The Pakistan Paradox: Instability and Resilience (The Ceri Series in Comparative Politics and International Studies)

It grew out of the separatist ideology which crystallised at the end of the nineteenth century among the Urdu-speaking Muslim intelligentsia of North India, whose key figure was none other than Syed Ahmad Khan, the founder, in 1877, of the Anglo-Mohammedan Oriental College in Aligarh, a little town not far from Delhi.

Born out of a schism of the old civilisation of India, Pakistan has debated over the construction of a culture of its own, a culture which will not only be different from that of India but one that the rest of the world can understand.

Since the beginning Pakistan has been confronted with the monumental task of formulating a national identity distinct from India.