Jinnah's tragedy

The discussion of Kashmir in the book is, however, very brief and almost cryptic notwithstanding that Jinnah was at the helm of affairs in Pakistan for a significant part of the first Kashmir War

Catastrophic events incubate their own revisionist histories. The partition of India — its attendant bloodbath, the portfolio of unresolved issues and legacy of mistrust and hostility — is a case in point. Earlier narratives were linear: The two-nation theory of the Muslim League led to the partition. In Pakistan this was intrinsic to its founding ideology — that Muslims had always sought a separate homeland and Qaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the leader who steered this aspiration to its destiny in the form of separate nationhood. The partition debate and the Jinnah debate were, and are, therefore, inseparable. Ayesha Jalal’s