American Media Perceptions of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, 1939-48

Muhammad Ali Jinnah, despite being a colossus of the Indian independence movement and one of the most significant Muslim leaders of the twentieth century, has rarely been analyzed vis-à-vis the United States. Though he devoted much of his life to freeing his countrymen, he was not perceived as an anti-colonialist leader in the class of Gandhi. For Pakistanis, he was the Quaid-i-Azam, the “Great Leader.” For the rest of the world, he was the tenacious lawyer who argued the case for Pakistan and won, changing the map of South-Asia in 1947. He remains a figure of great historical worth, and yet, ironically, misunderstood or little known by most Americans today.

This thesis, awarded Distinction by the London School of Economics and Political Science, is thus partly a historiographical introduction to Jinnah in relation to the US. However, by assessing Jinnah’s image in American media during his lifetime, and then seeking to understand the social and political lenses through which the media viewed him, a more complete picture of Jinnah, as well as of the origins and concerns of the nation he left behind, can be formed.