India and Pakistan: Twenty Years After

Abstract

The best way of seeing Indo-Pakistan, or of seeing it again, is to meander from place to place, and an effort to record impressions of it may perhaps be excused for doing the same. From the air, the great northern plains at least are a symmetrical chequerboard of small square fields; at ground level it is a highly unsymmetrical patchwork, full of unexpectednesses, with something out of another century always lurking round the next corner. Floundering among heterogeneous creeds and epochs, it resembles western Europe in its lack of firm convictions. of any accepted destiny, by comparison with Russia, China, or the U.S.A. Modernity has made its entry; but whether only to linger in the same penumbral fashion as in Latin America, is still a question.