Richard Walker

Hope for one of the most turbulent, traumatised regions in the world

Can the conflicts in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh ever stop? In Midnight's Descendants, John Keay suggests they can — and the answer lies in India

Lord Mountbatten discloses Britain's partition plan for India Photo: Getty 
issue 25 January 2014

John Keay’s excellent new book on the modern history of South Asia plunges the reader head first into some wildly swirling currents. Here are India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, not to mention Sri Lanka and Nepal, and a supporting cast of mini-states present and past that you may not even have heard of, all tumbling, overlapping, in a state of perpetual contradiction and collision, flowing like a tide of crazed tsunami debris down some great tropical floodplain.

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