Adil Najam
We at ATP like books. Over the last many months we have featured and discussed a number of books that relate to Pakistan in various ways.
I must confess that I had always hoped that we would talk more about books than we have. I hope we will be able to do so in the future. As a step towards that goal, we would like to invite our readers to share with us your suggestions of books on Pakistan that are worth reading.
This is not a popularity contest. We have no awards to give. We merely want to collate a list of books on Pakistan that people consider to be interesting reads. Specially those that you would consider recommending to others for whatever reason.
We have only two criteria:
- First, that the books you suggest must be about Pakistan, and significantly so. We, of course, realize that many Pakistanis read many books that are not about Pakistan, but the focus of this blog is not only on ‘All’ Things Pakistan, but also ‘Only’ things about Pakistan.
- Second, for the purpose of this first exercise please restrict your suggestions to books in the English language. This is a pragmatic, and not an ideological, criteria. The universe of books in Urdu is much larger – especially when one includes works of fiction and poetry – and hopefully we will have a separate exercise on those. For now, we wish to start small by focusing only on English language books.
The plan right now is to make this post and list a standing feature and to keep adding to it as readers share their suggestions and ideas. Hopefully this will be a useful service to those interested in Pakistan and Pakistaniat.
Pakistan or Partition of India… by Dr. B R Ambedkar is an amazing book. I thoroughly recommend it.
Another very interesting one on partition is
Pakistan and the partition of India
by Dr. Ambedkar (the father of India’s constitution), 2nd edition in 1945
What makes this book particularly instructive is that it is not an analysis of partition by a historian, but a contribution to the debate when the question of Pakistan was being hotly debated. It takes us right into the 1940s, discusses a variety of arguments that were being given on the topic, thus helping the reader get a better understanding of how one might have seen the issue in those days rather than looking at it through the prism of the present situation.
Ambedkar seems quite sympathetic to the demand for Pakistan, which makes the book all the more interesting and worth reading, considering that this man later became the author of the Indian constitution.
Rahul Bhattacharya’s Pundits from Pakistan is a tour diary of Indian Cricket Team’s historic tour to Pakistan in early 2004, not only is the book a beautiful recollection of the game of cricket it self, but its also very uplifting read about the troubled history of two nations and an Indian’s journey and discovery of modern Pakistan. Peter Roebuck regarded it as the best cricket book he’d ever read, and I would most certainly agree.
Interestingly I have read many of the ones you have mentioned above…
I’d add three very pertinent books:
1. Sole Spokesman by Ayesha Jalal
2. State of Martial Rule by Ayesha Jalal
3. Partition of India: Legend and Reality by H M Seervai
[quote comment=”36862″][quote comment=”36808″]Surprisingly no body has mentioned about the autobiographical books on Pakistan by Benazir Bhutto, Imran Khan, Asghar Khan, Hamid Gul so forth and so on.[/quote]
The question was to list books that people like.
Maybe that is why these do not feature.[/quote]
Hahahah…good one. Anyway, I actually have read Benazir’s “Daughter of the East.” I think it is worth reading if you want to understand the whole episode about ZA Bhutto, Zia etc.
One very interesting similarity between Wolpert’s book on Bhutto and Benazir’s book is that they both END the book on a somehwat dismal note but then both have an additional epilogue about the plane crash, etc.
Benazir’s book actually left me kind of sad…since it really makes you think of the opportunities her group squandered back in 1989.