The popularity of the Muslim League and its idea of Pakistan has been measured in terms of its success in achieving the goal of a sovereign state in the Muslim majority regions of North West and North East India. It led to an oversight of Muslim leaders and organizations which were opposed to this demand, predicating their opposition to the League on its understanding of the history and ideological content of the Muslim nation. This volume takes stock of multiple narratives about Muslim identity formation in the context of debates about partition, historicizes those narratives, and reads them in the light of the larger political milieu of the period. Focusing on the critiques of the Muslim League, its concept of the Muslim nation, and the political settlement demanded on its behalf, it studies how the movement for Pakistan inspired a contentious, influential conversation on the definition of the Muslim nation.

This book challenges the fundamental assumptions regarding the foundations of Pakistani nationalism during colonial rule in India.

In this book, the author takes Pakistan as a case study in a search for better definitions of nations and nationalism, arguing that it exhibits the three essential ingredients for a successful national movement. These are a distinctive integrated community, a particular set of circumstances, and purposeful leadership.

In early twentieth century British India, prior to the arrival of digital medias and after the rise of nationalist political movements, a small-town paper from the margins of society became a key player in Urdu journalism. Published in the isolated market town of Bijnor, Madinah grew to hold influence across North India and the Punjab while navigating complex issues of religious and political identity. In Print and the Urdu Public, Megan Robb uses the previously unexamined perspective of the Madinah to consider Urdu print publics and urban life in South Asia. Through a discursive and material analysis of Madinah, the book explores how Muslims who had settled in ancestral qasbahs, or small towns, used newspapers to facilitate a new public consciousness. The book demonstrates how Madinah connected the Urdu newspaper conversation both explicitly and implicitly with Muslim identity and delineated the boundaries of a Muslim public conversation in a way that emphasized rootedness to local politics and small urban spaces. The case study of this influential but understudied newspaper reveals how a network of journalists with substantial ties to qasbahs produced a discourse self-consciously alternative to the Western-influenced, secularized cities. Megan Robb augments the analysis with evidence from contemporary Urdu, English, and Hindi papers, government records, private diaries, private library holdings, ethnographic interviews, and training materials for newspaper printers. This thoroughly researched volume recovers the erasure of qasbah voices and proclaims the importance of space and time in definitions of the public sphere in South Asia. Print and the Urdu Public demonstrates how an Urdu newspaper published from the margins became central to the Muslim public constituted in the first half of the twentieth century.

Jinnah Wanted All Non-Muslims To Migrate To India And All Muslims To Inhabit Pakistan. The Book Is The Story Of This Unfulfilled Dream. While Pakistan Particularly, The Western Wing Went About Ethnic Cleansing, India Failed To Encourage`Hijrat`

'Ayesha Jalal's book is an important scholarly account of ... the partition of India in 1947.' American Historical Review

This book covers several themes and many message to different groups of Muslims around the world. The underlying message is that under a defeatist mindset, Muslim scholars adopted politically expedient positions through fatwas many of which are contrary to the scripture. This was established through the Investigative Commision established in Pakistam in 1953-54. Their report documents this fact (covered in Chapter 6 and Appendix 2) and exposed the many inconsistencies in the radical's doctrine. The book essentially revolves around the findings of this report. The recent terrorist events in Europe and the US, and increasing radicalism in these societies, can all be traced to the findings of that report. The interconnection between the radicals' doctrines and terrorist actions is overwhelming. Terrorists and politicized clergy use those flawed interpretations to radicalize and recruit youngters to their cadres. Many Muslim scholars and leaders justify the terrorist strikes as retaliatory actions against the US or Western anti-Islamic policies. The only way to reverse this destructive trend is for Muslims to understand and reject the incorrect interpretations. There are consequences for Muslims living in non-Muslim countries because Muslim scholars and leaders testified that Muslims cannot be faithful citizens of a non-Muslim government. Europe has seen this trend and it is now starting in the US. The Muslims living in non-Muslim countries should clearly establish their loyalties. It is therefore imperative for Muslims to be clear that Islam requires them to be faithful to their country.