India, Sept. 11 -- Muhammad Ali Jinnah died aged 71, on September 11, 1948 - just 394 days after Pakistan's creation - of chronic tuberculosis. His terminal illness, as he led the campaign for India's division in the 1940s, remained a secret until his death. Last month, Pakistan announced one of its highest civilian honours, the Nishan-e-Imtiaz, for two Bombay (now Mumbai) Parsi doctors, Jal Ratanji Patel, Jinnah's physician, and Jal Daeboo, a radiologist, acknowledging their inadvertent contribution to the circumstances that made Pakistan's creation possible by maintaining this secret.

Pakistani minister Ahsan Iqbal posted on social media that British viceroy Louis Mountbatten acknowledged he might have delayed Partition had he known ho...