Forgotten partitions that remade S Asia

THE EARLY IDEA OF PAKISTAN WAS QUITE DIFFERENT FROM THE IDEA OF PAKISTAN THAT WOULD EMERGE AFTER INDEPENDENCE, SAID DALRYMPLE

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As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia - India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait - were bound together under a single imperial banner, an entity known officially as the "Indian Empire", or more simply as the British Raj. And then, in just 50 years, the Indian Empire shattered. Five partitions tore it apart, carving out new nations, redrawing maps, and leaving behind a legacy of war, exile and division.

A new book by the author Sam Dalrymple, Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia, presents the unknown back story of how the Indian Empire was unmade. Dalrymple spoke about his new book on last week's episode of Grand Tamasha, a weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy co-produced by HT and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.