Pakistan's Indian History (original) (raw)
Related papers
2018
The Oxford Companion to Pakistani History, judiciously edited by Ayesha Jalal, is a valuable singlevolume reference work for those embarking on a study of Pakistan. For scholars familiar with Pakistan, it provides insight into areas unrelated to their basic specialization, and for the undergraduate student, journalist, and intelligent layman, it offers useful background information. The subject index at the end of the volume and the asterisk marks within the text are useful for those seeking specific information or leads. The contributors to this volume have adopted an academic and liberal democratic standpoint and can claim to have as “unbiased” a stand as is possible in the social sciences.
Pakistan: A Contemporary Searchlight
History Compass, 2004
This piece highlights some of the main areas of scholarly research and media reportage on Pakistan, which is not only one of the largest Muslim states but also operates as an important bridgehead between South and South-western Asia. Some of the recent and notable multi-disciplinary studies, by both foreign and Pakistani publishing houses, are also appended in the list.
Book review of 'Pakistan: Origin, Identity and Future' by Pervez Hoodbhoy
The Asian Age, 2023
First we are born to man and a wife. Then they give our names. Those names then our prison make. Of inflexible religious frames. But I that a "Hindu" am, might well have a "Muslim" been. Had the sperm and egg that wrought me, come from as Aslam and Nasreen" wrote Indian academic Badri Raina, in his longish poem 'Frozen in Birth.' Even such imagination today is blasphemous with the chest-thumping, religious nationalism, slowly eroding the compassion, reason and commonsense in both India and Pakistan.
JAHS, 2020
The present paper briefly introduces the archaeology and history of West and East Pakistan as it was then known and understood. It perfectly set the stage for Prof. Dani's future endeavours and thinking in the field of archaeology that he religiously followed in his early and later careers. Additionally, as the partition of India was quite new at the time of writing of this article, the article is brimming with the views and emotions of Prof. Dani on the eve of Independence of Muslim Pakistan. Furthermore, the article introduces the reader to almost all the chronological and historical phenomena and its related issues. Thus, describing the history of Pakistan, Prof. Dani was still adamant to believe the then prevalent understandings that the Indus Civilization had its origins in the Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations; however, he pointed to extensive trading relationships with the civilizations of Sumer and Egypt. In this article he sets the stage of his academic beloved subject of Aryans that he followed throughout his career. The article portrays his believe in the destruction of Indus Civilization at the hands of the Aryans and their superior lifestyles, and the horse-riding invaders and the harbingers of change in South Asia. These ideas resonate in his later works, especially on the Gandhara Grave Culture of Pakistan (Dani 1968, 1978, 1998; Dani and Durrani 1964; Zahir 2012, 2016). The articles briefly note the historical developments in West Pakistan, including the invasion of Alexander the Great, the Mauriyan and Kushan empires and ends with coming of Islam and the rise of Mughal India. The part of the article that describe the archaeology and history of the East Pakistan (present Bangladesh) delves more into the origin of people rather than cultures and, in a typical culture-history approach of the time that Prof. Dani continued almost all his academic life (Zahir 2016), considered people and archaeological material cultures as interchangeable.
Review of Granta, Special Issue on Pakistan
Pakistaniaat a Journal of Pakistan Studies, 2011
The gorgeous cover of the volume Granta Magazine has recently devoted to new Pakistani writing was designed by truck-artist Islam Gull from Karachi. Gull used the vibrant colors seen on decorated vehicles everywhere in this part of the world to capture a sense of home, or rather a sense of homecoming to the snowcapped mountains of Pakistan where wooden houses snuggle around rice paddies and lakes are so bright and blue they almost hurt the eye. On the back cover, fortified walls topped with ancestral guns are inserted in a green mosaic of birds and flowers, the dominant color inscribing an obvious reference to Islam, and the many conflicts that have been waged in its name in a country born in 1947 out of the need for an independent Muslim homeland. The notion of a tradition in motion is implicit in the landscapes on the front and back covers, but also in the range of works collected in this impressive issue. Gathered together are eighteen pieces of fiction, literary journalism, memoir, and poetry-originally in English or translated from Urdu-interspersed with reproductions of works by Pakistani visual artists. Special mention should be made of "High Noon," the central section introduced by novelist Hari Kunzru, and in which a selection of cutting-edge visual art is reproduced in collaboration with the London-based gallery Green Cardamom. Diversity in genre and provenance testifies to the development of contemporary Pakistani creation along increasingly transnational lines. In the context of globalization, Pakistani writing cannot be envisaged without due reference to the experience of arriving and growing up as a young immigrant in Britain, a common memory evoked in the bittersweet chronicles of Aamer Hussein's "Restless," and Sarfraz Manzoor's "White Girls." But the issue also leaves room for reflections on Pakistan from the outside with two reportages by Western press correspondents Jane Perlez and Declan Walsh, respectively on the father of the nation Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and on the political conundrum of Pakistan's tribal belt. These two pieces communicate a wealth of information on the historical confrontations that have led to the challenges Pakistan now has to face, by setting them in the successive frames of the colonial involvement of Britain in Pakistan and neighboring