Midnight’s Descendants: South Asia from Partition to the Present Day

Midnight’s Descendants: South Asia from Partition to the Present Day
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If British India had not been partitioned in 1947, its population would today be comfortably the world’s largest. At c1.5 billion, Midnight’s Descendants (the offspring of those affected by ‘the midnight hour’ Partition) already outnumber Europeans and Chinese; and they are growing faster than either. By 2020 they will constitute a quarter of the world’s entire population. As well as comprising the peoples of what is now called ‘South Asia’ (the preferred term for the partitioned subcontinent of modern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, plus Nepal and Sri Lanka) they are widely established across the globe.Midnight’s Descendants is the first general history ever published to treat the region as a whole. Correlating and contrasting the fortunes of all the constituent nations over the last six decades affords unique insights into the tensions and conflicts that divide what is being hailed as one of the world’s most dynamic regions.Written by a widely respected expert on the region, the book will be the first account to incorporate the rich story of South Asia’s transnational, or ‘diasporic’, peoples. It will examine attitudes towards their homeland of the 22 million overseas South Asians, and will assess their contributions to the self-image of the parent states, to economic survival in the case of Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and to India’s globalised achievement.Like Midnight’s Children, Midnight’s Descendants will be expansive and tumultuous in the great tradition of India’s narrative epics.

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William Collins

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First published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2014

Copyright © John Keay 2014

John Keay asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Cover photograph © Naringer NANU/AFP/Getty Images

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007326570 (HB), 9780007480036 (TPB)

Ebook Edition © January 2014 ISBN: 9780007468775

Version: 2015-07-20

In Memory of Julia Keay

1. Wavell greets Jinnah prior to the 1946 Cabinet Mission talks. (Press Information Bureau/British Library)

2. Gandhi with Pethick-Lawrence during the talks. (akg-images/Archiv Peter Rühe)

3. Police use teargas to disperse a crowd in Calcutta. (© Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS)

4. The aftermath of the Calcutta killings of August 1946. (© Bettmann/CORBIS)

5. Lord and Lady Mountbatten’s carriage swamped by the crowd during India’s Independence Day celebrations. (Topham Picturepoint)

6. Nehru addresses a crowd of over a million on Independence Day. (Topham Picturepoint)

7. Trains packed with fleeing refugees at Amritsar. (© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans)

8. The refugee caravans were easy prey. Hundreds of thousands were massacred. (© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans)

9. Female students protest against the adoption of Urdu as Pakistan’s official language in Dhaka in 1953. (Rafiqul Islam)

10. Demonstrators in Bombay burn an effigy of Nehru in January 1956. (AP/Press Association Images)

11. Tenzing Norgay at the summit of Everest. (Getty Images)

12. Indian patrol in eastern Ladakh in 1960. (Topfoto)

13. Indian women preparing to defend the nation during the 1962 Sino–Indian war. (Topfoto)

14. A village in Jammu and Kashmir during the 1965 Indo–Pakistan war. (©Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS)

15. A Pakistani liaison officer shakes the hand of an Indian army officer after the announcement of a ceasefire in the Indo–Pakistan war. (Topfoto)

16. Indian troops advancing into East Pakistan in December 1971. (Getty Images)

17. Pakistan’s General Niazi signs the document of surrender at the end of the Bangladesh Independence War. (©Bettmann/CORBIS)

18. The Indian Herald’s supplement on Mrs Gandhi’s declaration of the Emergency. (Courtesy of the Indian Herald)

19. Indira Gandhi campaigning in Calcutta for the 1977 elections. (EE/AP/Press Association Images)

20. Sri Lankan Tamils training in southern India in 1986. (Topfoto/AP)

21. Young recruits undergoing training by the Tamil Tigers. (Topfoto/AP)

22. Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. (AP/Sondeep Shankar/AP/Press Association Images)

23. The Golden Temple of Amritsar during ‘Operation Bluestar’. (Topfoto/AP)

24. Kashmiris burn the Indian flag in March 1990. (Ajit Kumar/AP/Press Association Images)

25. Protesters against the Indian army’s presence in Srinagar. (Barbara Walton/AP/Press Association Images)

26. Militant VHP kar sevaks attack the Babri mosque in Ayodhya. (AFP/Getty Images)

27. Hindu youths clamber onto the domes of the Babri mosque. (AFP/Getty Images)

28. Mumbai under attack by jihadist gunmen in November 2008. (Punit Paranjpe/Reuters/Corbis)

29. The Golden Quadrilateral highway under construction near Kanpur. (Ed Kashi/VII/Corbis)

30. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. (Mary Evans/SZ Photo/Scherl)

31. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. (AP/Topfoto)

32. General Ziaul Haq. (AP/Topham)

33. Benazir Bhutto. (PA/Topfoto)

34. Atul Behari Vajpayee. (Topham Picturepoint)

1. South Asia – physical

2. South Asia today

3. British India and the Princely States in 1947

4. North-East India and Bangladesh

5. Kashmir and Punjab

6. Political succession in South Asia, 1947–2014



I was six years old in 1947 when what was then British India won its independence. I vaguely recall the pomp and ceremony of the Delhi celebrations as filmed for Pathé News but have no recollection of seeing any coverage of the horrors of the Great Partition that followed. Pakistan I came across only in the classroom; it was not till nineteen years after Independence that I first visited what is now called South Asia.



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