Amit Baruah ´ 4 Free read
Recounts his family's experience of life in Istambul society between April 1997 and June 2000 - all of it conducted under the suspicious gaze of Pakistani intelligence agents. Dateline Islamabad
The multi storeyed reader's paradise known as Blossom's on Church Street, Bangalore is home to near infinite books which would require a lifetime's expeditions to process and identify the relevant works that delight one's intellect. On one such book hunting expedition in one of the nooks of the non-fiction section I discovered Dateline Islamabad which has since then been on my shelves for three years now. It was only recently when a podcast episode on politics in South Asia made me aware of how little I know of the details of the relations across the sub-continent and the foreign interventions in the state.
Based on three tumultuous years Baruah spent in Pakistan from 1997 to 2000, this book follows our neighbour in an era when it faced severe challenges, overhauling of the Chief Justice, a military coup against the Prime Minister, nuclear tests and the Kargil War. Baruah's book is well sequenced and a solid introduction lays foundation for what lies ahead and also a glimpse into the daily challenges faced by an Indian journalist in an enemy state. At no point in the book, does Baruah go all out anti-Pakistan and puts in best efforts to create a balanced narrative. Most of the sections are well researched and draw upon original articles written by Baruah himself or other renowned journalists from newspapers in Pakistan or the Middle East.
Given that the country suffered from numerous simultaneous challenges in that era, Baruah does a great job in creating well structured and sequenced chapters which give a clean end-to-end picture nuanced with 360 degrees of analysis. I set about reading this book to view the politics of the subcontinent from the perspective of a journalist in a concise manner. Overall, the book has checked all boxes for what I was looking for.
However, this is a book with a very niche coverage and may not necessarily appeal to the large number of readers. I would highly recommend this to someone looking to gain an elementary understanding of the dynamic and unstable policies of the two warring factions created from that tragedy that took place in 1947. English
