Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia by Sam Dalrymple review: 'alert to the details'

In this excellent account of the political upheavals that shaped modern Asia, Sam Dalrymple covers a vast amount of ground with admirable alacrity, writes Stuart Kelly

To convey the scope and subtlety of Sam Dalrymple’s book, rather than refer readers to the subtitle – “Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia” – it is better, I think, to sketch the outline of stories which encapsulate its capacity to fray and unpick preconceptions.

Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru in conversation at the All-India Congress committee meeting at Bombay, 1946 | Getty Images

In 1929-31 Gandhi travelled the breadth of “British India”; from Aden (now in Yemen) to Rangoon (now in Myanmar, formerly Burma). In an interview he conducts, Dalrymple records that Mohammad Zaul Hassan says “I was born in India, grew up in Bangladesh, became a citizen of Pakistan, now I’m British”. Salman Rushdie may have given the Partition of 14-15 August 1947 an almost mythic significance in his Booker winning Midnight’s Children, but it is clear from this book that the whole situation was far, far more complex than a singular event. The message is more mess than messianic moment.

Even in introducing his five partitions, Dalrymple is precise. The first is the partition of Burma from India; linked to both Bamar separatism and Hindu concerns about the integrity of the holy and ancient “Bharat”. But, as he notes, the Straits Settlement and the Somaliland Protectorate occurred beforehand (in 1867 and 1898): the five here have been chosen not just for being post-World War One (which saw the dismantling of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires), but after the introduction of Indian Empire passports. It is ironic that this bureaucratic formality went hand in hand with its own disintegration.

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The second partition was the ongoing divestment of the Arabian Peninsula states (including Aden). The third, which created West and East Pakistan, is the one that is now most associated with “Partition”, although the fourth – the partition of Princely India, with some 565 entities, including Jammu and Kashmir, Hyderabad, and Mysore, deciding whether to ally with Pakistan or India – is perhaps the most significant in terms of power dynamics. Finally, there is the 1971 secession of East Pakistan to become Bangladesh.

This vast amount of material is handled admirably, particularly since Dalrymple keeps the hypotheticals in full view at the same time. None of the outcomes was pre-ordained or inevitable, and the contingencies are as informative. There are reasons why Bhutan, Nepal and Oman kept their independence while Sikkim, Nagaland and Junagadh did not. Both Nehru and Aung San contemplated the possibility of an Asiatic Federation, including Sri Lanka as well. The levels of brinksmanship are astonishing – one possible outcome, since 1974, has been nuclear, yet even without that, mass displacement, starvation and old fashioned brutality had done more than enough. Dalrymple, incidentally, should be commended for being very careful about the contested use of the word genocide.

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The nuancing of imperial history has been one of the most welcome features of modern historiography. On one hand, the subcontinent shows the ideological assertions of almost primal historicity. The definition of an ideal and ancient Hindu “Bharat” both coalesces and excludes; even Pakistan’s name, coined by Rahmat Ali and originally “Pakstan”, was both a partial acronym of Panjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh and Baluchistan and a reference to the Persian word for pure.

Some of these ideas are novelised in Gurnaik Johal’s Saraswati, a fiction which might be slightly over-determined, but in its Calvino-esque braiding of stories is markedly more ambitious than most debuts. The insistence on aboriginal unity is offset with political theoretical problems about the right to separate: if secession is good enough for one area, why not for another? We are accustomed here to such arguments being deployed in terms of, say, Shetlandic or Orcadian independence. On the subcontinent this was exacerbated in the Princely States, where, for example, Jammu and Kashmir had a Muslim majority population and a Hindu ruler, Maharajah Hari Singh; while Hyderabad had a Hindu majority population and a Muslim ruler, the Nizam.

It was in Kashmir that a Scottish officer, William Brown, decided to mutiny to prevent the areas, particularly Gilgit province, joining India. With “three bottles of gin inside us”, he and Jock Mathieson “became uncontrollably hilarious… [and] created a terrific disturbance”, raised the Pakistan flag and saw off the emergent “United States of Gilgit”. Neighbouring Hunza and Nagar toyed, it was claimed, with succession to Russia instead.

Despite the immensity of the canvas, Dalrymple is alert to the telling detail and the revealing anecdote. Although I particularly liked the monkeys purportedly trained to throw hand grenades, Dalrymple cleverly has his cake and eats it with such material. It is too good to not include the Nawab of Junagadh, with his 800 dogs, each with their own servant, and the ostentatiously lavish wedding for his favourite Roshana, to a Labrador called Bobby, even if, as he points it, it is not true. Of course, such orientalism is essentially a literary phenomenon, and the fact that such stories were told tells us more than the stark reality.

Dalrymple is especially good at providing pen portraits of the key players – Jinna, Nehru and Aung San, as well as Gandhi, Menon, the Mountbattens and less well known figures like Naga nationalist Zapu Phizo. These state-level players are supplemented by written and oral people’s histories. It is always an incomprehensible irony to me that we indulge in so much phony nostalgia for Empire in this country, and know so little of the Empire. As Kipling said, “What do they know of England who only England know?” There ought to be a mammoth, epic, television series: but more The Hollow Crown rather than The Crown, please.

Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia, by Sam Dalrymple, William Collins, £25

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