'Efforts are to create Pakistans of hatred in every nation in the world. That's what happened in Bosnia .the Fragmented Soviet Union .and it is happening in Afghanistan everyone is interested in creating new Pakistans against the interests of their own people.'
Kamelshwar's Kitne Pakistan enjoys cult as a novel that dared to ask crucial questions about the making and writing history.
While its main reference point is the turmoil of India's partition in 1947, the novel presents a limitless canvas against which the most extraordinary trial in the history of mankind runs its course. Present in a court that transcends space and time are Mughal Emperors Babar and Auranzeb, Spanish adventure Hernando Cortez, Lord Mountbatten, Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein. Along with political leaders, religious zealots and scheming gods of mythology, they stand accused of creating countless fractured nations, leaving a never-ending trail of hatred and distrust.
The arbiter of suffering humanity is an unnamed adeeb or litterateur who must shift through the testimony of casualties from the killing fields of injustice at home and abroad, ranging from Kurukshetra to Kargil, Hiroshima to Bosnia. As recorded history unravels to reveal the sinister realities that lie beneath, the adeeb finds himself traveling back through the centuries over oceans of blood, so that he may forward for posterity the enduring lessons of love, compassion, peace and hope.
Translated into English for the first time, this boldly provocative saga is a triumph of poetic imagination that relentlessly probes our underlying assumptions of history and truth, religion and nationalism.
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