Preeta Chag

Pub by: William Collins

History is not necessarily about only what has happened. But history is what is presented, what is taught.

And we live by the narratives given. And that narrative goes on to become the professed, limited past until something else comes up.

“Shattered Lands” by Sam Dalrymple questions those narratives. Digging deep into the crevices of the past and coming up with a clear, concise introduction as to what could have been.

The book brilliantly brings to light the shattering and Partition of the former Indian empire from 1930s to 1971 which comprised of a vast swathe of lands -India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Yemen, Bhutan, Oman, the UAE,  Qatar, Bahran and Quwait – bound together under a single imperial banner, an entity known officially as the Indian Empire.

The book describes the making of modern South Asia through a series of rebellions, wars and some hasty bureaucratic decisions. It is an overwhelming, intense portrayal of displaced regions and their boundaries. Of what was, what could have been, and what is now. The past and the present so deeply intertwined across borders, religion and humanity.

The research is immense and outstanding.  And the style of narration, conversational. Small anecdotes about the people make the times come alive, lending an authenticity and real flavour to the book.

The secession of Burma makes up Chapters 2 and 3 of the book, providing details of Burma’s breakaway from the Indian Empire. Stories of princely accession to India, and its rebellion (Hyderabad and Kashmir), give an idea of the mammoth exercise undertaken by the Indian leaders to create the Indian banner.

Chapter 7 narrates the Partition of Indian and Pakistan and Lord Mountbatten’s hasty decisions on the date. Ironically, “But in June 1947, Partition was seen as a way to stop the violence. ‘We were tired men and were getting on in years, ‘Nehru later admitted. “The plan for Partition offered a way out and we took it.”

Displacements and rebellions mark the establishment of newer boundaries. “an astonishingly 1.2 million people would be displaced across the borders of Hyderabad, almost double those displaced in the Palestinian Nakba the same year.”

Newer geographies gave rise to newer resentments, such as the fostering unrest of North East India, which finds its roots in those days. The last Partition of Bangladesh from Pakistan marked the final shattering of the Indian empire.

Another irony.  “And for a strange twelve months, Pakistan was the only democracy in the former Indian empire.” When India was under emergency, Bangladesh was under military rule, and Burma too.

“Shattered Lands” is a delightful visual prose, making the book an easy read, when it could have been a heavy historical treatise. The book scores on its heavy research and an inquisitive, insightful depiction of a significant past.