Author: Yasmin Khan
Publisher: Penguin/Viking
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 251
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0670081582
Description
The partition of India in 1947 promised its people both political freedom and a future free of religious strife. Instead, the geographical divide effected an even greater schism of the population, benefiting the few at the expense of the very many, exposing huge numbers of the population to devastating consequences. Thousands of women were raped, at least one million people were killed and ten to fifteen times that number forced to leave their homes as refugees. It was among the first, most significant and bloodiest events of decolonization in the twentieth century.
In The Great Partition, Yasmin Khan examines the context, execution and aftermath of the subcontinent’s division, weaving together local politics and ordinary lives with the larger political forces at play. She exposes the obliviousness of the small elite driving division, as well as of the majority of activists on both sides, to what the partition would entail in practice, how it would affect the populace and how damaging its legacy would be. Published to coincide with the 60th anniversary of Partition and Independence , this illumination account draws together a fresh and considerable body of research, including many new interviews and archival sources, to underscore the catastrophic human cost of Partition, and to show why its repercussions resound even today. Scholarly, deeply felt, terrifying and wise, this book is a sobering analysis of one of the twentieth century’s greatest calamities.
REVIEWS:
‘This is an exceptional book. Yasmin Khan has written a vivid, authoritative and accessible account of one of the greatest human tragedies and dislocation of the modern era’—Andrew Whitehead, editor, History Workshop Journal and former BBC South Asia correspondent
‘Compassionate and devastating. This is a book for all who wish to understand attitudes on the subcontinent today’—Judith M. Brown, Beit Professor of Commonwealth History, University of Oxford
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Timeline of major Events, 1945-1950
1. Introduction: The plan
2. In the shadow of war
3. Changing Regime
4. The Unraveling Raj
5. The Collapse of Trust
6. From Breakdown to Breakdown
7. Untangling Two Nations
8. Blood on the Trcks
9. Leprous daybreak
10. Bitter Legacies
11. Divided Families
Epilogue
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index