Greetings, comrades. Today we'll be reviewing the book _Jinnah, Pakistan and Islamic Identity_ by the fabulous Akbar S. Ahmed. Yes, the same Akbar S. Ahmed who exec-produced the _Jinnah_ movie and has written extensively on that most Jinnah-esque topic of Islam and modernity.
This book, overall, infuriates me. Not for the reasons you'd think, but because he beat me to it and one-upped me. No, I don't kid myself in thinking that he stole my ideas or set out to make me have to scrap my research. In a way, actually, it makes me feel really good about myself, that an undergrad whose focus is Tamil humanities can, junoon se aur ishq se (aur maktabah kabirah se?) come to the same conclusions as a globetrotting scholar.
Anyway, onto the specifics. The main thing that Mr. Ahmed beat me to is his analysis of 'Jinnah Studies'. He didn't develop the same precise rubric that I did, but his conclusions essentially mirror mine. He also coined a bitchin' new term that I had never thought of -- RoboQuaid -- for interpertations such as Ayesha Jalal's that focus on Jinnah-as-statesman so intensely as to deny Jinnah-as-human. Cool. I like it.
Chapter 6 -- After reading the quote form Kennedy, you will never think of the term 'Nehru collar' in the same way again. Also, I'm going to be laughing hysterically for the next year or so because of the quote from Pirzada on page 153. /Wow/. That would have rocked. They should have done it anyway, even if Quaid-e-Azam didn't approve.
(Rather than subtitling the book 'The Search for Saladin', I think he should have called it 'What You Never Learned in School About the Freedom Movement'.)
On a more serious note, I think Ahmed's interpertations of RorschachQuaid (I coined that just now) are dead on. Mostly because I came to the same conclusions myself.
One thing that I was absolutely ecstatic to find and that I think will propel my own research in new directions is the section on Jinnah and the Dalit/Tribal/Dravidian Movement (Jinnah as Ravana? I like it!). This has been something that has been pestering me for a while now, and scouring the documents available to me has turned up little. Now I have some great leads and fascinating tidbits to springboard off of.
I would have liked to see more of the internal Pakistani interpertations of Jinnah, particularly how he has been invoked to legitimize leaders from Zia ul-Haq to Pervez Musharraf (and everyone ideologically in between). In a book that I was reading on Angkorean art and Khmer mythology earlier today, it mentioned how it is interesting to gauge the values of different South/Southeast Asian societies by how they interpert the Ramayana; I think it's equally interesting to see what is left in and out of the Jinnah hagiography (as Ahmed adroitly terms it) in different stages of Pakistan's history. He touches on it, but I think he could go a lot deeper.
In response to a criticism I saw on Amazon.com (from whence I purchased the book) I'd like to address the issue of Ahmed's extensive drawing from Hindu extremist polemic. According to the reviewer, this is tantamount to using al-Qaida tracts to characterize Islam. In a way, I agree with the reviewer. At the same time, though, both have to be taken as symbols and artifacts of their times and seen in a historical perspective. I would argue that any current book regarding Islam and the modern world would be amiss in not including a frank discussion of al-Qaida and Wahhabi Islam. And, with the BJP and Hindutva having played such a critical role in modern India and its worldview vis a vis Islam/Pakistan/Jinnah, it's something that needed to be broached.
Okay, so I'm starting to sound like the people in my department that I set out to annoy day in and day out in my baggy crackpants and hat on backwards, so I'd better cut this short. Heaven forfend against me actually starting to act the part of a humanities honor student! I'll rap at y'all again when school gets back in session.
I woke up yesterday around 3am and was fiending for something to read. Yes, I have six bookshelves, each loaded more than is safe or sane with books, and there are stacks and stacks and boxes and slovenly piles of the things on any piece of floor and furniture, but nothing suited. Not a comic book, not a language book, not a piece of fiction, not a travel book..I wandered around like a lost soul until I got the idea to check the political science books.
Most of my books are in rough organization. Bookshelf 1 has only language books -- specifically, Arabic, Japanese, Spanish, Latin and some novels in Tamil. Shelf 2 is political science, religion and comics/graphic novels. Shelf 3 has travel books and a healthy mishmash of military strategy, art, Ainu culture and Islamic books. Shelf 4 is fiction, more comics, some books in Persian and roleplaying games. Shelf 5 is solely paperback fiction. Shelf 6 is just for South Asia -- the top is nonfiction (music, art, history, travel, etc.), middle is language (very heavy on Tamil and Urdu) and the bottom is fiction and class readers.
I don't know why I told you all this. Anyway, political science books. I have a nice little collection of pre-9/11 books on terrorism. I was interested in it before it was cool. I knew who Usama bin Ladin was before he was famous. There's one that I've always been fond of: _Origins of Terrorism_ edited by Walter Reich. It takes a psychological approach to terrorism in general (including wonderful dueling essays on whether the organizations of terrorism have a psychological effect on their members or whether their members seek out such organizations because of preexisting mental disturbance). It's not all theoretical -- there are analyses of specific groups and how understanding terrorism from a psychologist's perspective can help policymakers.
As I flipped through the book, reading whatever looked interesting at the moment, I mused on why I don't own any post-9/11 terrorism books. Heaven knows there's been a bumper crop. I realized as I looked at the orderly charts and hypotheses what seems to be lacking in the book that I've read recently: scholarly detatchment. Everybody's so panicky and looking for quick answers based on a few events or organizations that they've lost historical and cross-disciplinary perspective.
Yes, I've had this discussion (in a slightly different form) with some folks in my department. I have reservations about scholar-activists and myself try to reserve my judgements for myself and my personal aquaintances (like you, dear reader). This becomes particularly relevant when I'm discussing my particular interest, which is military history. Take, for example, my standard 'what do you think about the war in Iraq' answer: "Strategically, they could have done better." No references to Bush and oil (frankly, I think Bush is a lot more irrelevant than people make him out to be) or the evil of Saddam Hussein.
But I guess it's too tender a thing to be looking objectively at yet. Guess we'll just have to wait.