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Ayesha Jalal (Punjabi language, ) is a Pakistani-American historian known for her work documenting the biography and career of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder and first Governor-General of Pakistan. She is currently the Mary Richardson Professor of History at Tufts University. Earlier in her career, Jalal taught at Harvard University and Columbia University. She was the recipient of the 1998 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.
Jalal is married to the distinguished Indian historian Sugata Bose, who is a professor of history at Harvard. He is a grand-nephew of the Indian Bengali freedom fighter Subhash Chandra Bose.
She stayed at Cambridge until 1987, working as a fellow of Trinity College and later as a Leverhulme Fellow. She moved to Washington, D.C. in 1985, to work as a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and later as Academy Scholar at Harvard's Academy for International and Area Studies. She was hired by Columbia University as an associate professor in 1991 but her tenureship was declined after review in 1995. In 1999, she joined Tufts University as a tenured professor.
The bulk of her work deals with the creation of Muslim identities in modern South Asia.
Jalal sued Columbia University alleging bias after her tenure review for a professorship was declined in 1995. In her lawsuit, Jalal accused the university of discrimination on the basis of religious and ethnic background.
Ayesha Jalal is among the most prominent American academics who write on the history of South Asia. In her book, The Sole Spokesman (Cambridge University Press, 1985 and 1994), Jalal gives her perspective of what happened in the years between the 1937 elections in British India and the Partition of the Indian subcontinent, identifying the factors which led to the creation of Pakistan and provides new insights into the nature of the British transfer of power in India. In particular, she focuses on the role of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of All-India Muslim League, and the main proponent of the Two Nation Theory on which the demand for Pakistan was based. Jinnah claimed to be the sole spokesman of all the Indian Muslims, not only in provinces where they were in a majority but also in the provinces where they were in a minority. Yet given the political geography of the subcontinent, it was clear that there would always be as many Muslims outside a specifically Muslim state as inside it. This book investigates how Jinnah proposed to resolve the contradiction between assertions of a "separate Muslim nation" and the need for a strategy which could safeguard the interests of all Indian Muslims. It does so by identifying Jinnah's real political aims, the reasons why he was reluctant to bring them into the open, and his success or failure in achieving them.
On 16 April 2016, Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan's ambassador to the United Nations, said that she was “the greatest historian Pakistan has produced.”
Awards
As a leading historian of Pakistan and South Asia, Ayesha Jalal has received numerous awards and recognitions:
Recognition
The Hindu, a newspaper of record in India, calls her, "...one of Pakistan's most acclaimed historians..." The Express Tribune, a Pakistani newspaper states, "...Jalal is revered globally as a historian of meticulous methods."
Bibliography
Books
(1997). 9780195639445, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195639445
(2026). 9780415779432, Routledge. ISBN 9780415779432
Ayesha Jalal (2026). 9780674052895, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674052895
Chapters in books
See also
External links
Categories: 1956 Births, Living People, Columbia University Faculty, Historians Of South Asia, Macarthur Fellows, Harvard University Alumni, Recipients Of Sitara-i-imtiaz, Pakistani Emigrants To The United States, Historians Of Pakistan, Tufts University Faculty, Stuyvesant High School Alumni, Wellesley College Alumni, Alumni Of Trinity College, Cambridge, Fellows Of Trinity College, Cambridge, Academic Staff Of Lahore University Of Management Sciences, Punjabi Women, American People Of Punjabi Descent, American Academics Of Pakistani Descent, 20th-century American Historians, 21st-century American Historians, Academics From Lahore, Muslims From New York
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