Pakistan: The Three Contradictions
1 min readBook review of The Pakistan Paradox: Instability and Resilience | Christophe Jaffrelot | Random House India | Pages 688 | Rs 799
Ian Stephens, a former editor of The Statesman, was possibly one of the first historians to go beyond Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s politics to seek an intellectual and historical rationale for Pakistan. Although Christophe Jaffrelot doesn’t mention Stephens’ 1964 book, Pakistan: Old Country/New Nation, it may have sowed some of the seeds that have flowered so magnificently in his magisterial survey of Pakistan’s past, present and future. In the uncertain 1960s, grateful Pakistanis invited Stephens to be their country’s official historian. His perceived sympathy for them had already cost him his Indian job.
