The Sole Spokesman:
                        Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan

                           Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985-hardback/1994-paperback
 


 
                        Heightening tensions along lines of religious community in India have underlined
                        the extent to which the partition of 1947 fell short of addressing its Muslim minority problem.
                        This study examines why the establishment of a Muslim homeland in 1947 was unable to
                        reconcile a claim of nationhood based on religious identity with the territorial expression
                        of statehood.

                        In 1940 the All-India Muslim League first voiced its demand for independent Muslim
                        states in the north-west and north-east of India. Seven years later Pakistan was created
                        amidst a religious holocaust of unprecedented proportions. Through an analysis of the
                        Muslim League's relations with the British, the Congress and Muslim-majority provinces
                        in the years leading up to partition, Ayesha Jalal identifies the factors that led to the
                        creation of Pakistan, and provides new insights into the nature of the British decolonization
                        of India.

                        By focusing on the role of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the All-India Muslim
                        League, she traces the evolution of the Pakistan demand based on the 'two-nation' theory.
                        Jinnah claimed to be the sole spokesman of all Indian Muslims, not only in provinces where
                        they  were in a majority but also in provinces where only a minority was represented. However,
                        the political geography of the subcontinent guaranteed that there would always be as many
                        Muslims outside a specifically Muslim state as inside it.

                        By consulting a wide range of primary sources, the author investigates how Jinnah proposed
                        to reconcile the contradiction between a demand for a Muslim state and the need for a
                        strategy covering the interests of all Muslims. She does so by identifying Jinnah's real
                        political aims, the reasons why he was reluctant to reveal them and his success or failure
                        in achieving them.
 

                        'Jalal's monograph is an important contribution which no student of modern South Asia
                        can ignore. The central theme is original, provocative, stimulating and in places quite
                        exhilarating...'   The Times Higher Education Supplement.


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