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The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
June 2015
On Sale: June 9, 2015
352 pages
ISBN: 0547669216
EAN: 9780547669212
Kindle: B00LZ7GO0C
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction History
A few bloody months in South Asia during the
summer of 1947 explain the world that troubles us
today.
Nobody expected the liberation of India
and birth of Pakistan to be so bloody — it was supposed to
be an answer to the dreams of Muslims and Hindus who had
been ruled by the British for centuries. Jawaharlal Nehru,
Gandhi’s protégé and the political leader of India, believed
Indians were an inherently nonviolent, peaceful people.
Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was a secular
lawyer, not a firebrand. But in August 1946, exactly a
year before Independence, Calcutta erupted in street-gang
fighting. A cycle of riots — targeting Hindus, then Muslims,
then Sikhs — spiraled out of control. As the summer of 1947
approached, all three groups were heavily armed and on edge,
and the British rushed to leave. Hell let loose. Trains
carried Muslims west and Hindus east to their slaughter.
Some of the most brutal and widespread ethnic cleansing in
modern history erupted on both sides of the new border,
searing a divide between India and Pakistan that remains a
root cause of many evils. From jihadi terrorism to nuclear
proliferation, the searing tale told in Midnight’s
Furies explains all too many of the headlines we read today.
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