The last years of the British Raj and the partition of India and
Pakistan were defining events in twentieth century world history,
the ethnic, religious, political, and military consequences of
which have continued to shape today's newspaper headlines. Standard
historical interpretations have, on one hand, been shaped by
interviews with Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy, and the British
who were involved in the events; on the other hand, there has been
a rise in new scholarship by Indians and Pakistanis that has
largely corrected the "great man" interpretations that have looked
exclusively at Gandhi, Nehru, and Jinnah. In this work, Stanley
Wolpert narrates the last half century of the British in India,
framed by the surrender of Singapore in February 1942, the
partition of South Asia in 1947, and the assassination of Gandhi in
January 1948. Great Britain's mid-August transfer of power to
new-born Dominions of India and Pakistan was immediately followed
by the withdrawal of all British forces from India. As the shield
of Imperial British troops collapsed, more than ten million
terrified Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs, fled from one side to the
other of two new borders, ineptly drawn through the heartlands of
multi-cultural Punjab and Bengal. Some one million refugees never
reached their destinations. The most bitterly hard-fought legacy of
Partition has been the Indo-Pak conflict over Kashmir, which has
triggered at least three South Asian wars over the last half
century. Wolpert's thesis is apparent from his title, drawn from
Winston Churchill's judgment on Indian partition. While Wolpert
does not believe the British could have ruled India indefinitely he
argues that the disaster of partition was largely due to Lord
Mountbatten's misguided decision to get Britain out of India as
quickly as possible. This popular account of the last years of the
Raj is accessible and features all the leading figures, including
Winston Churchill, PM Clement Atlee, Lord Mountbatten and other
viceroys, Gandhi, Nehru, Franklin Roosevelt, members of the
Congress and Muslim League, as well as Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims.
This account of events will be controversial, especially among
those who respect Mountbatten's actions, and among Indians and
Pakistanis.
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