Following the partition of India, she remained in Mumbai and spent time in London before settling in New York City later in life.

Her paternal grandfather, Jinnahbhai Poonja, was a merchant who hailed from Gondal in Kathiawar, Gujarat, and had moved to Karachi in the mid-1870s.

[2][3] They were Khojas; their ancestors were members of the Lohana caste, who had converted from Hinduism to the Shia Ismaili sect of Islam and were followers of the Aga Khan.

[2] After achieving the partition of India in 1947, Jinnah became the first Governor General of Pakistan[5] and he was bestowed with the title Quaid-e-Azam ("Great Leader").

[9] Petit converted to Islam, changed her name to Maryam—which she rarely used—and married Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who was twenty-four years her senior, on 19 April 1918.

[10] Historian Stanley Wolpert notes it is "precisely twenty-eight years to the day and hour before the birth of Jinnah's other offspring, Pakistan.

"[citation needed] In November 1932, Jinnah read H. C. Armstrong's biography of Kemal Atatürk, Grey Wolf, and seemed to have found his own reflection in the story of Turkey's great modernist leader.

Reminding her father that his wife had also been a non-Muslim and a Parsi as well, the young lady replied: 'Father, there were millions of Muslim girls in India.

"[citation needed] Chagla recounted in his autobiography Roses in December that when Dina married Neville, her father said to her that she was not his daughter anymore.

This story, however, is contentious as some say that Jinnah had sent a bouquet through his driver, Abdul Hai, to the newly married couple.

[21] On 28 April 1947, In one of her letters to her father, Dina had said: "My darling Papa, First of all I must congratulate you — you got Pakistan.... how hard you have worked for it…I do hope you are keeping well — I get lots of news of you from the local newspapers in Bombay.

Pakistan had since 1979 requested that India sell the property, or at least lease it to its government as a tribute to its founder in order to convert it into their Consulate.

Though P. V. Narasimha Rao, India's foreign minister in 1980, agreed in principle to lease Jinnah House as the residence of the Pakistani Consulate-General, the plan was never realized.

Indian government sources subsequently said that the claim by Jinnah's heirs will be treated "sympathetically" and have no intention of handing it to Pakistan.

She considered "cricket diplomacy" to be an enthralling dimension that illustrated an entirely new phase in relations between India and Pakistan.

[29][30] The Sindh Assembly in Pakistan observed a one-minute silence in her remembrance and offered Al-Fatiha for her and her father.