- ISBN13: 9780300143331
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- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
The Partition of India in 1947 promised its people both political and religious freedom?through the liberation of India from British rule, and the creation of the?Muslim state of Pakistan. Instead, the geographical divide brought displacement and death, and it benefited the few at the expense of the very many. Thousands of women were raped, at least one million people were killed, and ten to fifteen million were forced to leave their homes as refugees. One of the first events of decolonization in the twentieth century, Partition was also one of the most bloody.
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In this book Yasmin Khan examines the context, execution, and aftermath of Partition, weaving together local politics and ordinary lives with the larger political forces at play. She exposes the widespread obliviousness to what Partition would entail in practice and how it would affect the populace.?Drawing together fresh information from an array of sources, Khan underscores the catastrophic human cost and shows why the repercussions of Partition resound even now, some sixty years later. The book is an intelligent and timely analysis of Partition, the haste and recklessness with which it was completed, and the damaging legacy left in its wake.
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After Reading Narendra Singh Sarila’s fantastic account of the partition in “In the Shadow of the Great Game”, which gives a great many details on the main Indian and British figures that played a role in the partition, and their respective motivations.
This book barely scratches the surface of the real complexity, and seems to be another attempt by british intellectuals to spin the parittion in a convenient manner.
Rating: 1 / 5
I bought this book after reading a positive review in the Economist. I am not sure why it has attracted such stellar reviews everywhere. The prose I found uninspiring. The narrative throws no new light on the history of the partition. Yes, it does focus a great deal on the experience of the common man, but I don’t see what makes this book deserving of such praise.
Rating: 2 / 5
This is a well-researched and well-written book on a very touchy issue of the division of the Indian sub-continent. A well-biased version as well. The author took pains to dissect the various sources, taking into account their biases and prejudices, and tried to portray the true unfoldings of the game the British played, which they thought played very cunningly. People are still suffering from the left-over mess, be it in India-Pakistan, be it in middle-east.
Rating: 4 / 5
The Partition of India is a much studied though least discussed topic. Let me qualify what I mean by that seeming contradiction of terms. Many academics have studied the cause for the Partition and its horrendous aftermaths, but that’s it. It has become an academic exercise that has lacked thorough discussion by the very people that it wreaked havoc on. India sees the Partition through her own prism as does Pakistan. Both appear to be entrenched in the view that the other side caused it and our side suffered massively for it. As a result, students in India read the Indian version of the very same truth that is regurgitated in a much different form to Pakistani students. The truth becomes a casualty by the politics of each state.
Today’s world knows more about the Jewish plight in Europe and the after-effects of the atomic bombs in Japan than it does about the Partition — an event that displaced 18 million people, killed 3 million, and scarred many million more. The Indian and Pakistani states are simply not interested in preserving the memories — as horrid as they are — for future generations. The trains full of dead bodies arriving in empty stations; countless women abducted, left behind, or bartered for passage from one country to another; religions adopted or discarded at the whim of unruly mobs; riches lost and families torn apart. All these are the realities of the Partition that will go mostly unrecorded except for an academic mention. I am simply amazed by the single mindedness of the Israeli government to keep the memory of the Holocaust fresh in contemporary print and media (movies, etc.) just as I am amazed by the Indian and Pakistani state to interpret the Partition to suit the political need of the hour.
There are many reasons why the Partition occurred. The British wanted to accelerate their withdrawal from India, having just finished World War II with depleted coffers. They did not have the treasury nor the will to continue their dominion. Europe was licking its wounds from World War II as well and was not interested in the cleaving of a nation far from its borders. The Muslim League wanted a separate state for Muslims but had no idea what it would mean to divide the nation based on religious lines and to rule a new nation founded on religious principles — who protects the minorities? The Congress had its hand full trying to consolidate a new nation from the former princely states.
It is debatable whether the Partition could have been avoided. Was it for the British simply a matter of drawing a random line and dividing Punjab and present day Bangladesh as they did? Did they anticipate the mass exodus from each country to the other of the affected people? Did Jinnah anticipate this? Did Nehru? The book makes a point that the refugee crisis careened out of control because the world was not prepared to handle such a mass exodus. Red Cross did not exist in 1947 and the newly formed United Nations did not have the accouterments like UNHCR to deal with the refugee crisis. Whatever the causes and effects, the Partition ranks alongside the Holocaust and the use of atomic weapons as a testament to humanity’s worst. Except that unlike the Holocaust and atomic bombs, most of the world is ignorant of the horrors of the Partition.
Rating: 5 / 5
Most histories of the Indian Partition focus on the leadership but this one actually provides the social, economic and human context of the event. Khan is very balanced in her analysis identifying the forces that were building in the run-up to the Partition. The tragic consequences of these forces were were inevitable but they were ignored by native and colonial leaders due to either their incompetence or their indulgence. While lots of evil was committed by both sides, the book illustrates the uncertain context in which such evil was predictable, even if not justifiable.
Rating: 5 / 5