Pakistan A Modern History By Ian Talbot Pdf

[Martha Vanschaick]

IanTalbot is professor of modern British history and formerly head of history at the University of Southampton, United Kingdom. He has written numerous books on the modern histories of India and Pakistan.

Ian Talbot is Emeritus Professor in the History of Modern South Asia at the University of Southampton, where he was formerly Head of the History Department and Founding Director of the Centre for Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies. He completed his undergraduate studies at Royal Holloway, University of London where he received a BA (First Class Honours) in Modern History, Economic History and Politics. He also received an MA in History from the University of Oxford and a PhD in History from the University of London.

My key interests are the environmental history of South Asia, the history of British and US public diplomacy in Pakistan, the history of the colonial Punjab, the 1947 Partition of India, the history of Pakistan and the urban environmental history in modern South Asia.

The ability of Jinnah to unite a series of political expediencies with the popular appeal of Islam to demand a separate state for the Muslim people, has brought him the accolade 'the founder of Pakistan'.

The worldwide Islamic revival of the 1970s has overshadowed the attempts made by Muslims earlier in the century to unite religious and political authority. Muslims led the revolt against the colonial West throughout much of the Middle East, Africa and South and South-East Asia. In India especially, the Muslim urge to political power was clearly demonstrated. As British rule there drew to an end, many Muslims demanded, in the name of Islam, the creation of a separate Pakistan state. Its emergence in August 1947 remains one of the major political achievements of modern Muslim history. It resulted mainly from the efforts of one man, Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

This book fills the need for a broad, historically sophisticated understanding of Pakistan, a country at fifty which is understood by many in the West only in terms of stereotypes--the fanatical, authoritarian and reactionary "other" which is unfavorably compared to a tolerant, democratic and progressive India.

There is a need at the time of Pakistan's golden jubilee for it to be taken seriously in its own right as a country of 130 million people. It is in reality a complex plural society which although greatly shaped by the colonial inheritance and circumstances of its birth is also experiencing rapid change. The author's approach breaks down stereotypes and assists in answering the vexed question of why democracy has succeeded in India, while Pakistan has been subject to long periods of authoritarianism during its five decades of existence.

COMMENTS

Coventry University historian Talbot piles fact upon grim fact to show how Pakistan, born in suffering, has yet to heal the wounds of its past. The woes of this strategically located country seem overwhelming: rapid urbanization and population growth; high infant mortality and low literacy; unfavorable balance of payments; an economy skewed toward military spending; environmental pollution; refugee problems; and violence related to the trafficking of drugs and arms.

Islam, with its various flavors, has provided "insufficient cement" for building a nation out of warring ethnic, linguistic and regional factions. Added to all this is the country's perennial conflict with India, and the nuclear competition darkening the horizon. Talbot expresses faith in the courage and resilience of the Pakistani people, but his account of authoritarian regimes, chaotic elections and failed efforts at reform is at odds with his hopes for participatory democracy.

Bound to become a standard reference among the watchers of South Asia, this book analyzes the rise and fall of such leaders as Abdul Khan, Yahya Kahn, Zia-ul-Haq, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and Benazir Bhutto, the first female leader of a Muslim state. Even informed readers may be daunted by the detail, and the glossary, table of abbreviations, capsule biographies and short histories of political parties are essential to keeping on top of the densely packed material.

-Publisher's Weekly

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A fundamental question in writing the history of a new nation carved out of a larger area is where, in time, to begin. British historian Talbot (Coventry Univ.) concentrates on the push for Pakistan in the 20th century and then discusses the modern state, omitting its initial eastern portion, now Bangladesh. Oriented toward political history, he fails to give the big picture, offering little treatment of the cultural, ethnic, religious, and social issues that have so challenged development in Pakistan over time. Although the author is English, his book does not exhibit the command of the language so often associated with British scholarship on Southeast Asia, and it could use a glossary for its excessive discussion of splinter political groups, each identified by an acronym. Talbot's audience is a specialized one. Others will have to wait for a subsequent history.

- ADonald Johnson, Univ. of Minnesota Lib., Minneapolis

The story of history of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan began on 14 August 1947 when the country came into being in the form of Dominion of Pakistan within the British Commonwealth as the result of Pakistan Movement and the partition of India. While the history of the Pakistani Nation according to the Pakistan government's official chronology started with the Islamic rule over Indian subcontinent by Muhammad bin Qasim[1] which reached its zenith during Mughal Era. In 1947, Pakistan consisted of West Pakistan (today's Pakistan) and East Pakistan (today's Bangladesh). The President of All-India Muslim League and later the Pakistan Muslim League, Muhammad Ali Jinnah became Governor-General while the secretary general of the Muslim League, Liaquat Ali Khan became Prime Minister. The constitution of 1956 made Pakistan an Islamic democratic country.

Pakistan faced a civil war and Indian military intervention in 1971 resulting in the secession of East Pakistan as the new country of Bangladesh. The country has also unresolved territorial disputes with India, resulting in four conflicts. Pakistan was closely tied to the United States in Cold War. In the Afghan-Soviet War, it supported the Sunni Mujahideens and played a vital role in the defeat of Soviet Forces and forced them to withdraw from Afghanistan. The country continues to face challenging problems including terrorism, poverty, illiteracy, corruption and political instability. Terrorism due to War of Afghanistan damaged the country's economy and infrastructure to a great extent from 2001 to 2009 but Pakistan is once again developing.

Pakistan is a nuclear power as well as a declared nuclear-weapon state, having conducted six nuclear tests in response to five nuclear tests of their rival Republic of India in May 1998. The first five tests were conducted on 28 May and the sixth one on 30 May. With this status, Pakistan is seventh in world, second in South Asia and the only country in the Islamic World. Pakistan also has the sixth-largest standing armed forces in the world and is spending a major amount of its budget on defense. Pakistan is the founding member of the OIC, the SAARC and the Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition as well as a member of many international organisations including the UN, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Commonwealth of Nations, the ARF, the Economic Cooperation Organization and many more.

Pakistan is a regional and middle power which is ranked among the emerging and growth-leading economies of the world and is backed by one of the world's largest and fastest-growing middle class. It has a semi-industrialized economy with a well-integrated agriculture sector. It is one of the Next Eleven, a group of eleven countries that, along with the BRICs, have a high potential to become the world's largest economies in the 21st century. Many economists and think tanks suggested that until 2030 Pakistan become Asian Tiger and CPEC will play an important role in it. Geographically, Pakistan is also an important country and a source of contact between Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia and East Asia.

Important leaders in the Muslim League highlighted that Pakistan would be a "New Madinah", in other words the second Islamic state established after the Prophet Muhammad's creation of an Islamic state of Madinah which was later developed into Rashidun Caliphate. Pakistan was popularly envisaged as an Islamic utopia, a successor to the defunct Islamic Caliphate and a leader and protector of the entire Islamic world. Islamic scholars debated over whether it was possible for the proposed Pakistan to truly become an Islamic state.[2][3]

Another motive and reason behind the Pakistan Movement and Two Nation Theory is the ideology of pre-partition Muslims and leaders of Muslim League including Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Allama Iqbal is that, to re-establish the Muslim rule in South Asia. Once Jinnah said in his speech:

That is why Jinnah is considered the "great Muslim ruler" in the Indian subcontinent after Emperor Aurangzeb by Pakistanis.[6] This is also the reason that the Pakistani government's official chronology declares that the foundation of Pakistan was laid in 712 AD[1] by Muhammad bin Qasim after Islamic conquest of Sindh and that these conquests at their zenith conquered the entire Indian subcontinent during Muslim Mughal Era.

While the Indian National Congress's (Congress) top leadership had been imprisoned following the 1942 Quit India Movement, there was intense debate among Muslims over the creation of a separate homeland.[3] The All India Azad Muslim Conference represented nationalist Muslims who, in April 1940, gathered in Delhi to voice their support for a united India.[7] Its members included several Islamic organisations in India, as well as 1400 nationalist Muslim delegates.[8][9] The Deobandis and their ulema, who were led by Husain Ahmad Madani, were opposed to the creation of Pakistan and the two-nation theory, instead promulgating composite nationalism and Hindu-Muslim unity. According to them Muslims and Hindus could be one nation and Muslims were only a nation of themselves in the religious sense and not in the territorial sense.[10][11][12] Some Deobandis such as Ashraf Ali Thanwi, Mufti Muhammad Shafi and Shabbir Ahmad Usmani dissented from the position of Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind and were supportive of the Muslim League's demand to create a separate homeland for Muslims.[13][14] Many Barelvis and their ulema,[15] though not all Barelvis and Barelvi ulema,[16] supported the creation of Pakistan.[17] The pro-separatist Muslim League mobilized pirs and Sunni scholars to demonstrate that their view that India's Muslim masses wanted a separate country was in the majority, in their eyes.[14] Those Barelvis who supported the creation of a separate Muslim homeland in colonial India believed that any co-operation with Hindus would be counter productive.[18]

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