ABSTRACT
Jinnah began his political career in 1906 under the influence of the senior Congress leadership including Dadabhai Naoroji and Pherozeshah Mehta. He championed joint electorates for elective bodies irrespective of caste and creed. Having begun his political career in 1906 by championing joint electorates for elective bodies, by 1916 he became an advocate of separate electorates and even persuaded the Indian National Congress to waive its principled objections to them. Jinnah’s political predicament in the spring of 1937 led him to play the religious card. So far he had not worn religion on his sleeve. His visit to the Badshahi mosque in Lahore in February 1936 was his first experience of addressing a Friday congregation in a mosque; he had been pleased with it. Jinnah’s appeal in the name of Islam reached a crescendo in the general election of 1945–46.
