A searing split

Bound for Pakistan

Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition. By Nisid Hajari. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 328 pages; $28.

PARTITION, the bloody division of the Indian subcontinent into two countries in 1947, was a tragedy. The merits of the outcome—the creation of a Muslim-majority Pakistan separate from a secular but Hindu-majority India—have long been debated. But the botched and violent process of splitting up was undeniably catastrophic.

British colonial rulers who had long refused to discuss full independence, suddenly made for the exit with unseemly haste. The dividing line was drawn in weeks by an unqualified official, leaving a messy and dangerous legacy. Several rival leaders—Sikh, Muslim and Hindu—then scrambled for advantage, encouraging supporters to murder and rape as they sought to get control of land.

In “Midnight’s Furies”, Nisid Hajari, a journalist with Bloomberg, does a good job of recounting the horrors that unfolded, especially in Punjab. At least 14m people were displaced—“the biggest forced migration in history”—and hundreds of...

from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1IvDfvh