Full name: Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India

Author: Stanley Wolpert Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Amazon Goodreads ISBNs: 9780195393941 0195393945

Britain's precipitous and ill-planned disengagement from India in 1947--condemned as a shameful flight by Winston Churchill--had a truly catastrophic effect on South Asia, leaving hundreds of thousands of people dead in its wake and creating a legacy of chaos, hatred, and war that has lastedover half a century. Ranging from the fall of Singapore in 1942 to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, Shameful Flight provides a vivid behind-the-scenes look at Britain's decision to divest itself from the crown jewel of its empire. Stanley Wolpert, a leading authority on Indian history, paints memorableportraits of all the key participants, including Gandhi, Churchill, Attlee, Nehru, and Jinnah, with special focus on British viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten. Wolpert places the blame for the catastrophe largely on Mountbatten, the flamboyant cousin of the king, who rushed the process of nationhoodalong at an absurd pace. The viceroy's worst blunder was the impetuous drawing of new border lines through the middle of Punjab and Bengal. Virtually everyone involved advised Mountbatten that to partition those provinces was a calamitous mistake that would unleash uncontrollable violence. Indeed, as Wolpert shows, civil unrest among Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs escalated as Independence Day approached, and when the new boundary lines were announced, arson, murder, and mayhem erupted. Partition uprooted over ten million people, 500,000 to a million of whom died in the ensuing inferno. Here then is the dramatic story of a truly pivotal moment in the history of India, Pakistan, and Britain, an event that ignited fires of continuing political unrest that still burn in South Asia. Similar books: Midnight's Furies by Nisid Hajari The Great Partition by Yasmin Khan Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins India After Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha Indian Summer by Alex von Tunzelmann The Great Moghuls by Bamber Gascoigne The Discovery of India by Jawaharlal Nehru Early India by Romila Thapar A New History of India by Stanley Wolpert India by John Keay The Ruling Caste by David Gilmour The Mughal Throne by Abraham Eraly Empires of the Indus by Alice Albinia India and the Mughal Dynasty by Valerie Berinstain The Story of India by Michael Wood