Dina Wadia ( August 15, 1919 – November 2, 2017 ) was the daughter and only child of the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and his second wife Rattanbai Petit.
Dina Wadia | passed at the age of 98.
انا لله وانا اليه راجعون
Dina is survived by her son Nusli Wadia and his children.
Dina Wadia was the only child of Muhammad Ali Jinnah and his second wife Rattanbai Petit who was also known as Maryam Jinnah.
Dina Wadia was born in London on August 15, 1919. Her paternal grandparents were from Gujarat, who moved to Karachi for business in the mid-1870s, where her father, Jinnah, was born.
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As the famous American historian Stanley Wolpert’s Jinnah of Pakistan records: “Oddly enough, precisely twenty-eight years to the day and hour before the birth of Jinnah’s other offspring, Pakistan”.
It is believed that Dina’s relationship with her father became strained after she expressed her desire to marry a Parsi Neville Wadia. Jinnah tried to dissuade her but failed.
Mahommed Ali Chagla, Jinnah’s assistant recalls that “Jinnah, in his usual imperious manner, told her that there were millions of Muslim boys in India, and she could have anyone she chose. Reminding her father that his wife (Wadia’s mother Rattanbai), had also been a non-Muslim, a Parsi also coincidently, the young lady replied: ‘Father, there were millions of Muslim girls in India. Why did you not marry one of them?’ And he replied that ‘She became a Muslim’.
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Dina traveled twice to Pakistan. The first time in September 1948 on the death of her father, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and on the second and last occasion in March 2004 for an India-Pakistan cricket match.
On this visit, she also went to Karachi to visit her father’s mausoleum where she wrote in the visitors’ book: “This has been very sad and wonderful for me. May his dream for Pakistan come true.” She also went to pay respects to her aunt Fatima Jinnah at her tomb Madar-e-Millat and hosted the flag of Pakistan at the Flagstaff House Pakistan.
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