Boston, Aug 19 - Years before veteran politician Jaswant Singh, who was expelled from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Wednesday, a well-known historian here was championing Pakistan founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah's many admirable qualities, including his passion for a united India.

Ayesha Jalal, professor of history at Tufts University, has for long spoken about Jinnah's failed quest to remain within a united India while guaranteeing the Muslim community equal rights.

Her book 'The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and Demand for Pakistan' is widely regarded as the most definitive work on Jinnah and the circumstances that led to the creation of Pakistan.

'My understanding of Jinnah, and I have done substantial research on him, is that he never really abandoned the idea of a united India,' Jalal says in an upcoming documentary on Jinnah and the creation of Pakistan by US-based journalist Mayank Chhaya.

'A united India for him included a Pakistan. He invoked Pakistan based on the Muslim majority provinces of the northwest and northeast as a way of acquiring substantial amount of power at the all India centre,' Jalal says.

In tracing the history of developments that she says led to the movement for Pakistan as a separate state, Jalal focuses on the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 whose mandate was to discuss the transfer of power from the British rulers to Indians as well as discuss the framing of the constitution.

In a sense the Cabinet Mission Plan was about 'layered or shared sovereignty', Jalal argues. She was referring to a three-tiered arrangement proposed in the plan which included a federal union of India, the grouping of provinces as the middle tier (which Jinnah supported) and provinces as the third-tier.