Yasmin Khan (1) (1977–)

India at War: The Subcontinent and the Second World War by Yasmin Khan is the history of India's involvement in World War II both inside and outside its borders. Khan is Associate Professor of History; Fellow of Kellogg College at Oxford University. Her DPhil is from Oxford, in the History of the British Empire. She has taught at the Universities of Edinburgh and Royal Holloway, University of London.

I knew little of India's role in WWII before reading India at War. I did know of the Indian units in WWI fighting as part of the British Empire produced an impressive of Victorian Cross winners. Khan mentions this when talking about early recruitment in WWII. Older men, at the mention of war, would proudly display the medals they had earned in Europe and the Middle East. The people of Punjab seemed the proudest of their military tradition. India did send soldiers to fight in Africa against the Italians.Their bravery earned them the respect of many of the enlisted British soldiers while doing little to influence the officer ranks. Many who served outside of India were quickly put into uniform without much personal information or record keeping. This made identification and notification of next of kin nearly impossible in the event of death.

India itself was a strategic piece of land. With China slipping to the Japanese, India played a strategic role in resupplying the Chinese and as a barrier to Japanese expansion. Pro-independence India was thrilled when the Americans came to India. They saw an idealized image of America and hoped it would mean independence for them after the war. This hope faded as Indians saw how the black American soldiers were treated -- much in the same way the British treated the Indians.

Khan not only covers the mechanics of India during the war but also the growing independence movement. Several paradoxes come to light. India wanted its independence from Britain, but Japan seemed like a more urgent threat. Many knew independence would eventually come from the British. Few believed that if Japan was victorious independence would come at all. There were also loyalists to the British who resisted independence and once the war economy began in full, with American assistance, many people became wealthier and enjoyed the status quo. Like the American move for independence, support was not universal.

Khan presents a detailed history of India during the war. It is much more than a history of a country at war, but a history of a diverse people looking to regain their identity. There is bravery on the part of Indian soldiers and bravery of those at home. India played a pivotal role during the war in Asia. Soldiers, industry, construction, food, and even POW camps were all part of India's role. The war proved to be a shift in power. Although victorious, with the allies, Britain lost its ability to maintain an empire. Although devastating, World War II may have hastened Indian independence. India earned respect in the eyes of many nations, including Britain. India at War is an important piece of history that is not very well know in America. This is an essential reading for those wanting to know the bigger picture of the world history, outside American blinders.

… (mer)

The perils of nationalism, the tragedy of partition and its disastrous ramifications which no one could foresee.

The book covers the tumultuous years from the end of second world war in 1945 to the decolonisation and the formation of two new Nation-States. This is more of a people's history and focuses largely on the urban centers, the middle-classes and what the idea of Pakistan and swaraj meant to them. The author largely ignores the political and diplomatic byplays that were taking place in Delhi and the rise of the Fascist parties and Ethnic nationalism in India, which would play a big role in the coming genocide. She rather focuses on the collapse of British authority, the confusion and uncertainty that prevailed everywhere, and how the partition played out on the ground and what it meant to the people. The role played by the party propagandas and the nationalist and fascist militias, and how they were at the forefront of the events is very well chronicled. She focuses mainly on Punjab and not much attention is given to Bengal except for the Calcutta riots and the Noakhali carnage. Only a token glance is given to the social and class differences between Hindus and Muslims and the role it played.

Highly recommended. An important work on the subject. That being said, people who are not familiar with the history of colonial India might find this unenlightening, as its not a definitive work.

… (mer)

A well written book on the whole. This book takes a relatively unusual tack, in that it does not focus very much on the 'great leaders' of those times, but focusses a bit more on what happened on the ground, so to speak. It is the telling of an awful tale, a tale in which hundreds of thousands were killed and mutilated; a tale of the times when millions were displaced.

People do not often think that freedom can sometimes be an awful thing, and this is exactly what it must have been for many. What could have made the book stand out, for me, is if she had analysed the factors - and the effects - of the social transformation of the time. People identified themselves with their region, and not so much along religious lines. This changed. There are lessons in this, which we would do well to remember.… (mer)

Painful Beginnings

There are so many ways in which this story can be told, the truth, is often not one of them. Because the truth is too painful and too hard to imagine, because the truth doesn't give us hope in humanity. In "The Great Partition", Yasmin Khan takes us as close to the truth about this most tragic chapter in the history of South Asia as we will probably ever get. It is on the surface a simple story about post-WWII decolonization and the birth of two modern nation-states that tragically descended into a catastrophe of cataclysmic proportions.

The story of the Partition of India and Pakistan is unfortunately not a new one. There were several historical precedents that all had been marked by tragic consequences, such as the mass migrations between Greece and Turkey following WWI, or the ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Turkey, also following WWI. Which makes this exercise all the more tragic, knowing that history was being repeated.

Partition was not the first solution presented in their liberation from the British Raj. Khan's book is especially strong in describing those meetings between the British officials (Mountbatten), Muslim League (Jinnah), and the National Congress (Nehru) in the months before 1947. However, this initial proposal of an Indian federation didn't last long and Khan's interpretation is that all sides agreed to Partition as the "easy way out". It is perhaps useless now to think what if, but still one has to wonder if there was an alternative to the eventual solution that resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands.

The story of Partition is a lesson in how not to delineate territorial borders. Much like how the protagonists at the Paris 1919 peace conference arbitrarily carved up nation-states, the Partition of the province of Punjab in particular was an exercise in ignorance. Communities cut off from pilgrimage sites, factories divorced from their source of raw materials. The rush by British colonial administrators to make an expeditious exit is mostly to blame here which Khan describes as the "unforgiving calculus of Partition" (p.127).

It is the tragic irony that in the end, it took the shock of Gandhi's assassination which "immediately helped to stabilize and enforce national feeling and undoubtedly gave ascendancy to secular policy" (p.180).

What makes this story so important is it's lasting consequences. Khan writes: "The permanent separation of Indians and Pakistanis from each other, and their inability to cross the new border, was the most long-lasting and divisive aspect of Partition" (p.194). Families ripped apart, lives forever shattered.

In reading "The Great Partition", that familiar but dangerous theme of ethnic nationalism rears its ugly head. People didn't all of a sudden decide to kill, torture and rape their neighbors, they were coaxed into doing it. A deadly mixture of demagogue leadership and paranoid xenophobia drove good decent people into hysteria, turning them into the most heinous criminals. It's the "Lord of the Flies" theory.

Anyone who wants to learn more about modern history of South Asia should read this book. Khan, Professor at University of London, herself a product of and a generation or 2 removed from Partition has managed to weave together the tragic personal narratives with interpretations of primary source documents of the political leaders to produce a highly nuanced and insightful monograph of this monumental event.… (mer)