'Throughout the discussion of the Cabinet Mission the Congress Party was not willing to have the centre reduced to three subjects -- defence, foreign affairs and communication. They wanted a broader vision.

'When Jawaharlal Nehru made his famous statement that there is nobody who can stop the Constituent Assembly from enhancing the powers of the centre and we do not believe in grouping, it became untenable for Jinnah to accept the Cabinet Mission Plan. It was at that point that you begin to see a movement for a Pakistan as a sovereign state,' Jalal explains.

She says what the Cabinet Mission gave Jinnah was 'an option of a Pakistan that is based on a partition of Punjab and Bengal or remaining within the all India union with no necessary assurance of Muslim share of power at the all India centre. He accepted that, he accepted something less than a sovereign Pakistan.'

What made Jinnah 'revert back to the idea of a sovereign Pakistan', according to Jalal, was the rejection of the grouping by the Congress Party and once 'it became clear that the Congress had no intention of sharing power'.

In Jalal's telling, Jinnah was still 'hoping against hope that the British will make an award and give him an undivided Punjab and Bengal'.

Jalal's point that it was Nehru and the Congress Party that was unwilling to share power with Muslims tallies with what Jaswant Singh has said in his interview with Karan Thapar on CNN-IBN. 'Nehru believed in a highly centralised polity. That's what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity,' Singh has been quoted as saying.