Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India

Western scholars writing of the creation of Pakistan focus on Jinnah as the leading force for its creation.This book introduces us to a wider cast of characters who fought for the creation of Pakistan. Dhulipala's command of the sources is impressive. We learn that the ulamas in UP wanted to create a Pakistan that would be the new Medina of the Islamic world. They joined forces with Jinnah, an English trained barrister and arguably the most successful lawyer in India during his time.We also learn of the critical role played by Dr Ambedkar. His role in the creation of Pakistan had been overshadowed by his fight for the rights of the untouchables. This book puts him back in the spotlight.Dhulipala posits that Jinnah and the ulamas of UP were firm in their view to have a separate state for Muslims. His book therefore takes a completely different view from that taken by Ayesha Jalal in The Sole Spokesman : Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan.

Goes a long way to dispel the myths generated by Ayesha Jalal's "Sole Spokesman,". Although it focuses mostly on U.P., providing a ton of data, the broader narrative of the story of Pakistan is well explained. If I have one complaint, it is that the period of discussion is very narrow, just a few years before partition. The role of Iqbal is not well explained, although it can be argued that is outside the scope of this focused work, which by itself has an immense amount of detail that needs to be understood by anyone interested in the history of this period, and the original thesis of "Pakistan," as a concept, by none other than its originators. I'd also recommend Akbar S. Ahmed's "The Search for Saladin" as a companion to this book.

This book is a "must read" for students of Partition. It explodes many myths, including the one, floated in 1985 by Ayesha Jalal, which claimed that Jinnah's demand for Pakistan was, in reality, a bargaining chip for a better deal for the Muslims in a united India. This claim has been comprehensively demolished by Dhulipala, who provides a more authentic narrative for the partition of India; he cites many reasons to suggest that Partition was inevitable. Dhulipala's book should be read along with the book "The Untold Story of Partition" by Narendra Singh Sarila, to get a balanced view of Partition. His book spares no one, including many stalwarts of the independence movement, and sheds new light on the role of Dr B.R.Ambedkar, who was more prescient than Gandhi and Nehru about the Partition. Ambedkar, too, thought that Partition was inevitable, and was in the best interests of the Hindus and Muslims. He elaborated on this idea in his book "Thoughts on Pakistan," published a few months after the 1940 Lahore Resolution of the Muslim League, which demanded a separate state for the Muslims of undivided India. If only Gandhi and Nehru had listened to him, perhaps a great deal of bloodshed could have been avoided. This is an outstanding book by any standards. It should win many awards.

Arguably the most comprehensive book with mind boggling details on partition of India. The general perception created and perpetuated by mainstream Indian academia was that it was only Muslim League's demand to partition India and masses of Indian Muslims had nothing to do with it. Even though masses of India know that it was a false narrative the academia was keeping this perception in order to make Partition look very normal thing. In reality tye mainstream Indian Ulamas (Muslim clergy) were as much responsible for partition as Muslim league. Muslim league was head of the evil while Ulamas who provided manpower to execute the partition by street power was the body.

In this meticulously written book on the 1947 partition of India, historian Dhulipala demolishes the widely held consensus in partition historiography that Pakistan was an ill-defined and vague idea that somehow swayed the Muslim masses; Jinnah never propagated partition as a final destination, but only as a leverage to bargain for a better future for Indian Muslims. Dhulipala, with copious details, convincingly argues that Pakistan was an idea that was fiercely debated by its opponents and proponents in public sphere. It was envisaged by the Muslim League with active support of a faction of influential Deobandi Ulama not just as a sanctuary for the subcontinental Muslims, but as an “Islamic utopia that would be the harbinger for renewal and rise of Islam in the modern world, act as the powerful new leader and protector of the entire Islamic world and, thus, emerge as a worthy successor to the defunct Turkish Caliphate as the foremost Islamic power in the twentieth century.”