ABSTRACT
The agitation provoked by the internment of Annie Besant at Coimbtore in June 1917 lasted just three months, but it had for the first time sucked Jinnah into the whirlpool of nationalist politics. Jinnah told the Committee that the All India Muslim League, on whose behalf he was speaking, had adopted a programme — the attainment of self-government under the aegis of the British Crown — and ‘thereby came into line with the Indian National Congress’. The courage, the conviction and the clarity of Jinnah’s exposition of the nationalist case was reminiscent of the performance of his hero and mentor, G.K. Gokhale, before the Welby Commission in 1897. In retrospect, it seems that the Lucknow Pact was a turning point in Jinnah’s political evolution. Very early in his career—precisely in 1908-9—his wings had been clipped by the incorporation of separate electorates for Muslims in the Minto-Morley reforms.
