Lost opportunities in the Hindu Kush

Book review of India's Lost Frontier: The Story of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan

Raghvendra Singh’s lengthy book on the past, present and future of what the British called the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Pakistan renamed as Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa conforms to the current trend of blaming Jawaharlal Nehru for many of India’s woes. Mr Singh is a retired civil servant from the Indian Administrative Service whose bent for history was presumably stoked by an appointment as head of the National Archives of India. He has recently been appointed chief of the Development of Museums and Cultural Spaces. 

Mr Singh makes a simple argument in his book: In 1946, the overwhelmingly Muslim NWFP elected a