Review–Social and Political Concerns in Pakistan and India:Critical Conversations for College Students

Sharing this review of Dr. Anjum Altaf’s book Social and Political Concerns in Pakistan and India: Critical Conversations for College Students.  The book is a collection of essays originally published as blog posts on The South Asian Idea.    The mission of the blog was:

The South Asian Idea is a resource for learning, not a source of expert opinion. The posts on the blog are intended as starting points for classroom discussions and the position at the end of the discussion could be completely at odds with the starting point. Thus the blog simulates a learning process and does not offer a final product. The reader is invited to join the process to help improve our understanding of important contemporary issues.

The heyday of the blog was from around 2008- 2018.  It hosts hundreds of essays about issues relevant to South Asians–many of them about Partition, Hindutva, Pakistan etc.   At a time when Indians and Pakistanis are barely able to interact in a civilized manner (as we have seen on this blog), it is a record of an earlier time when the hope for better relations still seemed possible.  It is also an example of the work that goes into running and moderating a blog aimed at teaching people how to argue well about humanities subjects.

Here are an excerpt from the review in DAWN:

All in all, Altaf’s tome deserves praise for courageously, convincingly and argumentatively questioning the dictatorship of mainstream discourses. Fanaticism has reduced the Indian Subcontinent to an Absurdistan. Altaf’s book shows that a patient argumentation in the tradition of Enlightenment is the only way to reverse the course.

Here’s a link to the post mentioned in the review (entitled “The Road to Partition”)

Currently, the book is only available in Pakistan. However, it is available on Kindle for those in India.