REFERENCE Khalid Chaudhry’s letter ‘India’s dishonesty’ (Aug. 18), I would like to add some of my own thoughts. But before that something about the book, The Emergence of Pakistan by Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, cited by him as reference.

Mr Ali was one of the prominent participants of the Pakistan Movement and had ample opportunities to interact with Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan. Later he became the prime minister and also held extensive negotiations on Kashmir with the Indian premier Jawaharlal Nehru. All of this provided him with intimate knowledge of the sacrifices made for creating Pakistan as well as of the underhand tactics of India’s leaders to usurp states like Junagadh, Manawadar, Hyderabad and Kashmir. Thus, he was exceptionally qualified to write an authoritative account of events.

This fact had been recognised by various entities and individuals who gave excellent reviews to this book written in 1967 and originally published by the Columbia University Press, US. It was subsequently reprinted many times by the Research Society of Pakistan, University of Punjab.

To quote some of the reviewers, the Times Literary Supplement called the book “a distinguished achievement”. Wayne Wilcos of the Rand Corporation had labelled it as “the most important memoir yet written” and “may well remain the definitive statement of the Partition of British India from an informed Pakistani participant.”

The noted British historian, subcontinent specialist and writer, Prof. L. F. Rushbrook Williams had opined, “Chaudhri Muhammad Ali has given his readers just the kind of inside view that Liaquat Ali Khan and Quaid i Azam himself would have written, had the opportunity been given to them.” Thus, all educated Pakistanis must read this work.

As far as Kashmir is concerned, India has been fully exploiting the West’s desire to sell their wares to this huge market, as also its wariness about the resurgent China, to which India is being promoted as a counterweight. The world powers should realise that the Kashmiris or Pakistanis can’t hope to have a fair resolution of the issue, given India’s gigantic size and power.

Unless the sole superpower and the international community force India to hold a plebiscite, the Kashmiris will continue to bleed and the Muslims who care about them will become totally alienated from the West. There will then be no ground for any Western leader to ask, “Why do they hate us?”

M. P. Chishti

Karachi

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2016