David Gilmour

Problems of Partition

The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India’s Partition

By

Constable & Robinson 432pp £20 order from our bookshop

Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India

By

Oxford University Press 231pp £xx order from our bookshop

Some years ago I went to a dinner in Lucknow where everyone present was a Hindu refugee, or refugee’s child, from Lahore. A week later I had a similar evening in Lahore where everyone was a Muslim refugee from Lucknow. It was difficult to believe that at these events I was meeting enemies, citizens of hostile states that had fought several wars and were about to fight once more in Kashmir. The guests had no animosity towards their supposed foes across the border, and indeed, so similar were the two sets in cultural and conversational ways, they could have mingled happily at each other’s parties. The only difference was that I was offered Indian whisky in Lucknow and mango juice in Lahore.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'The characters in many of these stories are trapped in the obsessive present tense of their own thoughts; in the m… ,
    • 'Libraries, for much of their existence, have embodied in microcosm many of the characteristics of the totalitarian… ,
    • 'Moss and Cynthia buy several properties through which to launder their ill-gotten gains, take lots of drugs, have… ,
    • 'Never mind the imperial cult. This is the cult of Boris. What happened to Rome?' From the LR archive:… ,
    • Thirty-two years ago this month, we published Muriel Spark's short story, 'A Playhouse Called Remarkable' Read it… ,
    • Time travel, bicycles and white horses populate @WomackPhilip's roundup of children's books by @marcussedgwick,… ,
    • RT : Joanna Kavenna’s ‘Cooking with Trotsky’s Frying Pan’ in June’s is the most well written and interesting… ,
    Follow Us