The fourth and final stage in Jinnah’s long political career was as the all-powerful Governor-General of Pakistan. Against all efforts of Gandhi, Nehru, Maulana Azad and Sardar Patel to prevent the partition of India, he had succeeded in creating a Muslim-majority Pakistan in the north-western and north-eastern zones of India. It had entailed agreeing to the partition of Punjab and Bengal, something which he had resisted with all skills at his disposal. In the end, he had to relent on it. Simply put, it was obviously too illogical to demand a separate state for Muslims who were only 25 per cent of the total Indian population but claimed the right to a separate state in regions where they constituted a majority and deny the same right to non-Muslims to separate from those regions where they (the non-Muslims) were in majority. This was the case for the eastern districts of Punjab and western districts of Bengal. In any event, Jinnah was disappointed and described the Pakistan he got as moth-eaten. The British had courted Jinnah during the war but now when it was over amid intense US pressure and the shattering of its own economy and industry, they decided to transfer the power to Indians. The transfer of power was to ensure that they continued to retain a dominant role in South Asia. In a memorandum dated May 12, 1947, and prepared by the British military, the partition of India was accepted on grounds that Jinnah was willing to remain in the British Commonwealth whereas India could go its own way – quite simply Nehru and his leftist group in the Congress were considered unreliable because of their anti-imperialist stance and pro-Soviet leanings. On January 25, 1948, Jinnah told the Karachi Bar Association that the constitution of Pakistan was given 1300 years ago. Jinnah, on the other hand, had realised that the US was the power to be reckoned with and sent in 1946 sent Mr Isphahani to the US to plead for support to create Pakistan, telling the Americans that Pakistan would geographically and culturally be best located to protect American interests in the Middle East oil and to contain communism. Jinnah continued to lobby for American support when he met Life correspondent on the partition, Margaret Bourke-White, in the first week of September 1947. In the fourth and final stage of his career when Jinnah was at the pinnacle of power, he was fully aware of a predicament his admirers have not admitted: he had not set forth a clear, consistent and coherent vision of how Pakistan would be. He was on record describing Pakistan as a modern state, a Muslim democracy, an Islamic state, a Muslim state in which sharia would be the source of constitution and law-making. Then, on 11 August 1947, on his election as the president of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly, he had omitted mentioning Islam altogether and instead talked about Hindus and Muslims enjoying equal rights. Consequently, Muslim modernism, Islamic statism and the solidarity omission of Islam in the August 11, 1947 speech resulted in endless controversy to determine what really he wanted Pakistan to be like. He candidly admitted to his army and naval aides that since he had given conflicting promises to Pakistani Muslims on the idea of Pakistan it will take time to sort that confusion. Therefore, he was leaving it to the Pakistan Constituent Assembly to take up the question of the Pakistan constitution. He appointed Sir Zafrulla, an Ahmadi, as Pakistan’s foreign minister and Joginder Nath Mandal, a Hindu Dalit, as law minister but simultaneously set up the Islamic Reconstruction Institute in Lahore to advise the government on an Islamic constitution, economy and educational system. He wrote to the head of the Muslim Brotherhood Hassan Al-Banna to send an Islamic scholar to Pakistan to advise the government on how to make Pakistan a truly Islamic state and society. On January 25, 1948, he told the Karachi Bar Association that the constitution of Pakistan was given 1300 years ago, and Islam was democratic and egalitarian. In July 1948, at the inauguration of the Pakistan State Bank, he told directors to devise an Islamic economy, which was neither capitalistic nor socialistic. Exercising unprecedented powers acquired through the amendment of the 1935 Act and the July 1948 Indian Independence Act, he presided over meetings of the federal cabinet while Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan willingly sat with other ministers and dutifully signed all decisions taken by Jinnah. Using the same powers, he dismissed the elected government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, the elected government of Sindh and told the Bengalis who constituted 55 per cent of the Pakistan population that Urdu will be the national language of Pakistan. These three decisions perpetuated the colonial type of viceregal system instead of the cabinet form of parliamentary democracy. He surely felt that all such decisions were taken in the best interest of Pakistan, and he alone knew what was best for Pakistan. As the founder of Pakistan, he had very strong reasons to believe that he was acting in the best interests of the people of Pakistan. Concluded The writer is Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University; Visiting Professor Government College University; and Honorary Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. He can be reached at billumian@gmail.com