Nations, as political theorists like to remind us, are imagined communities. But who could have seriously, soberly, sanely, imagined Pakistan or at least the nation-state as it exists today? In 1933, when Chaudhary Rahmat Ali's pamphlet "Now or Never" first publicised the name Pakistan, it was intended to be the "land of the pure": home to "30 million" Muslims in (P)unjab, (A)fghania: North West Frontier Province, (K)ashmir, (S)ind and Baluchis(tan). But the "moth-eaten" Pakistan, to use Mohammed Ali Jinnah's phrase, that was finally created was a "double-headed state", a geographical monstrosity that bore little resemblance to Ali's vision. It is the story of this unimaginable nation that is explored in the scholar-journalist Owen Bennet Jones' study.

PAKISTAN: EYE OF THE STORM By Owen Bennet Jones Viking Price: Rs 395 Pages: 327

Most of the traumas that Pakistan suffered over the past 55 years were rooted, as we know, in the internal contradictions that were inherent in its birth as a separate state. While the historiography of Partition is mired in controversy, what is clear is that the founders of Pakistan had not developed a clear design for the new state even when the idea had captured the imagination of a section of Muslim masses. There is an explanation for this absence of serious thinking. Even as late as 1946, the main advocates of a separate Muslim state had not expected that it would translate into reality since the demand for Pakistan was initially put forward by the leadership of the Muslim League largely as a negotiating posture without much serious resolve.

The communal fury that was subsequently unleashed made the establishment of Pakistan a virtual inevitability. But Pakistan that achieved independence was also a bundle of contradictions. The tensions between modernists and the Islamists, the inability of the praetorian-bureaucratic-feudal structure to reconcile itself to democracy and the continuous hostility with India conjointly helped to produce the collective national mindset of an insecure nation, virtually always on the verge of disintegration.

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Engaging with these tensions forms the bulk of Jones' absorbing narrative. Instead of producing a predictable chronological story, he picks up the most critical issues that have defined Pakistan's political history: Kashmir, nuclear weapons and enmity with India; Islam and nationalism; democracy and the army. The account is riveting, but not particularly revealing (as claimed by Ahmed Rashid in his endorsement of the book) to those who have followed Pakistan at least in the media or read other accounts. Still, this is probably the most comprehensive and up-to-date account of Pakistan available today. Jones is a journalist and scholar, but the former occasionally dominates the book. While the chapter on Kashmir is balanced and nuanced and engages with different versions of history, there are some glaring omissions. Although there is a discussion on Lord Mountbatten's role in the Kashmir issue, there is no reference to Chandershekar Dasgupta's pathbreaking recent book that relies extensively on the former governor-general's private papers. Similarly, there is an engrossing account of back-channel diplomacy between R.K. Mishra and Niaz Naik on Kashmir after the Lahore Summit. Jones, however, uncritically accepts Naik's version, which I have also had the privilege of hearing. It is most unlikely that any Indian, as Naik suggests of Mishra, would be "neutral" to a division of Jammu and Kashmir along the Chenab river, which would concede the Valley to Pakistan.

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