Tinderbox

April 2, 2012
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.

May 1, 2012
Among the spate of recent books about Pakistan, India Today editorial director Akbar's (Have Pen, Will Travel: Observations of a Globetrotter, 2011, etc.) elegant, probing work exhibits a sympathetic insider's understanding of the complex, evolving relationship between Muslims and Hindus in the area. The author traces the early isolation and vulnerability of the Muslim community in India with the collapse of the Mughal Empire in the mid-18th century, squeezed from both sides by the increasingly numerous Hindus and increasingly powerful British. "A strange alchemy of past superiority and future insecurity shaped the dream of a separate Muslim state in India," he writes. The Muslim clergy thrived as an educated, military class, led by the moral instruction of Shah Waliullah, who propounded a "theory of distance" regarding the Hindu infidels. His idea of a separate Islamic state without dynasty was taken up by the first Muslim political party, the Muslim League, in 1906. The community's sense of inferiority rendered it ripe for the embrace of a great galvanizing leader, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, an English-educated lawyer who was embarrassingly unfamiliar with Islamic teachings. Yet it was Gandhi who won the hearts of the Muslims by insisting on carrying out his "non-violent jihad." Akbar masterly reconstructs the final tensions among the Indian Congress and Muslim League, Gandhi, the British and Jinnah, as unity broke down and partition was declared in August 1947. The struggle between a religious and secular state was just beginning, however, undertaken next by Sayyid Maududi, "godfather" of Islamic fundamentalism in South Asia, charismatic leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto and strongman General Zia. The author concludes darkly with a contemporary portrait of Pakistan still beset by secessionist worries and religious extremism and Balkanized by Western influence. Though the chapter on current affairs yields little new insight, Akbar presents a thoughtful historical perspective, rich in detail, research and gloom.

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June 1, 2012
War in Afghanistan has made Pakistan hot, with a half-dozen studies published over the past 18 months. Akbar, editorial director of India Today and editor of the Sunday Guardian, joins the authors of those booksamong them, journalists, academics, and diplomats from a variety of nationsin providing perspective on a populous, troubled, strategically located nation few in the West truly understand. Akbar focuses on historical roots of Muslim-Hindu tension on the subcontinent these groups have shared for centuries. He argues that as the Mughal Empire declined, leading members of the community feared their minority would be swamped by the country's Hindu majority and demanded a Muslim space. This theory of distance was a constantly recurring motif and a critical contributor to partition of the British Raj into India and Pakistan. Akbar's analysis of generations of interactions between Hindu and Muslim, and ultimately between Gandhi and Jinnah, are the heart of his book; only his last 3 (of 15) chapters consider developments in Pakistan over the past 65 years. A challenging read with valuable insights.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)