Author: Stanley Wolpert
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2011
Language: English
Pages: 421
ISBN/UPC (if available): 019567859-1
Description
Mohammad Ali Jinnah was for Pakistan what Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru combined were for modern India--inspirational father and first head of state. Jinnah began his career as the Indian National Congress's "Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity" but ended it forty years later as the architect of the partition that split Pakistan away from India.
This authoritative and uniquely insightful biography explores the fascinating public and private life of this eminently powerful but little understood leader who changed the map of the Asian subcontinent. Portraying Jinnah's story in all of its human complexity, Wolpert begins in the late nineteenth century with Jinnah's early life as a provincial country-boy in Karachi and follows him to London where he studies law and became a British barrister.
Returning to India in 1896, Jinnah rapidly ascended the dual ladders of Indian law and politics, climbing to the top rung of each. By the 1920's, however, it appeared that Jinnah's political career was at an end, superseded by the rise of Gandhi's leadership and the movement of India in a more revolutionary direction. Yet. Jinnah was to remain a pivotal figure in the turbulent decades that followed, as India struggled for independence from British rule amid growing Hindu-Muslim antagonism.
Wolpert vividly recounts how the tragic clash of personalities and party platforms that initially pitted Jinnah against Gandhi escalated from a personal rivalry into a conflict of national and international proportions. Wolpert shows how Jinnah's shrewd and skillful leadership combined brilliant advocacy and singular tenacity to win his suit for the creation of Pakistan on behalf of the 'Muslim nation'--his sole client during the last, lonely, pain-filled decade of his life.
FOM AUTHOR'S PREFACE
Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Mohammad Ali Jinnah did all three. Hailed as 'Great Leader' (Quaid-I-Azam) of Pakistan and its first governor general, Jinnah virtually conjured that country into statehood by the force of his indomitable will. His place of primacy in Pakistan's history looms like a lofty minaret over the achievements of all his contemporaries in the Muslim League. Yet Jinnah began his political career as a leader of India's National Congress and until after World War I remained India's best Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity. As enigmatic a figure as Mahatma Gandhi, more powerful than Pandit Nehru, Quaid-I-Azam Jinnah was one of recent history's most charismatic leaders and least known personalities. For more than a quarter century, I have been intrigued by the apparent paradox of Jinnah's strange story, which has to date been told in all the fascinating complexity of is brilliant light and tragic darkness.
REVIEWS:
An important contribution to the study of one of the most significant episodes of modern history - the partition of India.
-Ainslie T Embree, Columbia University
Scholarly, insightful, understanding and brilliant. Scholarship and the art of portrayal merge so masterfully in the work that Jinnah's personality becomes truly alive.
- Fazlur Rahman, University of Chicago
Wolpert's biography of Jinnah is excellently written..comprehensive in its sweep.
- Economic Times
Wolpert's well-researched biography will revive the debate on the measure of Jinnah's foresight.
-Times Literary Supplement.
The first scholarly biography of one of the most important political figures of the modern world. Beautifully written, insightful, and dispassionate, it brings to life this complex, brilliant, and ambitious leader.
Contents
1. Karachi.
2. Bombay (1896-1910).
3. Calcutta (1910-15).
4. Lucknow to Bombay(1916-18).
5. Amritsar to Nagpur (1919-21).
6. Retreat to Bombay 1(1921-24).
7. New Delhi (1924-28).
8. Calcutta (1928).
9. Simla (1929-30).
10. London (1930-33).
11. London-Lucknow (1934-37).
12. Toward Lahore (1938-40).
13. Lahore to Delhi (1940-42).
14. Dawn in Delhi (1942-43).
15. Karachi and Bombay revisited (1943-44).
16. Simla (1944-45).
17. Quetta and Peshawar (1945-46).
18. Simla revisited (1946).
19. Bombay to London (1946).
20. London-final farewell (1946).
21. New Delhi (1947)
22. Karachi - "Pakistan Zindabad" (1947).
23. Ziarat (1948).
Notes.
Bibliography.
Inde