Research and Publication Centre (RPC) invites you to its Guest in Town Series for a talk by Professor Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed on Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at 4:30 pm. Address: Research and Publication Centre (RPC), 2nd Floor, 65 Main Boulevard Gulberg, Lahore (next to Standard Chartered Bank, above Indesign showroom). Lift is operational. The talk will be followed by a Q & A session and tea.
Jinnah: His Successes, Failures and Role in History
The talk will trace the evolution of Mohammad Ali Jinnah as a politician identifying four phases in his political life concentrating on his embrace of the two-nation theory formally on March 22, 1940 and its deployment to claim Muslim states through a partition of India. That idea ultimately crystallized in the form of one Pakistan constituted by two wings of the country.
The implications and ramifications of adopting a communal ideology for achieving his objective of a separate state for Muslims will be examined critically, including the bloody division of India and the biggest forced migration in history, as well as Jinnah’s role as the all-powerful head of state of Pakistan.
Some of the controversies which will be highlighted will be:
1. Do existing sources confirm that after 1939 Jinnah was working to reach a power-sharing deal within a united India?
2. The controversy around the Cabinet Mission Plan.
3. Did Jinnah want Pakistan to be a secular state?
4. Did Jinnah as the all-powerful head of state of Pakistan bequeath precedence that negatively impacted Pakistan’s future as a parliamentary democracy?
5. How can we understand Jinnah’s role in history as a leader of men?
Bio data Ishtiaq Ahmed
Professor Dr. Ishtiaq Ahmed holds a PhD in Political Science from Stockholm University. He was member of the Faculty in the Department of Political Science at Stockholm University during 1987-2010. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Stockholm University. He is Honorary Senior Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore, where he worked as Senior Research Professor during 2007-2010. During 2013-2019 he taught winter semesters at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS, 2013-2015) and at Government College University Lahore (during 2015-2019).
He has published several books, including The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed: Unravelling the 1947 Tragedy through Secret British Reports and First-Person Account, which won the 2013 Best Non-Fiction Book award at the Karachi Literature Festival and at the Lahore Literary Festival. His book, Jinnah: His Successes, Failures and Role in History won the 2021 Best English Non-Fiction Book award at the Valley of Words, Literature and Arts Festival, Dehradun. His book, Pakistan the Garrison State: Origins, Evolution, Consequences 1947-2011, provides an alternative, dissenting view of civil-military relations. His latest book is, Pre-Partition Punjab’s Contribution to India Cinema.
His research interests cover such diverse fields as political Islam, ethnicity and nationalism, human, minority and group rights, partition studies, and the Punjabi contribution to cinema. He writes columns in several Pakistani newspapers. He has contributed extensively to peer-reviewed journals and chapters to edited books.
Currently, he is working on a new book, Partition Controversies: India, Punjab, Bengal – Who did What?
Rashed Rahman
Editor, Pakistan Monthly Review (PMR) (link: pakistanmonthlyreview.com)
Director, Research and Publication Centre (RPC) (on Facebook)
