White-Spunner has relied on many sources—books, interviews, newspapers—to write his account of Partition but chief among them is The Transfer of Power papers, a massive twelve-volume compendium of all official correspondence
Source/Credit: The Times of India
By John Cheeran | August 23, 2017
Nehru did not believe religion held such sway in India. Jinnah did not understand Punjab. Mountbatten hardly knew India.
What led to India’s Partition? Could it have been avoided? If not Partition, the bloodbath that claimed the lives of more than 1 million people?
In a brilliant, must-read effort, noted military historian Barney White-Spunner recounts what happened in 1947, freedom and its aftermath, in 12 riveting chapters, each earmarked for a month from January, in Partition: The Story of Indian Independence And The Creation of Pakistan in 1947 (Published by Simon and Schuster, Pages 419, Price Rs 699).
How much of Mahatma Gandhi’s famed non-violence was a sham or an ineffective ploy could be understood from reading this brutally honest account of Partition. The killings had begun much earlier than August 15, 1947.
It is important to give the background of the author. White-Spunner has commanded British and allied troops at every level from troop to field army, including the elite 16 Air Assault Brigade, whom he took into Kabul in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. He has also led operations in the Balkans and Iraq, as well as Africa and Asia. The robustness of his prose in Partition—clear, sympathetic but unsentimental—is a testament to his qualities as a fighter. He enters where it matters, the end of the Raj.
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