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Jinnah’s victory, Pakistan’s loss

What might have been had there been no partition

Friday 23 May 2008

Currently Pakistan seems to stand at a point where all the contradictions in its inception, all the missed opportunities in its history and all the failings of its ruling elite have finally come together to produce an insoluble crisis. Internal stresses and external pressures may now at last have converged to call into question the viability of the state as currently constructed.

To ask how it came to any of this is always to arrive at the same point, at the inescapable conclusion that the failings and weaknesses of Pakistan as a nation state were all present in embryo at Partition in 1947. This inevitably brings a reminder, replete with tragic irony that Partition itself, the very act that conferred such an ill-starred legacy on the fledgling country, was explicitly the wish of the state’s founding father, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Roderick Matthews, Historian, obtained a First from Balliol College, Oxford in Modern History. Studied Medieval History under Maurice Keen. Studied Tudor and Stuart History under Christopher Hill, Master of Balliol College. Studied European History under Colin Lucas, later Master of Balliol College and Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University. Studied Imperial History under Professor Paul Longford, Rector of Lincoln College.

Roderick Matthews
Jinnah’s victory, Pakistan’s loss: The Poisoned Legacy of Partition
Ideaindia.com
eBook : download here

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