Includes bibliography and index

Salman Faruqui was only eight years old when he was abruptly uprooted from an idyllic childhood in Patiala and forced to flee with his family during the engulfing storm of Partition. His family eventually settled in Karachi, where he spent his formative years before embarking on a distinguished career in Pakistan’s civil service.
“Dear Mr Jinnah...” is the story of Salman Faruqui’s life in service as one of Pakistan’s foremost civil servants. Starting at the lower echelons of the finance bureaucracy during the Ayub Khan years, his career witnessed a meteoric rise that catapulted him from the province of Sindh to the new federal capital of Islamabad.
Faruqui, by then a senior civil servant, worked under General Ziaul Haq and Muhammad Khan Junejo. Under Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, he spearheaded landmark initiatives, including Pakistan’s telecommunications revolution in the 1990s, followed by a posting as the head of President Zardari’s secretariat, and as Federal Ombudsman of Pakistan.
Spanning seven decades, “Dear Mr Jinnah...” brings to life Pakistan’s political trajectory from the prism of
a senior civil servant, who, having borne witness to some of the country’s darkest hours, reaffirms his belief that despite past mistakes, Pakistan can “still be made perfect.”