Reddit mentions of Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River

warning. this is a long post. please don't read unless you read the entire thing.

in my opinion it was pretty disgusting. Jinnah used religious differences that had not prevented over 900 years of coexistence to fuel the drive to create a country. A great example of this coexistence is described in 'Empires of the Indus' by Alice Albinia (http://www.amazon.com/Empires-Indus-The-Story-River/dp/0393338606) that is instructive:

"Whatever Latif (referring to Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai) was, his Risalo is not the work of a dogmatist. It contains few tenants of any kind, whether Sufi, Shia, or Sunni. It is certainly the work of a Muslim - but no more stridently than Shakespeare's plays are coloured by Christianity. Just as Shakespeare has been called a Protestant, Catholic, atheist, and the inventor of romantic love, so, according to the Sindhi historian Hussamuddin Rashdi, the same fate has befallen Latif.

Shah Abdul Latif has always been as beloved by Sindhi Hindus as Sindhi Muslims, and every year Hindu scholars from India are invited to the government-sponsored literary festival, held during the urs. Latif himself spent some three years in the company of Hindu yogis, and he praises them in his poetry:

I find not today my Yogi friends in their abodes;
I have shed tears all the night, troubled by the pang of their parting;
The Holy Ones for whom my heart yearneth, have all disappeared.

Latif's Risalo, then, exemplifies the easy spiritual interaction that exists between the two faiths, an easiness that has been acquired after centuries of cohabitation. This legacy is an irony in a country based on the separation of Muslim and Hindu (referring to Pakistan), and it is wonderful that this syncretism has survived....

..I arrive at Urderolal at dusk. As I climb down from the bus I can hear that the mela, the fair, has begun: through the loudspeakers mandatory to any subcontinental religious event, bhajans - Hindu devotional songs - are being chanted; and in the background is a steady wall of noise, the coming and going of pilgrims. I turn the corner in the road and see the massive Mughal fort, with its five-foot-thick walls, which enclose a mosque, a temple, and the tomb of a man whom Muslims call Shaikh Tahir and the Hindus call Jhulelal or Urderolal - and whom everybody calls Zindapir. Today it is Zindapir's birthday.

As I am circumambulating Zindapir's tomb with the crowd, a Hindu family arrives, bearing a traditional green Muslim cloth, inscribed with Quranic verses, which they drape over the tomb in thanksgiving. In the adjacent room, devotees are queuing up to pray to a roomful of Hindu images. In the room next to that are the graves of the four Muslim Shaikhs who - according to the Hindu legend - granted Zindapir the land, free of charge, on which to build a temple in the 10th century. Outside in the courtyard, is a tree the branches of which are hung with pieces of coloured cloth, the wishes of supplicants of both faiths.

I have been invited to the Hindu-only festivities by Diwan Lekraj, a member of the Evacuee Trust Property Board set up after Partition to protect the monuments of the absent 'minorities'. Diwan is a Hindu, but he is almost indistinguishable from the Muslims around him. There is nothing in his dress (shalwar kameez) or his language (Urdu) or his car or his house to draw attention to his 'minority' faith. Perhaps the horrors of Partition taught Pakistan's Hindus that it was wiser thus. Or maybe there really is not much to distinguish them after all, as the story of Zindapir's two faiths suggest...

• Empires of the Indus, pp. 94-99.
  
  Can a Hindu really be a Pakistani, if Pakistan was founded on the basis that Hindus and Muslims are different civilizations? Events like the one described in the book run counter to the popular narrative surrounding Pakistan’s creation. Many Pakistanis will claim that they bear ill will against Hindus or any religion, and as a Pakistani I can say that this is true. However, this does not change the fact that our founding narrative treats Hindus and by extension Sikhs as fundamentally different and that had partition not happened we would live in existential fear of imminent extinction at their hands.
  
  
  

This here is good. [Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0393338606?ie=UTF8&tag=vlogbrothers-20&linkCode=shr&camp=213733&creative=393185&creativeASIN=0393338606&ref_=sr_1_4&s=books&qid=1328216396&sr=1-4)