surendranath Banerjee since 1896.
• He won a case representing Sir Pherozshah Mehta in Bombay High Court in 1905. This case is known as Caucus Case.
  

  In 1906, he joined Indian National Congress. He also did not favor the outright independence.

• Initially he avoided the All India Muslim League, because it was too much orthodox. It was in 1913, when he joined the Muslim League and became its president in the Lucknow session of 1916.