Another tragic partition

Book review of 'Durand's Curse: A Line Across The Pathan Heart'

DURAND’s CURSE 

A Line Across The Pathan Heart

Rajiv Dogra

Rupa Publications

256 pages; Rs 595

In a media interview following the publication of Durand’s Curse, former Foreign Service officer Rajiv Dogra confessed that he was not a trained historian and needed, in the course of his research, to put in “back-breaking work of 15 to 16 hours a day for months together.” However, he appears to have taken a few shortcuts as well. A number of paragraphs in the book’s 13th chapter (“A Troublesome Ally”) are identical to parts of an article titled “Mortimer Durand: The Man who Drew