"The Economist" Recommends a New Book on India

Toward the end of Ghandi, the movie, there was some coverage of the partition of India in 1947. We can be forgiven for not having paid much attention to the breaking up of a sub-continent along religious and ethnic lines--Muslims forcibly removed to the newly created East and West Pakistan and Indians keeping the rest--we were too young to take it in. The Atlee govt. was in charge then, but partition would have happened whatever the government. Also, by 1948 other distractions got in the way as the creation of the new state of Israel got under way.

The Economist recommends a new book: The Partition of India: The Unruly End of Empire by Yasmin Kahn. Parallels can be drawn with Iraq, especially the atrocious lack of understanding of history, religion and culture and absence of imagination or planning for possible unforeseen disaster. Nobody it appears learns from history--especially our so-called leaders. Vis a vis Iraq today. It's also worth considering that one of the unforeseen disasters is playing out today with killer terrorists from Pakistan striking at Britain's very heart.

Here' are a couple of tasty bites from the Economist articls:

The decision to divide India on religious lines was taken with regret but little foreboding and carried out with outrageous haste and unconcern by the British government and its viceroy in India, Lord Mountbatten. Asked by a journalist if he foresaw any mass transfer of population, Mountbatten said, “Personally I don't see it...Some measure of transfer will come about in a natural way...perhaps governments will transfer populations.”

The announcement that India was to be partitioned and independence would follow not less than a year later was made in the House of Commons on June 3rd 1947. By August 15th the British were gone. They accepted no responsibility for the carnage that was taking place and they refused to allow the British troops still in India to keep order or protect people.

http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9507188