*In celebration of 12/25 we thought we’d share some of the top rating books on the man himself, Jinnah. These are all collected from different sources and readily available on the net for purchase. Please feel free to add on. Enjoy.
**The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan **
Review
'Jalal's monograph is an important contribution which no student of modern South Asia can ignore. The central theme is original, provocative, stimulating and in places quite exhilarating ...' The Times Higher Education Supplement 'The strength of Jalal's work is her forthright repudiation of the historicist assumption that because an independent Pakistan came into existence such a state was intended by Jinnah as he campaigned for 'Pakistan' from 1940-1947.' American Historical Review 'Ayesha Jalal's is a well researched, well written and more or less dispassionate study of the factors leading to the creation of Pakistan - indeed India's Partition.' The Economic Times (Bombay)
Review
"At once compelling and closely argued, this is a work no student of modern India and Pakistan can afford to ignore." American Historical Review
"Concise, elegantly written, amply documented..." Pacific Affairs
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**Jinnah: Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity**
Contents: Introduction: the impact of partition on the study of Jinnah. 1. Gokhale's heir. 2. Ambassador of unity. 3. Jinnah and Willingdon. 4. Defeat by Gandhi. 5. The backrooms of politics. 6. Leader of the opposition. 7. The Jinnah League. 8. The fourteen points of Mr. Jinnah. 9. Exile in London. Conclusion: Jinnah in perspective. Bibliography. Index.
"This book analyses the development of Jinnah's relationship with India's Muslims from his entry into politics until 1934. It seeks to establish that a dominant view of Jinnah--namely that he was an ambassador of Hindu Muslim unity in the 1920s who became a communalist in the 1940s--is far from the truth.
Ian Wells shows that the 'Two-Jinnahs' approach oversimplifies the trajectory of a complex and evolving political thinker and strategist. The primary changes in Jinnah's politics, he suggests, were the strategies Jinnah employed to achieve his goals rather than the goals themselves.
Among the facets of Jinnah's political thought and career analysed here are various other settled perspectives on Jinnah: his 'elitism' and distance from mass politics; the effect on his work of an intellectual genealogy from the liberalism of Morley on the one hand and the constitutionalism of Gokhale on the other; his view of secularism, religion and the religious community; his relations with Gandhi, Motilal and Jawaharlal Nehru, Willingdon, Ramsay MacDonald and Irwin; his attitude to the Rowlatt Act, the Khilafat Movement, and non-cooperation; and his complex, troubled relations with other nationalist Muslim leaders.
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**Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity: The Search for Saladin **
**by Akbar S. Ahmed**
August 1947 marked the 50th anniversary of India and Pakistan's independence from Great Britain. That hard-won independence, however, came with a high price: a bloody partition of the subcontinent into Hindu-majority India and the Muslim state of Pakistan. Almost as soon as Jawaharlal Nehru pronounced India a new nation, the butchery began--a bloodbath in which millions perished and for which there are still no exact figures. What Mohandas K. Gandhi was to India, Mohammed Ali Jinnah was to Pakistan--the architect of its statehood. In Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity, Akbar S. Ahmed shines the spotlight on a man whose character, he feels, has been distorted by the official Pakistani line. Though Jinnah was clearly interested in ensuring a homeland for Muslims, Ahmed's book makes clear that this London-trained lawyer was no Islamic fundamentalist. The author's take on Indian-Pakistani history, his account of Jinnah's involvement, and his ideas about the future of Pakistan and the Islamic world are both thought-provoking and important.
Neither Ayesha Jalal nor Akbar S Ahmed is authority on Jinnah , former being greatly influenced by her Doctoral Advisor ( an apoopnent of partition) when she was completing her PhD in UK and latter is staunch Indian Nationalist and twist the history for his usual hatred towards Jinnah and Pakistan .
See the praise of Ayesha Jalal from an indian media site when Prof. Fateh Muhammad Malik criticized her and hardly anyone in Pakistan today is authority on Jinnah,Pakistan,Partition and Iqbaliat and all about it greater than Fatheh Malik !
In keeping with its general attitude of animosity towards India, Nawai-e-Waqt carried numerous pieces expressing disdain for the peace overtures made by India and occasionally Pakistan (as was evident in the articles on Kashmir). A comment piece by Professor Fateh Mohammed Malik , ‘New creation of Pakistan in an Indian mould’ was a detailed critical commentary of Pakistan’s New Creation , a book written by a former Indian Director General of Military Training, Major General Vinod Sehgal. General Sehgal’s fantasy of a sub-continental confederation from Kabul to Colombo involves the obliteration of Pakistan as it exists today. It offers familiar arguments of Pakistan as a failed jehadist state that needs to be remoulded in the image of India. This feeds into the ‘Akhand Bharat’ ideology beloved of the right in India. Professor Malik’s critique of the book is therefore justified but he couches it in terms of an absolute opposition between Islam and Hinduism and attacks Ayesha Jalal as well. This absolutism tends to dilute the question he asks in conclusion: ‘shouldn’t I call the person who is giving a threat like this a “Hindu terrorist?“’ (January 19). Indeed he should and one wonders why General Sehgal’s book was not commented upon by the Indian media under survey. Perhaps because it shows Indian policy commentators in poor light and India as a state with hegemonic desires.
http://72.14.235.132/search?q=cache:C4i1frH08EEJ:www.thehoot.org/web/home/searchdetail.php%3Fsid%3D1985%26bg%3D1+Prof+Fateh+Muhammad+Malik+jalal&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=9&gl=pk