Business of Politics, Politics of Business
Salil Misra
HAJI SIR ABDULLAH HAROON by Doulat Haroon Hidayatullah Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2006, 347 pp., 595
May 2006, volume 30, No 5

Haji Sir Hidayatullah Haroon (1872- 1942), the subject of the book under review, was a multifaceted man. A successful industrialist, a philanthropist, devout Muslim, a supporter of separation of Sind from Bombay Presidency, and a crusader for Pakistan as an independent Muslim homeland. The biography is rich in details and contains many primary documents, not very easily available to researchers. The book is important for another reason. The works on the Pakistan movement have focused more on Punjab, Bengal and UP, the nerve centres of the movement. The Sind story in all this tends to get left out. Abdul Haroon came from that area, and while talking about his contribution to Pakistan movement the book also gives us a glimpse of the Pakistan movement in Sind. In spite of the fact that the biography is written by Abdullah Haroon’s daughter, it is remarkably devoid of any personal details. It is strictly a political biography, not a personal one.

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