The troubled history of India-Pakistan relations has always remained a gravitational point of international academic debates. The intellectual circles from different corners of the world have produced sufficient literature on the changing dimensions of the India-Pakistan rivalry based on their varying viewpoints. Thus, the contesting arguments of global intellectual communities witnessed similar trends in the South Asian region, where the Indian and Pakistani authors explain their governments’ positions in mainstream literature. In the debates of existing literature on the multifaceted hostility between two arch-rival nuclear neighbours, it is difficult to ignore the significance of literature produced by local Indian and Pakistan writers. The book under review reflects Pakistani views on the recent developments in the decades-long rivalry between two nuclear states with territorially adjoining connections. It is a diplomatic account of a Pakistani ambassador, Abdul Basit, who has served in Pakistan’s diplomatic missions in several stations (Moscow, New Delhi, Sana’a, Geneva, and London). Initiating his career in the Foreign Services of Pakistan in 1982, Basit remained a career diplomat for thirty-five years and tried cultivating Islamabad’s cooperative connection with the outside world. The end of his career brought him to the most challenging destination and appointed him as a Pakistan High Commissioner to India from 2014 to 2017. Basit’s deep understanding of international affairs allowed him become an active part of Pakistan’s mainstream research community. His research interests attached him to the Islamabad-based research institutes, Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI) and Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies (PICSS). Basit’s combination of academically rational and professionally diplomatically potential encouraged him to compile his experiences in book form. Thus, the book Hostility contains the experiences of Basit as a career diplomat in New Delhi (2014-17) and summarises a brief period of interaction between the governments of two rival nations.
The main structure of the book divides the core theme of Basit’s study into brief eight chapters, which are designed in chronological order. After formally introducing the central theme of the book and the core argument of the author, the first chapter starts the debate from the appointment of the author in New Delhi by the foreign office of Pakistan. The subsequent chapters summed up all his arguments in a sequential manner (2014-2017). The four chapters (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017) contain the analysis equipped with some primary sources of information. In other words, it is the author’s own way of looking at the hostility between two territorially adjoining rival nations. A brief addition of different pictures and various arguments provides validation to the author’s way of discussing his experiences at social and political levels. His interaction with the local community and formal communications with the leading state officials of two states covered a concise series of different events in the book. These events became an essential part of the Pakistan-India rivalry during the author’s stay in New Delhi. The detail of different events, based on first-hand information showed the commitment of the author to preserve the actual spirit of diplomacy while working as a formal representative of his country in a hostile land. The author’s highly professional and academic traits remained highly calculated and cautious while developing contacts with different segments of the Muslim community in India. An active dealing with various local and international media channels also remained a significant part of the author’s job as the Pakistan high commissioner. Through interviews, a succinct connection with various TV channels allowed the author communicate to the Indian government the formal position of his country on different regional and global issues. His determination to emphasize the key points of hostility between New Delhi and Islamabad highlighted different events in the book, parallel to marking the Kashmir issue as an uncompromising dimension of India-Pakistan hostility (p. 116).
All the experiences shared by the author are associated with the India-Pakistan hostility and its multifaceted phases, which affects the role of diplomatic forces between both governments. The explanations of different events and the challenging situations faced by the author indirectly echo the level of political toxicity between New Delhi and Islamabad. An analytical examination of various critical scenarios in regional politics, mainly linked to the issue of Kashmir, slightly resonated the author’s art of diplomacy which encouraged him to tackle difficult situations under an ideologically fanatical Indian government. Therefore, it is appropriate to maintain that the book is an impartial and balanced account of different arguments faced by a diplomat during his stay in New Delhi. Akin to Basit’s experiences, the Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan (T. C. A. Raghavan) has introduced his academic version of diplomatic tenure in Pakistan. In The People Next Door: The Curious History of India’s Relations with Pakistan, Raghavan summarised his stay in a hostile country while serving as a career diplomat in Pakistan.
The efforts of Basit are slightly different from his counterpart in Islamabad, Raghavan, due to a more logical and convincing argument. In Basit’s book, the whole debate regarding the evolution of hostility between two nuclear neighbours is fundamentally an autobiographic account of a diplomat’s memoirs. It was a reflection of various diplomatic experiences of a certain period when the author was designated to serve in a rival country parallel to upholding his vision of peace and harmony. A detailed examination of the various arguments developed by the author in the book suggests this book is an appropriate study for the students of Politics, International Relations, and Peace Studies. The mainstream policymaking circles can also find it an interesting reading and informative feedback for improving the cooperative connections between New Delhi and Islamabad. It is a valuable contribution to the existing literature on South Asian politics generally and the India-Pakistan conflict specifically. Thus, it is more appropriate to say that the book has given a fresh look to the New Delhi-Islamabad hostility parallel to identifying the major impediments in undermining the vision of peace, stability, and development in the nuclearized subcontinent. This book could can broadly be considered an interesting scholarly piece of writing parallel to having greater relevance to different circles of research communities linked to the South Asian political literature. Basit’s book has established a good precedent in the diplomatic community of Pakistan regarding publicly revealing the details of their experiences in critical stations. Such books could be used as the most authentic source of data for research and policy studies.
