Product Description

The partition of India in 1947 promised its people political and religious freedom, both through the liberation of India from British rule, and the creation of the Muslim state of Pakistan. In reality 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 desperate and devastating consequences. At least one million people were killed, thousands of women were raped and many millions were forced to leave their homes as refugees. It was one of the first, the most bloody, and remains one of the most significant, events of decolonisation in the twentieth century. In this book, Yasmin Khan examines the context, execution and aftermath of partition, integrating an incisive knowledge of political manoeuvres with a deeply felt understanding of their fundamental social and cultural consequences. She exposes the obliviousness of the small elite driving division, as well as the majority of activists on both sides, to what partition would entail in practice and its effects on the populace. Its repercussions still resound today. Published to coincide with the 60th anniversary of partition, Khan's personal account draws together a fresh and considerable body of research, including many new interviews, newspaper extracts and archival sources, to reappraise independence and division and reinforce its catastrophic human cost. Intelligent, terrifying, wise and timely, Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan is a testament to a country and people who were brutally and recklessly ripped apart.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #195672 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-29
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 250 pages

Tarquin Hall, The Sunday Times, August 12, 2007
rather than dwelling on... political intrigue, [Khan's] insightful book focuses on the... social undercurrents that contributed to the mass violence

Alex von Tunzelmann, Daily Telegraph, August 11 2007
Khan's book is splendidly researched, and she has an eye for illuminating details of how Partition affected everyday lives

The Times, August 4, 2007
Khan's angry, unsparing analysis of catastrophe is provocative and painful

Customer Reviews

A good introduction
An excellent history of the partition and somewhat uniquely the author tries make this a social history. The intricacies of deal nor the personal politics of the big players are not covered but you do get a sense of what the situation was like on the ground. However Yasmin Khan seems to get stuck between writing a full social history and straight forward linear one and as a result we sometimes only get a glimpse of both. Ideally this book should be slightly longer and focus more on what was happening on the ground, as it stands it makes for an excellent introduction to the subject though we are left wanting for more.

Not impressed
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.

Insight at nearly both a human and a practical level
"Partition is a lasting lesson of both the dangers of imperial hubris and the reactions of extreme nationalism".

Ms. Khan's account of the destruction (and a little of the re-emergence) of stable feelings of belonging in South Asia is both searing in narrative and reflective of the dangers of haste at the top, both British and indigenous, to ordinary people compelled to live with the consequences of inadequately and simplistically visualized change. So much of the published history to date in English of the events before, during, and after Partition is about the dilemmas of the well-known figures who brought on, or tried to navigate, the always difficult passage from colonial empire to swaraj, self-rule. Ms. Khan takes a very valuable and radically different approach. Her book's narrative themes are developed from comments by, for the most part, middle class people contending with monstrous waves of fear, doubt, worry, anxiety, agony, and desperation.

The Great Partition tells how the ideas of Pakistan and swaraj triggered calamities that, with today's knowledge of cultural, linguistic, and religious development paths, could have been predicted. That they were not then is testimony to how much has since been learned by innumerable social scientists working in subjects barely conceived in the late 1940s as Pakistan and India began to emerge as independent states. Ms. Khan has rendered not only all those affected by Partition, but anyone charged with or aspiring to leadership, a service of great value. That she should be so young is especially good news, for what depth and breadth of insight can we expect from her next?

Missing still, at least to this reviewer, is a book that links the financial and political circumstances of Atlee's and Truman's governments to the horrendously unexpected and in due course calamitous decision of Mountbatten in early June 1947, when he announced -- to the surprise of virtually everyone around him -- that the dates of both Partition and Independence would be only 2-1/2 months ahead into what already was clear would be a riotful future.