Muhammad Ali Jinnah - Aftermath

Aftermath

Dina Wadia, Jinnah's daughter, remained in India after independence before ultimately settling in New York City. In the 1965 presidential election, Fatima Jinnah, by then known as Madar-e-Millat ("Mother of the Nation"), became the presidential candidate of a coalition of political parties that opposed the rule of President Ayub Khan, but was not successful.

The Jinnah House in Malabar Hill, Bombay, is in the possession of the Government of India, but the issue of its ownership has been disputed by the Government of Pakistan. Jinnah had personally requested Prime Minister Nehru to preserve the house, hoping one day he could return to Mumbai. There are proposals for the house be offered to the government of Pakistan to establish a consulate in the city as a goodwill gesture, but Dina Wadia has also asked for the property.

After Jinnah died, his sister Fatima asked the court to execute Jinnah's will under Shia Islamic law. This subsequently became the part of argument in Pakistan about Jinnah's religious affiliation. Vali Nasr says Jinnah "was an Ismaili by birth and a Twelver Shia by confession, though not a religiously observant man." In a 1970 legal challenge, Hussain Ali Ganji Walji claimed Jinnah had converted to Sunni Islam, but the High Court rejected this claim in 1976, effectively accepting the Jinnah family as Shia. Publicly, Jinnah had a non-sectarian stance and "was at pains to gather the Muslims of India under the banner of a general Muslim faith and not under a divisive sectarian identity." In 1970, a Pakistani court decision stated that Jinnah's "secular Muslim faith made him neither Shia nor Sunni", and in 1984 the court maintained that "the Quaid was definitely not a Shia". Liaquat H. Merchant elaborates that "he was also not a Sunni, he was simply a Muslim".