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 Jinnah of Pakistan
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Product Details:
Author: Stanley Wolpert | ISBN: 0-19-577389-6 | Format: Hardcover | Pages: 421 | Weight: 1.39 lbs | Pub. Date: 2006 | Publisher: Oxford University Press
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 studied 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 By the l920s, however, it appeared that Jinnah’s political career was at an end, superseded by the rise of Gandhi’s leadership and the movement of India in a more revolutionary direction.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.
Stanley Wolpert, one of America’s foremost experts on South Asia, is Professor of History at the University of California at Los Angeles. His books include Roots of Confrontation in South Asia, A New History of India (Second Edition, 1982), Morley and India 1906-1910, Nine Hours to Rama, and Tilak and Gokhale.
Praise for Jinnah of Pakistan
“An important contribution to the study of one of the most significant episodes of modern history, the partition of India. Jinnah’s role has been consistently distorted both in scholarly work and in the popular media, as most recently in the Gandhi film. . .Wolpert has succeeded in showing Jinnah as a rationalist of great intelligence and political ability, who was driven to become the spokesman for the partition of India by tides of Indian nationalism…’’ - Ainslie T. Embree Chairman, Department of History, Columbia University
‘This masterly biography of Pakistan’s founder and ‘Great Leader’ is also a thorough and objective study of the coming of political independence and partition to the Indian subcontinent.” - Holden Furber, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania
“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, Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago
“A magnificent biography...We should be grateful to Stanley Wolpert for a book that combines meticulous research and scholarship with a lively and interesting style. He is one of a rare species: a scholar who can-and will-write well.” - Norman D. Palmer, Emeritus Professor of Political Science and South Asian Studies, University of Pennsylvania
“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 who did more than anyone else to bring to realization the seemingly chimerical dream of founding a Muslim majority state in the Indian subcontinent. All readers interested in contemporary history can profit greatly from reading this book.” - Nikki Keddie, Past President, Middle East Studies Association of North America
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