In 1940 the All-India Muslim League orchestrated the demand for independent Muslim states in India. Seven years later Pakistan was created amidst a communal holocaust of unprecedented proportions. Concentrating on the All-India Muslim League and its leader, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, The Sole Spokesman assesses the role of religious communalism and provincialism in shaping the movement for Pakistan.

‘Jalal’s monograph is an important contribution which no student of modern South Asia can ignore. The central theme is original, provocative, stimulating and in places quite exhilarating …’

Source: The Times Higher Education Supplement

‘The strength of Jalal’s work is her forthright repudiation of the historicist assumption that because an independent Pakistan came into existence such a state was intended by Jinnah as he campaigned for ‘Pakistan’ from 1940–1947.’

Source: The American Historical Review

‘Ayesha Jalal’s is a well researched, well written and more or less dispassionate study of the factors leading to the creation of Pakistan - indeed India’s Partition.’

Source: The Economic Times (Bombay)