📚 Book: Jinnah: A Life | ✍️ Author: Yasser Latif Hamdani | Episode 8

Book Café Podcast

▶️ Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/yTM7FtieCIw
📚Book: "Jinnah: A Life"
📚Genre: History / South Asian History / Religion / Politics
✍️ Author: Yasser Latif Hamdani
🎧 Episode info:
Barrister Yasser Latif Hamdani talks about his latest book "Jinnah: A Life"; a holistic biography of the Founding Father of Pakistan Mahomed Ali Jinnah.
🖍 Episode Highlights:
✔️ Mr. Jinnah's cultural and religious background
✔️ Mr. Jinnah's original vision for Pakistan
✔️ The 1948 Urdu-Bengali language controversy
✔️ What would Mr. Jinnah have thought of Bangladesh?
Author bio:
⚖️ Yasser Latif Hamdani is a corporate and constitutional lawyer with a keen interest in aviation law, space law, digital rights, tech and telecommunications and corporate law.
⚖️ He is a Barrister of @LincolnsInnOfficial holding an LLM and an LLB. He studied economics at @RutgersU , USA (2002). He is also an @asiasociety Fellow (2014) and @HarvardLawSchool and Human Rights Fellow (2018).
⚖️ Some notable constitutional and technology cases include the YouTube un-ban case (2013-2016), a challenge to the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act -PECA (2017-2020), and unbanning BIS for Blackberry (2011) in the early days of digital rights litigation in Pakistan.
▶️ Yasser Latif Hamdani's Official YouTube Channel: @yasserhamdani
📚 Book Review by Omar Nizam:
One of the most enigmatic figures in history, the Founding Father of Pakistan Mahomed Ali Jinnah is revered by some and vilified by others. Some hold him to be the savior of Islam and Muslims in South Asia while others see him as the stubborn statesman whose single minded sense of purpose eventually split India into two.
Away from the derisions and the hagiographic portraits alike, Pakistani author Barrister Yasser Latif Hamdani finally sheds light on this debate by bringing forth the real / historical Mr. Jinnah; relying not on his knowledge as a trained historian, but by his skills as a lawyer.
Readers on both sides of the Indo-Pakistan border will be very surprised to learn about the real Mr. Jinnah: a staunch patriot who was hailed as the Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, a man who respected religion but was not looking to build a theocratic state; a man who believed in secular democracy, and ultimately a man who second guessed himself on his deathbed as to whether the state he helped to create was a mistake or not.
Readers in Bangladesh and the Bengali diaspora may also be very surprised to learn that had Mr. Jinnah been alive today, he may well have considered Bangladesh - and not Pakistan as it exists in it's current iteration - as the true manifestation of his vision.
Some 70+ years after his death, Mohammed Ali Jinnah continues to fascinate. A highly riveting page turner, "Jinnah: A Life" is a must read.
Rating: 5/5 stars (with great distinction) 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

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1. Author's introduction (00:00:00)

2. Motivation for writing the book (00:05:03)

3. Mr. Jinnah's early life (00:10:38)

4. Mr. Jinnah's pre-1937 political ideology (00:17:31)

5. 1906: The formation of the All India Muslim League (00:23:56)

6. 1916: Ruttie Jinnah's influence on her husband (00:27:03)

7. 1920: Enter Mr. Gandhi (00:33:00)

8. Enter Mr. Nehru (00:41:25)

9. Mr. Jinnah's post-1937 political ideology (00:45:57)

10. The Alternative Partition Plan: United Bengal (00:49:22)

11. 1947: Enter India and Pakistan (00:52:22)

12. 1948: Urdu-Bengali language controversy (00:56:22)

13. Book recommendations (01:06:23)

14. Guest question from Dr. Emran El-Badawi (01:09:51)

15. Would Mr. Jinnah have approved of Bangladesh? (01:17:30)

16. Concluding remarks (01:20:28)