A Leadership Odyssey - Muslim Separatism and the Achievement of the Separate State of Pakistan

This book offers a unique historiography of the phenomenon of Muslim separatism as it affected and shaped modern South Asia. It describes the journeys of six prominent Muslim leaders of British India: Syed Ahmad Khan, who laid the foundation of the Muslim separatist political movement; Sultan Muhammad Aga Khan III, Syed Ameer Ali, and Maulana Mohamed Ali, who strengthened and developed it in their own ways; Allama Muhammad Iqbal, who took its cause further and formulated the idea of a separate state; and, of course, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who, after making the demand for a separate state, transformed it into the nationalist Pakistan Movement and led it successfully to achieve the separate state of Pakistan.
Previous studies have not explained Muslim separatism in such a leadership framework. In this book, based on an ‘instrumentalist’ approach, Muslim separatism has been analysed through the contributions of a host of Muslim leaders, one after the other, helping and reinforcing each other, and thus leading all the way to the achievement of Pakistan.