SINCE THE beginning of the Cold War, Pakistan has appeared in the international imagination as a minor figure in the drama between rival superpowers or as the religiously hidebound antagonist to the rise of a modern, secular India. In both instances, what has been obscured are the political debates, struggles, and movements inside of Pakistan—struggles for a future that is not the same as the one imagined by those who have been at the nation’s helm throughout its sixty-four-year history or those agents (usually American, but occasionally Saudi) who have directed its course from afar by meddling in the nation’s politics. 
                                                                                                                                                                         More often than not, Pakistan’s current situation is blithely understood as the necessary consequence of its origins in a religious ideology, and any serious investigation of the nation’s social and political dynamics are summarily reduced to the equation of Pakistan with that baggy term, “Islam.”
                                                                                                                                                                          In the National Cultures Toor argues that it comes to the front instantly after the partition. First of all, not all of Indian Muslims have left for Pakistan, and secondly, the demands from East Pakistan to uplift Bengali language to equal status as Urdu – proved that both these factors were devastated the philosophy of national integration. Toor quotes Aziz Ahmed saying that, “cultural nationalism is difficult to attain than political nationalism”. Indeed, the cultural divisions between East and West Pakistan could eventually lead to the break-up of East Pakistan. Toor retells us of detrimental undemocratic deportments by the Muslim League itself, and have just widen the gulf immediately after Quaid’s death. The One Unit scheme was projected, paradoxically, to make both wings equal in terms of population and varnish the cultural differences. Therefore, underlining the role of culture is a dominant political force in fledgling Pakistan, hence Islam was backed to hold the two wings together.
                                                                                                                                                                        Chapter three is a delight for literary politics, specifically the progressive versus the nationalist camps. Toor argues that the anti-communist writers and intellectuals confronted the Progressive Writers Association, while blaming each other of treachery. The manifesto of APPWA was called “the new chapter of the ‘war of independence’”, as the progressives wanted to bring into the fore a pure political literature that underscores the predicaments of the people. While the nationalist camp has showed anxiousness towards the political and intellectual attempts of the progressives, Toor insists that many progressive writers and intellectuals including the most prominent among them Faiz Ahmed Faiz was accused of conspiring the Rawalpindi plot of the 1950s, which was at the climax of the Cold War literati politics.
                                                                                                                                                                     The following chapter deals with the Ayub khan’s “decade of development” (1958 – 1968) and political integration of the leftist under the patronages of National Awami Party (NAP). Toor insists that Ayub was an anti-communist and had systematically opposed the leftist camaraderie predominantly, an account of its wider dimension – across the world’s troubled countries. The leftist cohesion recalling the status quo in countries, such as, Vietnam, Algeria, Palestine, Iran and Africa. So that “internationalism” was (quite rightly) unfavourable to the interest of the establishment. The military had almost relatively dominated the economic control of the society and the cultural institutions vs the press for its never-ending quest of power. However, Toor contends that the formation of the establishment writers had never attempted to suggest “at removing Islam from politics”. Thus, opposition to the Ayub’s draconian regime came in the immediate aftermath of the 1965 election and the loss of Indo-Pakistan war. It was the climax of anti Ayub riots and demonstration, when a massive accusation of election rigging came to the fore against him, had steadily provided an opportunity for Bhutto to interject into the realpolitik through a political force, which ultimately lead to creation of Pakistan People’s Party. Bhutto a staunch advocate of “Islamic Socialism” was widely appreciated and became popular. Which was the ultimate failure of the Ayub’s anti-communist stand and “his attempted marginalization of Islam.” Toor contends that it was the “leftist poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz who stirred the cultural paradigm – Islamic, but uniquely Pakistan – later adopted by Bhutto”. Perhaps more importantly Toor argues that, it was a commendable idea in theory, but actually it was deteriorated after the Military crackdown in East Pakistan in the year 1971.

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