The Great Divide : Britain-India-Pakistan/H.V. Hodson. Reprint.
Karachi, Oxford University Press, 2001, xl, 590 p., photos, ISBN 0 19 577340 3.
The Great Divide : Britain-India-Pakistan/H.V. Hodson. Reprint.
Karachi, Oxford University Press, 2001, xl, 590 p., photos, ISBN 0 19 577340 3.
Contents: Author's introduction. I. Background to the drama: 1. British policy in India. 2. The Muslims. 3. The problem of the states. 4. Two great personalities. II. How the rift widened: 5. The Act of 1935. 6. The failure of federation. 7. Provincial autonomy. 8. The war and the Pakistan movement. 9. The cripps offer. 10. Lord Wavell and the Simla Conference. 11. The cabinet mission. 12. Prelude to breakdown. III. The last of the viceroys: 13. The new viceroyalty. 14. Talks with political leaders. 15. The problem of the forces. 16. Disorder in the vexed areas. 17. A plan for the transfer of power. 18. The period of dissection. 19. The accession of the states. 20. The end of the British Raj. IV. The aftermath: 21. Feelings after partition. 22. Massacre and migration in the North-West. 23. The last days of Mahatma Gandhi. 24. The Junagadh affair. 25. Conflict in Kashmir. 26. The recalcitrance of Hyderabad. 27. The integration of the states. 28. The completion of partition. 29. Envoi. V. Retrospect: 30. Alternative to partition? 31. Lord Mountbatten appraised. Appendix. Index. Epilogue.
"On 15 August 1947 the greatest and most decisive step in the retreat of British imperialism occurred--the new nation of Pakistan was created out of the body of India and Britain's century-long dominion over the Indian sub-continent ended. A completely authoritative account of this crucial event is obviously a major contribution to contemporary history--and this H.V. Hodson has produced in The Great Divide.
As a former constitutional adviser to the Viceroy (Lord Linlithgow), Mr. Hodson was intimate with the great issues involved and with the complexities of Indian politics. Moreover, he has had the unique advantage of unrestricted use of Lord Mountbatten's India papers, including his personal reports to the British Government and to the King: and from these he quotes freely. He knew personally most of the principal actors in the drama--Mohamed Ali Jinnah, successive Viceroys, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru--as well as the brilliant administrators, British and Indian, who enabled the immense task of vivisection to be completed.
The author asks some penetrating questions. Why did the climax come so swiftly? What is the truth about the enforced resignation of the previous Viceroy, Lord Wavell, and Lord Mountbatten's appointment and instructions? Was the British withdrawal inevitable and right? Mr. Hodson's answers have a hard bedrock of undeniable fact.
Hodson not only records history but renders an impartial assessment of the impact of the divide.
In an epilogue, written in 1985, Hodson charts the events since partition--the many harsh vicissitudes: natural, political, economic and defensive, the myths and realities, the triumphs and tragedies and peace and conflict among the two successor nations--India and Pakistan, in their crucial formative years, thrusting them into the vortex of nuclear power politics and culminating in the truncation of Pakistan in 1971.
The trauma and subsequent chequered history of political development leads the author to ask: was it inevitable?" (jacket)