A History of Pakistan and Its Origins (Anthem South Asian Studies)

Rating:
Summary: Most comprehensive and objective book on Pakistan out today
Review: Every since September 11th, countless books about Pakistan have been published, each scrutizing its history as nothing but a state bent on growing the seeds of Islamic fundamentalism. This book is a welcome contrast, and hats off to Jaffrelot, a Frenchman, and his team for doing an extensive amount of research about the initial foundations of the country, all of the political tumult, the events leading to Bangladeshi secession and the tense relationship with India, the role as a proxy during the Cold War, the constitutional straying from Jinnah's secular vision, and an invaluable lesson in ethnography and religion, described in much more detail than the average book on the country (for example, not only does it describe Sunnism and Shi'ism as being the two main branches of Islam practiced in the country, it delves into subsets and sub-subsets of each branch, so that the reader gets a much better understanding of the incredible religious diversity within the Pakistani Muslim community itself). The main compliment I have about this book is that it remains extremely academic and objective. Never is it written in an alarmist way, and it doesn't favor one political movement over another. It refrains from sugarcoating any misdeeds of the government, the army, or the population, yet at the same time, it doesn't resort to demonizing the nation, either. It just states how things are over there now, and how things were in the past. It is a much more fascinating and educational read (for Pakistanis and non-Pakistanis alike) than other "Beware Pakistan!" types written by so-called Western "experts" on the region who try to make the reader believe that the entire country is one big madrassah intent to destroying the United States (far from it), or "Pakistan - The Glorious" types written by heavily biased Pakistani writers who believe that every single thing wrong within the country is due to a "foreign hand." If you would like to get a good base knowledge about the dynamics of this country caught within an extremely tumultuous global political game, put this book at the top of the list.