BOOK REVIEW

Name: Flying Officer Suhaib Murtaza

Pak: 20064
Book Title: The Indus Saga and the making of Pakistan
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Title:
The Indus Saga and the making of Pakistan
Author:
Aitzaz Ahsan
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Publication:
1996
ISBN No:
978-93-5194-073-9
Number of pages:
730 pages
About the author:
Being the third generation in his family to hold an elected position in a
legislative body, Aitzaz Ahsan comes from a political family. He was the
minister of law, justice, interior, and education in the federal government
between 1988 and 1993. He is a member of the Pakistan People's Party. He
was elected to the Pakistani Senate in 1994, and between the years 1996
and 1999, he alternated between being the House Leader and the
Opposition Leader.

He completed his undergraduate studies in law at Cambridge and was

admitted to the bar at Grays Inn in 1967 after receiving his early schooling at
Aitchison College and the Government College in Lahore. He is a respected
lawyer for Pakistan's Supreme Court. Additionally, he is a tireless advocate
for human rights and the founding vice president of the Human Rights
Commission of Pakistan. He has frequently been imprisoned under arbitrary
detention laws by militaries and totalitarian governments. He authored The
Indus Saga during one of these lengthy detentions.

About the book:

The Indus region, which makes up the westernmost portion of the Indian
subcontinent (now Pakistan), has long had a unique racial, ethnic, linguistic,
and cultural identity. Only for the past 500 years, out of the last 5000, has
this area been politically a part of India. Therefore, Pakistan is not a "artificial"
state created by British India's disgruntled Muslim elite.

As he alludes to this region, the Indus, Aitzaz Ahsan traces its history from
the Harappan civilization to the British Raj, finishing with independence and
the founding of Pakistan. Ahsan's message is intended for both Indians who
still long for an "undivided" India and their Pakistani neighbors who tend to
narrowly define themselves by their "un-Indianness."

Synopsis of the book:

“The Indus Saga” by Aitzaz Ahsan is a book that explores the history and
significance of the Indus River and its associated civilization. It delves into
the rich cultural and historical heritage of the Indus River Valley, which is
home to one of the world's oldest known civilizations, the Indus Valley
Civilization.

In the book, Aitzaz Ahsan likely discusses various aspects of the Indus River
and its role in shaping the development of ancient civilizations in the region.
This may include insights into the social, economic, and cultural aspects of
the people who lived along the Indus River thousands of years ago.

Furthermore, the book may touch upon the environmental challenges facing
the Indus River in contemporary times and its geopolitical significance in the
region.

Critical analysis:
Aitzaz Ahsan acknowledges the contributions of M.J. Akbar and a Pramod
Kapoor, both from India, who worked with him to draft the second edition.
Reading it makes it clear why, as the novel depicts the theory of the epic
Mahabharta even though it is ostensibly about Pakistan.
The first book has four pages as the preface and a twenty three page
introduction, where Aitzaz starts with his Jail experiences in General Zia-ul-
Haq’s time and writes of fragile state of Pakistan by quoting Ziring 2 ‘Pakistan
could cease to exist in its sovereign nation-state form’ and then quotes Tariq
Ali from his book ‘Can Pakistan Survive?’ and Shahid Burni, a director of
World Bank, ‘only time will tell whether Pakistan realize its potential or be
over whelmed by its problems’ He also cites a Tahir Amin of Q.A. University
‘The Bangladesh syndrome continues to haunt the Pakistani decision-
makers, who fear the ethno-nationalist movement of NWFP, Sindh and
Baluchistan may also follow the precedent set by Bangladesh movement’.
And now he applauds the figure of Jawaharlal Nehru, who expounded the
theory of Mahabharta, of one-ness of India and refers to his book3. Aitzaz,
equates his jail experiences with that of Nehru and appreciates his vision of
unity of India and mentions the centripetal pull of India, a supernatural force
that could again pull Indus region to itself!

1. The first, 1996, Edition had 3 parts and 399 pages and published by
Oxford press.
2. The 2nd, 2005, Edition has again 3 parts, 451 pages and published in
New Dehli by Roli Books.
3. “Pakistan: The enigma of Political Development”, Dawson West View,
1980
4. ‘The Discovery of India, Signet Press, Calcutta, 1956

In the third part of his book, he attempts to discover our original inhabitant of
Indus region. Unfortunately, as he has not done his research and this portion
fails miserably to portray the true history and heritage of the region.
Aitzaz stresses that the essential purpose of the book being is to discover
and define the Indus person, the best he can do is to name eleven persons
4 to sum up the illustrious and enviable Indus Civilization from pre-history to
1947.

In Section-1 of the Introduction, he takes on the search of Pakistani identity

but fails to locate it by giving arguments but not the answers to Pakistani
identity by throwing questions like, is Pakistani an Arab, Indian, or both, or a
Central Asian?

He tackles the unfolding of the global empires by portraying a grand

Mahabharta as if the world lived in a culturo-civilization vacuum and denies
the more powerful bordering influences like the Persian and the Turkish
empires of the epoch.

His passing reference to the influence of Persians through a single citing of

the Persian wheel or boka 5amplifies his lack of historic understanding
because the Peshdadi, Kiani, Hakamanish and Sassani periods alone cover
5000 years of history of Iran till 653 AD. Little wonder why he neglected to
acknowledge that our National Anthem is in Farsi, while the crescent and
star Pakistani flag is influenced by the Turk.

In Section-2 of the Introduction, Aitzaz brings forth the theme of one-ness of

Bharat or the epic Mahabharta.

He appears obsessed by the theme of Mahabharta and either by design or

ignorance, this modern-day champion of Indus does not enlighten us that the
concept of a mahabharta is actually a concoction of the fertile Hindu
Brahman mind. This fabrication of history spreads over a span of hundreds
of years and the Brahmans zeal in this scheme of make-believe is also
apparent from the fact that there is no record of the supposedly pre-historic,
Chankiya Kutaliya’s book on statecraft named ‘Arthshashra’ until it was
presented to R.D. Shasktri in 1904 by a pundit of Tanjore.

“The epic mahabharta, in describing that great pre-historic civil war not only
unquestionably, assumes the ‘oneness’ of the vast subcontinent, but also
books upon the lands of Bactria (Balkh) and China, beyond its great
mountain’s ranges, as outlying frontier regions, inseparable, inalienable and
natural parts of the Indian subcontinent. The concept of the ‘unity and
indivisability’ and of one vast and limitless subcontinent, itself the size of all
of Europe, is thus ancient and rooted in historical mythology”.

Then Aitzaz gives the geographic boundaries encompassing oneness of

India and a common Indian race and refers the same to Jawaharlal Nehru
and also quotes other proponents of Indian oneness 6.

Building up the case of a greater India, the apt and able lawyer in Aitzaz now
pauses in his graphic description of an akhund-bharat and returns to his
earlier theme of the Indus Saga i.e., Pakistan’s creation.

In Section-3 of the Introduction, Aitzaz describes the river Indus, its origin
and subsequent fall into the sea. His lack of study on the subject is apparent
by the fact that he only mentions Sutlaj, Beas, Ravi, Chinab & Jhelum & has
no inkling of the influences from the north-western rivers like, Kabul, itself fed
by about a dozen rivers, Kurram, Zhob, Gomal and a host of torrential
streams from the Suleman ranges.

In Section-4 of the Introduction, he again reverts to his oneness of India

obsession. Though he outwardly laments that, our historian continues to
style the variegated and many-faceted history of Indus as an integral part of
what is called ‘Indian’ history. And further woes that our historian, though
focusing on Indus history pay more attention to the rule & influence upon it
of the Indian dynasties, and also bemoans – that our historians in order to
give entity to Pakistan, trace our cultural foundations solely to extra-territorial
linkages, meaning thereby, the Arab, the Persian & Turk. And Aitzaz claims,
that in denying the Indian they deny theIndus and hence the break from the
many attributes of Indus culture which are common to the Indian.

In Section-5 of the Introduction, he deals with , what he calls, the battered

soul of Pakistan and professes it is time to rediscover and restore the soul,
the dream embodied in it, and to rediscover and restore Pakistan as a liberal
progressive, modern state, and hence through this quest of Pakistan, he
wants to create a secular Pakistan, and then merge it in the oneness of India
as is the theme of the work disguised as a peace move.

In Section-6 of the Introduction, Aitzaz refers to a generation bridge covered

by his three points – first being poetry to illustrate a point – by quoting on P-
35 of his book a Rig Vedic hymn in praise of a horse.

The apparently insignificant Horse has a very important role in this subtle
war of indoctrination by the Brahman designs.

As horses were the primary tool of warfare, it is important to note that the
superiority of any martial race depended on who tamed, bred and used the
horse first. The visual and psychological impact of an invading army,
galloping and thundering down the battlefield on horseback was sufficient to
unnerve any fainthearted enemy.
It is in this context that the Brahman and, subsequently, the European
intellectuals invented the fable that the Indus valley did not have the horse
prior to the advent of the Hindus.

Aitzaz appears to accept the same conjecture and agrees to the argument
very seriously by further quoting another anti-Indus writer, Romila Tharpar 7
that Indus was not a horse area and fails to appreciate that British horse runs
& stud farms were in thickly vegetated canal colony areas of present Punjab
and also the salt range breed, the Sanghar breed of Sind have always been
famous for its endurance. His lack of study in this aspect reflects again on P-
35, where he mentions that the central Asian steppe is the natural habitat of
the horse.

He is mysteriously silent on the prime hot-blood breed called the Arabian

which is the oldest and the most coveted bloodline without which any hot- or
warm-blooded horse is not recognized as a premier breed. The Arab horse
predates the central Asian ponies because the Arabian bloodline is known to
date back to 2500-3000 B.C.

5. History of India, Volume I, New York 1979’ P-95,

Even the indigenous breeds of Indus were cross bred with the Arabian to
give it a separate entity of endurance and stamina, though most have been
renamed as Indian breeds – by British in the last 250 years i.e., 1757 onward.

In Section-8 of the Introduction, he names the main eleven Indus men 4 who
are his heroes of Indus.

Among these, Arjun is a character in mahabharta, Sheikha & Jasrat are

misquoted by Aitzaz to be Ghakkars while they were actually Khokhars – and
Amir Timur was not a ‘scourge of Earth’, 8 rather it was Alexander of
Macedonia who burnt all cities and libraries of Egypt and Iran & destroyed
the palaces & shrines. Bhagat Singh was a Sikh who hardly had any
contribution as an Indus person. Aitzaz should have added a Buddhist and a
Christian name; hence his secular theory would have been complete.

Aitzaz gives his own concept of Pakistan’s Past, Present & Future, by
stressing on P-17, “they cut us off from our heroes, but the questions and
our heroes have survived, they must survive. Pity the nation that forgets its
heroes. We have to rediscover our heroes. Until we do so, many cancerous
myths will continue to harbor in our body- politic, and many unwanted
fractious controversies and fissiparous tendencies will continue to divide us”.

Excellent and well-said. But which heroes is he talking about? Aitzaz, fully
expounds, and substantiates his above statement in his second (Indian)
edition of The Indus Saga (2005). P-30 where after Bhagat Singh, he states,
“nor of the deities and beliefs of their predecessor Indus Person. Indra and
the Vedas, Krishna and the Mahabharata are to be shunned as if they would
pollute the minds of the youth:” He goes on to conclude that “Yet these deities
and beliefs, howsoever incredible, are facts forming a part of Indus history.”

Unfortunately, these sweeping and misguiding statements do not hold their

grounds to either the true history of Indus region nor to the chronology of the
Iranian and the Turkish empires that predate the Hindu mythology.

According to Aitzaz9, we were never fighters, and he starts our past from the
time when Hindus came and made us Puru’s and under their leadership, we
became a fighting force!

6. Page 16, Indus Saga, 1996 Edition

7. Page 38-39, Indus Saga, 2005
But wait, first you have to decipher what Aitzaz is saying of our past.

He is professing that until the discovery of Mohenjo-Daro, there was no

evidence that Indus had a past as they had flourished and vanished without
successor or trace in chronology. He quotes lavishly from the Hindu writer
named Kosambi and states there is a vacuum of 500 to 600 years till 1000
BC when new cities came. Secondly, according to Aitzaz, two cities, Harappa
and Mohenjo-Daro, existed in this vast endless river basin of Indus till the
sea.

So where do we fit in Taxila or similar archeological finds all over Pakistan?

Aitzaz quoted Kosambi again to argue that the absence of a large network
of cities indicates that there was an almost lethargic indifference to growth.

His third argument is that Indus cities had neither fortresses nor any colossal
monuments to the glory of a king in the manner in which Pyramids standout.

Aitzaz fails to understand that our past monuments, much superior to

Pyramids, were razed to the ground by the Hindus under the Mughal
emperor Akbar, and then during the Sikhs and the British Raj. It is recorded
in history that the Hindu engineers and railway line contractors, from Karachi
to Peshawar, used our entire Past monument for the ‘Ballast’ of the railway
lines because it was free and was a suitable substitute to broken rock and
gravel used as railway lines bed.

The monotheist Buddhist past of Indus has been substituted by the polytheist
Hindu but in the absence of a personal research or study, Aitzaz relies on
‘Kosambhi’ and hence helps destroy the very past he purports to uphold.
He quotes Kosambi again to state that ‘The Indus region seems to have been
called the Meluhha by the Mesopotamians. All mention of Meluhha ceases
by about 1750 B.C.”

But the irony is in new books of syllabus, where we have been shown
destroyed in 1900 BC. So, in these books the Indus civilization is wiped out
150 years earlier than even what Kosambi claims.

A person may be given the benefit of doubt when addressing on a platform

as one can get carried away by the rhetoric and say that may be incorrect.
But he who writes muses and gives his inner self. Is it that Aitzaz’s projection
of one-ness of India, which he calls the centripetal pull of India, is pulling him
to India?

Aitzaz talks of Bangladesh syndrome but fails to understand and research

the historic perspective. While there is no denial that many a political and
administrative mistakes were made by the then West Pakistan based
government, it was in 1880 that the first seed of Muslim divide was planted
by the Bengal British Government by abolishing the Perso-Arabic script in
the Bengal, which is the same script in which Urdu is written, and replaced
by Deva Nagri script, in all matters related to printing, and Kaithi script, in all
papers written by hand. All courts and Bengal Government departments
followed this executive order, and all old books were destroyed, and the
‘Tagore’ family was invited to re-write the new literature of Bengal in the new
script.

With the merger of the script into a Hindu format, within a span of 90 years
came the eventual product the “Mukhit-Bhami” the new intellectual, born,
breed and groomed in the Tagore literary culture written in Deva-Nagari scrip,
which was later called Bengali script.

In Section-9 of his Introduction, he now tries to undo his venom by supporting

the theory of two-nations, India& Pakistan, by referring to his Gurdaspur
Kathiawar salient theory of divide. What one needs to understand is that
Ganga and Indus have two distinct features. Our Indus from eastern Baltistan
and down to salt range is supplemented by massive network of tributaries
while Gangas does not have such a network. The roots of Indus are more
densely distributed, hence our heritage, and the base of the languages of
our original tribes is old Scythian, Dardic. Our script is even spread to
Turkistan in our North, courtesy the Buddhist who shifted our Buddhist
religion to Khotan around 1st Century AD and then to Lhasa in 8th-9th
Century AD. Again, it was Turks of present Sinkiang province, the old
Turkistan, who technically are the owners of present land mass called Tibbet.
It should be borne in mind that the first Buddha is a Saka, and a Saka is a
Turkish tribe – born in Kashmir – as our old annals tell us. The theory is
further collaborated by Fa-Hain (400AD) & other Chinese pilgrims who have
recorded their travelogues.

The title of last section of his Introduction, ‘From Pataliputra to Pakistan’,

itself signifies our nations’ supposed break from, his professed, mahabharta.
In this manner he has tried to firmly establish our heritage commencing from
the Indian geographical region of Pataliputra instead of the Indus valley.

Hence, his argument of the Indus Saga is self-defeating.

The second edition of his book is now called ‘the Indus Saga, from
Pataliputra to Partition’.
In fact, it is really a Pataliputra to partition concept i.e., from oneness of
British India, we entered in a break called partition of 1947. The use of the
term ‘partition’ is incorrect. Partition implies an entity which is divided in parts.
While we have been an independent entity from ages prior even to
Pataliputra.

This book quotes Lal Krishna Advani (P-XI) on how to run our country, and
Jawahar Lal Nehru preaches us the benefits of secularism and oneness of
India and on P-XII. Aitzaz laments that ‘the number of Muslims in India is
greater than population of Pakistan’.

The fact is, in 1947, they chose to live in British India while nine million
Muslims did migrate to both our wings, East and West Pakistan. The Muslims
of India, who opted to stay back are ethnically divided into four groups
namely those claiming Arab ancestry, secondly Afghan-Pathan, third Turkish
Iranian, and lastly, the local ethnically indigenous converts to Islam. None of
these groups claim Indus valley ancestrally or ethnically so just as the
Muslims from China, Malaysia and Indonesia would not be interested to
migrate into Pakistan, these ethnic groups, nevertheless Muslims, should not
be expected to come into the folds of the Indus valley.

If we are to talk of the ‘Ummah’ or ‘Pan Islamism’ then the argument is

sustainable that there should be unified Muslim state stretching from the
Atlantic to the Pacific and the Arctic to the Indian Ocean. However, this is not
the contention here.

If we want to look at this from the ‘secular’ aspect, the Muslims residing in
present-day India have a different ethnical entity and the argument of the
presence of more numeric Muslims does not hold its ground.
On (P-XIII) Aitzaz Ahsan grieves on the theme ‘six decades on, there is
hardly an Indian, even the most accommodating and rational, who does not
privately resent the partition of 1947. Even the most congenial Indian, Hindus
and Muslims will say with love and affection, ‘how much before it might have
been if…….” If the partition should not have taken place? one is tempted to
ask the learned writer and council.

Conclusion:
"Indus Saga" by Aitzaz Ahsan is a comprehensive exploration of the
historical, cultural, and geographical significance of the Indus River.

The book delves into the rich history of the Indus River Valley, home to the
ancient Indus Valley Civilization.

Aitzaz Ahsan discusses the profound impact of the Indus River on the
development of early human settlements and societies in the region.

The book highlights the archaeological discoveries that have shed light on
the Indus Valley Civilization.

It also examines the cultural and religious aspects of the people who
inhabited the Indus River Valley.

Ahsan provides insights into the challenges facing the Indus River in
contemporary times, including environmental concerns.

The book offers a geopolitical perspective, discussing the river's role in

regional politics and water disputes.
Readers gain a deeper understanding of the Indus River's role as a lifeline
for South Asia.

Ahsan's writing is informative and engaging, making complex historical and

cultural topics accessible.

In summary, "Indus Saga" is a captivating journey through the history and

significance of the Indus River and its civilization.