Review of Dhulipala's Creating a New Medina

Pratap Bhanu Mehta's review of Dhulipala's new book is here.

Venkat Dhulipala v Ayesha Jalal

It is a popular theory in some circles that the demand for Pakistan was merely a bargaining position that Jinnah took, and it was the stupidity of everyone else that they did not realize this, and ended up giving Jinnah Pakistan.   The most prominent exponent of this point of view is Ayesha Jalal.

Venkat Dhulipala has a book forthcoming, "Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India", and an excerpt from it was published in the Hindu.  It takes on the idea of Pakistan as a bargaining position head-on.

Why did Jinnah recognize Kalat as an independent state?

The British position in Lord Wavell/Lord Mountbatten's time was that Kalat was like any other Indian princely state.  Nevertheless, Lord Mountbatten mediated negotiations between M.A. Jinnah and the Khan of Kalat and Jinnah, on behalf of Pakistan, recognized Kalat as a sovereign, independent state.  The question is - why did Jinnah adopt that position?

The answer has to do with the legal position of the Indian princely states.   Under the Indian Independence Act, British paramountcy would lapse, and all treaties between the princely states and Great Britain would cease to have effect.   However, all British Indian treaties with sovereign states would continue to be in effect, and be inherited by the newly independent India and Pakistan.

The British had obtained a perpetual lease of Quetta and surrounding areas from the Khan of Kalat.  If Kalat was a sovereign state, then Pakistan would inherit that lease.   If Kalat was a princely state of British India, the lease would lapse, and  Quetta would revert to Kalat. Pakistan's claim on it would depend on whether the Khan of Kalat acceded to Pakistan or not.

Some of the evidence for this answer is presented below. It is in reverse chronological order.

Kuldip Nayar on Jinnah

One day when Jinnah was in Lahore, Iftikhar-ud-din, Pakistan’s rehabilitation minister, and Mazhar Ali Khan, editor of Pakistan Times, flew him in a Dakota over divided Punjab. When he saw streams of people pouring into Pakistan or fleeing it, he struck his hand on the forehead and said despairingly: “What have I done?” Both Iftikhar and Mazhar vowed not to repeat the remark. Mazhar took his wife Tahira into confidence and told her what Jinnah had said, and she communicated Jinnah’s comment to me long after her husband’s death.

  via Outlook India.