(This article was originally published on 4 April 2017.)
How history becomes heritage, and how heritage preserves history, is a fascinating subject for the students of history and practitioners of heritage conservation. However, when history gets distorted, and a historical personality comes to be demonised on account of the distortion, the heritage associated with his name either degenerates due to disuse or, worse still, is sought to be destroyed by the falsifiers of history.
For evidence, come to Jinnah House on Mumbai’s Malabar Hill, the original abode of the city’s rich and powerful. And Mohammed Ali Jinnah was certainly one of the most powerful politicians in the city, both in his earlier avatar as a staunch Congressman and an ‘Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity’ (these being the words of his mentor Gopalkrishna Gokhale) and later as the supreme leader of the Muslim League that demanded India’s partition and the creation of Pakistan.
You will not be able to enter it because the heritage mansion, sitting on a sprawling plot of 2.5 acres, is locked under litigation. But peer through the gate, and you will be left with no doubt that the magnificent house that Jinnah built in 1936 is a victim of appalling disuse.
Also Read: Free to Go to Your Temples In This State of Pakistan: Jinnah, 1947