Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan

In his first U.S. publication, prominent Indian journalist Akbar (Blood Brothers) brings his expertise in Hindu-Muslim relations and modern India to a historically grounded, informative, though uneven analysis of Pakistan. Attentive to the details of Islamic culture and society, the book focuses on Muslim-Hindu relations and their geopolitical expression from the 19th to mid-20th centuries. For Indian Muslims, argues Akbar, the arrival of the British began a long period of insecurity (intensifying under a British divide-and-rule strategy after the Indian Mutiny of 1857) among a once-confident minority population used to privileges and prestige under Muslim dynasties in India and the larger world. The desire for a Muslim “comfort zone,” combined with a sense of past greatness, nourished the dream of a separate Muslim state, and insecurity was traded for uncertainty with the creation of Pakistan in the 1947 partition of India. Pakistan, however, has been rocked by social and cultural divisions as well as the tension between secular and religious authority. As for American foreign policy in Pakistan, Akbar only offers vague sketches. For U.S. collusion in a nuclear Pakistan, for instance, Akbar refers to other published English-language sources. The last few decades, up through the 2011 assassination of Osama bin Laden deep inside Pakistan are abbreviated and derivative. Nevertheless, this is a mostly reliable introduction to a restive and fascinating country. (July)