Muhammad Ali Jinnah called for the division of India on 22ndMarch 1940 in his presidential address to the annual session of the All-India Muslim League held at Lahore. Immediately, the League were beset with not only opposition from all flanks but also the allegation that Jinnah's idea of Pakistan was ill-defined and merely a counter for bargaining. Even after Pakistan's independence in 1947, this theory was furthered to the extent of being elevated to orthodoxy. This paper examines Jinnah's private correspondence dealing with the nature of Pakistan, in particular Jinnah's 1941 letter to the League leader Nawab Ismail that refers to findings of the Reforms Commissioner H.V. Hodson regarding Pakistan, and is often cited as evidence of Jinnah’s ‘real aims’. In parallel, Jinnah and prominent League leaders’ dealings with the British are analyzed in order to reconcile their disparate stances.
Keywords : Jinnah, Hodson, Nawab Ismail, Partition
Authored by :
(1) Meraj Hasan
Department of Pakistan Studies, National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad, Pakistan.
(2) Asifa Zafar
Lecturer, Department of Pakistan Studies, National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad, Pakistan.
(3) Kanwal Noreen
Lecturer, Department of Pakistan Studies, National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Global Political Review (GPR) is an emerging elite scholarly journal which deals broadly with theoretical and practical aspects of regional and global issues. It discusses the sub-national, national, regional and global crucial and attention-seeking topics of Political Science, International Relations, Peace and Conflict Studies, Defense and Strategic Studies, Diplomatic Studies, International Law, UNO, other Inter-governmental Organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations and International Political Economy. The following details show an overall scope of the journal.
