ABSTRACT

This chapter, in addition to providing an overview of the content of this volume, explains why the editors, Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury and I, decided to collaborate on a book entitled Pakistan at Seventy. Both of us are associated with the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), National University of Singapore, as senior research fellows. The institute decided to observe the 70th anniversary of the birth of Pakistan and India by sponsoring two volumes, one on each country, in which a number of contributors would be invited to write on the fields in which they specialized. This project was preceded by the publication of two working papers on Pakistan and India, respectively. The study on Pakistan was written by me, and that on India by Subrata Kumar Mitra, the director of ISAS. My study was published on 14 August 2017, Pakistan’s birthday, and that by Mitra one day later, to coincide with the birth of India, Pakistan’s sister state. 1 This overview will take a thematic approach rather than discussing each chapter in turn.