The “Jinnah” Hat: A Southall Winter’s Tale

The winter of 1963 was a brutal one. Southall was buried under a thick, white silence. Even the coal man had not been able to get through. The usual roar of traffic on Southall Broadway was much quieter. My mum and dad walked toward the shops, clinging to one another to stay upright on the icy glass of the pavement.

As they reached the grocery store, the atmosphere shifted. The air wasn’t just cold, it was thick with whispers. A group of Indian women stood huddled together, their breath was like steam as they gossiped to stay warm.

Mum caught the tail end of their judgment: “She acts like such a good Sikh woman… it’s a shame she’s married to a Muslim man.” The women looked appalled, their narrow-mindedness laid bare in the snow.

She stopped out of curiosity. Dad had already sped ahead and started talking to the shop owner Mr Bakshi. Mum was not one to look away from these things. She demanded, “Why on earth would you think that?”

One of the women gestured toward my father. “He wears a Jinnah hat,” she whispered, as if stating an undeniable fact. “Everyone knows only Muslim men wear them.”

Mum didn’t get angry, she burst out laughing. The absurdity of it – the idea that a piece of lambskin fur could define a man’s faith – struck her as hilarious. Dad looked over at her and smiled, as she herself was laughing. She winked at him.

On the way home mum told dad what the women had said. They giggled how narrow minded people of our community could be, and what does it matter if she was married to a Muslim man. They quickly stopped as they had to concentrate on not falling over whilst slipping and sliding on the ice, making sure they didn’t drop all the groceries.

From that day on, dad made sure to wear that Jinnah hat as much as humanly possible. If a hat could rattle the narrow-minded, he was more than happy to give them something to talk about.

The Jinnah hat is called a Karakul hat often made of Persian lambskin fur. It was the hat worn by Jinnah who served as the leader of the All India Muslim League from 1913 until the inception of Pakistan on the 14th of August 1947.