Was this Handsome Man Evil? Muhammad Ayub Khan

James Lovegrove:“The search for aliens, then, has turned inward. The Other is no longer up there in the stars. He’s our neighbour with the faith-based dress code. She’s the person with the tinted skin and unfamiliar accent. Modern science fiction is putting out the unexceptionable message that we should gladly embrace him or her, if we are to have any kind of future.
Someone else’s Other, after all, is us.”

Many of us in India have been raised to treat Muhammad Ayub Khan, the first military ruler of Pakistan as evil.

Was he?

Please read "Lessons of Murree" by A.G. NOORANI (Frontline, July 2 2010).

Paul Krugman wrote on July 1 2010: "When I was young and naïve, I believed that important people took positions based on careful consideration of the options. Now I know better. Much of what Serious People believe rests on prejudices, not analysis. And these prejudices are subject to fads and fashions."

Did Indian leadership in early 1960's- read J L Nehru- "take positions based on careful consideration of the options" vis-à-vis border disputes with China and Pakistan? Or "much of what they believed rested on prejudices, not analysis"?

As for me, I was very moved by this picture (dated August 25, 1959) of Mr. Khan and his wife. They make a handsome couple worthy of a role in contemporary Hindi film. Move over Motilal and Meena Kumari!