The enemy's bungalow is in the middle of Mumbai, worth 2600 crores, this is where the conspiracy to divide India was hatched

Jinnah House: The conspiracy to partition India was hatched in the Mumbai bungalow of Pakistan founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah. This bungalow is in Malabar Hill, Mumbai, which Jinnah built in 1936 after returning from London. Jinnah... Read more

Jinnah House: Malabar Hill is counted among the most posh and expensive areas of South Mumbai. The families of industrialists like Jindal, Ruia and Godrej live here. But there is a bungalow in this Malabar Hill where a conspiracy was hatched 79 years ago to divide India into two parts. The owner of this bungalow was none other than the founder of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah. This bungalow was famous as Jinnah House, but its original name was South Court.

Jinnah House was built by Mohammad Ali Jinnah after he returned from England in 1936. He had taken full control of the Muslim League, which later demanded a separate country for Muslims in the form of Pakistan. Jinnah House has a European style architecture designed by Claude Batley, former head of the Indian Institute of Architects. Specially trained masons from Italy were called to India to build Jinnah House.

The bungalow was built for Rs 2 lakh

It is said that Mohammad Ali Jinnah built this luxurious bungalow at a huge cost of Rs 2,00,000. This amount used to be very high in 1936. To understand the perspective of the cost, it would be interesting to know that when India became independent in 1947, 1 rupee was equal to 1 US dollar. According to a report by Bhaskar, the cost of this bungalow at present would be Rs 2600 crore. This bungalow is spread over 2.5 acres of land. The bungalow is facing the sea. The finest Italian marble and walnut wood were used in the construction of Jinnah House. But this bungalow has been deserted for more than four decades.

In the year 1936, Jinnah House cost Rs 2 lakh.

Jinnah House , the centre of this bitter chapter of history,

was the centre of the Muslim League's agitation for Pakistan. Its leaders would discuss how to deal with the Congress and convince the British that Muslims wanted a separate nation. It was Jinnah House where Mahatma Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah held talks in September 1944, often called the 'decisive talks on the partition of India'. On 15 August 1946, exactly a year before partition and independence, Jinnah held another round of talks with Congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru about the creation of Pakistan. After partition, Jinnah moved to Pakistan, but he had expressed his wish to spend his last days at Jinnah House in Mumbai.

What happened after partition?

After independence, the country's first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru did not want to declare Jinnah House as enemy property. It is said that Nehru wanted to return Jinnah House to Mohammad Ali Jinnah or rent it to a European with Jinnah's consent. But due to Jinnah's sudden death a year later in 1948, Nehru could not take a final decision on Jinnah House. Eventually in 1949, Jinnah House was declared evacuee property and the Government of India took control of it. It was allotted to the British High Commission, which worked from Jinnah House until 1981, after which they moved out. After the British High Commission left, Pakistan requested the Government of India to allow it to use Jinnah House as its consulate. However, this was not possible.

The architecture of Jinnah House is of European style which was designed by Claude Batley.

Jinnah House case

Three years after Jinnah House was built, Mohammad Ali Jinnah wrote his will, in which he made his unmarried sister Fatima Jinnah the sole heir to his properties, including this huge bungalow. At the time of partition, Fatima Jinnah moved to Pakistan. Later in 1962, Fatima obtained a certificate of succession from the Bombay High Court, but this was before the Enemy Property Act, 1968 became law. Thereafter, Jinnah's only daughter Dina Wadia, who married an Indian and settled in India, was engaged in a legal battle with the Indian government. Dina Wadia claimed in the Bombay High Court in 2007 that she was the heir to Jinnah's property as his only child. Dina Wadia also argued that the Hindu Succession Act was applicable in the case of this property because Jinnah was a Hindu only two generations ago. Jinnah's mother's name was Mithubai and his wife's name was Ratanbai. Jinnah was a Khoja Shia Muslim. After Dina's death, her son Nusli Wadia fought the case. Nusli is a billionaire businessman and chairman of the Wadia Group, which is involved in FMCG, textiles and real estate industries. 

Who owns Jinnah House now?

The Ministry of External Affairs rejected Dina Wadia's claim as the legal heir of Jinnah's properties, including Jinnah House. The Ministry of External Affairs told the Bombay High Court that Mohammad Ali Jinnah's 1939 will settles the issue of inheritance in the family. The Ministry of External Affairs said that Jinnah House belonged to Fatima Jinnah. But when Fatima Jinnah moved to Pakistan, Jinnah House came under the control of the Custodian of Enemy Property, which comes under the Government of India. The ambiguity over the rights of enemy property continued until 2005, when the Supreme Court ruled that the Custodian of Enemy Property is only a trustee, who is the owner of the enemy property. This changed in 2016, when the Narendra Modi government came out with an ordinance followed by four more ordinances. The first four ordinances lapsed, while the last ordinance was replaced by the Enemy Property (Amendment) Act, 1968, passed by Parliament. The amended law makes the Centre the owner of the enemy property. Now Jinnah House is the property of the Central Government.

PC:News18