Shattered lands by Sam Dalrymple
Audiobook!
A fifteen hour long behemoth!
Read by Sam himself which gives it an amazing original feel!
He talks about the great Indian Partition but not just of India but of the Indian Raj!
The British India actually included Burma Qatar and even Kuwait!
The book reframes the geopolitical history of South Asia and the Middle East by showing how the single, massive British Indian Empire—which once stretched from Yemen to Myanmar—was fractured into 12 modern nation-states over a fifty-year span!
Dalrymple challenges the common misconception that modern borders in South Asia represent ancient, inevitable ethnic or religious divides.
Instead, he highlights that as recently as the late 1920s, a vast network of territories—including modern India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait—operated under the unified banner of the Raj, utilizing the Indian rupee and shared imperial passports!
With notes from several stories and sources and a plethora of investigations he compiles a huge story in the lines of Freedom at Midnight and does a decent enough job!
Apart from the chief partition he ask focusses on other partitions!
Starting with the Separation of Burma (1937): Cutting off British Burma from the rest of the administration in British India.
Then the Partition of the Arabian Peninsula (1937–1947): Beginning with the separation of Aden and concluding with the transfer of the Persian Gulf protectorates.
The Great Partition which is of course the primary partition of 1947.
The chaotic, violent split creating independent India and Pakistan, resulting in the largest forced mass migration in human history.
Then his own views on the Partition of Princely India: The absorption and fragmentation of more than 550 nominally independent princely states into the new republics! With special emphasis on Hyderabad and the nizams!
Finally ending up with the Secession of East Pakistan (1971)! The bloody civil conflict and political rupture that split Pakistan apart and birthed the nation of Bangladesh!
It is a good effort but unfortunately the narrative feels biased in many points! It is sad that a Scot though born in India had to write about India! Then again some bias will always be there when the sources are secondary!
For a change he does not hold back on the spicy details of the Mountbattens! (Do read or hear by yourself! I do not have the guts to repeat them for you!)
He also gave a good description on the formation of Bangladesh which was new and different and a little neutral!
Then again history is not a story! It’s a point of view and an amalgamation of the hearsays and the truth!
Which is which is your choice!
Do listen if you want another point of view!
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