Assignment of Pak Study: Review of the Modern History of Pakistan (Book Review Sample)

ASSIGNMENT OF PAK STUDIES
REVIEW OF "THE MODERN HISTORY OF PAKISTAN”
ABOUT AUTHOR:
IAN TALBOT is British author of many books and most of them is related to Pakistan and India partition.He is professor of Modern British History in University of Southampton.He is also director of Postgraduate Research there.His main interests are Pakistan’s post-independence political history.His main contribution is the major text entitled , Pakistan:A Modern History.He has also contributed number of edited volumes on this issue as well.
REVIEW:
In this book author explicitly explains partition issues of India and Pakistan.Successive bouts of authoritarian rule have reinforced centrifugal ethnic,linguistic and regional forces.He has explained complex reasons why the Pakistani state has been manifestly unsuccessful in accommodating cultural diversity emerge during the narrative.The narrative also reveals that a state-centric approach is inadequate.
I think the author has explained a vital point by telling that the presence of strong leaders has given testament to instability and immaturity,rather than vitality and development.The author has clearly demonstrated Pakistan politics by his point of view.He has also told how power holders harass their opponents who cry foul in a discourse dominated by concerns with corruption.The author has described Pakistan politics as "ephemeral”.The line I like most is "Personalities count rather than ideologies”.A major issue is explained that electoral politics are dominated by elite families like Khans,Sharifs and Bhuttos are labelled as "famous political dynasty”.Pakistan’s post-independence political history has thus been a fruitless search for stability with frequent changes of government and regime.
The Zia regime reworked the foundational myth to posit Jinnah and the Muslim League leadership as demanding Pakistan in order to establish an Islamic state.The author has given an opinion that by returning to the pristine Islamic intentions of its creators could Pakistan establish its true identity and acheive national unity.Pakistan movement represented a golden age of idealism .The original ideals of the famous 1940 Lahore Resolution that emphasised the decentralization of power to the federating units of a Muslim state.Pakistan’s historical realities are messy and complex according to author.Pakistan’s instability can be gleaned from theoretic understandings.Pakistan geopolitical situation gave it great international interest during the Cold War Era .As the military threat of the former Soviet Union had been removed ,India could no longer rely on it for supplies of cheap weapons.The unofficial Pakistani support for the Taliban movement in Afghanistan must be viewed in the light of trade as much as Islamic policy.Indo-Pakistan relations had worsened in the wake of the Kashmiri separatist uprising and the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya in India.
The author has typified Pakistan as a populous,rapidly growing middle income country in which agriculture is losing its predominance.He has described literacy issues.Despite rapid growth,the economy is highly vulnerable to both internal and external shocks and indebtedness is a major problem.Pakistan received around $2.6 billion in loans from the World Bank and the Asian 1Development Bank till now.According to author Pakistani society is overwhelmingly Islamic in its values and ideas.He had described that East Bengal was separated in 1971 and had compromised one-sixth of Pakistan’s total area.The Bengal elites sense of marginalization is clearly displayed in a speech by Ataur Rahman Khan .
The author has described Punjabis as controller of Pakistan State.He has also described issues of language and political identity in Pakistan.The author has predicted that language has acted as an important maker of identity and source of political mobilization .The eminent Pakistani scholar Akbar Ahmed has seen rapid social mobility as aiding the process of Pakistanisation by its strengthening of Urdu as common language.According to my perspective author has pointed out a good point by telling that Islam has exerted a major influence on Pakistani politics and in order to make sense of the complex interaction between these it is necessary to understand conflicting Islamic ideological responses to the eighteenth century decline of Muslim power in North India and also the sufism for rural Pakistani Muslims
The author has pointed out that four major responses to the crisis was brought on by the loss of Muslim political power and the rise of an alien Christian rule which are modernism,reformism,traditionalism and Islamism.They were represented respectively by the Aligarh,Deoband, Barelvi and Jamaat e Islami movements.Aligarh movement has played a major role in creation of Pakistan by encouraging Muslims to engage in Scientific Society and to reconcile the Islamic concept of the sovereignty of God with nation State.As islamists were opposed to the creation of Pakistan,seeing the establishment of a secular Muslim state as blasphemous.There were also other issues of Shia and Muslim minorities in Zia era which is still.
Like Ahmad S Akbar which is the author of PAKISTAN AND ISLAMIC IDENTITY this author has also agreed upon sufism in Islam and its major role in attracting non Muslims.This author has also explained about elite families politics in Pakistan and I also agree that social and economic v gulf exists between the landholding elite and the rural masses.The continued power of feudal elite is seen as Pakistan’s bane...