The two admirers and critics of Mohammad Ali Jinnah will be astonished to learn that he vigorously safeguarded one communist revolutionary in court and also gave sound legal advice to his friends. Yet, neither admirers nor critics care one piece to consult his remarkably rich record spread over nearly half a hundred years. Both seem to agree on the date of his political birth, March 23, 1940, the day the Muslim League adopted the Pakistan resolution. He was a national figure around 30 years earlier. Jinnah was not a perplexing person like Jawaharlal Nehru. He was transparent and uncomplicated, as his companion Sarojini Naidu noted.
Frank Moraes wrote in his book Yonder One World that Jinnah was the most totally honest politician he had known, adding that he had known many in his time.
The episode teaches lessons multiple. Jinnah was, of course, opposed to the communist philosophy. In any case, his obligation to his set of rules as a lawyer came first. It reveals also that he was liberated from hate.
Nonetheless, Jinnah imposed a quaint, self-serving rule on himself - never accept an unpaid brief. His nephew, who was also a lesser in his chambers, Akbar A. Peerbhoy, would reminisce to colleagues at the Bombay Bar that the standard wouldn't be relaxed regardless of whether the case concerned a mosque. Jinnah would, instead, ask the prospective clients to raise funds, obediently paying his own commitment to the funds.
Then again, he was fearless and uncompromising in his obligation to professional ethics and behavior. There is a notable instance of a short client of money who pleaded that Jinnah accepts the expense he was offering and offer guidance on the basis of the time the charge could sustain since he charged by the hour. Jinnah agreed; gave his advice - and discounted a substantial part saying he had read whatever was relevant to read.
Presently for the episode. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Muzaffar Ahmad published his autobiography in 1970 ( Myself and the Communist Party of India 1920-1939; National Book Agency P. Ltd, Calcutta). It records two encounters with Jinnah in his own inimitable style.
"Ours being an international development, defense committees were shaped abroad, remembering one for London. Charles Ashleigh, about whom I have composed previously, became secretary of this advisory group. I have composed that George Lansbury also was interested in our defense. Friends in London requested Mr. M.A. Jinnah through Mr. Markmaduke Pickthall or, it very well might be, through some solicitors' firm in London to accept the brief for the accused. Although he didn't refuse, he demanded £2,000 (Rs.30,000) as his charge. Considering that Mr. C. Ross Alston's daily charge was Rs.1,000, Jinnah's demand was not excessive. However, Mr. Jinnah was not prepared to show communist prisoners the sympathy usually shown by lawyers in protecting accused persons in political cases. In this respect, he was a class-conscious person"; a completely unfair remark to make (page 358).
This concerned the Kanpur Conspiracy Case (1924). The other approach concerned Philip Spratt. "From the Communist Party of Great Britain following George Allison came Philip Spratt. Taking the occasion of Sakalatvala's visit to Bombay in January 1927, George Allison also came to Bombay. Around then he had meaningful discussions with Philip Spratt for several days. Spratt was then a young fellow aged just 27. He graduated with Honors in Physics (Tripos) from Cambridge University and became an individual of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Clemens Palme Dutt sent him to India after instructing him appropriately. Spratt reached Bombay in December 1926. Some writers have put the date as December 30, 1926. I met Philip Spratt interestingly on the night of January 13, 1927, at the Bombay YMCA. C. Krishnaswami Ayengar had taken me to see him.
"I have already said that George Allison engaged in a case for using a produced passport. In a little while, Philip Spratt also engaged in a case for sedition (124-A, IPC). His co-accused were S.S. Mirajkar and another person. Spratt composed a book entitled India and China, which was published by Mirajkar and printed by another person. A case for sedition was instituted against all three of them. They were, in any case, released on bail.
"Our Bombay comrades, who addressed Mrs. Sarojini Naidu as a mother, all of them together pressed her to persuade Mr. M.A. Jinnah to care for the case, however, he declined the brief. However, he gave a valuable recommendation to Mrs. Naidu. His advice was that we should make an application and get the case transferred to the High Court Sessions, where Philip should give up the demand for trial by a European jury; and then the case would be attempted by a majority of Indian jurors, who might naturally be sympathetic to an Englishman being pursued treason in India. The Bombay comrades acted according to Mr. Jinnah's advice. The case was focused on the High Court Sessions and a jury, consisting of one European and eight Indians, was selected for the trial. At the finish of the trial, the eight Indian jurors returned a verdict of not liable. Just the European hearer adjudged the accused liable. Agreeing with the majority verdict, the adjudicator acquitted the accused. The ' India-China' case finished in this manner" (pages 465-466).
More details rise out of the Oral History Transcripts of two communist veterans, S.V. Ghate and S.S. Mirajkar, which are stopped in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi. Both were close to S.A. Dange during the 1920s, however, each had his very own persona. Their reminiscences of the communist movement merit a separate study. It is their versions of the Jinnah engagement that we are here worried about.
As we shall see, the three accounts struggle somewhat - Muzaffar Ahmad's, Ghate's, and Mirajkar's - however, the center is not affected.
According to Ghate, Jinnah protected Spratt. He recalled: "During the time of his [Allison's] trial, Spratt had come. He composed a pamphlet India and China, for which Saklatvala composed a foreword…. Spratt was attempted in the Bombay High Court. He was not allowed bail. Mohammad Ali Jinnah argued for his bail. Some strange things happen sometimes. Jinnah was the topmost lawyer in the Bombay High Court. No one could stand against him. He said: 'For what reason are you dragging me unnecessarily?' He used to charge 1,500 rupees a day whereas we had not around then even 1,500 paise. So our companion, Latvala, promised to give the fees and he was engaged. Of course, the bail application was dismissed. After that, some other lawyer came and argued the case and he was acquitted."
Mirajkar's recollections are as clear. "In 1927 the India-China case was an important event in the energy everyone needs and in my personal life as well. Philip Spratt composed a series of articles in the National Herald of B.G. Horniman, which dealt with great events that were taking place in China in 1927. There was pretty much an uprising of the common laborers and the peasantry in China against the nationalist rule of Kuomintang driven by Chiang Kai-shek. I chose to gather those articles and publish them in a pamphlet structure, and I did as such. Soon after the publication of the pamphlet, the British government chose to ban it. So the pamphlet was banned. One day, while we were having some discussions in our Workers' and Peasants' Party office at Girgaum, the police jumped upon us and arrested Philip Spratt under Section 124-A, namely, the section which was always used against Indian patriots like Lokmanya Tilak and others. Philip was the first Englishman to be nabbed under this section and was taken to prison. They refused to grant bail for Spratt, for which we immediately made an attempt. An unfortunate individual remained in police custody for various days.
"In this association, there is a small story, with which M.A. Jinnah was concerned. Philip Spratt was British and he had no assistance here, and it was our obligation to see that he was at least released from jail before the trial begins. Therefore, I went to Jinnah, whom I had known, and asked him that he should take up the bail application and argue it in the High Court and get Spratt released on bail. Jinnah said: 'Indeed, Mr. Mirajkar, we are friends, however business is business. You must approach me through a solicitor. A barrister is always to be approached through a solicitor, not straightforwardly.' This is the manner by which Jinnah advised me to go. I was helpless, yet an idea seemed obvious to me. I went to Mrs. Naidu - our companion. At the point when she heard this story and the discussion between Jinnah and me, she said: 'All right, let us go to Jinnah. What does he mean by letting you know that you must approach him through a solicitor?' So we, the two of us, again went to Jinnah's place and she started hammering him as soon as we went into his house. She said: 'What is this, Jinnah, to ask this unfortunate kid to approach you through a solicitor when a British companion of ours who is battling for us is arrested and is to be assisted and helped legally?' He showed all softness before Mrs. Naidu. He said: 'All things considered, what can I do? I said that, yet presently since you have come, I will take it up.' He promised that he would take up the bail application and would do whatever preliminary was necessary for that association. The following day the bail application was recorded by Jinnah in the Bombay High Court. Of course, the case immediately came before Justice Davar. He took up the High Court seat and heard the bail application argued by Jinnah. Jinnah, of course, was very articulate and did his utmost. He argued for four hours for a simple bail application and everyone thought, who had assembled to listen to the arguments of Jinnah, that something could happen. However, the following day, Justice Davar indeed refused Spratt's bail, and all the arguments presented by Jinnah before him were of no use.
"Spratt remained in jail all this while. The very following day I have arrested as a publisher as well as a printer of that pamphlet. The manager of Lotvala press, on whose address I had printed that pamphlet - the pamphlet's cost was six annas - was also arrested. So we were also in prison. Yet, we were granted bail. I was out inside one or two days…. So when I came out, I, of course, arranged for further defense, and so on. A solicitor, F. Ginwala, was engaged. He was one of the trade union leaders, along with Jhabwala, a Parsee. He took up the case in right earnest, without asking for money in advance, and the defense of Spratt and myself was thrust on him. So the case was to start after a week or thereabouts. That was the ideal opportunity for the preparation of the defense. However, it must be recorded that this was the first case against an Englishman after the establishment of British rule in the country. Spratt was a British. It was attracting great public attention in the city. So much so that a tremendous group attended the trial, which happened for about five or six days in the Bombay High Court. It was as largely attended as Tilak's trial, under the Sedition Act, Section 124-A. The fact that a British was being pursued interestingly for sedition against the British government itself attracted individuals' attention in the city.
"Yet again Jinnah was approached yet he had some other engagements and unfortunately, he was unable to take up this brief. Therefore, we tracked down another lawyer. There were lots of youthful lawyers, and volunteer lawyers, and one of them was a youthful, almost junior barrister, Barrister Ambedkar - not the same Babasaheb Ambedkar, who later on became a major leader of the Scheduled Castes - who had started practicing in the Bombay High Court. He was also one of the defense counsels. I don't recollect the names of the senior counsels now. Thus, the case started in the Bombay High Court. It was very much argued by our lawyers. On the very first day, Philip Spratt British had a decision to ask for a special jury. In any case, he waived that decision, that right, and he went in for a typical jury. This was based on Jinnah's advice. All the special jurors were challenged and tossed out and normal jurors, consisting of nine jurors assumed the jury's position.
"So the normal jurors took up their seats and the trial began, with Justice Fawcett taking up the seat on the criminal side. It was a criminal case. As I said previously, the trial began in right earnest and it happened for six or seven days. Our lawyers argued the case to the best of their ability. They were very unmistakable lawyers in the Bombay High Court. And, finally, Justice sat in the chamber, to sum up the case and the jury went in. Spratt and I, the printer, sat in the dock and waited for our fate. Fortunately, the jury presented to us a verdict, eight to one, declaring all of us, under Section 124-A, not liable. Therefore Justice Fawcett had no decision except to let us off." Jinnah's advice to Spratt to waive his rights as a European proved very sound, without a doubt.
We live in a different clime in which lawyers decline to safeguard unpopular causes, violating the honorable code established over the centuries. The finest statement of the duties of counsel was made by Thomas Erskine in his celebrated defense of Tom Paine when he was attempted in 1792 for seditious defamation: "I will forever, at all hazards, assert the respect, freedom, and trustworthiness of the English Bar, without which impartial justice, the most valuable part of the English Constitution, can have no existence. From the second that any advocate can be allowed to say that he will or won't stand between the Crown and the subject arraigned in the court where he daily sits to practice, from the second the liberties of England are at an end. In the event that the advocate refuses to shield, from what he may consider the charge or of the defense, he assumes the character of the appointed authority; nay, he assumes it before the hour of judgment, and with respect to his rank and reputation, puts the heavy impact of perhaps a mistaken assessment into the scale against the accused in whose favor the benevolent standard of English law makes all presumptions, and which commands the very judge to be his counsel"
(T.B. Howell (ed.); State Trials, T.C. Hansard, London; 1816 Edition, Vol. XII, page 411).