titles of good objective history book?

Arts & Culture Culture, Arts, Literature & Linguistics
1

I’m looking for an objective (well, as objective as possible anyway) book (in English) about the history of Pakistan.

topic: - mughals
- the struggle to form Pakistan, there are so many stories, some
say Jinnah played trick on India, others say it was them, I’m
looking for objective as possible history, also a good biography
of Mr. Jinnah.

Can anyone recommand titles (and if possible the names of the writers) please? Thanks in advance.

2

hmm....i 'll let u know if i could get some info from my sis ....she is doing masters in history ....hopefully will be able to help
:)

3

Thanks. :-)

4

I haven’t read it but ‘Indus Saga and the Making of Pakistan’ by Aitzaz Ahsan covers that subject and gets some pretty good reviews on Amazon. It’s expensive though at over $50 so see if you can get it from a library or something.

5

Thanks for the link. The reviews are great, so it must be a good read. :-)

6

Ok let's see, the book mentioned by Xtreme was written by Aitazaz Ahsan, famous lawyer and PPP guy. it's a good book but perhaps not as complete as you may want. In case of Pakistan History, for Jinnah the definitive would be Stanley Wolperts books on Jinnah, Gandhi and Nehru. In case of political history one of the most in depth would be Ayesha Jalals books they look at things quite differently and look critically on all groups.

7

Oke, thanks for your input.

8

Oh i ordered one from Pakistan last month "The Emergence of Pakistan" i think its written by Chaudry Muhammed Ali but im not sure. I would have checked but since im going to Pakistan im taking it with me and its already somewhere in the suitcase.

9

try Freedom At Midnight By Dominique Lapierre

10

sadya
if you want Quaid-e-azam's ultimate biography read nothing except Fatima Jinnah's "My Brother" it is the most authentic account of our founder's life. next in line among many pakistani authors is G. Allana, who was i suppose Quaid's friend and wrote his book under Fatima Jinnah's supervision. There have been many foreign authors writing on Quaid-e-Azam but Stanley Wolpert by all means is the best for his biography on our leader which is named "Jinnah of Pakistan". i have met mr. Wolpert, he is a very lerned man and a great writer and historian and teaches history at UCLA. he has also written a book on Gandhi.
all other writers' works are full of controversies and misconceptions due to a huge number of reasons so i would reccomend that you stay away from them if you are new to studying pakistani history.
Aitzaz ahsan's book is among the one's to be avoided. freedom at midnight is pretty famous and one of the earliest on the topic of Pakistan's creation.
and if you are interested in the common man stories from the time of the freedom movement and partition you can read the translated (from urdu) works of the sisters Khadija Mastur and Hajra Masrur. they both wrote short stories inspired by the daily common events that took place with coomon people affected by the disturbances. the book, name of which i dont remember, was published by Oxford Univ Press last year i think and tells us a great deal about what sacrifices our ancestors made and what hell they had to go threough to get Pakistan.

11

Try "India Wins Freedom" by Maulana Abul kalam Azad
and "Freedom At Midnight" by Lappiere in the same order.

I think , these two books give the best account of Indian subcontinent's
history!

12

Oh wow, thanks guys for all the titles. I'm just going to read them all, one by one. Yes, it's the first time I really 'dig' into Pakistani history.
Thanks again. :-) :-)

13

india wins freedom is also good
but if you are looking for something about mr jinnah than i would suggest you try a short story written on mr jinnah by mr sadat hassan manto where mr manto speaks to the chaffuere of mr jinnah its simply the best

14

Kabir i never heard of such a thing by Manto. is it good? but Manto's work is almost always fictional. where can i find this one with the Quaid's driver?

15

Just a comment, Freedom at Midnight doesn't say much about Pakistan. It's heavily slanted towards Mountbatten and Nehru.

16

I didn't find the titles here, so I ordered them. Meanwhile I found in the library old books. I started this book by Khalid bin Sayeed: Pakistan The formative phase 1857-1948. Is anyone familiar wiht the writer/book?

I also found: Old Roads New Highways , fifty years of Pakistan by Victoria Schofield adn Pakistan A Modern History by Ian Talbot. Has anyone read these?