While studying European history in college, Napoleon Bonaparte and his statecraft fascinated Husain Haqqani, but his friends, he says, were "obsessed" with Napoleon's wife Josephine and their love life. Says the Pakistan-born South Asia expert, "These things didn't interest me at all. Bigger issues and bigger questions mattered. Frankly, if Napoleon had slept with nine other women, how would it be relevant was my point. I would look at history in a larger context."

That is what he attempts to do in his latest book, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State. The tagline is sure to get the goat of many in Pakistan. But Haqqani is anyway a marked man in his home country and has been in self-imposed exile in the US for almost two decades now. Not that it worries him. "Should I worry about being popular? I am not running for the title of a beauty queen." He goes on to say that calling Pakistan "dysfunctional", as he often does, is no big deal. He recalls that Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, a former Pakistani high commissioner to India, recently wrote a column in which he, too, called Pakistan dysfunctional. "And Pakistan is a nuclear state. What is the problem in stating that," he wonders rhetorically.

We are in the conference room of a central Delhi hotel. Haqqani, 61, is an imposing figure with a ready smile. It's the second day of his Delhi visit and he seems a bit weary after a series of media interviews; this would be the last one, his relations manager assures him, then he can rest a while.

In his book, Haqqani traces the slide of Pakistan through the titles of books by Western authors. From the benign covers of the 50s and 60s to recent years, Pakistan has registered an unmistakable tailspin with words like "destruction", "frightening" and "deadly" scattered about everywhere as descriptors of the nation. Can the book covers on Pakistan get any worse? He says: "How much apprehension can one express about a country? People probably will stop reading books on Pakistan with titles such as 'Most Dangerous Place' or 'Crisis State'. I think the international community's inclination towards apprehension and foreboding has reached a climax."

Unlike most decision-makers from the sub-continent, Haqqani doesn't plonk himself in the middle of historical events to explain things. "I have never understood the obsession with telling the personal story as the only thing that matters. I find it quite vain to focus on personal experiences." But while that is one way of looking at narratives, Haqqani himself comes from a rich experience in Pakistan's public life. He served in several senior government positions, with two diametrically opposite political parties. He was thrown into prison by the Nawaz Sharif government in 1999 and then made a comeback. Thereafter, he was made Pakistan's ambassador to the US. Now he stands branded a traitor.

For those who have seen him from close quarters - mostly journalists - Haqqani has been a nifty political operator. "Opportunist" is the word commonly used to describe him. These people point to how he started as a student leader of a Right-wing radical religious party and later jumped ship to work with the then prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, in the late 80s and then shifted loyalties to the late Benazir Bhutto. Some even say that he was the one who introduced " lifafa journalism" (envelopes containing currency notes for journalists) when he was advisor to Sharif. It is also said that he coined the term "Mr Ten Percent" for Asif Zardari, the former president and husband of Benazir Bhutto. "You have to ask those who say this, if they ever received a lifafa from me. There have been so many other allegations. But these were never true. The way stories are being made about me, I sometimes feel that people will some day say that I was the one who launched the Khilafat movement," he says and bursts into laughter.

Most of these stories, he says, have been floated by jealous contemporaries. And he is glad to be away from it all. "In a way I am blessed that I am outside Pakistan. At least, I will not be killed like some people have been. I will not disappear like some people are made to disappear... I don't feel sad when I am attacked. I look at it as a phenomenon, how so many people can be mobilised into believing utter nonsense."

He brings up some of the other conspiracy theories doing the rounds in Pakistan. One of them being that Sunni extremists believe Iran, Israel, India and the US are all hand-in-glove to destablise Pakistan. "How is that even possible when Iran and Israel don't see eye-to-eye," asks Haqqani. He clenches his right fist and stops to gather his thoughts.

According to Haqqani, an "ideological dysfunction" has taken hold of Pakistan. And this is because of its convoluted relationship with history, he reckons. "The name Pakistan is no older than 1937. The country Pakistan is no older than 1947. Pakistan could have easily accepted that challenge of keeping its history simple and said we are a new country in an old land... That would have been an honest approach. But what happened was that there was an attempt to invent history to justify the new country."

Many Pakistanis, he says, are confused about the history of their own country. "History books say that the idea of Pakistan has been in the heart and mind of every subcontinental Muslim. That is absolutely wrong. The Muslim rulers of the subcontinent proudly called themselves Shahenshah-e-Hindustan. They never saw themselves as separate."

A regular visitor to India, Haqqani says he is not comfortable with the ideological shift in India in recent years and some of the attempts to tinker with its history. "I worry about the prospect of Pakistanisation of India. That is a very dangerous path." He goes on to talk about his last book, India vs Pakistan: Why Can't We Just Be Friends?, in which he quotes a poem by Pakistani poet Fahmida Riaz. "Tum bilkul hum jaise nikle." Turns out, you are just like us.

"Look, I understand that you are angry with Pakistan over terrorism and other things, but that is no reason to behave like the extremists there. There is lynching for blasphemy in Pakistan, there is lynching for cow slaughter here. That will essentially mean, any claim to being a more effective state would erode over time. You have to jealously guard your republic, democracy and the institutional balance. You have to guard your inclusiveness and tolerance and not let the Pakistanis-also-do-it approach creep in."

As for the current situation in his home country, he sees a clear military hand behind recent happenings, including the judicial ouster of Nawaz Sharif from the prime minister's chair. "The Pakistan military has perfected the non-coup coup. It is a strategy of controlling policy without necessarily having to take responsibilities of government." According to Haqqani, the judiciary under the current chief justice, Mian Saqib Nisar, has been a willing partner of the armed forces.

As for his own case in the Pakistan Supreme Court - it recently ordered the Pakistan government to produce Haqqani before it - he says he is not losing any sleep over it. It relates to the events following the killing of Osama Bin Laden by US forces in Abbottabad in Pakistan. Haqqani was ambassador to the US at the time and it has been alleged that soon after the killing, the civilian government in Pakistan, fearing a military coup, sent a memo to the Obama administration urging it to avert such an event. The Pakistani media called it the "Memogate".

The Federal Investigation Agency of Pakistan has approached the Interpol for a red-corner notice against Haqqani in connection with Memogate. Responding to these efforts, Haqqani says, "Good luck to them if they can manage it." He predicts that Pakistan will make a mockery of itself if it approaches the Interpol and claims he knows how Interpol operates better than Pakistani law enforcement authorities. "These threats and claims are a reflection of how insular Pakistan has become. It is absurd. Article 3 of the Interpol charter states that it will never get involved in political matters and it defines political matter as any case involving treason, sedition, rebellion, etc. There you go."

Haqqani may win this battle against his own country, but he is unlikely to win any new friends in Pakistan. But then, as he himself said, this is no beauty pageant and he is eyeing no crown.

têtevitae

1977: Haqqani completes his BA from the University of Karachi, followed by an MA in International Relations
Is president of the students’ wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, a far Right Islamist political party, during college days

1980-88: Works as full-time journalist with print, radio and television 
Comes to be known for his shifting ideology and loyalties as he moves from being a Zia-ul-Haq man to a supporter of Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto at different points of time

1992: Becomes one of Pakistan’s youngest ambassadors, posted to Sri Lanka 

2008: Appointed Pakistan’s ambassador to the US. For his pro-West stance, detractors dub him Washington’s ambassador to Pakistan

2011: Resigns after the Memogate controversy. A judicial commission appointed by the Supreme Court investigates the case and proclaims him guilty

2012: Insists that his side was never factored and goes back to the US, never to return to Pakistan again, except for a brief appearance before a Supreme Court panel