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The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India's Partition | 
| Authors: Narendra Singh Sarila, Narendra Sarila
Publisher: Basic Books
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 468904
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.7
ISBN: 0786719125
Dewey Decimal Number: 954
EAN: 9780786719129
ASIN: 0786719125
Publication Date: November 12, 2006
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Product Description
A radical reassessment in British colonial history by the former ADC to the last Viceroy of British India is important, but Sarila's claim that current Islamic terrorism is partially rooted in Partition has wider implications. Historians have underestimated the role of British strategic interests: fears about the USSR's control of Middle Eastern oil wells and access to the Indian Ocean. New material on figures like Gandhi, Jinnah, Mountbatten, Churchill, Attlee, Wavell, and Nehru are offered.
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| Customer Reviews:
The genesis of partition and the wages of playing the fear game. July 16, 2008
This book by Narendra Singh Sarila is a true eyeopener. Many commonly held beliefs about the history of the Indian subcontinent are disputed and in some cases heartily debunked. The author was the ADC to Mountbatten and thus comes with the imprimatur of "being on the scene".
I remember reading various sources like Wolpert wherein it was emphatically stated that Gandhi was always against partition. Well here Sarila reliably infers that at the end Gandhi thought partition was a necessary evil. Jinnah played the religion card to the hilt appealing to the lower angels of human nature via the fear route. Arguing that muslims would never get a fair shake in a Hindu Congress and nation Jinnah shrewdly played the fear card. Of course thirty million muslims who were not in the demarcated areas were left high and dry.
What is truly sad is the low opinion that Churchill had about Indians in general and Hindus in particular. Yes in those days it was quite common to view Indians as a cacaphony of peoples incapable of governing themselves, but Churchill's animosity seems to have been beyond the bounds of reason. Too bad because Churchill truly was the man of the hour during WW2 and helped save Western civilization. In my eyes the greatness of Churchill is tangibly abased by the vile alloy of racism.
Sarila recounts, in detail, the behind the scenes machinations of various players mostly to the detriment of a united India.
A sad commentary on a lamentable period of the Indian subcontinent. Highly recommended.
a must-read July 29, 2007
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
An interesting and detailed analysis based on historical documents that sheds light on the british machinations to encourage, even engineer the partition. lots of other fascinating facts and details are brought to life as well.
 An important contribution July 27, 2007
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
The Partition of India is one of the great un-studied subjects of modern times, especially in light of the great ethnic-cleansing that it caused, it is suprising it is ignored and its refugees forgotten. This book however is not about these crimes but about the politics and also the prejudices that brought about partition. It mostly focuses on the British decision to assist Ali Jinnah and his attempts to form a Muslim state. The British had long supported Muslims in India, both as civil servants and administratively, allowing them to keep Shariah law while suppressing Hindu traditions.
As the Great Game ended in 1905 and world politics changed the British continued to cultivate loyal Muslims in India and used them to split India, eventually using them to create Pakistan, and using Pakistan against Soviet Russia, which would have reverberations in the 1980s and even today.
This is a very interesting and new point of view. Few authors have tackled the subject of British pro-Islamic politics in their colonies and this is an important contribution.
Seth J. Frantzman
Excellent Narrative of India's Partition March 26, 2007
10 out of 13 found this review helpful
This book is a significant contribution to the understanding of the fateful events surrounding the independence and partition of India and the players involved. The book presents the events in a cogent manner with insightful analyses into the events and personalities. It is a must read for any student of Indian history and politics since it gives insight into the situations affecting the national security and political decisions made even today. We all have heard so much about the "Divide and rule" policy of English. The reader is able to witness that policy in action in this book.
Key features that one learns from this book are: i) the British determination to hold on to India as long as possible, and in the event that this becomes impossible, secure the northwestern portion of India to thwart any real or imagined Russian adventures, ii) The naivety of Indian National Congress leaders, especially Nehru, about the survival of an independent India in a predatory world, iii) the aging of Gandhi and weakening of his faculties and judgment in dealing with the changing political environment, iv) Even though Mountbatten contributed to bringing the princely states into the Union he also did double cross Nehru in dealing with Kashmir, and v) Hunger for power at any cost on the part of Jinnah who died regretting what he had done with his life.
The role that President Roosevelt played in pushing Churchill towards Indian independence and the US gesture to be the first country to send an ambassador to India is neither appreciated nor known among the India's polity nor did the historians pay much attention to the subject. Better management of the relationship with US early on might have paid dividends and the world history could have turned out to be totally different than what we have witnessed.
The author has to be specially commended for his assessment that Indian independence came not because the British had an enlightenment about egalitarianism or human rights but because the empire was economically not tenable any longer, and even more important, the events of the second World War and its conclusion created an environment in India where they could not even count on the loyalty of the Indian army any longer. The "awe" with which the ordinary Indian looked at the Englishman had ended. The bluff that worked for two hundred years stopped working.
Brilliant study of 'divide and rule' January 5, 2007
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
The author worked from 1948 to 1985 in India's Foreign Service. He uses primary sources in this excellent book to show how from 1906 to 1947 the British state allied with Islamists to defeat India's majority-supported Congress Party.
The Aga Khan and some Bengal landlords founded the Muslim League in 1906 and at once petitioned Viceroy Minto to introduce separate Muslim electorates, a sure way to split a country. Lord and Lady Minto immediately welcomed this: she wrote that it would mean "Nothing less than the pulling back of 62 million people from joining the ranks of the seditious opposition."
Churchill too played the Muslim card, lying that the real problem lay in Hindu-Muslim differences about India's future and not in Britain's rulers' unwillingness to accept Indian independence. Viceroy Linlithgow forged an alliance with Jinnah's Muslim League Party. Linlithgow's successor Lord Wavell produced the 1946 blueprint giving the strategic prize of North-West India to Pakistan.
Jinnah called a `Direct Action Day' for 16 August 1946. The British governor of Bengal knew of the League's intention, yet the British brigadier in charge of law and order in Calcutta ordered his troops confined to barracks for the day. 5,000 people were killed. Wavell's blueprint was implemented when the British withdrew from India in 1947, even though it was kept secret to avoid any impression of a British hand in the division of India.
Sarila summarises, "Once the British realized that the Indian nationalists who would rule India after its independence would deny them military cooperation under a British Commonwealth defence umbrella, they settled for those willing to do so by using religion for the purpose. Their problem could be solved if Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League Party, would succeed in his plan to detach the northwest of India abutting Iran, Afghanistan and Sinkiang and establish a separate state there - Pakistan. The proposition was a realizable one as a working relationship had been established between the British authorities in India and Jinnah during the Second World War and he was willing to cooperate with Britain on defence matters if Pakistan was created."
Imperial policy was and is divide and rule - whether setting Muslim against Hindu in India, Bosnian Muslims against Serbs in Yugoslavia, Sunni against Shia across the Middle East, Protestant against Catholic in Ireland, or Scottish against English in Britain. As Sarila notes, "The successful use by the British to fulfil political and strategic objectives in India was replicated by the Americans in building up the Islamic jihadis in Afghanistan for the same purpose, of keeping the Soviets at bay."
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