Jinnah stopped consuming alcohol during the last years of his life. The banquet given to Viceroy of India (Mountbatten) in Karachi was alcohol free highlighting the Islamic character of the new state.



Jinnah never consumed pork; it was a piece of propaganda spread by MC Chagla who held a personal grudge against Jinnah.



Akbar S. Ahmed writes in his book - Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity:



The answer may well come from Muslim history. Babar, the Mughal emperor, provides an interesting example of a Muslim’s attitude to drink. Famous in history as a tippler, he was also a poet, autobiographer, warrior and a family man. But at a critical point of his career, when the fate of India was to be decided through a battle, he decided to make a personal sacrifice. He promised God that he would give up drink on the eve of the battle. He went on to win India. Perhaps something similar happened to Jinnah. Several sources indicate that towards the end of his life he had given up drink.



In August 1995 in Cambridge, Yahya Bakhtiar recalled that to the best of his knowledge Jinnah stopped drinking in his final years, and that Iqbal had done the same —that is, in spite of doctor’s orders, they had ‘gone Muslim’. S.S.Pirzada confirms this: ‘It is on record that during his last illness when his physician advised him to take a little brandy, “as a medicine”, he refused. “You want me to take it [alcohol] in the last days of my life, I would not do that,” he said’ (interview of S.S.Pirzada by M.H.Faruqi, Impact International, August 1995:19).



Pirzada also rejects the often repeated story of Jinnah eating ham sandwiches. As Jinnah’s honorary secretary between 1941 and 1944, he never saw him eat forbidden flesh. However weak the evidence, the most widely read works on Pakistan—by Christina Lamb and Emma Duncan, for example—begin their accounts with a predictable catalogue of Jinnah’s dietary habits.



Pirzada put the matter in perspective: ‘Still there is this story about ham sandwiches which is being given currency in Pakistan now’ (Pirzada interview, ibid.). ‘The only source for this appears to be M.C.Chagla’s book Roses in December…. After independence, he rose to become a Minister in the Indian Government and a virulent anti-Pakistani.’ Pirzada explained Chagla’s motivation as the need for revenge: Chagla had been both an honorary secretary to Jinnah in the 1920s and a secretary of the Muslim League, but when he welcomed the Nehru Report in 1928, which Jinnah opposed, Jinnah had him removed. When partition came in 1947 Chagla remained on in India, rising to the post of Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court and eventually becoming ambassador to the USA and Foreign Minister of India. Chagla needed to show loyalty to India and also wished to project Jinnah as ‘secular’ and a flawed Muslim.



According to Chagla’s story (quoted in Wolpert 1984:78–9), Ruttie offered ham sandwiches to Jinnah in the middle of a political campaign. If this were true it would mean that Ruttie was mentally retarded, that she had no idea about her culture and the sensibilities of her society. In fact she was an intelligent, supportive wife. Having become a Muslim after her marriage, she would have particularly appreciated the difference between what was forbidden and what was not. The last thing she would have done would be to embarrass her husband and damage his political career. As much for religious as for cultural reasons, she would certainly not have brought her husband ham sandwiches in the middle of a political campaign, even if she had wanted him to eat them in the first place. It is a silly story.



When I asked Dina Wadia in New York whether Chagla’s story had any factual basis, she recalled that over sixty years ago they were travelling by train to a hill station when ham sandwiches were brought with the food as part of the menu. Her father had them sent away. (She also expressed her irritation about Pakistanis who only seemed to be interested in whether Jinnah ate ham and drank whisky.)