The Nine Lives of Pakistan: Dispatches from a Precarious State

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I found this claim glaringly assumptive. This quote is in fact in direct accordance with The Charter of Madina, widely considered the first civil constitution to set the basis of a multi-religious Islamic state in Medina, drawn up on behalf of the Prophet Muhammad. A vital clause of the document granted non-Muslim members autonomy and freedom of religion. Walsh’s book suffers from minor factual mistakes: Zia had passed away nearly a year before the Tiananmen Square killings in China, so he could not have sent Beijing a message of support in 1989. Intelligence Bureau reports directly to the Prime Minister and not to the interior ministry; former foreign secretary Shaharyar M. Khan never served as Ambassador to India; although the author cites Dilip Hiro’s book on Partition as a source about the meeting between Jinnah and Chaudhry Rahmat Ali in New York’s swanky hotel, it probably happened in London instead of New York as there is no record of Jinnah visiting the United States in 1933. The former New York Times Pakistan bureau chief paints an arresting, up-close portrait of a fractured country.

He then presents his ruminations on some of the touchiest subjects in Pakistan; from the military’s involvement in politics and the intelligence agencies’ activities to the delicate religious fault lines that are ever-present yet often obscured. Among the many themes discussed, he dissects the Red Mosque seizure, gives accounts of tribal leaders and their ways of war and life, and the many unconventional stories of Pakistanis he stumbled upon during his time here. Manto is best known for his short story “Toba Tek Singh,” a powerful parable about the absurdities of Partition in 1947. But Manto’s other writings, and many of his real-life experiences, foreshadowed the issues that still loom large. He wrote fearlessly about the country’s troubled nationalism, the instrumentalization of blasphemy, and the schisms that cut across society, in stories and essays that, with some tweaks, could have been written today. His work is also graphic, earthy, and filled with a cheeky and subversive humor that is true to the best work on Pakistan. Manto is the ultimate antidote to the saccharine portraits of what Pakistan is, or could be, that are favored by Pakistanis ideologues. And so Asma Jahangir with this small, formidable, fiery woman who was willing to stand up for the most dispossessed people in her country and was also willing to stand up loudly to the most powerful ones. The book has an immense literary touch. You’re quoting Sadat Hasan Manto, a giant of 20th century Urdu literature, with regard to Pakistani history, culture, and politics. How and why did Manto seem relevant to contemporary Pakistan?SHAPIRO: So what does her story tell you about the ability of civilians to stand up to the military in Pakistan? WALSH: Oh, there were so many things. You know, one of the most extraordinary things about being a reporter in Pakistan is the sort of access that you get to people across society. This - here was this country where ministers would, you know, return my phone calls, even late at night and personally. But more than that, when I went out traveling around and turned up in any random village, people really wanted to speak. They wanted - not only were they generous with their hospitality and welcoming in but they wanted you to step into their lives. And they wanted to at least give their point of view or even more. All those interested in South Asia and its complex politics and culture should read this book' - Pankaj Mishra WALSH: Well, you know, I've just spent a five-year assignment in Egypt. And on the basis of that, I can certainly tell you that every country is not the same. And there are countries where people are really afraid to speak out and really feel constrained. And it can be much harder to be a journalist. But in Pakistan, even though there were a lot of forces that could threaten people's lives or that exerted a lot of pressure on them - and yet there was this natural impulse to speak.

Declan Walsh begins his captivating new book on Pakistan with an account of how he came to leave the country for the first time, abruptly and involuntarily in May 2013. “The angels came to spirit me away,” is the way he puts it, using the Urdu slang for the all-powerful men of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), whose presence is felt, even when not seen, throughout The Nine Lives of Pakistan. Although he correctly assumes that Jinnah cuts an elusive figure in Pakistan, remembered yet unknown, he then proceeds to fill in the gaps with incomplete or embellished facts. Case in point: he postulates based on the following line from Jinnah’s speech that he wanted a secular, not a theocratic homeland. “You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the state.” This is not just a book for someone wanting to find out about Pakistan, although it performs that job admirably. It is also a richly observed study of how humans respond to the extraordinary pressures of a sometimes-choking society; empathetic, but hard-nosed and never veering into hagiography. If there is a flaw, it is simply that Walsh’s eviction has left him unable to cover the country’s shifts since 2013. It is a sadder place now, with the military controlling politics again, abducting critics with abandon and stifling the once-boisterous press. Perhaps The Nine Lives of Pakistan will inspire others to follow in Walsh’s footsteps. And if someone at the ISI reads it, they might wonder: is having a reporter like this around such a bad thing for the country, nosy and annoying as they may be?DECLAN WALSH: When I started to write the book, I thought, of course, about the big characters, the Pervez Musharrafs, the Benazir Bhuttos, the people that I had really covered intensively over the years. But then I realized that I had learned most, actually, in a way from what I called the sort of second-tier characters of the country's dramas - police chiefs, spies, a tribal chief. These were people who lived dramatic lives and were willing to open up those lives to a stranger like me. Dhamaal is a form of spiritual rapture, but Walsh describes it as “a kind of religious rave” and regards the shrine as having a Las Vegas aesthetic, which has extremely different connotations. He seems to be overstretching analogies here to make foreign customs palatable to western readers. However, the Western prism through which the author portrays events from Pakistani history is an aspect of his writing that one must keep in mind when reading the Nine Lives of Pakistan if one wishes to gain a thorough understanding of the book’s context – not only is this Western-centric interpretation of Pakistani history glaringly obvious throughout the book, but some may also allege that at times, his analyses carry within them hints of the white-savior complex. WALSH: So that's a chapter about Asma Jahangir. She was Pakistan's most prominent human rights activist. She came from a fairly well-to-do family in Lahore but had spent her life on the streets of the country, standing up for the dispossessed, for minorities who are being discriminated against, for women who had suffered and still suffer heinous crimes. And more generally, she stood for civilians against the country's military. This is - Pakistan's a country where the army has been in charge directly for about half of the country's history. And for the rest of the time, frankly, the military has pulled the levers of power, indirectly.