WEAKENED STATES SEEKING RENEW.: British Official Reports from South Asia, 1 January30 April 1948 - Hardcover

CARTER, LIONEL

9789350980002: WEAKENED STATES SEEKING RENEW.: British Official Reports from South Asia, 1 January30 April 1948

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9350980002 ISBN 13: 9789350980002

Publisher: Manohar, 2013

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The volume documents four critical months in South Asia's post-partition history as recorded in the reports sent to London by British diplomats. It opens in January 1948 with both India and Pakistan suffering from the effects of Partition and communal upheavals manifested in weakened economies and administration and with the real possibility that all-out war over Kashmir might break out between them. Indeed the continued unity of the two states was in doubt. Gradually, particularly under the influence of Vallabhbhai Patel in India and Jinnah in Pakistan, increasingly determined and successful efforts were made to prevent disunity. By the end of April 1948 clear moves towards centralisation were apparent in both India and Pakistan to counter the growth of factions within the ruling parties, an increase in extremism, and the fragmentary agendas of provincialism and linguistic grouping. In India huge and extremely rapid steps had been taken to integrate the Princely States. Moderate Sikh leaders too had been induced to abandon the idea of a separate Sikhistan and instead accept continued participation in the Indian polity through membership of Congress. The central event in the volume is Gandhi's assassination at the end of January 1948 preceded by the Mahatma's last epic fast. The volume fully documents the responses to, and consequences of, these happenings and includes a lengthy and moving despatch by the British Acting High Commissioner in India on the last months of Gandhi's life and the circumstances of his death.

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About the Author

For more than ten years, Lionel Carter was a member of the team which produced the British Government's series of Documents on the Transfer of Power to India, 1942-47. From 1980 until 1999, Carter served as Secretary and Librarian of the Centre of South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge.

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