Book looks into deadly legacy of Partition

A new book on Partition looks at how leaders on both sides of the border "mishandled the chaotic birth of their nations", and how the critical decisions they made drove those countries further apart rather than bringing them together.
"In Midnight's Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition", Bloomberg View's Asia editor Nisid Hajari vividly recreates that tragic period through personal stories and eyewitness accounts, and recounts the complex relationships among Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Lord Mountbatten.
He feels the mistakes were twofold.
"On a political level, Congress leaders such as Nehru and Gandhi missed several opportunities for potential compromises that might well have prevented Partition.

"Their obsession with the specific wording of particular agreements, and their mistrust of the British as well as Jinnah, I think blinded them to the need for Congress - as the far more powerful party - to be more generous in addressing the legitimate fears of minorities," Hajari told PTI.
"Secondly, the personal mistrust and mutual loathing that marked the relationship between Nehru and Jinnah encouraged a zero-sum contest in which each sought to undermine the other, thereby fuelling a new round of suspicions and resentments."

According to the author, both men vastly overestimated their sway over their followers and underestimated the latter's capacity for violence.

"They misjudged the impact of their political rhetoric, which might have sounded grand and persuasive at a political rally or in a courtroom, but which spurred ugly emotions at the grassroots level," he says.
The author says one must fault them for stirring up powerful forces they could not control - a caution to demagogues today who believe they can manipulate the passions of citizens for political gain.
Asked in what way his book, published by Penguin Books India, is different from the several other works on Partition, he says, "I wanted to look at how leaders on both sides of the border mishandled the chaotic birth of their nations, and how the critical decisions they made in the months just before and just after independence drove those countries further apart rather than bringing them together.

"I don't think there was anything inevitable about the bitterness that mars the relationship between India and Pakistan - its seeds were planted, even if unwittingly, by their founding fathers.