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Summary
Summary
A "fast-moving and highly readable account" of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947 and its lasting legacy in today's geopolitical tensions ( The New York Times ).
An NPR and Seattle Times Best Book of the Year
Nobody expected the events of 1947 in Southeast Asia to be so bloody. The liberation of India and the birth of Pakistan were supposed to realize 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.
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 arming themselves as the British rushed to evacuate. 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.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru-these towering figures of South Asian independence are widely familiar today for the outsize impact they had on the shape of the modern world. But Hajari, Asia editor for Bloomberg View, turns away from them to deliver the story of the grassroots: faceless actors operating in secret as they overwhelm ideologies and official pronouncements, fomenting chaos to an extent no leader could have predicted. In a region as complex and densely populated as South Asia, events on the ground-often leaderless and seemingly random-can make short work of any policy or plan. Hajari highlights the insufficiency of governments to curb the passions of their populations, devoting a large portion of the book to the contested territory of Kashmir, just one of a multitude of flashpoints at the time of the 1947 partition, albeit the one that arguably inspired the most passion in the dueling leaders. "Given the paucity of unbiased accounts," he notes, "the question [of who had first attacked whom in Kashmir]-while endlessly debated over the last six decades-is impossible to answer." The failure to come to any resolution on that issue has haunted the Indian subcontinent ever since, and Hajari laments that the cycle of recriminations has hardened into a permanent obstacle to peace. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Hajari, who writes editorials on Asia for Bloomberg View, teases out the history behind the Partition, out of which Pakistan was created with the departure of the British from India in 1947. While there were certainly massive political forces at work among Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and the British Raj, Hajari shows how much the interpersonal dynamics among those constituencies' leaders especially between the Hindu-dominated Indian National Congress party's Jawaharlal Nehru, tasked with holding the country together, and the All-India Muslim League's Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who voiced the resentments of underrepresented Muslims exaggerated differences between the two groups, leading to the split and resultant bloodletting. The book's subtitle notwithstanding, Hajari does not really cover the region's history from Partition to 2015. Still, a fine unwinding of an epic event.--Moores, Alan Copyright 2015 Booklist
Choice Review
Hajari led international coverage for Newsweek for more than ten years and for Time for four years and is a commentator for media outlets. He is on the Council on Foreign Relations, is Asia editor for the website Bloomberg View, and resides in Singapore. A keen observer of events, Hajari has a journalist's eye for details and employs a journalist's colorful turn of phrase. A graduate of Princeton and Columbia, he has lived in various cities, including New Delhi. Hajari's extensively researched and lively volume covers the period from 1946 until the ceasefire in Kashmir on January 1, 1949, when "Nehru's long battle with Jinnah had ended." In emphasizing the violence that accompanied independence in 1947, the central motif of the volume is the conflict and contrast between Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Jawaharlal Nehru. Chapter 2 dissects the lives of the two figures. A seven-page epilogue, "Deadly Legacy," focuses on Pakistan's turn to militancy and sponsorship of terrorist groups and the danger this has created in South Asia and for the world. Suitable for general readers, the volume offers useful pointers to US sources for scholars. Summing Up: Recommended. All levels/libraries. --Roger D. Long, Eastern Michigan University
Library Journal Review
The August 1947 granting of independence to India (previously a British colony) and the creation of Pakistan was not supposed to be a bloodbath. However, even before independence, violence erupted in Calcutta and tore apart the Punjab region. Within weeks of the partition, fighting took root in Kashmir, which straddles India and Pakistan. Somewhere between 200,000 and one million Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs were ethnically cleansed as brutality spread across the Indian subcontinent. Trying to understand how these events could have created such a wide gulf between India and Pakistan, Hajari (Asia editor, Bloomberg View) skillfully chronicles these occurrences in a fast-paced narrative that is framed by the political ambitions of Pakistan's Mohammed Ali Jinnah and India's Jawaharlal Nehru. If ever a situation demanded truly effective leadership, partition was such an instance. Unfortunately, both Jinnah and Nehru frequently come across as ineffectual. Their personal shortcomings surfaced at precisely the wrong moments and repeatedly triggered tumult on the subcontinent as extremists on all sides seized the account and sparked one spasm of bloodshed after another. -VERDICT This harrowing tale of political miscalculation and misunderstanding is recommended for all readers of history, politics, and current affairs.-Chris Sauder, Round Rock P.L., TX © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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