This talk examines how the idea of Pakistan was articulated and debated in the public sphere and how popular enthusiasm was mobilized for its successful achievement, especially in the crucial province of U.P. (Uttar Pradesh) in the last decade of British colonial rule in India. Contradicting the overwhelming scholarly consensus that Pakistan was a vague idea that serendipitously emerged as a nation-state during the last days of the Raj, it argues that Pakistan was popularly imagined through the 1940s as a sovereign Islamic State, a new Medina, as some called it. In this regard, it was envisaged as the harbinger of Islam's renewal and rise in the twentieth century, the new leader and protector of the global community of Muslims, and a worthy successor to the defunct Turkish Caliphate.

Bio: Venkat Dhulipala is Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. His research interests lie in the field of modern South Asian history, religion secularism, and nationalism in South Asia, Islam in South Asia, and comparative studies in decolonization. He has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities), besides degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Hyderabad.

Free and open to the public.

This lecture is part of the Thursday Series of the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg. Additional assistance from the Center for South Asian Studies.