Waterstones The Great Partition
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Price: £13.99
Brand: Waterstones
Description: A reappraisal of the tumultuous Partition and how it ignited long-standing animosities between India and Pakistan Eloquently discusses the making of India and Pakistan after British rule on the subcontinent was dismantled in 1947. A new look at this still important subject. | ?? Library Journal This new edition of Yasmin Khan's reappraisal of the tumultuous India-Pakistan Partition features an introduction reflecting on the latest research and on ways in which commemoration of the Partition has changed, and considers the Partition in light of the current refugee crisis. Reviews of the first edition: 'A riveting book on this terrible story." | ?? Economist 'Unsparing. Provocative and painful." | ?? Times (London) 'Many histories of Partition focus solely on the elite policy makers. Yasmin Khan's empathetic account gives a great insight into the hopes, dreams, and fears of the millions affected by it." | ?? Owen Bennett Jones, BBC. Waterstones The Great Partition - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: Waterstones
Product ID: 9780300230321
Delivery cost: 2.99
ISBN: 9780300230321
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Author: Peter Hargreaves
Rating: 5
Review: Events, in particular in 1946 and 1947, are described, culminating in British withdrawal and establishment of the new states of India and Pakistan. The book runs to 210 pages, plus maps, a list of abbreviations, a glossary, monochrome photographs, notes, a bibliography and index. For £12 it is good value. The book records both the negotiation of regime change and those affected by the resulting mess. It is a work of narrative history, from which important lessons should have been learnt. First the actors didn’t know what they were seeking to achieve. The Second World War and Partition bled into one another. The Moslem League had grown in influence amongst Muslims. However League supporters did not think of their call for Pakistan primarily as for a territorial unit. If they did, they hoped it would include large tracts of what had been Mogul India, larger and without the separation between what became East and West Pakistan. Jinnah, leader of the League and now thought of as father of Pakistan, sought a federal solution in which the Moslems would have regional and communal checks on majority power. He accepted Partition and the creation of Pakistan only as second best. Second, bringing about regime change was always going to be difficult, attempting to effect it within an unrealistic time frame, meant it failed. The Radcliffe Commission was given a quite inadequate time to establish and document the land border between India and Pakistan. On Independence some 48% of the land area and 28% of the population remained within princely states, which had not yet been integrated into the new states of India and Pakistan. This further complicated the process. The Moslem ruler of Hyderabad sought a separate independence. In 1948 Hyderabad was forcibly annexed to India. In the North of Bengal the princely state of Cooch Behar included a checkerboard of territory reflecting historic land holdings between it and Mogul territory. This had not been sorted out by 1949 when Cooch Behar, bordering East Pakistan, joined India, As a result there were 123 tiny enclaves of East Pakistan, now Bangla Desh, in India and 74 enclaves, legally Indian territory, in Bangla Desh. Third violence portrayed as random thuggery was not. It was routine, timetabled ethnic cleansing. It wasn’t disruptive background noise to constitutional decision making, but intended to influence the process, preventing reconciliation. There was no longer the appetite for Gandhian non-violence, instead an increasingly violent nationalism on both sides. Rape was used on both sides as a weapon, encouraging the "other" to flee. The British were shipping troops out, India and Pakistan dividing the Indian Army up between them, just when a disciplined military could have assisted in overseeing Independence and Partition. All this, and the uncertainty about where a border would be and what it would mean, created a perfect storm of ethnic violence. The leadership of both new states whilst washing their hands of the violence, to various extents, were complicit in it. Fourth the actual outcome was very different from that intended. A functioning Raj was fraying. The British, exhausted by their war effort, sought a quick withdrawal, and a successor, with whom to negotiate and to whom to hand over power. If Congress and the Moslem League wouldn’t work together, Partition was intended by the British so power could be handed to Congress in India and the Moslem League in Pakistan. In 1946 there were serious intercommunal riots in Calcutta followed by the massacre of Hindus, largely the landlords, by tenant Moslems in East Bengal. Partition was seen as preventing further violence. In fact it became the source of new calamities, with some 80,000 women abducted and up to a million people killed. No one expected, or planned for, the scale of population movement. Both new governments intended to protect minorities in their new states. If Pakistan protected minority Hindu and Sikh populations in Pakistan, this would help guarantee the rights of Moslems in India and vice versa. It was considered inconceivable that some 12m people would move between the new states. However with mass movement of population underway, both new governments reversed their plans, so population exchange became official policy and cover for further ethnic cleansing. The refugee crisis became a tragedy both for the refugees themselves and for the new states. Finally, Partition is an example of application of the founder principle from biology and linguistics to history. What happened at the beginning, however unintentionally, disproportionately influenced what followed. A temporary solution became a permanent division, a border, thrown up in haste, fixed and impermeable. The two new states, which in many ways are very similar, created in violence, continued to view each other through a prism of violence. Both the Pakistan and India they ended up with were very different from those they had hoped for. Pakistan’s fragility when created means it became a largely militarised state, which, after further tragedies, split between Pakistan and Bangla Desh. Writing this review now, it is hard not to see lessons which have not been learnt. In Myanmar ethnic cleansing of the Moslem Rohingyas has been followed by their flight to Bangla Desh, which lacks the space or resources to accommodate them. Brexit, whose meaning and implications were barely understood by those voting for it, is being implemented by parties who never intended, nor planned for, it over a quite impractical timetable. Brexit, like Partition, may well lead to permanent acrimonious rift.
Author: Troygirl
Rating: 3
Review: I bought this book as I have an interest in history and had heard a lot about the terrible atrocities that occurred during this dreadful time in India's history. The book came across somewhat biased in that it sometimes appeared to point the finger of blame for this human catastrophe squarely with the British and yes the British rule in India is just another example of how western countries get it badly wrong interfering in other countries politics, cultures and religions and sadly lessons are still not being learned today. However it is my understanding from that the minority muslim population at the time pushed relentlessly for the separate state of Pakistan not the British.
