AAKAR PATEL

The flat is being renovated, sort of, and that is a pain because some of the bookshelves must be moved, and there is all the noise and disturbing the neighbours. On the credit side, the bits that need moving are the shelves that house works that I haven’t gone through in a long time— the works on Pakistan. And so this un-shelving and then replacing has given the opportunity to handle and, therefore, reacquaint oneself with these works. Let us have a look at what is being carted around.

The first set, right at the bottom because it is rarely accessed, is the Jinnah Papers, which I regret buying. The founder of Pakistan wrote no book, but his letters have been edited by Z H Zaidi and published with help from the Pakistan government. For some reason Zaidi also includes correspondence to Jinnah, and most of it is banal. This is irritating because the Jinnah Papers volumes are very expensive.

Each volume of Gandhi’s collected works I bought for as little as ~25 (free online), while each volume of Jinnah’s is between ~2,500 and ~4,750. It is surprising the Pakistan government does not subsidise the publications of its founder, as India does the publications of its early leaders.