Insightful

Ayesha Asif’s essay on PTI history and Imran Khan’s populist policies is one of the most interesting in the book. Those who have grown up watching their mothers, grandmothers, and great-aunts perusing the pages of Pakeezah will find Laurent Gayer’s comments on Urdu pulp fiction to be particularly insightful; again this essay finds a companion-piece in Aqsa Ijaz’s incisive literary analysis of Mirza Athar Baig’s Ghulam Bagh. Here I should add that Ijaz states that in spite of detractors being uncharitable about the philosophy depicted in this text, the late, respected critic Asif Farrukhi expressed sincere admiration for Baig’s endeavour. Julian Levesque draws one’s attention to the heroic, though disillusioned GM Sayed’s role in student politics, and Julia Porting to farmers’ markets across Pakistan. As one can tell even by my cursory comments, academic though the book may be, dry it most definitely is not. Indeed, I was pleased to observe that several colour-plates of photographs had been inserted in the middle, several of which focus on representations in art of the Sindhi saint Jhulelal. This elusive and august personage provides the crux of Michel Boivin’s article on the saint; the critic notes, inter alia, the different ways in which Pakistan regards Jhulelal, as opposed to how India has historically perceived him.

I have reviewed tens of books over the course of my career as a scholar and do not usually take issue with printing errors, but given that this text has been published by OUP I feel it incumbent on me to draw attention to a particularly grave and distracting one. Laurent Gayer’s wonderful essay is marred by the unnecessary repetition of several pages—indeed, this error takes place not just once, but twice. It is a shame that the final proofreading of the book did not catch this glaring mistake, which is inexcusable when it comes to a publisher of OUP’s stature and magnitude. We are all prone to human error, but this problem seems to have been the inverse of too many cooks spoiling the broth—it appears that in spite of several cooks, no one noticed that the lasagna’s cheese had burned undesirably.

Be that as it may, that is not my main criticism of this text, the research value and academic use of which is undeniable. Nevertheless, I was unpleasantly surprised to note that not a single male, Pakistani scholar has contributed to this volume. Perhaps feminists and those who espouse the causes of disenfranchised groups will cheer at this (and they are welcome to); however, this type of omission skews the teamwork and overarching focus of the book detrimentally in my opinion. The text does profess to be an international endeavour on aspects of Pakistan. Pakistani women have certainly contributed to it, and the omission may have been a genuine oversight on the part of the book’s worthy editors. However, criticizing the patriarchy of a country does not mean sidelining some of its most vital male scholars. Let us hope that in retaliation they do not behave like Maleficent at Aurora’s christening!