MR AND MRS JINNAH

Sheela Reddy

Before Muhammad Ali Jinnah became a proponent of the two-nation theory and the founder of the state of Pakistan, he was a successful barrister in Mumbai who fell in love with and married Ruttie Petit, the daughter of a wealthy Parsi mill owner. Theirs was an unlikely union that resulted in Petit being wholly ostracised by her family and her community. Petit died at the age of 29, leaving behind a daughter, Dina, the couple’s only child. Jinnah never married again. In this book, the journalist Sheela Reddy uses newly accessible archival documents to write an account of a love story and a marriage that shaped modern South Asia.

Penguin Random House, 440 pages, Rs 699