These are the views of my school friend, Professor Khursheed Hasanain, who teaches at Islamabad University. 

“After having read Azad's autobiography "India wins freedom" and some other material my views regarding Jinnah Sahib have been solidified that he was not an opportunist but a pragmatic politician who got trapped in a situation mostly due to Nehru and Patel’s intransigence and Gandhi's tolerance of the same. Basically Jinnah wanted guarantees for Muslims in an undivided India particularly when he saw Gandhi inject religious jargon (ram raj etc)into politics. Jinnah's brinkmanship touched a chord with the reactionary Muslim nawabs etc and they felt secure in a vision of Pakistan guided by religion where the then threatening populist (socialist) forces could be kept at bay in the new republic. Remember that Jinnah was still willing to accept the Cabinet mission proposal for an undivided India with autonomous zones as late as 1946. It was Nehru and Gandhi who rejected it much to Azad's chagrin. Jinnah was a very seriously ill person by this time and knew that he had only collected mediocrities around him who could not deliver in any way. He then opted for the moth eaten Pakistan, in his own words, since he saw he had been trapped into a situation. It was a Shakespearean tragedy all over. Man caught in a web of his own fears and weaknesses. The partition of Punjab was again a sick joke played by Mountbatten and Nehru that laid the foundations of the horrors of partition and the subsequent bitterness and enmity of the two countries.

One may still argue in a Marxist analysis that Jinnah was a bourgeois who catered to the needs of an insecure Muslim middle and upper classes and duped the lower classes that Pakistan would result in freedom from Hindu Landlords and mahajans. To that I would have to agree, in a historical sense. My gut feeling is that had he survived, the lower classes would also have seen some of their dreams come true. Your despondence about Pakistan is understandable but here we do not give up hope. Yesterday the NFC award has been approved meaning the formula for distribution of resources between the provinces and between the provinces and the center. No mean achievement. The Baluchis have been granted amnesty and some beginning of autonomy. There is now growing realization, though looking at the bastards on the electronic media, you may not believe it, that the slaughter of the innocents in Punjab is being carried out by the so-called Punjabi Taliban, the elements of the Jihadi groups we had ourselves created and nurtured very lovingly. The sins of the fathers are revisiting the sons as they say. We will survive if the military takes the people in confidence on this and launches an uncompromising offensive against its (illegitimate) offspring.” 

Najeeb Kazmi