Daughter demands Jinnah's house

NEW DELHI: Mohammed Ali Jinnah’sonly daughter, Dina Wadia, has made a fresh claim to the house where she wasborn, her father’s most famous property in Mumbai — JinnahHouse.In a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last month, sherequested possession of the house, which has emerged as an emotive diplomaticpoint between India and Pakistan. Wadia’s letter cameimmediately after Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, for the nth time, triedto cajole Manmohan Singh into getting Jinnah House for Pakistan’sconsulate in Mumbai.Jinnah House remains elusive to the mostpersuasive of Pakistani arguments. Instead, the Pakistan high commission hasbeen given a choice of three plots in northern and central Mumbai, including onein upmarket Bandra. These were shortlisted during last week’svisit to Mumbai by Pakistan high commissioner Aziz AhmedKhan.Pakistan has never given up trying to get Jinnah House, andMusharraf, in particular, has carried on a sustained campaign.During his April visit, he pressed his claim with Leader ofOpposition L K Advani. This, after trying for at least two yearswhen Atal Bihari Vajpayee was PM, when Pakistan tried to sell the line thatIndia’s gesture on Jinnah House would be the ultimate CBM.After the Musharraf visit, a discussion on Jinnah House between thegovernment and opposition also revealed a finding by former attorney-generalthat Jinnah’s legal descendant still had first rights to theproperty.As a matter of fact, Wadia had made several claims to herfilial property during the previous NDA government, which had attempted to beginthe process of returning the property to her. In her petition, Wadiahad used the precedent of Salman Rushdie retrieving his ancestral property tofortify her case. But for reasons that remain unclear, the issuefell through the cracks in the hurly-burly of governance and there was noclosure.In 2004, Wadia made her first visit to Pakistan during thecricket series, where she was accorded the singular honour that can only be dueto the daughter of the Qaid-e-Azam.Jinnah House is intimately tiedto the partition of the subcontinent, apart from being her birthplace on,interestingly enough, August 15, 1919.Situated on Mount PleasantRoad in Mumbai’s prohibitively expensive Malabar Hill, the house, now in ashocking state of disrepair, bore witness to Jinnah’s landmark meetingswith Subhash Bose, Mahatma Gandhi (1944) and Jawaharlal Nehru(1946).Significantly, Nehru resisted registering Jinnah House asevacuee property, though any move to give it to Pakistan died a swift death inIndia.