Review Article M.A. Jinnah: The First Research Dissertation

Abstract

The Political Career of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the first research dissertation of Pakistan’s founder, by William Stafford Metz was submitted to the University of Pennsylvania in 1952. This was two years before the official biography, Hector Bolitho’s Jinnah: the Creator of Pakistan was published. It had been preceded by Matloobul Hasan Saiyid’s Muhammad Ali Jinnah: A Political Study (Lahore: 1945) but this book reads more like an ideological chronology, than a coherent depiction of Jinnah’s political life. Considering that it had to seek the approval of a person as reticent as Jinnah, this is not surprising. Metz did not travel to South Asia in preparation of his thesis to interview people who knew Jinnah personally. He submitted his treatise before there was any hope of official documents being declassified. His bibliography is short, yet it is not outmoded even 55 years after its submission. It is seeing the light of day a full 60 years after Jinnah’s demise. Despite steadily growing body of Jinnah studies, its authenticity and relevance are retained. This dissertation yield new material and new interpretation. Both because of its primacy and its intrinsic worth, this treatise is deserving not only of recognition, but of tribute.