On June 3, 1947 Lord Mountbatten announced that district of Gurdaspur was to be assigned to Pakistan but Redcliffe, Head of the Boundary Commission, conspired with Indian politicians such as Nehru and modified the geographic boundaries of the two newly formed countries in order to include the district of Gurdaspur in India’s map. As a result, the Muslim population of Gurdaspur set out in search of a safe home in Pakistan but many dangers awaited them on their journey to their new homeland

    He chronologically maps how Pakistan's spiritual soul has been trampled upon in its quest to gain acceptance as an 'ideological state'.'End of the Past' is written not so much as a nostalgic memoir as an analysis in the form of a narrative and a means of explaining the enigma that is Pakistan.Paracha looks at Pakistan's political, sporting and cultural pasts, hoping that future generations will learn from them and chart a brand new beginning for a country that he loves passionately. He pleads for a decisive end of the past so that a new and less tumultuous future can be envisioned and built.

    Ashfaq Ahmed is a consummate master of words.

    

    The novel is so exciting that the reader will love to read it more than once. Feudal system of undivided India, British, Hindu & Muslims are main characters of this novel.

    Regarded as the architect of the Islamic empire, Omar established a model political structure that would hold together the growing empire for centuries. Nomani delves into Omar's reputation as one of history's great conquerors and political geniuses, while also examining his pious and just nature, which earned him the title Al-Farooq ("the one who distinguishes between right and wrong"). Under Omar's leadership, the empire expanded at an unprecedented rate ruling the whole Sassanid Persian Empire and more than two thirds of the Eastern Roman Empire. As a leader, Omar was known for his simple, austere lifestyle. Rather than adopt the pomp and display affected by the rulers of the time, he continued to live much as he had when Muslims were poor and persecuted.The book consists of two parts: the first deals the events embracing the lifetime of Omar as well as his political achievements, while the second is a detailed examination of his system of government, both political and ecclesiastical, as well as his intellectual attainments, personal virtues and habits.Author and renowned Islamic scholar Shibli Nomani undertook an extensive study of the subject through several years of research in many of the great libraries of the day, including Istanbul, Beirut, Alexandria, Paris, Berlin and London. The result is what many consider to be the definitive biography of Omar "The Great".Upon publication, the book was hailed as a major event in the history of Islamic literature. Originally published in India and written in urdu, the book was quickly translated into several other languages. Celebrated Pakistani writer and activist Maulana Zafar Ali Khan published the English translation in 1900.

    

    Powerful, moving, poignant - this is a soft book with great depths to it.

    The story of Husain and Zammarrud fallen in the grip of the Assassins take us back to the last days of Hasan Bin Sabah's merciless followers, at the end of which the sect's stronghold, the famous fort of Alamoot, was destroyed by the even more merciless Mongol hordes. Sharar writes famously in the style of a Walter Scott novel, the novel itself being a new literary form in his day. But there are shades of an earlier indigenous genre - the Dastaan - in his work. Yet although he tells a gripping tale, part Scott and part Dastaan, he is not unaware of character. Husain may be credulous, and smitten silly by his love for Zammarrud, but he can still ask Shaikh Vujoodi intelligent questions which the Shaikh can only parry by the display of great wrath and superhuman knowledge. Husain's credulity in accepting his answers immediately has a lot to do with his fear that he would not be allowed to visit his beloved in 'Paradise.' There is a definite modern streak in Sharar's work. His treatment of Zamarrud is different from the usual portrayal of female characters in his day. Zamarrud has a mind of her own. She is observant and intelligent and capable of rebuffing her lover when he sounds credulous and foolish. No old fashioned perceptions of female 'duty' or the superior status of men holds her back from realizing that she is more clear-headed than Husain. She is moreover not mild of manner or adulatory of her man, as the prototypes of female perfection tend to be in Urdu literature of the day. Yet non of this detracts from her femininity, as she runs around 'like a delicate, fleet-footed doe' but fully determined to have her way. Much has been written about the Assassins in English and other languages. Sharar's novel has its own charm, and given a chance it should become a very popular book. Translated into Tajik, Sharar's works have quite a lot of readers in Tajikistan, where they are also the subject of a Ph.D. dissertation by Vladimir Lanikin.

    It has seared the psyche of four plus generations of this subcontinent. Why did this partition take place at all? Who was/is responsible - Jinnah? The Congress party? Or the British? Jaswant Singh attempts to find an answer, his answer, for there can perhaps not be a definitive answer, yet the author searches. Jinnah's political journey began as 'an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity' (Gopal Krishna Gokhale), yet ended with his becoming the 'sole spokesman' of Muslims in India; the creator of Pakistan, The Quaid-e-Azam: How and why did this transformation take place?No Indian or Pakistani politician/Member of Parliament has ventured an analytical, political biography of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, about whom views necessarily get divided as being either Hagiographical or additional demonology. The book attempts an objective evaluation. Jaswant Singh's experience as a minister responsible for the conduct of India's foreign policy, managing the country's defence (concurrently), had been uniformly challenging (Lahore Peace process; betrayed at Kargil; Kandahar; the Agra Peace Summit; the attack on Jammu and Kashmir Assembly and the Indian Parliament; coercive diplomacy of 2002; the peace overtures reinitiated in April 2003).He asks where and when did this questionable thesis of 'Muslims as a separate nation' first originate and lead the Indian sub-continent to? And where did it drag Pakistan to? Why then a Bangladesh? Also what now of Pakistan? Where is it headed? This book is special; it stands apart, for it is authored by a practitioner of policy, an innovator of policies in search of definitive answers. Those burning 'whys' of the last sixty-two years, which bedevil us still. Jaswant Singh believes that for the return of lasting peace in South Asia there is no alternative but to first understand what made it 'abandon' us in the first place. Until we do that, a minimum, a must, we will never be able to persuade peace to return.

    Today Manto is an acknowledged master of twentieth-century Urdu literature, and his fiction serves as a lens through which the tragedy of partition is brought sharply into focus. In The Pity of Partition, Manto's life and work serve as a prism to capture the human dimension of sectarian conflict in the final decades and immediate aftermath of the British raj.Ayesha Jalal draws on Manto's stories, sketches, and essays, as well as a trove of his private letters, to present an intimate history of partition and its devastating toll. Probing the creative tension between literature and history, she charts a new way of reconnecting the histories of individuals, families, and communities in the throes of cataclysmic change. Jalal brings to life the people, locales, and events that inspired Manto's fiction, which is characterized by an eye for detail, a measure of wit and irreverence, and elements of suspense and surprise. In turn, she mines these writings for fresh insights into everyday cosmopolitanism in Bombay and Lahore, the experience and causes of partition, the postcolonial transition, and the advent of the Cold War in South Asia.The first in-depth look in English at this influential literary figure, The Pity of Partition demonstrates the revelatory power of art in times of great historical rupture.

    

    It contains his earliest poems - in nazm, ghazal and qita form - that set him on course to becoming the greatest and most-read Urdu poet of the 20th century.

    He has collected anecdotes and assessments from a large number of Mr Jinnah’s colleagues and acquaintances, and he has strung them together very skilfully upon an outline of the domestic events of Mr Jinnah’s life and of the great political events in which he played so dominant a part.’—Tablet, 5 February 1955‘In his Jinnah Hector Bolitho has written his best book for many years—a direct, unpretentious biography of the man whose single and unswerving determination primarily created Pakistan and who…accepted the sacrifices entailed without demur.’—Daily Telegraph, 26 November 1954‘By the test of sheer achievement, Mohammed Ali Jinnah must be reckoned as one of the most dynamic and successful political leaders thrown up by the present century. It has fallen to Mr Bolitho to write the first full-scale biography of this remarkable man, and he has done it very successfully.’ —The Economist, 4 January 1955 ‘He has taken the greatest care to check his facts, and to take the opinions at first hand of Jinnah’s contemporaries. The result is a fascinating biography packed with incident and anecdote, which does not forget the magnitude and the growth of Jinnah—a biography that is eminently readable.’—Nottingham Journal, 1 February 1956

    Good tool for intellectual grooming.