THIS volume is the latest in Oxford University Press (OUP) publications on Pakistan’s history. Conceived by editors at the OUP and edited by professor Robert D. Long, A History of Pakistan promises to be a “rich and authoritative guide” to the “turbulent decades” of Pakistan’s history and the “history of the Indian subcontinent”. Organised mostly chronologically, this volume covers a broad sweep of history from the Indus Valley civilisation to the present century. Eighteen specialists have contributed 19 chapters in what promises to be, on paper at least, an insightful account of Pakistan’s history.

To begin with, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer provides a comprehensive overview of the archaeological heritage of Pakistan. Kenoyer has contributed two chapters to the volume, with the first exploring the period from the Palaeolithic age to the Indus Valley civilisation, and the second providing an account of the early chiefdoms and states of the northern part of the subcontinent. Aside from tracing the ancient heritage of Pakistan, both chapters also offer a useful account of the recent advances in archaeological studies as well as the remaining gaps in our understanding of the subcontinent’s ancient inheritance. For largely ideological reasons, this heritage is frequently ignored in nationalist histories. In these accounts, the ‘origin’ of Pakistan is traced back to the first Arab invasions of the subcontinent. In his essay, ‘The Advent of Islam in South Asia’, Manan Ahmed Asif brilliantly historicises this foundational myth, showing how it emerged through colonialist writings and later gained prominence through nationalist historiography. He also demonstrates how this “originary myth” has little, if anything, to do with the historical circumstances suggested by primary sources. In other words, these fictive narratives tell us more about the silences and politics of nationalist historiography than they do about what actually happened.

Emma J. Flatt continues this vein of questioning in her essay on ‘The Delhi and Provincial Sultanates’. Her essay offers a valuable commentary on how primary sources have often been simplistically used by historians in reconstructing the history of this period. Through a more critical engagement with the sources, she reminds us of how the monolithic and teleological narrative of the “Islamic conquest of India” breaks down upon closer scrutiny.

Avril A. Powell provides an equally comprehensive review in her essay on the Mughal Empire. Alongside a useful commentary on scholarly debates, she provides a thematic overview of the Mughal Empire that moves beyond a dynastic-centred perspective. Ranging from discussions on the apparatus of rule to the position of women in the royal court, this essay is a highly informative survey of the Mughal Empire. A similar attempt to provide a broad overview, this time on the British Raj, fails to achieve the standard of the previous chapters. Authored by Marc Jason Gilbert, ‘The Era of British Rule’, offers a broadly chronological and sketchy sweep of British rule in the subcontinent. For the general reader, there is not much here aside from the most cursory information on the Raj.

Bizarrely, there is not a single citation in the entire piece or any reference to additional literature one might consult. More importantly, broad generalisations like “the pre-colonial history of South Asia suggests that South Asians have an aptitude for adapting to and even resolving the tensions produced by foreign rule”, conclude what is unfortunately one of the weakest pieces in the entire volume.
Regrettably, Sikandar Hayat’s article on ‘Muslim Revival and the Freedom Movement’ is equally problematic. This is essentially a story of four great men (Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Maulana Mohammad Ali Jouhar, Muhammad Iqbal and Mohammad Ali Jinnah) guiding the beleaguered Muslim masses of South Asia to their manifest destiny in 1947. Conspicuous by their absence are Mus-lims who had a different take on ‘Muslim revivalism’ and ‘freedom’. Nor is there an engagement with some seminal contributions that have greatly advanced, and complicated, our understanding of Muslim revivalism and the Freedom Movement. It’s hard to see, then, how this essay provides any insights beyond the standard narrative of nationalist triumphalism.

Fortunately, Sarah Ansari provides a more nuanced perspective in her essay on ‘The Pakistan Movement: 1940–1947’. In some ways, her contribution undercuts some of the claims made in the previous chapter. Her essay analyses the multifaceted nature of the movement, situating it across various provinces and locating it more firmly within imperial calculations surrounding the Second World War and the colonial end game.

Her contribution is followed by a focus on the ‘Founders of Pakistan’ by the editor of the volume, Long. This is a largely hagiographic piece on Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan, Chaudhary Khaliquzzaman and Mirza Ispahani. Useful in terms of providing brief biographical details of the four men (not many, for instance, know about Ispahani), this essay regrettably falls short on complicating our under-standing of their politics and the context in which they operated. What one is left with are celebratory accounts that do little in going beyond a view of history that privileges great men in uncomplicated ways.

Ian Talbot’s piece complements Long’s contribution by analysing the other end of the spectrum. His essay, ‘The Democratic Phase’ goes beyond personalities and a focus on national politics by looking at political developments in Pakistan’s provinces in the first decade of its existence.

Craig Baxter provides a follow-up account of this period by focusing on the Ayub years. His chapter, ‘Muhammad Ayub Khan’, provides a decent biography and a broad commentary on the self-appointed field marshal’s rule, covering his domestic and foreign policies. Inexplicably, Baxter neglects to mention the widespread discontent that, in part, compelled Ayub Khan to step down.

Sarmila Bose’s chapter analyses Yahya Khan’s three eventful years. Her piece promises a reappraisal of his regime and, by and large, it delivers on what it promises. One can disagree with her portrayal of the general, but that said, it is a valuable contribution in that it provides a much more nuanced (and sympathetic) account of Yahya Khan that is far removed from his simplistic vilification as a debauched individual.

His successor, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, is discussed by Philip E. Jones. Jones provides an erudite account of an enigmatic, brilliant, but ultimately flawed individual. He charts Bhutto’s political career while keeping an eye on the broader political context; a balancing act that’s often lacking in the chapters discussed above. Similarly, there is not much to take issue with in Lawrence Ziring’s piece on ‘The Zia-ul-Haq Era’. Ziring provides a familiar overview of Ziaul Haq’s regime and interprets his Islamisation programme as an attempt to unify a fractured and broken nation after the debacle of 1971.

For the turbulent ’90s, Mariam Mufti chips in with ‘The Years of a Failed Democratic Transition, 1988-1999’. This is a superb review of this period, which is further supplemented by an insightful analysis on why democracy failed to take root in Pakistan.

Capping off the chronological thrust of this volume is a reflection (in what reads in some bits like an extended op-ed) by Ayesha Siddiqa on Pervez Musharraf’s era. Her essay is useful to the extent that it provides an insight into the internal workings of the military establishment and the rifts within it. Beyond that, there’s not much of a commentary on other developments. The ‘lawyers movement’, for instance, is hardly mentioned at all.

Finally, we have three thematic essays. The first, by Ijaz Khan, is a broad overview of Pakistan’s foreign policy. In part, his analysis is an attempt at pointing out the inadequacies and limitations of a policy that was never really able to move beyond its obsession with India. One is left wishing for greater historical depth, however, particularly insofar as the Cold War is concerned.

Next is a superb essay by Christopher Candland, who traces how Pakistan’s structural inequality and poverty was largely an outcome of misguided ‘developmental’ policies adopted in the ’50s and ’60s. In line with the economic thinking of the time, inequality was considered necessary, and even desirable, for ‘growth’ and ‘prosperity’. The much touted ‘development’ and ‘progress’ of that era therefore was a deliberate mischaracterisation: the benefits accruing to the few came at the expense of the many who suffered on account of increasing inequality.

Lastly, there is a brilliant chapter on the social and cultural history of Pakistan. Authored by Shahnaz Rouse, the essay fruitfully engages with questions of the state, gender, class and ethnicity. In doing so, she also provides an excellent sociological analysis on the changes within Pakistani society. More importantly, though, this is a much-needed essay given that the rest of the volume is largely silent on these crucial issues.

There certainly is much to recommend about this tome. There are a fair number of contributions that make this an enjoyable and informative read. Taken together, however, what is offered as Pakistan’s history in this volume is a narrative that is uncomfortably familiar. There is little here that separates it from standard conceptualisations. And it’s uncomfortable because this standardised narrative reinforces a set of silences.

Take the question of ‘historical inheritance’ for instance, which this volume is keen on emphasising. What we have here is a standard chronological arc that begins with the Indus Valley Civilisation, continues through to Muslim invasions, North Indian sultanates, and the Mughal Empire, and arrives at the British Raj and the consequent freedom movement. From thereon, we are in the post-independence period, which is demarcated in eras defined solely by their rulers and/or modes of governance. This is, of course, not to deny the utility of this narrative or even dispute that this is an integral part of Pakistan’s historical inheritance. That said, one rarely finds mention of other inheritances: like, for instance, regional kingdoms and states (e.g. the Talpur or the Sikh kingdoms). It’s almost as if the regions constituting present-day Pakistan are bereft of their own history. Instead, what is presented by way of a common historical inheritance is one that is uncomfortably aligned with the silences in elite centred nationalist imaginings of ‘Pakistan’s’ history.

What of other silences? Barring some exceptions, it’s striking that the accounts offered for the post-independence period are largely state and elite centred political histories. Missing in these narratives are the people of Pakistan. There is precious little, for instance, on linguistic and ethnic movements, regional and provincial politics, working class movements, women, religious minorities, castes, tribes, urban-rural developments, and nothing whatsoever on the peripheries of the Pakistani state: Balochistan, Fata, Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and, to a lesser extent, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh. Coupled with this are obvious omissions, like dedicated essays on Partition, East Pakistan, the 1971 civil war and so on.

Such silences are telling. For if our histories are reflective of how democratic and inclusive our polity is, it is no coincidence that the groups and regions marginalised in Pakistan are precisely those that have been silenced in its history. That is not merely an indictment of this volume. It is rather an indictment of the way that history is written and envisioned in Pakistan generally.

Having said this, expecting an edited collection to address the potentially limitless gaps in Pakistan’s history would be unfair and unrealistic. It would also be unachievable given that there’s not much scholarship on these issues to begin with. This volume, then, remains a welcome contribution in some respects. But unless the urgency in addressing these gaps is felt and attended to, Pakistan’s manifold histories will be anything but “rich and authoritative”.

The reviewer teaches history at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

A History of Pakistan

(HISTORY)

Edited by Roger D. Long

OUP, Karachi

ISBN 978-0199400249

843pp.