‘First Thing Jinnah Would Do Is Partition The Moon’: MJ Akbar's Lunar Levity Targets Pakistan's Space Ambitions

Author and former union minister MJ Akbar has turned Pakistan’s newly named lunar rover, Jinnah-1, into the subject of a sharp political joke, quipping that the first thing Jinnah would likely do on the Moon is “partition it”.

The remark plays on the historical legacy of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founder and the principal political figure associated with the Partition of British India in 1947. Akbar’s satire deliberately brings that history into an unlikely setting: the Moon, where Pakistan is preparing to make its first foray into rover-based exploration.

What Is Jinnah-1?

Pakistan’s Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) has named its first lunar rover Jinnah-1. The approximately 35-kilogram rover is being developed for a mission to the

lunar south polar region in cooperation with China.

The rover is planned to travel as part of China’s Chang’e-8 mission, which is intended to conduct scientific investigations and technology demonstrations on the Moon. Current plans put the mission in the 2028-29 timeframe, with schedules subject to change.

Jinnah-1 is expected to study aspects of the lunar environment, including the surface and geology, while contributing to experiments relevant to future lunar exploration and sustained human activity.

Why the South Pole Matters

The choice of destination is significant. The lunar south pole has become one of the most coveted areas in modern space exploration because permanently shadowed regions may contain deposits of water ice.

Water on the Moon could eventually have enormous strategic and scientific value. It could support life-support systems and, after processing, potentially provide hydrogen and oxygen for fuel.

That has turned the south pole into a major focus for several national space programmes, including India’s, China’s, and the United States’s.

India’s Chandrayaan-3 achieved a historic soft landing near the lunar south polar region in 2023, making India the first country to land in that part of the Moon.

A Joke With a Long Historical Shadow

Akbar’s “partition” quip works because it compresses a century of South Asian political history into a single lunar image.

Pakistan’s Jinnah-1 mission, however, represents something considerably more serious than a political punchline: an attempt to build indigenous scientific and technological capability and participate in the international race to explore the Moon.