August 14 and August 15 mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of independence from British rule for Pakistan and India, respectively. Inextricably linked to the birth of these two South Asian nations is the 1947 Partition of the subcontinent that tragically accompanied the end of British colonialism.
Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India, described the moment of independence as a tryst with destiny. “At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance…” he said in his famous speech on August 15, 1947.
The world-renowned Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, wrote in “Subh-e-Azadi” (“Dawn of Freedom”):
These tarnished rays, this night-smudged light —
This is not that Dawn for which, ravished with freedom,
we had set out in sheer longing.
(Translated from Urdu by Agha Shahid Ali)
The volumes below illuminate the lives of individuals, the politics, and the literary traditions that shape the rich histories of both nations. They are in the spirit of Nehru’s midnight and Faiz’s dawn alike.
Pakistan
Aqil Shah, The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan
Faisal Devji, Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea
Ayesha Jalal, The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics
Ammara Maqsood, The New Pakistani Middle Class
Bullhe Shah, translated by Christopher Shackle, Sufi Lyrics: Selections from a World Classic
India
Manan Ahmed Asif, The Loss of Hindustan: The Invention of India
Sugata Bose, His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against Empire
Faisal Devji, The Impossible Indian: Gandhi and the Temptation of Violence
William Elison, Christian Lee Novetzke, and Andy Rotman, Amar Akbar Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, and the Nation
Edited by Ramachandra Guha, Makers of Modern India
Ruth Harris, Guru to the World: The Life and Legacy of Vivekananda
Ramin Jahanbegloo, The Gandhian Moment
Niraja Gopal Jayal, Citizenship and Its Discontents: An Indian History
Madhav Khosla, India’s Founding Moment: The Constitution of a Most Surprising Democracy
Neeti Nair, Changing Homelands: Hindu Politics and the Partition of India
Dinyar Patel, Naoroji: Pioneer of Indian Nationalism
Mircea Raianu, Tata: The Global Corporation That Built Indian Capitalism
Rabindranath Tagore, edited by Fakrul Alam and Radha Chakravarty, The Essential Tagore
Ananya Vajpeyi, Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India
Steven I. Wilkinson, Army and Nation: The Military and Indian Democracy since Independence
