Amritsar-born Saadat Hassan Manto wrote "Dekh Kabira Roya (Kabir Saw and Wept)" soon after he moved to Pakistan. On madrasa children the author quotes Jalees Hazir in The Nation: "These children are the collective responsibility of our society and we must not leave them to the mercy of professional peddlers of faith who fill their innocent minds with ignorance and prejudice.5 million in WW II, had been a major war-winning factor for the Allies in both these wars.Beginning with his fascination and curiosity about Pakistan, as a youngster born seven years after its painful birth, the author, in his preface, appropriately quotes a couplet each of two famous poets — Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Habib Jalib. His next story about the partition, titled "Thanda Gosht" Cold Flesh)" — nothing to do with cooked meat — landed him in court for the second time with a sentence of three years in jail, which was fortunately suspended. This was mainly because Pakistani tank-crews had not done their training on the newly-acquired Patton tanks, resulting in poor gunnery.However, immediately on becoming Pakistan Army, changes kicked in. The English translation of these verses are: This tainted night, this night bitten dawn This is not the dawn we waited for, expressing Faiz’s anguish on Pakistan’s birth in Subh-e-Azadi (Dawn of Freedom) and You are sowing love through violence, smearing the face of the nation in blood; You think your journey is being completed, I am certain you are losing your destiny, conveying Jalib’s lament at Pak Army’s crackdown in East Pakistan.The newly-formed Pakistan Army had been part of undivided Indian Army under British rule. And their twisted religious fear of flames-that if burnt they would go to Jahannum (Hell)-made them to bail out after a single hit.
The failure has been made worse by these critical issues being ignored by a succession of leaders, civilian and military, since its creation.The 18 chapters arranged under seven sections are: The Foundations — The Pakistan Movement, The Legacy; The Building Blocks — A Question of Identity and Ideology, The Provincial Dilemma; The Framework — The Army has a Nation, Civil-Military Relations; The Superstruc-ture — Islamisation and Growth of Sectarianism; The WEEP Analysis, an indeed telling part, with Water Running Dry, Education: An Emergency, Economy: Structural Weak-nesses and Population: Reaping the Dividend; Win-dows to the World — India: The Quest for Parity, Afghanistan: The Quest for Domination, China: The Quest for Succour, The United States: The Quest for Dependence and finally, Looking Inwards, which has a chapter with the same title. Many thousands of Kabailis were lured and used without much success."This painstakingly resear-ched China aquarium wavemaker and well-presented book must be widely read in India, Pakistan and in many other counties dealing with these two nations and affected by terrorism most of which is emanating from or linked to Pakistan. We must not leave them to be used as fodder for their convoluted political agendas and be abused by them in myriad ways. Jinnah, a Shia, to propound the two-nation theory.Since the deaths of Messrs Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan soon after Pakistan’s birth, its Army pounced into the political space created and strengthened its hold, but lost a lot of its professionalism. Indian tank-crews remained in their tanks despite one or more hits and bailed out only if the guns could not fire, or when the tanks actually caught fire. Becoming shy of fighting head on, it excelled in "outsourcing" and turned totally rogue and barbarically brutal.Anil Bhat, a retired Army officer, is a defence and security analyst based in New Delhi. Its troops numbering 1. In the 1971 war, resulting in the liberation of erstwhile East Pakistan/ birth of Bangladesh, after barely 13 days of battle, 93,000 Pak armed forces surrendered and were taken as prisoners of war (PoW) by Indian Army and kept healthy till their repatriation. The author states that it is "the journey between Faiz’s tainted dawn and Jalib’s tragic destiny" that forms the subject matter of the book, which is abundantly packed with facts and ana-lyses leading to how Pak-istan is courting the abyss