In late 2012, the first liquefied natural gas tanker to sail through the Northern Sea Route reached its destination in Japan, carrying gas from a Euro–Arctic offshore field. Only months earlier, a Korean-owned naval architecture and engineering company had won the contract for designing the long-awaited new icebreaker for Canada's coast guard, 1 and China had completed its fifth Arctic marine survey from its own ice-capable research vessel.

Nepal's King Prithvi Narayan Shah's famous ‘Yam between two boulders’ quote reflects the great understanding of Nepal's security dilemma, even as far back as the 18th century. 1 This has remained a cornerstone of Nepal's foreign policy to date, primarily driven by Nepal's geographic location. 2 Shah understood well that Nepal would always remain insecure vis-à-vis its powerful neighbours, that is, China and India, and urged the need to keep refining, adapting and adjusting Nepal's foreign policy in order to deal with its powerful regional neighbours.

With the successful holding of the fifth summit of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) in Durban during March 26–27, 2013, this influential group of emerging economies completed its first important phase of genesis and evolution. The idea was floated in 2001 as an ‘acronym’ created by an investment banker of Goldman Sachs, Jim O'Neil who believed that the fast-growing economies of Brazil, Russia, China and India would be the single greatest game changers in coming times.

This article seeks to study the post-partition and especially post-1971 experimentation with history writing in Pakistan and focuses on how the revisiting of the partition has led to a reinvention of history by the selective contraction, misinterpretation and even omission of certain periods believed to be detrimental to the process of nation building in Pakistan. The article seeks to selectively apply the Hegelian approach and make a case for a common history, which it is hoped will facilitate better relations and greater mutual understanding between the nations of the sub-continent.