Historical The Partition, 1947

[Afif]

.....so I personally have gotten desensitized to the victimhood narrative that has surfaced at times. I dont like excessive victimhood narratives in general, theres are really bad ones that have taken shape in India too....it intersects with cowardliness, laziness and incompetence of people with privilege and idle time and often sufficiently loose morals.

Ah nope, that wasn't victimhood narrative. My sentences are 100% factual.

But you are right with this-

Countries have various interests. Autocracy is secondary or tertiary concern if a concern at all (since the non-autocrat, pluralist principles apply to your own country, not others, the constitution applies to your nationstate, not others).

However, what I mean by 'huge problem' is, people see this India-BAL dynamic for what it is. And if a democratic government manage to come back into power tomorrow, its sentiment isn't going to be very friendly.

That is why IMO, Chinese approach is more effective. They work with whatever government in power and work toward long term economic integration, trade and infrastructure development. Consequently, In the end you can't ditch them no matter who comes and goes.

How BD works upon addressing this is for BD to do....and also from learning from any consequences those bring up. Its a large entity, 2xturkiye or 2xiran population, so theres obviously a large enough presence of good, tough, morally sound people in it (with a job to do if they set their minds and purpose to it),

I totally agree with this. Hence, I don't necessarily blame India. This is how realpolitik works apparently. And ultimately it is our job to ensure how our system should function and not let other foreign powers jeopardize that.


But apart from this, even from realpolitik perspective, I think it can be questioned how sound India's strategy regarding BD actually is? I mean, more and more BAL is leaning toward PRC and if economy continues to worsen, BD will very likely to end up more entangled with PRC than previously. Besides, US now clearly wants a Regime change in BD.

Egyptian friends of mine (all 3 of them) are pro-Sisi for a reason too, they absolutely DESPISE the "muslim brotherhood"...as simply they subvert the core principles altogether while feigning democratic ideals using an extreme identitarian populist ruse again harnessing victimhood, other conspiracies and much else.

If the military autocrat is what is required to hold more of the principles together so an actual democracy can form later (within the scope for what democracy is for), so be it. Society needs reform in interim till it understands this collectively. That is their summary. These are principled secular nationalist folks in the end....its why I am friends with them in first place.

Then it would be hypocritical, unless you would support a hypothetical autocrat who could have been able to 'hold' more 'principles' in India than democratic BJP government.

Becuase clearly, BJP does all those things of-

using an extreme identitarian populist ruse again harnessing victimhood, other conspiracies and much else.

Edit- Could you please move this convo to BD-India relation thread? I don't want to derail this thread further and we could continue there if you want to reply.

 

[Nilgiri]

Ah nope, that wasn't victimhood narrative. My sentences are 100% factual.

However factual you feel your sentences are isn't the point. The point is what I've seen from certain Bangladeshis and their discussion reels...often with my own BD friends watching over my shoulder giving me some good context.

It wasn't meant towards you personally.

However, what I mean by 'huge problem' is, people see this India-BAL dynamic for what it is. And if a democratic government manage to come back into power tomorrow, its sentiment isn't going to be very friendly.

Who dares wins. The institution of democracy isnt solid enough to describe any govt as "democratic" in BD.

If the "sentiment" bleeds into anything untoward past an establishment-establishment unfriendliness, then we'll see how that goes then.

In the interim, India is fully multi-partisan on which party is friendly to India in BD.

Definitely not the ones that are pro-islamist or overtly islamist.

That is why IMO, Chinese approach is more effective. They work with whatever government in power and work toward long term economic integration, trade and infrastructure development. Consequently, In the end you can't ditch them no matter who comes and goes.

If you say so. There is enough anti-India sentiment in BD for them to do this for it to also be perceived as such....and what promise BD holds for Chinese strategy to begin with.

When the issue is closer to them like say Taiwan, Japan, Korea and the rest (that have developed some political pluralism etc), no, they dont quite work with whatever govt all the same (and where these occupy in the security paradigm promise for other powers, notably the US).

The Yasukuni shrine visits, what the first democratic elected KMT president of Taiwan had to say about it all (given his heavy pro-Japan sentiment) in general....forget the DPP stuff later....as just one small example of it.

Stuff that makes the CCP really upset, and then even more upset when you mention Mao actually paid major kudos to the Japanese actions in his country since it brought him to power in the end and the CCP still officially reveres Mao to a great degree... and gets caught in this particularly nauseous conundrum of own making that colours a lot about how they interact politically with these entities.

Similarly when the issue of what Bangladesh even was in first place, was closer in view to their basic interests in the region and their decision to not recognize BD for the first years it existed commensurately.

But now can China "ditch" Taiwan, Korea and Japan in some extreme way given what would be wrought by doing so? Nope. So will be the case for BD with India in all further hypotheticals. Neighbourhoods bake in lot of realities by the fact of what neighbours are in the end.

I totally agree with this. Hence, I don't necessarily blame India. This is how realpolitik works apparently. And ultimately it is our job to ensure how our system should function and not let other foreign powers jeopardize that.


But apart from this, even from realpolitik perspective, I think it can be questioned how sound India's strategy regarding BD actually is? I mean, more and more BAL is leaning toward PRC and if economy continues to worsen, BD will very likely to end up more entangled with PRC than previously. Besides, US now clearly wants a Regime change in BD.

BAL is the least worst option for India. How it conducts things with PRC would just be a plate that grows in new ways if other entities related to BNP-JeI-fellow travellers et al come to power and establish in any long term meaningful way. So its an even worse option. There's simply no upside to the other entities for India.

Disagree the US wants some regime change fundamentally, but they have reasons to put pressure on BAL like they do when they sense anti-incumbent pressure having really grown and advantages to be gained in that.

They know they exactly how much they buy from BD too, a phenomenon existing unlike China. i.e what investment actually matters as an integral in the end....rather than whatever gets laundered into varying degrees of success.

For all this talk after all of investment, theres a reason China buys very little from BD....and why BD's forex is now at the level its at.

The 1 billion forex injection being sought now is also from the IMF as expected, not from a Chinese bank. Common story as usual now.

Maybe the Chinese need to "work towards" things in different ways if they actually were genuinely comprehensive to BD (and all other countries too) and their interests are actually exactly what they claim they are. Guess a lot of things look good on brochures though.

So I see little to no entanglement with the PRC if they cant keep up right now on these more mundane measures the US can do easily given the US actually has put money where its mouth is far longer on what keeps BD financially viable and solvent on the international scene.

Then it would be hypocritical, unless you would support a hypothetical autocrat who could have been able to 'hold' more 'principles' in India than democratic BJP government.

Egypt is a very different country to both India and BD. I just said I sense some similar things going on with the BD context and Indian context too. Now what the intensities are, I rely on a larger network of people I trust in end. With the Egyptian one, the intensity was off the scale according to my Egyptian friends and the backdrop has its power precedence unique to Egypt in end.

I don't support autocrats, or democracy-abusers that launder autocracy (like the BJP) to varying degrees.

How the "who is less bad" (when say these 2 get into some power-struggle) thing goes when some SHTF in huge way, well that needs lot more details (and what is the situation in question) and thats a larger topic....given there are first of all lot of other political parties in India (running and functioning) and number of checks and balances in play institutionally... unlike Egypt where there is stark divide and folks have pretty much binary absolutes to pick from.

Edit- Could you please move this convo to BD-India relation thread? I don't want to derail this thread further and we could continue there if you want to reply.

Parts of it connect back to partition basis, islamist-majoritarian vs secular (whatever the faults and attrition of the latter)....so I will keep it here for now.

If there are enough requests for a move, I will do so.

I do request we should probably try bring the conversation back to partition as directly as we can. But the downstream and upstream of partition is going to be recurring thing in this thread too from time to time.

 

[Afif]

Good people, may I start saying something about key elements behind partition?

Indeed, I am firmly waiting for it.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Why would a country be partitioned?

In the case of India, and Pakistan, that in course of time became Pakistan and Bangladesh, it was due largely to the Pakistan Movement, that had ideological roots in a concept embodied in the Two Nation Theory.

This theory, in simple terms, stated that the Hindus of South Asia were a nation, the Muslims, too, were a nation, and both nations lived in the same geography. Further, that these two nations could not form the same nation-state, as they were completely different - starting with religion, going to personal laws of marriage, adoption and inheritance, apparel (this differed in part of India, and was uniform in some other parts), food and dietary laws and restrictions - in short, in every imaginable way.

The theory ignores all other religions - Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhi and Zoroastrianism, not to mention the animist and tribal doctrines that were and still are prevalent over large areas. It focussed on these two major religions, that in the days of the Crown Colony of India, and over 550 states ruled by Indian princes, that were in a subsidiary alliance with the British Crown (not with the Colony, but the Crown that ruled the UK, directly).

How and why did it get started?

There were interesting political and sociological triggers for this theory to be conceptualised and to find circulation, till they finally found practical expression in partition. These need to be examined one by one, which we shall do over the next few posts.

Please feel free to comment as we take this narrative forward.
Please also note that I am using a dangerous source for references, Wikipedia, with its well-known mistakes and errors, as it is easily accessible.

References available on request.

 

[Afif]

In an advanced industrialized economy, religion's role has historically shrunken to one's personal matter and became confined within one's private life. That is because as economy improves, the complexity, intensity and the speed of life increases dramatically, and materialist functions (if not a materialist world view) takes over on one's everyday life in practice.

While it can be said this is an oversimplification and there are exceptions, much more nuances to that, but nevertheless in general, this is a historically proven phenomenon.

In this regard, 20th century was unprecedented in recorded Human history. The magnitude of scientific innovations and discoveries in industrialist societies, coupled with commercialization and globalization of those (thanks the the Capitalist system) brought dramatic changes to people's lives on a scale that severely upset and disrupted existing hundreds of years old (or in some cases, thousands of years old) social structures across the globe. And religion in particular, got the raw end of it. Every society had to grapple with identity crisis. And most of them continue to do so to this day on various levels. That is because, the intensity and the pace of meterial changes introduced in our lives within a short span of time was much higher than the existing socio-cultural structures could adopt.

In light of it, subcontinent societies were in a unique stage in the middle of 20th century. It was standing in between modernity and its primitive past. Religion was a huge factor in avarage people's lives and it mattered very much.

Hence I believed, the two Nation theory was based on real world experience. that, these Hindues and Muslims could not form a functioning nation-state wihtout one side completely dominating the other in order to avoid severe instabilities and dysfunctions, "as they were completely different - starting with religion, going to personal laws of marriage, adoption and inheritance, apparel (this differed in parts of India, and was uniform in some other parts), food and dietary laws and restrictions - in short, in every imaginable way."

Now as I said, it was a unique situation, because even though religion was still playing a significant role, nevertheless these societies needed to function in the modern world. Thus, even though the concept of modern 'nation state' and its institutional functioning structures were by and large alien to masses, nevertheless political and social elites needed to stablish it for the necessity of operating in a modern world.

In short, at the time religion's role in people's lives was strong enough to make a nation state composed off two completely different societies (much of this differences are due to the centrality of religion itself as mentioned in detailed above) dysfunctional, but wasn't good enough to hold a nation state togather just on its own. As it was demonstrated later in the partition of Pakistan itself.

To put it in another way, Subcontinent societies were standing with one leg in the past and one leg in the modern world. Hence, it needed both the religion or to put it more precisely, the domination of one religious majority over the minority (which is much easier to achieve when minority is actually minor in numbers. which wouldn't have been the case today in a hypothetical United India) and adequate nation state institutions to function. While Pakistan had the first, it could not successfully develop the later. Hence IMO, creation of Bangladesh does not necessarily render the two Nation theory false.


As for the other minorities in subcontinent, they were too small to form a real nation state or to cause serious instabilities and dysfunctions. Hence they weren't counted in the logical framework of two Nation theory. And we didn't need a three or four or five nation theory in practice.

 

[Jackdaws]

Based on my research -

1. Pakistan wanted a share of the assets but not burden of the liabilities - I think it still owes India money there

2. For all his talk of Muslim majority, Jinnah tried ardently to get Hindu Rajputana states bordering present day Pak like Jaisalmer and Bikaner by trying to bribe the rulers.

3. Hyderabad started own negotiations with the Portuguese to rent a port in Goa since it was landlocked

 

[Joe Shearer]

In an advanced industrialized economy, religion's role has historically shrunken to one's personal matter and become confined within one's private life. That is because as economy improves, the complexity, intensity and the speed of life increases dramatically, and materialist functions (if not a materialist world view) takes over on one's everyday life in practice.

While it can be said this is an oversimplification and there are exceptions, much more nuances to that, but nevertheless in general, this is a historically proven phenomenon.

In this regard, 20th century was unprecedented in recorded Human history. The magnitude of scientific innovations and discoveries in industrialist societies, coupled with commercialization and globalization of those (thanks the the Capitalist system) brought dramatic changes to people's lives on a scale that severely upset and disrupted existing hundreds of years old (or in some cases thousands of years old) social structures across the globe. And religion in particular, got the raw end of it. Every society had to grapple with identity crisis. And most of them continue to do so to this day on various levels. That is because, the intensity and the pace of meterial changes introduced in our lives within a short span of time was much higher than the existing social structures could adopt.

In light of it, subcontinent societies were in a unique stage in the middle of 20th century. It was standing in between modernity and its primitive past. Religion was a huge factor in avarage people's lives and it mattered very much.

Hence I believed, the two Nation theory was based on real world experience. that, these Hindues and Muslims could not form a functioning nation-state wihtout one side completely dominating the other in order to avoid severe instabilities and dysfunctions, "as they were completely different - starting with religion, going to personal laws of marriage, adoption and inheritance, apparel (this differed in part of India, and was uniform in some other parts), food and dietary laws and restrictions - in short, in every imaginable way."

Now as I said, it was a unique situation, because even though religion was still playing a significant role, nevertheless these societies needed to function in the modern world. Thus, even though the concept of modern nation state and its institutional functioning structures were by and large alien to masses, nevertheless political and social elites needed to stablish it for the necessity of operating in modern world.

In short, at the time religion's role in people's lives was strong enough to make a nation state composed off two completely different societies (much of this differences are due to the centrality of religion itself as mentioned in detailed above) dysfunctional, but wasn't good enough to hold a nation state togather just on its own. As it was demonstrated later in the partition of Pakistan itself.

To put it in another way, Subcontinent societies were standing with one leg in the past and one leg in the modern world. Hence, it needed both the religion or to out it more precisely, the domination of one religious majority over the minority (which is much easier to achieve when minority is actually minor in numbers. which wouldn't have been the case today in a hypothetical United India) and adequate nation state institutions to function. While Pakistan had the first, it could not successfully develop the later. Hence IMO, creation of Bangladesh does not necessarily render the two Nation theory false.


As for the other minorities in subcontinent, they were too small to form a real nation state or to cause serious instabilities and dysfunctions. Hence they weren't counted in the logical framework of two Nation theory. And we didn't need a three or four or five nation theory in practice.

I partly agree, partly disagree. Yes, society in South Asia was as you have described at that intermediate point where it was difficult for scientific thought and the relegation of religion to a secondary position to dominate nation-making, and due regard had to be given to strong religious feelings. In fact, that strong feeling persists in parts of our South Asian society to this day.

On the other hand, the first sixty years or so of India was a strong indication that it might have been possible to live in a pluralistic society. I take the period from 2014 till today as an aberration, as the result of a deliberate social and political movement to reverse what was happening and to introduce an element of reversion to a wholly mythical, imagined past, a golden age that never existed. Leaving this strong, well managed and disciplined but destructive movement aside, India did a good job of building a pluralistic society.

Pakistan did not, for two vital reasons, but let us not get ahead of the narrative. All that happened after Partition, although it might be right to state that the seeds were sown before.

 

[Joe Shearer]

One caution: some of the thinking and the public postures of leaders of that period was intensely religious, and it is preferable to keep those elements outside the forum, to avoid pitching ourselves into controversial and ultimately mutually hostile discussions or even quarrels.

It seemed best to keep reference material to the background offline, and to allow people to look it up away from the forum.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Based on my research -

1. Pakistan wanted a share of the assets but not burden of the liabilities - I think it still owes India money there

2. For all his talk of Muslim majority, Jinnah tried ardently to get Hindu Rajputana states bordering present day Pak like Jaisalmer and Bikaner by trying to bribe the rulers.

3. Hyderabad started own negotiations with the Portuguese to rent a port in Goa since it was landlocked

Interesting.

I thought, on point 1, the boot was on the other foot.

Could you dwell on this when we come to that point of the story? That would be interesting.

I had in mind to deal with #2 and #3 down the line, in terms of time. We are still at Waliullah. When we get there, to the events during Partition, you might please consider expanding on your views.

 

[Afif]

On the other hand, the first sixty years or so of India was a strong indication that it might have been possible to live in a pluralistic society. I take the period from 2014 till today as an aberration, as the result of a deliberate social and political movement to reverse what was happening and to introduce an element of reversion to a wholly mythical, imagined past, a golden age that never existed. Leaving this strong, well managed and disciplined but destructive movement aside, India did a good job of building a pluralistic society.

Is that so? Well for now I won’t get into that. But that is beside the point. The reason India didn’t become dysfunctional is because muslims are too minor to assert themselves. (I guess the same is true for Hindus in Bangladesh) If in a hypothetical United India where Hindu-Muslim ratio would have been roughly 3/1, chances are it would have gone very very badly. The evidence is history. The very Death of one million people ( roughly 2/3 of them being Muslims) during partition Proves the validity of two nation theory.

If peaceful coexistence was possible then separation should have been peaceful by default.

 

[Joe Shearer]

Is that so? Well for now I won’t get into that. But that is besides the point. The reason India didn’t become dysfunctional is because muslims are too minor to assert themselves. (I guess the same is true for Hindus in Bangladesh) If in a hypothetical United India where Hindu-Muslim ratio would have been roughly 3/1, chances are it would have gone very very badly. The evidence is history. The very Death of one million people ( roughly 2/3 of them being Muslims) during partition Proves the validity of two nation theory.

If peaceful coexistence was possible then separation should have been peaceful by default.

That can, and will be discussed.

Meanwhile, just check my next post.

 

[Joe Shearer]

I am planning to use the following books to build a narrative about partition, not at the moment making a judgement on whether it was justified or not, but simply building the narrative (a deeply subjective exercise):


The Great Game
Churchill's Secret War
Churchill and Gandhi
The Sole Spokesman
Ghaffar Khan
The Struggle for Pakistan
India Wins Freedom
The Great Partition
Bengal - the Unmaking of a Nation

 

[Joe Shearer]

Besides this list, there may be - my pocket permitting - additional resources on the over-arching narrative.

I hope to start with Syed Ahmed Khan, and the other Bengali root that, I think, an academic friend of mine had mentioned, that I am desperately trying to remember. After that, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, and Syed Ahmed's mentor, Shah Waliullah, and the outbreak that took place due to Waliullah's teachings at Balakot, ending in the deaths of Syed Ahmed Barelvi and Shah Ismail Dehlvi.

On to Allama Iqbal and Chaudhary Rahmat Ali on one side, and Vinayak Savarkar, Syama Prasad Mukherjee and M. S. Golwalkar on the other. In the general stream, it may be useful to start with the First Round Table Conference, and continue with summaries of interactions between the INC, the AIML and the Viceroys starting from Lord Minto through Hardinge, Chelmsford (son of the bungling general responsible for the defeat at Isandhlwana), Reading, Irwin (later Churchill's rival for Prime Ministership, as Lord Halifax), Willingdon, Linlithgow and Wavell.

There will be a separate list of Wikipedia references.

 

[Joe Shearer]

The reason India didn’t become dysfunctional is because muslims are too minor to assert themselves. (I guess the same is true for Hindus in Bangladesh)

Not to be diverted ahead of time, Muslims in India are today 17%, Hindus in Bangladesh are below 8%. Certainly there might have been different outcomes if the two communities had been closer in proportion. That belongs to the realm of alternative history, and is best avoided.

 

[Nilgiri]

People of power/influence fomenting social tension to the point where a partition and ethnic cleanse (in border areas affected) doesn't mean inevitability all along.

The same reason why what happened to East Pakistan/Bangladesh in 1971 was not inevitable.

Things were manufactured by a precise set of people in position of power and influence.

If peaceful coexistence was possible between the Roman Catholic and the Protestant in Europe, then the "30 years" should have been peaceful by default.

Surely the long term consequence would be full partitioning of (at least central) Europe on fully protestant and catholic lines to this day?...given the scale and intensity of those 30 years.

In the end, if you analyse it fairly enough, there can be dereliction of duty and responsibility by the powerful and manufacturing of a conflict. Its not like people everywhere in world don't have tribalism and zero-sum existential impulses to harness at the ready....and however this cascades be it a official war or an intense societal upheaval/migration enforced overnight from fears/mistrust grown intensely in a few precise years (rather than the opposite done).

When your friends face is a pile of goo, you'll know what to do - Patton.

 

[Joe Shearer]

People of power/influence fomenting social tension to the point where a partition and ethnic cleanse (in border areas affected) doesn't mean inevitability all along.

The same reason why what happened to East Pakistan/Bangladesh in 1971 was not inevitable.

Things were manufactured by a precise set of people in position of power and influence.

If peaceful coexistence was possible between the Roman Catholic and the Protestant in Europe, then the "30 years" should have been peaceful by default.

Surely the long term consequence would be full partitioning of (at least central) Europe on fully protestant and catholic lines to this day?...given the scale and intensity of those 30 years.

In the end, if you analyse it fairly enough, there can be dereliction of duty and responsibility by the powerful and manufacturing of a conflict. Its not like people everywhere in world don't have tribalism and zero-sum existential impulses to harness at the ready....and however this cascades be it a official war or an intense societal upheaval/migration enforced overnight from fears/mistrust grown intensely in a few precise years (rather than the opposite done).

When your friends face is a pile of goo, you'll know what to do - Patton.

At this stage, from what I have managed to read - perhaps 10 to 15% of what should be read - it seems quite clear that these differences between groups are not 'natural', in the sense that the existence of a minority above a certain percentage of the population would inevitably cause strife, and below would inevitably lead to peaceful co-existence.

Instead, as @Nilgiri has pointed out, this kind of strife has to have individual sponsors, people who go about informing their community that the other community represents a hostile entity, and needs to be fought.

Both on the Hindu side and on the Muslim side, we can identify individuals who played key roles in mobilising resistance to the ideas and social structures that they considered negative. That is what we shall see, it is to be hoped.

 

[Nilgiri]

At this stage, from what I have managed to read - perhaps 10 to 15% of what should be read - it seems quite clear that these differences between groups are not 'natural', in the sense that the existence of a minority above a certain percentage of the population would inevitably cause strife, and below would inevitably lead to peaceful co-existence.

Instead, as @Nilgiri has pointed out, this kind of strife has to have individual sponsors, people who go about informing their community that the other community represents a hostile entity, and needs to be fought.

Both on the Hindu side and on the Muslim side, we can identify individuals who played key roles in mobilising resistance to the ideas and social structures that they considered negative. That is what we shall see, it is to be hoped.

It sometimes helps to look at conflict analysis elsewhere in world and then return back to the subcontinent to look at things again.

It was a Tanzanian friend of mine for example who explained the tutsi-hutu conflict likely never would have gained real momentum, had the Belgians not invaded german east africa in ww1 (and rwanda and burundi just transitioned into the modern era as part of Tanganikya/Tanzania).

The hutu and tutsi would have found themselves as just one among many in the tribal confederation setup that Nyerere et. al then consolidated (whatever Nyerere's faults which are a different subject to broach).

These two populations also had kinspeople spread in the surrounding countries....so conflict (given tiny sizes of these two countries) often meant entire populations would just move into DRC, Uganda, Tanzania etc and just "wait it out" while a current conflagration played out. The nationstate had very limited presence here (Kagame is trying to change this now for Rwanda's case in autocrat fashion, a long story of its own - he recently got called as a Hitler by the DRC president).

But in the cold war and 90s, things were deliberately manufactured at precise years by the upper echelons of society (and at other years allowed to subside a bit and people could make do again with whichever reality they had to live with and get on with) .... and of course the scale of the 1994 genocide was of another scale altogether of this same thing, which really is a disturbing topic in the end.

There was a reason why many communities were wiped out in one fell swoop, with the doctrine any "moderate hutu" is just as bad or even worse than the Tutsi.

There is now a truth and reconciliation process holding. Uneasy mixed consolidation again (the masses have to make a living in the end, chip on shoulder grudges get in the way of that as painful as recent living memory is). But none of this had to happen at all if you had the right ingredients vested in those strong enough when they take the reins. They need to the do the hard durable good things, not the short sighted easy harmful things.

This is the parallel to those short years leading to partition in the 1930s and 1940s.

What makes Kerala stand out in South Asia in the end? Its a simple instructive reason after all.

I wrote about this other conflict here, credit to my Tanzanian comrade who first shone a lot of light on it:

Combat, War, Geopolitics History and Analysis

Austrians are just Southern Germans just like Bavarians. Austrians have always been Germans they only got left out in German unification due to Prussia. German history since the 1700s has been characterised by the Prussia-Austria rivalry both wanted to control all of Germany. Not to mention...

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[Afif]

Just visiting. A week has passed. Waiting for @Joe Shearer.....

 

[Joe Shearer]

Just visiting. A week has passed. Waiting for @Joe Shearer.....

I am shifting tomorrow, and carrying all my books with me, to review for this thread in summary form.

The list is listed at #52.

 

[Joe Shearer]

The Great Game
Churchill's Secret War
Churchill and Gandhi
The Sole Spokesman
Ghaffar Khan
The Struggle for Pakistan
India Wins Freedom
The Great Partition
Bengal - the Unmaking of a Nation

Since I can't afford to buy the missing books that would make up a full series, I am forced to go to Wikipedia for an admittedl suspect abstract of the subject matter