SOURCE: Addy, Premen. “State of Faith.” New Statesman 106, no. 2731 (22 July 1983): 24.

In the following review, Addy credits Ali for his overview of the geopolitics of India in Can Pakistan Survive?, but faults him for not going beyond the “commonly held perceptions of the Left” in the book.

The creation of Pakistan was for its founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a triumph of will and tactical acumen. For the Muslims of the subcontinent, whose cherished homeland this was to be, its consequences were fraught with tragedy. Jinnah had fondly hoped to build the new state in his own image: liberal, cosmopolitan, secular. But, as Tariq Ali observes [in Can Pakistan Survive?], it was a house built on sand. With Islam as its raison d'être, the country's ruling class consisted mainly of an unholy crew of Punjabi landlords and bureaucrats, a Punjabi-dominated military and a middle-class refugee element from Uttar Pradesh...