For years, a seductive little claim has floated through op-eds, TV debates and now the swamp of social media: “Mahatma Gandhi gave Muhammad Ali Jinnah the title Quaid-e-Azam.” It sounds poetic, almost cinematic – the apostle of non-violence supposedly conferring the crown of “Great Leader” on the man who would ultimately carve Pakistan out of British India.Strip away the WhatsApp mythology and the casual misquotations, and the story that emerges is far more interesting – and far more political – than the feel-good fiction of Gandhi “honouring” Jinnah with a grandiose title.
The Myth That Just Won’t Die
Why does the Gandhi-gave-the-title story refuse to die? Because it is tidy, dramatic and convenient.
It allows some Indian commentators to say: “Look, even Gandhi respected Jinnah so much that he named him Quaid-e-Azam!” It gives some Pakistanis a way of claiming that even the “Father of the Indian nation” tacitly recognised Jinnah’s towering stature. It is the perfect myth for panel discussions and Instagram reels.
A widely circulated piece even stated, almost in passing, that Gandhi “honoured” Jinnah with the title. No citation, no primary document, just a sweeping line served as gospel truth. The internet did the rest.
But when one goes looking for hard evidence – a resolution, a speech, a letter in which Gandhi coins or confers the title – the paper trail runs cold. There is, quite simply, no credible contemporary record of Gandhi inventing the title “Quaid-e-Azam” for Jinnah.
So if it wasn’t Gandhi, who did crown Jinnah?
Enter the Forgotten Maulana of Delhi
To find the real origin, we have to leave the drawing rooms of Delhi and the ashrams of Gujarat, and step into the bustling world of Urdu newspapers in late-1930s Delhi.
The star of this story is not Gandhi, Nehru or even Jinnah himself – but Maulana Mazharuddin Ahmad, editor of the Muslim daily Al-Aman (often spelled Al-Iman in some records), published from Delhi.
On 10 December 1938, Maulana Mazharuddin did something that would change political vocabulary in the subcontinent forever. In his newspaper, he formally proposed that Indian Muslims should address Muhammad Ali Jinnah as “Quaid-i-Azam” – the Great Leader.
This was not a casual off-hand phrase. It was a deliberate political act, a conscious elevation of Jinnah’s status at a time when he was emerging as the unchallenged voice of the Muslim League after the 1936–37 provincial elections.
The suggestion did not die in the columns of Al-Aman. Within weeks, it would be stamped with the authority of the All-India Muslim League itself.
Patna 1938: When the Title Became Official
Fast-forward to the 26th annual session of the All-India Muslim League, held at Patna between 26 and 29 December 1938.
This was not just another party jamboree. By then, Congress ministries had taken office in several provinces, Muslim anxieties were hardening, and Jinnah was positioning himself as the indispensable negotiator for Muslim political interests. The air was thick with speeches, resolutions and the sense of a gathering storm.
Somewhere amidst this charged atmosphere, Maulana Mazharuddin’s proposal was taken up on the League’s platform. The session approved that Jinnah be addressed henceforth as “Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah” by the Muslim League and by Muslims in general.
At this point, the title ceased to be a mere journalistic flourish. It became a political honourific sanctioned by the highest organ of Muslim politics in British India.
And then came the moment that would immortalise it in popular memory.
“Quaid-e-Azam Zindabad!” – A Slogan Is Born
The story goes that Mian Ferozuddin of Mochi Gate, Lahore, who had travelled to Patna for the session, became the first to electrify a crowd with the cry:
“Quaid-e-Azam Zindabad!”
That slogan – the kind that sends shivers down spines at mass rallies – caught fire. It travelled from Patna to Lahore, from Aligarh to Bombay, from the countryside of Punjab to the alleys of Calcutta. Within a surprisingly short time, the man once known simply as “Mr Jinnah” or “Jinnah Sahib” had, in popular imagination, become Quaid-e-Azam.
Notice who is missing from this entire chain of events: Mahatma Gandhi. He is nowhere in the origin story. No Congress resolution, no Gandhian statement, no press note of the time attributes the title to him.
The crown was crafted and placed not by a Congress leader from Gujarat, but by a Delhi Maulana and a Muslim League session in Patna – and carried forward by the lungs and throats of ordinary Muslim Leaguers.
So Where Does Gandhi Come In?
To be fair to the myth-makers, Gandhi does appear in the story – but much later, and in a very different role.
By September 1944, Jinnah was already firmly established as Quaid-e-Azam in the Muslim political universe. When Gandhi and Jinnah held their famously fraught talks in Bombay that month, they exchanged a series of letters.
In one of these letters, dated 24 September 1944, Gandhi opened with the words: “Dear Qaid-i-Azam”.
This is crucial. Gandhi was not inventing a title; he was acknowledging one that had already become standard in Muslim political discourse. It is akin to a political opponent today addressing someone as “Prime Minister” or “Chief Minister” – recognition of position, not authorship of the title.
Somewhere along the way, this simple courtesy morphed into the florid claim that Gandhi gave Jinnah the title. From there, the myth grew legs and found its natural habitat in “forwarded as received” messages and lazy commentary.
The Bizarre “Great Ass” Theory
As if one myth were not enough, there is an even stranger sideshow in this saga.
In a quirky anecdote unearthed from an early-1970s political book, the ever-wily C. Rajagopalachari (Rajaji) is cast as the secret author of the title. According to this story, Rajaji – dubbed the “crafty Brahmin of Madras” – allegedly called Jinnah a “great ass,” using a Tamil word for ass, “kazhde”, which somehow evolved into “Kazde Azam” and eventually “Quaid-e-Azam”.
It is a clever joke, the sort that earns a wry chuckle in drawing-room banter. But as history, it is a non-starter.
There is no serious documentary backing for this tale, no contemporary usage, no trace in Muslim League records, Urdu newspapers or the official correspondence of the period. It is almost certainly a post-facto satire, not an origin story. Taking it literally would be like insisting that “Sher-e-Punjab” was coined during a zoo visit.
Why the Real Origin Matters
“Who cares who first said it?” some might shrug. “Everyone knows Jinnah was called Quaid-e-Azam; what difference does it make whether Gandhi coined it or a Maulana did?”
It makes a difference because myths are never innocent.
If one accepts the Gandhi-bestowed-the-title story, it subtly rewrites the political script. It suggests a kind of mutual moral endorsement between Gandhi and Jinnah that did not exist in that form. It blurs the sharp ideological contest of the 1940s into a cosy exchange of honorifics.
More importantly, it erases the agency of Indian Muslims themselves – of the Maulana who proposed the title, of the Muslim League delegates who endorsed it, and of the ordinary supporters who turned “Quaid-e-Azam Zindabad!” into a thunderous reality.
The title did not descend from a Hindu saint-statesman. It rose from within the Muslim community’s own political awakening, at a time when they were rallying behind a leader they believed could bargain with both the British Raj and the Congress on their behalf.
To misattribute that crown to Gandhi is to misunderstand both Gandhi and Jinnah – and to flatten the complex, often bitter, political drama of the late-colonial years into a feel-good anecdote.
Jinnah’s Ascent and the Birth of a Cult Title
By the late 1930s, Jinnah’s transformation was nearly complete. The sharply dressed Bombay lawyer and one-time “ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity” had re-emerged as the stern, implacable voice of Muslim separatist politics.
Nothing captured this metamorphosis more dramatically than the historic Lahore session of the All-India Muslim League in March 1940, where the famous “Qarar-dad-e-Pakistan” – the Pakistan Resolution – was adopted at Minto Park (now Iqbal Park) on 23 March 1940. Jinnah, already being hailed as Quaid-e-Azam by that time, presided over a sea of green flags and restless expectation as the League formally demanded that Muslim-majority regions in the northwest and the east be constituted into “independent states”. The roars of “Quaid-e-Azam Zindabad!” that rolled across Lahore that weekend fused the man, his title and the Pakistan idea into a single, electrifying symbol.
The failure of Congress–League cooperation, the experience of Congress provincial ministries, and growing anxieties among sections of the Muslim middle classes all fed into a narrative that Jinnah alone could “deliver”. The Muslim League was no longer a languishing elite club; it was on its way to becoming a mass political machine.
In that setting, the title “Quaid-e-Azam” was not just flattery. It was a political instrument, a rallying cry. Every time a crowd roared “Quaid-e-Azam Zindabad!”, it was not merely praising a man; it was endorsing a particular political project – one that would eventually culminate in the demand for Pakistan.
Titles like this are never neutral. “Mahatma” for Gandhi, “Netaji” for Subhas Bose, “Sardar” for Patel – each of these emerged from specific political battles, contexts and constituencies. “Quaid-e-Azam” belongs in that same gallery: a title minted in the heat of agitation, not handed out across communal lines as a gesture of personal affection.
Busting the Myth, Keeping the Respect
None of this means that Gandhi and Jinnah never showed courtesy to each other. They did – sometimes through formality, sometimes through pointed politeness that thinly veiled deep disagreement. Gandhi addressing Jinnah as “Quaid-e-Azam” in 1944 is one such moment of careful respect in the midst of intense ideological war.
But courtesy is not authorship.
To insist that Gandhi created the title is to bend facts to fit a sentimental narrative. The real story is sharper, more political – and, in many ways, far more revealing about the subcontinent’s fractured journey to independence and partition.
In an age where “history” is increasingly manufactured in meme factories and amplified by algorithms, this much should be non-negotiable: words matter, and so do the people who first uttered them.
“Quaid-e-Azam” was born not in Gandhi’s ashram, nor in a Tamil pun, but in the columns of a Delhi Urdu newspaper and on the stage of the Muslim League’s Patna session in December 1938. From there, it leapt into the slogans of the street and into the psyche of a community on the move.
That, not the WhatsApp fairy tale, is the story that deserves to be told.