INDIA’S PARTITION: Preludes and Legacies

India’s independence in 1947 was the culmination of a prolonged and sustained movement. The partition, on the other hand, would seem to be an aberration, a historical accident, caused by a configuration of forces at a particular historical juncture. It has had a profound impact on contemporary politics, society, culture, literature, and historiography. The impression left on the minds of those who lived through those traumatic times persists until today.
Who and what caused India’s partition? Was it impossible to avert this carnage? Who were the losers and gainers from this vivisection? Did anyone envisage the consequences that partition entailed? These fundamental, doubt-ridden, stubbornly nagging questions provide the thematic backbone of India’s Partition: Preludes and Legacies. Seventeen distinguished historians and political scientists grapple with the seminal issues that are crucial to understanding the processes that led to the bifurcation of 1947. The explore the key force, factors, events and personalities that provoked the partition and strive to locate the lasting legacies that emanated from the same. The endeavour is to understand, rather than judge, the multiple complexities that culminated in sundering the Indian sub-continent.
Ably argued, this anthology rests on wide ranging research. It will be of interest not only to professional social scientists and practising politicians but every sensitive citizen who is concerned with the “partitioned past” that threatens the “polarised present” which in turn has severely menaced the future progress of the subcontinent. In focussing on the political rumblings, and contextual and ideological specificity behind partition and the consequences that it entailed, the book intends to contribute to a deeper understanding of one of the most decisive, and certainly the most violent and barbaric, phases in the history of the Indian subcontinent.