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Drawing on the newest and most sophisticated historical research and scholarship in the field, Modern South Asia provides a challenging insight for those with an intellectual curiosity about the region. After sketching the pre-modern history of the subcontinent, the book concentrates on the last three centuries. Jointly authored by two leading Indian and Pakistani historians, it offers a rare depth of historical understanding of the politics, cultures, and economies that shape the lives of more than a fifth of humanity.

Covering the entire spectrum of modern South Asian history, this comprehensive study provides new insights into the structure and ideology of the British raj, the meaning of subaltern resistance, the refashioning of social relations along the lines of caste, class, community and gender, the different strands of anti-colonial nationalism and the dynamics of decolonisation.

This third edition brings the debate up to the present day, covering the closer integration of South Asia with the global economy, the impact of developments in Afghanistan on the region as a whole, the large implications of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination and the fresh challenges to South Asia’s nation-states.

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This book relates the personal experiences of the author and looks at East Pakistan from his perspective. The author served in East Pakistan for two years during the crucial period of 1969 to 1971. The book also includes an account of a cyclone that hit East Pakistan in 1970. He has analyzed the roles of the three major players in the game viz. General Yahya Khan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Mujibur Rehman and the role of the US, which has been involved in Pakistan right from the time of independence in 1947. ... Read more

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Pakistan's politics, governance, institutional capacities, internal and external security and the nation-building process are at a critical juncture. The stance of the military, thus, would be a critical factor in determining the future course of Pakistan. Under the prevailing scenario in the country, any elected government would need to re-establish the viability and vitality of the state. Should it fail, the army would be compelled to re-intervene to save the country from falling apart.

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Nation-states often shape the boundaries of historical enquiry, and thus silence the very histories that have sutured nations to territorial states. "India" and "Pakistan" were drawn onto maps in the midst of Partition's genocidal violence and one of the largest displacements of people in the twentieth century. Yet this historical specificity of decolonization on the very making of a nationalized cartography of modern South Asia has largely gone unexamined.

In this remarkable study based on more than two years of ethnographic and archival research, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar argues that the combined interventions of the two postcolonial states were enormously important in shaping these massive displacements. She examines the long, contentious, and ambivalent process of drawing political boundaries and making distinct nation-states in the midst of this historic chaos.

Zamindar crosses political and conceptual boundaries to bring together oral histories with north Indian Muslim families divided between the two cities of Delhi and Karachi with extensive archival research in previously unexamined Urdu newspapers and government records of India and Pakistan. She juxtaposes the experiences of ordinary people against the bureaucratic interventions of both postcolonial states to manage and control refugees and administer refugee property. As a result, she reveals the surprising history of the making of the western Indo-Pak border, one of the most highly surveillanced in the world, which came to be instituted in response to this refugee crisis, in order to construct national difference where it was the most blurred.

In particular, Zamindar examines the "Muslim question" at the heart of Partition. From the margins and silences of national histories, she draws out the resistance, bewilderment, and marginalization of north Indian Muslims as they came to be pushed out and divided by both emergent nation-states. It is here that Zamindar asks us to stretch our understanding of "Partition violence" to include this long, and in some sense ongoing, bureaucratic violence of postcolonial nationhood, and to place Partition at the heart of a twentieth century of border-making and nation-state formation.

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A core addition to any history collection focusing on Asia
The political boundaries of modern Asia are radically different than those of one hundred years ago. "The Long Partition: And the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories" Is an overview of the modern states of Asia and how they became what they are today. A tale of independence, ancient racial and religious tensions, European interventions, refugees, and more, author Zamindar provides a fascinating narrative of Southern Asia in the twentieth century with an educational and thoughtful read. "The Long Partition" is a core addition to any history collection focusing on Asia.
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The book undertakes an objective review of Pakistan's troubled political history, analyzing the major events, important leaders, institutions, and political and social processes. The discussion includes the major internal and external factors that have shaped the political process. A comprehensive book on the political history of Pakistan from 1947-1999, the book offers rich insight into Pakistan's foreign policy since independence. ... Read more

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Mughal India and Central Asia explores the Central Asian element in the formation of the civilization of Mughal India, focusing on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The culture of the Mughal Empire is seen to be a composite of indigenous and foreign elements, many of which originated, like the Mughal rulers themselves, in Central Asia. The author argues that the Muslim societies of the pre-colonial period in Asia should be studied in terms of their own self-perceptions, and not simply as backward projections of modern day realities and notions. ... Read more

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Many dramatic developments have taken place in Pakistan since the publication of the first edition of Oxfam's Profile (Pakistan: Tradition and Change, 1996). This up-dated edition contains a supplement that summarizes the internal tensions and external shocks that have created turbulence, which is extreme even for a country that was born in a ferment of change:

* The erosion of democracy under civilian rule in the late 1990s

* The military takeover of 1999

* Strained relations with India, Afghanistan, and the USA* An economy reeling from the impact of heavy foreign debt and huge defense expenditure

* The legacy of the religious fundamentalism of the 1980s, and its impact on state policies and practices

* Prospects for a return to democracy

The original text, which describes Pakistan's history and rich cultural heritage, and self-help community schemes run by grassroots groups, is reproduced in full, with the original evocative illustrations; but the social and economic indicators and the resources section have been revised to bring the book up to date. ... Read more

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This study provides insights into Pakistan's historical development through focusing on politics in Sindh, a key province constituting the new nation state in 1947. This examination of party and ministerial politics at the provincial level provides a unique perspective that is relatively little known. It contributes to a deeper understanding of Pakistan and the challenges and difficulties it has faced following independence in establishing a stable political system and government. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Very informative but somewhat skewed
The book is based on Jones' PhD work at Duke university completed in 1977. Having earlier read an article contributed by the author on Sindh's Muslims for an encyclopedic Survey of Muslim Peoples (published in the 1980's), I didn't know what to expect from his upcoming book. The article appeared shallow; among other things, many "native" terms he used were actually not in the native Sindhi language; they were in Pakistan's official language, Urdu. [He learned Urdu in Lahore in 1972]

After reading the book, I think that it's a valuable resource for anyone interested in learning about the complex events of the time. An interesting observation the author repeatedly makes in the book is how uninterested Sindh's Muslim leaders were in all-India politics, which confirms claims by contemporary Sindhi scholars that following the 1936 separation of Sindh from Bombay presidency, Sindhi leadership was thinking more in terms of complete independence than any type of Muslim union. Even conservative Muslim leaders such as Abdul Majid Sindhi of communal Sindh Azad Party struggled to stay independent of Muslim League, while seeking support for his local agenda.

It appears that the supposed Hindu-Muslim conflict that arose was anything but a religious conflict. It was in fact a class conflict, with the predominantly Hindu urban upperclass on one side and the mass of Hindu and Muslim lower and middle rural classes on the other, the latter represented by an emerging Muslim middle class with rural roots. It would seem that Hindu leadership was hijacked and communalized by business interests of the urban upper class (which probably explains why surveys have shown resentment among diasporic Sindhi Hindus against their leadership - See Subadhra Anand, "National Integration of Sindhis", Vikas, 1996). The population distribution of the time (as shown by the 1931 census) is particularly revealing. Where Hindus did indeed form significant majorities of populations in many cities (except Karachi, Larkano, and Upper Sindh Frontier), the population distribution in the countryside was almost identical to the overall distribution of Hindus and Muslims in all of Sindh. In fact, the Sindh United Party which won the 1937 election, had a secular agenda with primary focus on economic uplift of the rural population. The party was led by Haroon, Bhutto and Hidayatullah. Even Sindh Muslim League leaders who formed government in 1940, Mir Bandeh Ali, Khuhro, Syed and Abdul Majid, went against All-India Muslim League policies such as separate electorates, to restore the communal harmony disturbed by Muslim League's tactics for removing Allah Bux government. Abdullah Haroon, the sole prominent Sindhi Muslim leader supportive of the League's all-India communal agenda, repeatedly failed to impose the same on Sindh's Muslim League leadership. Despite this, Haroon played an active role at the historic Muslim League gathering which passed the famous 1940 Lahore Resolution supporting Pakistan.

There are also small details in the book about things such as Shahnawaz Bhutto's reluctance to support separation from Bombay until when it was obviously inevitable. The rivalry between Bhutto and Hidayatullah, and the politics of personalities rather than parties, people switching sides because of personal rivalries, reminds one of what we continue to witness in Sindhi politics today. Though the author acknowledges a gradual political maturity evidence by leaders' commitment to either a Sindh focused or India focused agenda.

Something that I did not like about the book was the general tone; it almost appears that the author is rooting for Muslim League throughout the narrative and is lamenting the fact that Sindhis are too focused on Sindh and aren't taking interest in the larger Indian Muslim politics. With the benefit (or otherwise) of the knowledge of what eventually happened, and being under the impression that joining Pakistan was good for Sindhis (Jones' thesis work coincided with Z A Bhutto's rule, when Sindhis enjoyed sort of a respite), perhaps he is simply trying to emphasize how many opportunities were lost. But the way he fails to distinguish between the average Hindu and the exploitative urban upper class (which happens to be dominated by a small minority of Hindus) almost appears to suggest that the author has bought into the myth of "evil Hindus" perpetuated by Muslim League. For reading the objective facts themselves as late as late as 1930's, one does not get a sense of inevitability of Sindh's entrapment by Muslim League's egalitarian pretensions. It is also noteworthy that it was in the name of the suffering rural poor, rather than Islam, that Muslim League along with its dirty politics gained entry into Sindhi politics. By the time it was exposed, it was too late. Unfortunately, the book does not cover the last few years before 1947, which too witnessed events that could very well have changed the course of history; or at least a thorough discussion could have exposed British partiality towards Muslim League.

The book actually discusses events as early as 1885, and in fact the tentative title for the book publicised by Oxford mentioned the period 1885-1940. However, the discussion of the period preceding 1907 is very brief, which probably explains why the title was changed. The first chapter still has 1885-1935 in the title.

The foreward is written by Dr. Hamida Khuhro, who is daughter of one of Sindh's leaders during the 1940s. Mr. Khuhro became a Premier of Sindh after Indian independence and was sacked and arrested for trying to prevent anti-Hindu riots by Muslim refugees arriving from India and for resisting Pakistani occupation of Sindh's capital Karachi. ... Read more

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A decade after the 1971 wars in South Asia, the principal decisionmakers were still uncertain why wars so clearly unwanted had occurred. The authors reconstruct the complex decisionmaking process attending the break-up of Pakistan and the subsequent war between India and Pakistan. Much of their data derive from interviews conducted with principal players in each of the countries immediately involved-Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh-including Indira Gandhi and leaders of the Awami League in Bangladesh. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

A case study in academic sterileness
This "unbiased," thoroughly researched account, as other reviewers have accurately stated, is a little TOO unbiased, giving this book the feel of hermetically-sealed academia. While reading "War and Secession" I kept trying to account for the authors' strangely sterile analysis of one of the most outrageous and shameful unravelling of the democratic processes in recent history. I can only assume that neither of the authors spent much time in Pakistan or Bangladesh previous to their research trips for interview purposes. Their sometimes painfully detailed account is limited to the bureaucratic and military chambers of power and is curiously drained of the flesh and blood of the real historic situation. Academic "objectivity" actually becomes less objective by not adequately indicating the real consequences of the dry political struggles. This becomes especially evident halfway through the book when, astoundingly, after spending a long chapter detailing final negotiations, the skip ENTIRELY any details of what the infamous military crackdown of March 25, 1971 actually entailed, in terms of the brutal extermination of tens of thousands of Bengali civilians.

This book is definitely NOT for the general reader, as the authors not only write in a dry, typically old-fashioned academic style, but seem to assume readers' familiarity with the situation. For example, they switch from referring to the capital of Pakistan as "Rawalpindi" to "Islamabad" without explanation, and similarly offer the first use of the term "Bangladesh" without quotes or context.

There are also a few minor factual errors that don't change the book's value for its detailed account or the overall import of the history it describes, but do make me wonder why they didn't use a fact-checker (standard procedure, I thought, for a major scholarly work). For example, they describe the "major" cyclone of "October" 1970, which in fact took place on November 12-13; and then procede to give no indication of the singular, historic nature of this cyclone, which killed at least 250,000 people in the Ganges Delta OVERNIGHT.

Overall, this book provides some valuable "primary source" information for specialists, with insights into why the war happened, but little acknowledgement of its probable inevitability, given the arbitrary divisions of post-British Partition. Regarding the Pakistan Army, Shuja Nawaz's Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within (Oxford Pakistan Paperbacks) (2008) is a far better resource. Alas, the definitive book about the 1971 Bangladesh war of independence has yet to be written.

View of political leaders
Sisson and Rose present a thorough analysis of the policy decisions of the involved governments that led to the creation of Bangladesh as an independent country.The authors describe the issues and events that faced the leaders of the respective governments and their actions.Of note, the book does not describe the events that occurred to the people of Bangaldesh during the war.

Thorough Account of All Sides
Richard Sisson and Leo E. Rose put all of their many interviews to good use in War and Secession (Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh).They present all sides of the various complex relationships of this region, as well as presenting the fascinating international views of the situation, predominantly China, USSR, and the US.They are careful to remain unbiased (perhaps sometimes a little too unbiased in the case of Bhutto, in my opinion) and present the misperceptions that all sides were using to base their decisions upon.This book will also be a joy for the general reader as they make all the issues understandable and unravel all the tangles between the various personalities.The authors provide a defintive account of the creation of Bangladesh that will both entertain and inform.

An unbiased, well-researched accurate account
The authors provide a well-balanced, unbiased historical account of the accounts leading to the war of 1971.The book is very well researched with numerous notes on various sources of information.

The book describes thegenesis of the problems in East Pakistan, beginning with the partition ofIndia and the formation of Pakistan's two wings.Carefully collectedeconomic data demonstrates the lop-sided distribution of wealth in Pakistanwith more government spending and foreign aid going to the West than to theEast, despite the latter having a greater population and suffering fromsevere natural disasters.Also cited are the differences between East andWest Pakistan over confronting India over Kashmir.The East did not sharea penchant for confronting India over Kashmir - a territory that lay over a1000 miles away.There were more pressing problems at home then(circumstances that are eerily similar to those today inPakistan!).

These differences came to a height in a war fought overKashmir in 1965 (instigated upon Bhutto's advice to Ayub Khan) when EastPakistan was left virtually undefended against any potential Indianmilitary advances.This further contributed to its sense ofinsecurity.

The politicians of West Pakistan, most notably Z. A. Bhuttoand Yahya Khan, are blamed unambiguously for their role in canceling asession of the first democratically elected national assembly in Pakistanthat precipitated in a crisis in March 1971.India's role in contributingto the crisis until March 1971 was minimal, if any, but was to assumegreater importance in the months to follow.The failure of all politicalprocesses to placate the demands of Z. A. Bhutto led to the suspension ofthe National Assembly, and subsequent events.

However, once the crisisresulted in millions of refugees flowing into India that threatened toupset the delicate demographic balance in the affected states, the problemalso became one of India's.The authors fault Indira Gandhi for not tryingharder to achieve a political settlement of the problem.It is highlyunlikely that India could have mediated a problem between West and EastPakistan.After Indira Gandhi concluded that the problem could not beresolved politically by Pakistan's leaders, India began to play anincreasingly larger political-military role, beginning in the summer of1971 and concluding with a lightning military campaign in December, 1971.

Balanced and informative
Sisson and Rose present a highly informative account of the events leading to the independence of Bangladesh. As a Pakistani, it proved depressing reading as one sees how events unfolded in what would almost be a comedy of errors had the human cost not been so high. The actions of key protaganistsleave one disgusted at their short-sightedness and venality. Much as we maylike to think that it was 'all India's fault', the authors make it quiteclear that while India acted to take full opportunity of the chances ithad, its role in precipitating the Crisis was negligible (if at all).Similarly, while Yahya Khan and the Army must take the blame for theultimate decision of the Army action, the behaviour of the prominentPakistani political leaders, especially Bhutto (who, from the eventsnarrated in the book, seems to come away with the most blame), beggarsbelief. A must read for anyone interested in the events of 1971 free of thebaggage that subcontinental writers bring to the subject. ... Read more

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In August 2008, Pervez Musharraf stood down as Pakistan's president after having already resigned the posts of Chief of Army Staff and Prime Minister. It was a final end to a dictorial rule that started when he seized power in a military coup in 1999, and seemed to many to be the inevitable conclusion to a government that had started in idealism but had ended in corruption - another example of the cycle of army intervention-idealism-corruption-failure-coup that has blighted Pakistan's political history. In this book, Asian politics and Islamic expert Iftikhar Malik discusses why this pattern has such a hold on Pakistan's government and sets out to discover if this cycle is one that can be broken and if so, where hope for the future lies.Following an in-depth look at Pakistan's political and social history and current situation, the book considers: the power of individual personalities and dynasties such as the Bhuttos in party politics; the different priorities of democracy and liberalism; Pakistan's external relations with neighbours such as India and Afghanistan; Pakistan's role in the 'war on terror' and the tensions between Western security priorities and those of ordinary Pakistanis; Muslim perceptions of global alienation fuelling the rise of political Islam within Pakistan and consequences of this move; and, opportunities for democracy and nation-building presented by factors such as the expanding, liberal middle class and devolution of power within the country. Opinionated and critical, Professor Malik's book discusses the issues and challenges facing Pakistan at this critical juncture in its history. ... Read more

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In May 1998, John Joseph, the first native Pakistani Catholic bishop, shot himself in front of the courthouse where a Christian had been sentenced to death for blasphemy. This book tells the story of the Christians in Pakistan, with Bishop Joseph as its centrepiece. It is an account of outcastes who sought hope through Christianity, but who now find themselves victims of a struggle to define Islam in Pakistan. The majority of Pakistani Christians are descendants of untouchables converted to Christianity in the late 19th century. In Pakistan a minority religion is linked with low status, perpetuating the Indian Hindu caste system even though the Muslim majority has disassociated itself from all things Hindu and Indian. The book also deals with enculturation in the Pakistani church, the rise of native clergy, conflicts between the local church and Rome, the rise of 'fundamentalist' Islam and the position of women in society and church. ... Read more

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The State of Islam tells the story of the Pakistani nation-state through the lens of the Cold War, and more recently the War on Terror, in order to shed light on the domestic and international processes behind the rise of militant Islam across the world. Unlike existing scholarship on nationalism, Islam and the state in Pakistan, which tends to privilege events in a narrowly-defined 'political' realm, Sadia Toor highlights the significance of cultural politics in Pakistan from its origins to the contemporary period. This added dimension allows Toor to explain how the struggle between Marxism and nationalism was influenced and eventually engulfed by the agenda of the religious right. Timely and unique, this book is a must for anyone who wants to understand the origins of modern Pakistan and the likely outcome ofcurrent power struggles in the country. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

How to Build an Empire
"Broad-range analysis of empire-states' relationships to each other and the nation portray British imperialism as an increasingly Eurocentric process. This conceit broadly characterizes the British in South Asia, as well as their actions in western India between 1838 and 1849. It leads (unlike the Russian empire-state) to progressively less respect for socio-cultural difference. This lack of respect results in the British more rapidly jettisoning South Asian forms of sovereignty. Wallis richly portrays this process in Afghanistan, Sindh, Gwalior and Punjab. It is also a process that continued until it witnessed a major challenge: the Mutiny of 1857. The history of 1857 while more studied than the imperial actions that Wallis documents - should not overshadow the events that precede it. Studies like Wallis' expand our knowledge of such events by focusing on places and times less studied by historians, both of empire and South Asia." - Prof. Matthew A. Cook, North Carolina Central University

"We can draw implications from Frank Wallis' explanation of these British expansions on the frontiers of their empire in this region in order to understand better the present and future politics of the United States on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border." - Prof. Michael Fisher, Oberlin College

"Wallis' contention that the very nature of the imperial frontier facilitated and encouraged imperial expansion is compelling and well argued. His close attention to internal British debates about territorial expansion and policies towards independent Indian and Afghan states is an important corrective to simplistic theoretical ideas of the meaning, purpose, reason, and idea of empire. With such a detailed examination grounded in in-depth research in British sources Wallis is able to elucidate the important distinction between public proclamations of imperial policy and the private opinions that actually motivated intervention, conquest, and annexation." - Prof. Mitch Numark, California State University-Sacramento
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The book is divided into six sections, representing the differnt ecological regions of Pakistan. These sections are the Mountains, Indus Plains and Western Islands, The Desert, the River (Indus), the Coast and the City. The social, economic, physical and governance related changes that have taken place in these regions are described through extracts from reports, field notes for different development related work and media articles prepared by the author and through extracts from his personal dairies.

The writings identify past socio-economic conditions as viewed by the communities the author worked or interacted with, present conditions and emerging trends. It also identifies the actors of change, their relationships with each other and with the largr physical and political context on the other. The section on the city deals with the informal sector in the provision of land and services, the impact of globalisation on culture and development and contains geographies of resistance by communities to "insensitive" development projects. ... Read more