The making of India and Pakistan“The Great partition: The making of India and Pakistan.” The Book on the rising of two territorial entities.
Yasmin Khan, a young British historian who was brought up in Britain and has links in both India and Pakistan sheds a new light on ‘Why the Great Indo-Pak Partition went wrong’ in her book “The Great Partition: The making of India and Pakistan” . The author argues that Pakistan had a legitimate right to come into existence but the manner of its creation was disastrous. Even the hardcore votaries of a separate Muslim homeland had not bargained for the shape in which Pakistan eventually emerged. Their idea of Pakistan was far removed from what was delivered on August 15, 1947. “Pakistan” was the name they gave to the idea of Muslim autonomy, and not to a territorial entity. Ms. Khan rejects criticism that the Muslim demand for Pakistan was a sectarian one. The demand, she argues, arose from genuine Muslim fear that their political and economic rights may not be safe in a predominantly Hindu India. The partition became so “bloody and messy” affair because both the British and their home grown Indian successors had their own agendas. Exhausted by the War, British were in hurry to cut their losses and run, while the Indian political class, represented by the Congress and the Muslim League, was in an equal hurry to assume power. In the pursuit of their aims they ignored the warning signals and allowed the situation to get out of hand resulting in what became “one of the darkest moments of the 20th century.” Ms. Khan writes attributing the bloody events of 1946-1948 to a combination of British cynicism, rabid Hindu and Muslim nationalism and political opportunism.