An example of Jinnah's "bluff"

The Ayesha Jalal school of thought says that Pakistan was merely a bargaining position to get a better position for Muslims in an undivided India, and Jinnah didn't really intend partition.

The problem with that theory is we know what Jinnah said in private to the British, and also what he said in public, and you have to ask just how could someone intuit that Jinnah might back down from the partition demand.

Here is an excerpt of a report of a Jinnah speech. It is the "Presidential Address at the 28th Annual Session of the All-India Muslim League, Madras, April 14, 1941", as published by the Muslim League itself.

Returning to the point as to why they did not demand Pakistan here and now, Mr. Jinnah said that it was due to one and only reason, namely, we did not wish to embarrass the British Government when they are engaged in this struggle of life and death and their own existence......"But let me once more emphasize from this platform that the policy of the British Government in India, of inaction, of weakness, and of vacillation, is going to prove more disastrous than it is even in Europe.   Cannot these men see that events are moving so fast and that maps are being changed?   Look at what the Axis powers are doing - action and action; and what is the British Government doing, placating and placating, vacillation, weakness, inaction!

Yugoslavia and India

 In this connection, Mr. Jinnah referred to the march of events in Yugoslavia and said that, following the German capture of Zagreb, the Yugoslavia province of Croatia had been proclaimed an 'independent state' according to the German News Agency, and a Croat general had called on all officials, army officers and non-commissioned officers take the oath of allegiance to the 'New State'.  They should remember, Mr. Jinnah said, that in Yugoslavia there were the Croats, the Slovenes and the Serbs.  Their position was very much like our position in India: Dravidastan and the Dravidians, Pakistan and the Muslims and Hindustan and the Hindus.  Here is a mighty sub-continent and the question really is: Are you going to wait and allow somebody else to come here and do the job for you or are you going to do it yourselves? {emphasis added}

This has been an example of Jinnah's bluff.