Ayesha Jalal was born in Lahore, Pakistan in 1956, the daughter of Hamid Jalal, a senior Pakistani civil servant, and his wife Zakia Jalal. She is related in two ways to the Urdu writer Saadat Hasan Manto. Ayesha's paternal grandmother (Hamid Jalal's mother) was the sister of Manto. Secondly, Manto's wife Safia was the sister of Ayesha's mother Zakia Jalal. In other words, the uncle-nephew pair of Manto and Hamid Jalal were married to the sisters Safia and Zakia.[3][4]
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.
Jalal sued Columbia University alleging bias after her tenure review for a professorship was declined in 1995.[5]
Ayesha Jalal is among the most prominent American academics who write on the history of South Asia.[4] 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.[4]
Awards
A leading historian of Pakistan as well as South Asia, Ayesha Jalal has received numerous awards and acknowledgements:
The Hindu, a newspaper of record in India, calls her, "...one of Pakistan's most acclaimed historians..."[4]The Express Tribune, a Pakistani newspaper states, "...Jalal is revered globally as a historian of meticulous methods."[1]
On April 16, 2016, Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistani ambassador to the UN, said that she was “the greatest historian Pakistan has produced.”
Books
Jalal, Ayesha (1990). The state of martial rule: the origins of Pakistan's political economy of defence. Cambridge England New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN9780521051842.[3]
Jalal, Ayesha (1994). The sole spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League, and the demand for Pakistan. Cambridge Cambridgeshire New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN9780521458504. First published 1985.[1][4][3]
Jalal, Ayesha (1995). Democracy and authoritarianism in South Asia: a comparative and historical perspective. Lahore, Pakistan: Sang-e-Meel Publications. ISBN9789693506297.[4][3]
Jalal, Ayesha; Bose, Sugata (1997). Nationalism, democracy, and development: state and politics in India. Delhi New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN9780195639445.
Jalal, Ayesha (2000). Self and sovereignty individual and community in South Asian Islam since 1850. New York: Routledge. ISBN9780415220774.
Jalal, Ayesha; Bose, Sugata (2011). Modern South Asia: history, culture, political economy (3rd ed.). London New York: Routledge. ISBN9780415779432.[4][3]
Jalal, Ayesha (2013). The pity of partition: Manto's life, times, and work across the India-Pakistan divide. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN9780691153629.[1]
Jalal, Ayesha (2014). The struggle for Pakistan: a Muslim homeland and global politics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN9780674052895.[8]
Jalal, Ayesha (2009), "Freedom and equality: from Iqbal's philosophy to Sen's ethical concerns", in Kanbur, Ravi; Basu, Kaushik (eds.), Arguments for a better world: essays in honor of Amartya Sen | Volume II: Society, institutions and development, Oxford New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 452–469, ISBN9780199239979.