You may find on the internet a picture of the Pakistani flag with splotches of blood on the white stripe. This stripe was included in the national flag to represent our minorities and, with the various atrocities taking place in recent years, the bloody imagery becomes quite appropriate. Pakistan’s partition from India in 1947 was a traumatic event and, like any traumatic happening, it gave birth to numerous narratives, many of them conflicting. Our history textbooks present one, fairly limited, view of the partition and discredit other points of view even before any of us have a chance to explore them for ourselves. Reacting against such distortion, journalist Haroon Khalid decided to explore the minorities’ religions and cultures first hand. Visiting the holy places of Sikhs and Hindus, he started writing articles about them in 2008 and this led to the desire to write about their trials and tribulations in greater detail. His efforts culminated in the shape of a recent book by the name A White Trail. It is divided into five sections, one section each dedicated to Hindus, Christians, Zoroastrians, Baha’is and Sikhs. Khalid chose to research for the book through interviews and first-hand observations. From looking at monuments and places of worship, he attended religious festivals and visited individuals in their homes to get a more complete sense of the way the minorities are coping with occasional outbursts of violence and trying to live normal lives. The author describes the Hindu community of Multan at the time when the Babri Masjid in India was demolished by Hindus upon the claim that it was built on a Hindu religious site. The members of the Pakistani Hindu community are shown to retreat from the public sphere and prefer relative anonymity to avoid repercussions for an act in which they had no part. The confidence to celebrate religious festivals like Holi, Diwali and Navratri is only now increasing, with educated and liberal Muslims also participating. However, the government is still apathetic towards such events, which is reflected in the negligible security detail provided at them. Khalid writes that temples and other sacred monuments do not receive attention from the government, a fact that is poignantly illustrated at the occasion of the celebration of Shivratri at Killa Katas when the electricity is cut off at a crucial moment and the pilgrims have to make arrangements themselves. Their decision to use a nearby office of the Archaeology Department as shelter for the night also leads to chaos the next morning when they are discovered and thrown out unceremoniously. Khalid also writes about the effects of the blasphemy law on the Christian community. He narrates a number of instances, mainly from Punjab, where enraged mobs have descended on villages and communities to demand that alleged blasphemers be handed over to avoid their wreaking vengeance on the entire community. “The story of a few burnt pages from the Quran found in local mosques seems to happen often,” the author writes. He also brings to light the long-held view that Islamic religious parties are only tolerated for their nuisance value and are not supported by the public at large, and the subsequent shattering of this view upon the assassination of Salmaan Taseer, when thousands rallied in support of the man who killed him for his views on the review of the blasphemy laws that are used to terrify and exploit religious minorities. He quotes a Christian woman: “Every time I go to a neighbouring Muslim village, which I have to often, I feel afraid. Even though I enjoy a friendly relationship with them I still feel that I cannot trust them.” Khalid’s book is also replete with information about the Parsi, Baha’i and Sikh communities. He describes his interactions with the Parsi community of Lahore, which has dwindled to a little more than 30 people due to migrations abroad and marriages into other communities. This section of the book, however, suffers from a lack of proper research because, despite stating that the Parsi community in Karachi is still very large, Khalid did not make the effort to go there and write about them. The same is the case with the Sikh community in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which he mentions in the beginning but does not explore in the book. He does acknowledge and explain these limitations in the afterword, writing that he confined himself to Punjab and used it as a prototype to show the minorities’ experience all over the country, but including the experiences of communities from places where they are relatively empowered would have added more perspective to his work. A White Trail contains a lot of information that readers would not be familiar with. Using the method of structured interviews and presenting a more informal picture of minority communities intertwined with political undercurrents, certainly makes this an interesting read. However, one criticism that has been levelled at the book by a number of people that I spoke to is that Khalid seems to be writing for foreign readers. Although this is something that is said about most writers who hold a mirror up to a country’s biases, Khalid uses language in a number of instances that serves to turn the Muslim and minority communities into binaries that can never coexist. For example, he writes about the Hindus of Multan: “They are the true descendants of this land, who are now sadly unwelcome in this Muslim country.” In other instances also, his tone about the Muslim community as a whole is biting and full of blanket disapproval, which only serves to alienate sympathy. Furthermore, the form of the book is a little erratic, especially for a work of research. It is not as objective as such a work is supposed to be and the pick-and-choose method serves to adapt the subject matter more to the author’s whims than to the need of the subject matter. Given the sensitivity of this subject, the author’s objectivity and the use of temperate and dispassionate language are essential because exoticising any community or other-ing it (even if it is positive instead of negative this time) at the expense of another is more counterproductive. I sincerely hope the author can overcome these problems in his next effort because his keen eye for detail and experience would certainly benefit if he did. The author has a degree in English Literature and is currently being trained as a civil servant. She may be reached at madeehamaqbool@gmail.com