MUMBAI’S famed landmark -- the Jinnah House on Malabar Hill -- which was once the hub of brainstorming sessions over the contentious Partition of India, remains a charming orphan since the past 75 years.

Top leaders of the All India Muslim League (AIML) used to converge here frequently to strategise and push forth the much abhorred ‘two-nation theory’, first propounded by Choudhry Rehmat Ali in 1933, when he was studying law at the University of Cambridge.

Though ridiculed initially, that student’s theory -- entitled “Now or Never, Are We to Live or Perish Forever”, where he first named the futuristic state of ‘Pak-stan’ -- finally landed in Bombay for serious discussions at the Jinnah House.

Then AIML supremo Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Indian National Congress leader Mahatma Gandhi initially negotiated the Partition here in 1944, followed by another decisive round on the nitty-gritties between Jinnah and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in 1946.

Both Gandhi and Nehru were as reluctant, as Jinnah was adamant on Partition, but as later historical events transpired, the bloody division finally took place in August 1947 -- with India flanked by Pakistan to the West and East Pakistan, or modern-day Bangladesh, to the East.

The critical details of Partition were hammered in parleys among the three top barristers then -- Jinnah, Gandhi and Nehru -- before the trio sat with the Britishers to carve out the country into three geographical entities and two political nations.