This admirably written book analyzes, in a scholarly and impartial way, a mass of material relating to the creation of Pakistan. Taking 1857 as the starting point, Khalid bin Sayeed relates the diverse factors which periodically heightened or lowered tension between the Hindus and Muslims of the subcontinent.

Even fifty years after it was first published, Khalid bin Sayeed’s scholarly study of the formative phase of Pakistan remains the definitive work for the period.