The Political Career of Mohammad Ali Jinnah

Mohammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) is chiefly known as the founder of Pakistan, and as such is widely revered in Pakistan and reviled in India. This book aims to present an impartial account of his career.

Through a wide range of sources, the author demonstrates how Jinnah started out as a secular-minded nationalist dedicated to bringing independence to India through constitutional means and eager to work through both Congress and the Muslim League to achieve Hindu–Muslim unity in the struggle.

The highpoint of this strategy was the Congress–League Pact of 1916 but this could not be maintained. The book charts the stages in Jinnah’s disillusion and change of direction. British repression after the First World War led Gandhi and Congress into policies of which he disapproved, and Gandhi’s leadership with its Hindu-dominated tone also wounded him both personally and politically. He retired from politics in 1920 and, when he returned in 1924, he tried a different tack seeking to unite the Muslim League as the political vehicle for achieving Hindu–Muslim agreement.

But here too he failed; his attempts at agreement with Congress were rebuffed and this weakened him within the League. When the 1930 Round Table Conference failed to produce unity, Jinnah again retired from politics.

British initiatives during the 1930s met with divided responses.

Increasingly worried at the prospect of active Hindu domination in an independent India, and at Congress’s refusal to guarantee safeguards, Jinnah again returned to the fray and, as leader of the Muslim League, adopted Partition as the political principle for the subcontinent’s Muslims. By holding unswervingly to this through all the negotiations against considerable odds, he achieved Pakistan.