SOURCE: Ahmed, Akbar S. Review of Can Pakistan Survive?, by Tariq Ali. Journal of Asian Studies 44, no. 1 (November 1984): 239-41.

In the following review, Ahmed criticizes Can Pakistan Survive?, calling the work simplistic, polemical, and “marred in general by non sequiturs and by exaggeration.”

Tariq Ali, the professional polemical student leader long resident in England, has written a polemical book [Can Pakistan Survive?]. The title, subtitle, and photograph on the jacket (Pakistan in flames) may be termed “sensational.” The question in the title has been asked since 1947; the subtitle is premature.

Tariq's view of South Asian political history is simplistic. Pakistan was a mistake: “Pakistan was an irrationality, a product of imperialist penetration of the subcontinent—its interior was diseased from birth—an experiment doomed to failure” (p. 145). It is a position held by most Indian leaders. Tariq's villains are black and his heroes are white. In the former...