1/9 @mitteleuropean correctly infers in #bookReview of @marinaccwheeler #Partition1947 @HodderBooks @TheTimesBooks 8 Nov 20, pp 16-17 that, ' #Independence hasn't been all it was cracked up to be.' Some of his surmises along the way merit critiquing.

2/9 Affording oft-maligned #Jinnah the benefit of the doubt is not only correct but, sometimes, imperative—though not in the final analysis. Rashid contends #Jinnah 'sincerely' held #Muslims could be 'untethered from their #faith'. Was he that insouciant?

3/9 Did #Jinnah not retain a fleeting familiarity with #Muslim mores regarding communal action and political organisation which, in time-honoured fashion then as now, has universally been to coalesce confessionally? To iterate so isn't essentialist.

4/9 #Jinnah apart, most in #Muslim #League were not cultural but believing #Muslims. An analogy with culturally Jewish #Zionists is attractive but untenable. As are those popular congruences between #Israel and #Pakistan which can be suggestive, not real.

5/9 In forging a #Muslim #Zion, #Jinnah sought to put paid the permanent minorityism of #Muslims by claiming parity utterly out of proportion with strength or standing in late imperial #India. That he pulled it off constitutes another discussion.

6/9 To delve on his personality, as @marinaccwheeler has done, isn't irrelevant or clichéd: so much of the personal was political. To rehearse as others have that #Jinnah ate #pork or #Gandhi knew more #Quranic #verses is not to taunt #Pakistanis.

7/9 One thing a #Parsi #wife prepares #ham #sandwiches for her #Muslim husband. Another when disappointed #Jinnah reminded luncheon banquet wasn't on as #Ramadan, Aug. 1947, forbade him enjoying his crowning moment of creating the largest #Muslim #country.

8/9 Unmentioned are 'disenfranchised' #Hindu, #Christian, #Buddhist and #Sikh underclasses in #Pakistan and #Bangladesh that mirror #Indian, #Muslim plight more sharply than most of Rashid's #diasporic, #SouthAsian, #Muslim generation care to realise.

9/9 #Indian #Muslims are voluble, vigilant and vouchsafed of the fact that there are not only constitutional safeguards but also the #solidarity of #nonMuslim #Indians, something blatantly absent for fearful counterparts in #Pakistan or #Bangladesh.