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List of photographs and maps; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Glossary; Introduction; 1. Nationalists, communalists and the 1937 provincial elections; 2. Muslim mass contacts and the rise of the Muslim League; 3. Two constitutional lawyers from Bombay and the debate over Pakistan in the public sphere; 4. Muslim League and the idea of Pakistan in the United Provinces; 5. Ulama at the forefront of politics; 6. Urdu press, public opinion and controversies over Pakistan; 7. Fusing Islam and state power; 8. The referendum on Pakistan; Epilogue; Conclusion; Select bibliography; Index; About the author.
This book challenges the fundamental assumptions regarding the foundations of Pakistani nationalism during colonial rule in India.
Venkat Dhulipala is Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, specializing in the history of modern South Asia. He received his PhD from the University of Minnesota in 2008. Dhulipala offers courses on modern India and Pakistan, Gandhi, Mughal India, and India and Pakistan after 1947.
'Dhulipala's impressively researched, lucidly written, and
intelligently argued book comes as a sharp but welcome corrective
to the tendency to see Pakistan as a country created accidentally
in a fit of popular enthusiasm and elite indirection in the final,
confusing years of British rule in India. Dhulipala shows, with
particular focus on north India, how rich the 1940s were with
public debates in English and Urdu over the meaning of Pakistan.
This is an exciting, significant, and challenging contribution to
South Asian history.' Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago
'This is a path-breaking book, indispensable to anyone who wishes
to understand the emergence of Pakistan. It persuasively challenges
dominant understandings of Pakistan as the creation of a 'sole
spokesman' or of 'secular elites' and demonstrates a long-standing
relationship between the Muslim League leadership and an important
set of Deobandi ulama. It shows how preparations for creating an
Islamic state in Pakistan began in the early 1940s, and explores
the conflation in people's minds between the creation of Pakistan
and the fashioning of a 'New Medina'. It thus brings Islam back
into the debate on Pakistan's birth and offers a new perspective
for its subsequent development. It should be read not just by
specialists working on India's Partition and modern Pakistan, but
by scholars in Middle Eastern history and politics and those
interested in twentieth-century Islamic movements.' Francis
Robinson, Royal Holloway, University of London
'Dhulipala's monograph breaks new ground in studies of the birth of
the Pakistan idea in northern India. In place of the conventional
focus on political negotiations and communal violence, he explores
its cultural and religious dimensions and traces the roots of the
concept in Indian as well as in early Islamic traditions. Based on
meticulous research into a massive corpus of Urdu journals and
religious treatises, it looks at the role of the Deoband clergy in
very new ways. It is a valuable and important addition to the
historical field.' Sumit Sarkar, University of Delhi
'Dhulipala's magisterial book is one of the first to carefully
examine a broad range of debates on the idea of Pakistan both in
English and in Urdu that illuminated the public sphere in the
decade before Partition, particularly within the context of
politics in UP. His book powerfully illustrates that understandings
of Pakistan were not so vague or ill-formed as many historians have
previously argued. Supporters (and opponents) of Pakistan were
deeply engaged both with contemporary ideas about the modern
nation-state and with conceptions of the state rooted in Islamic
history. This is a significant story for understanding Pakistan's
intellectual and political heritage.' David Gilmartin, North
Carolina State University
'I read Creating a New Medina not as a slice of Indian history but
as a brilliant, elegantly written study of some of the crucial
subjectivities that led to the partitioning of British India.
Refusing to wear glasses well-meaning liberal historians often love
to wear, Dhulipala takes a hard look at styles of mobilisation
deployed by the Pakistan movement and explores how they radically
changed the nature of politics in mid-twentieth-century British
India - to ultimately shape the future of public life in
postcolonial South Asia.' Ashis Nandy, Centre for Study of
Developing Societies, New Delhi
'… arguably among the most important studies of the ideological
origins of Pakistan published to date … A magnificent book.' Pratap
Bhanu Mehta, The Indian Express
'Dhulipala has raised a host of uncomfortable issues that
politicians and intellectuals on both sides of the Radcliffe Line
would prefer to shy away from.' Swapan Dasgupta, The Telegraph
(India)
'… a marvelous analysis of what Pakistan was meant to be …' Khaled
Ahmed, The Indian Express
'Venkat Dhulipala's book … is a treasure house of information about
debates and discussions relating to the idea of Pakistan.' Ali
Usman Qasmi, The News on Sunday (India)
'… [an] engaging book … a small treasure of references about how
the campaign for Pakistan was being conducted in the areas of North
India.' Ajmal Kamal, The News on Sunday (India)
'[In] Creating a New Medina, Venkat Dhulipala makes well-researched
and insightful comments on the emergence and popularity of the
demand for Pakistan in the final decade of colonial rule in India.'
The Express Tribune
'… an encyclopedic masterpiece … This wonderfully written and
painstakingly researched book will be of tremendous interest to
students and scholars of Muslim politics, nationalism and religion,
and South Asian Islam.' Sherali Tareen, New Books in Islamic
Studies (newbooksinislamicstudies.com)
'This is an important book … Venkat Dhulipala has provided much
food for thought and unearthed a host of sources that demonstrate,
without doubt, that Pakistan was not 'insufficiently imagined'. On
the contrary, it was abundantly imagined, both vehemently opposed
and extravagantly supported, with many shades of opinion in
between.' Gail Minault, H-Asia
'Dhulipala's work, scholarly but accessible, upends decades of
accumulated conventional wisdom in both India and Pakistan. Indians
can no longer pretend that Pakistan was a fraud committed by a
handful of Muslim grandees. Pakistanis can never again argue that
their country was intended to be anything other than an Islamic
state. Today's Pakistan, with its ascendant mullahs, is not an
aberration from, but the culmination of, its ideological origins.
Creating a New Medina is a masterpiece - arguably the most
important work of history published in 2015.' Newsweek
'By unearthing enormous evidence of overwhelming support for
Pakistan especially in the United Provinces of Agra and Audh (U.P.)
this book debunks the mainstream historiography of Pakistan as a
sudden emotive construct. … Taking the same tradition of iconic
writings forward, this encyclopaedic work makes a valuable addition
to the ever-expanding literature on Pakistan.' Swaran Singh, The
Hindu
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