Book Recommendation: Shadow of the Great Game

As a kid, I was fascinated by the section on Indus Valley Civilization in my history book at school. To imagine an ancient India where the cities were laid out in a Manhattan-like grid, with an upper and a lower city, an advanced drainage system, and ports from where traders traveled as far as ancient Sumeria or Egypt. It's just a captivating part of our country's ancient history. I let my imagination run far with some help from the pictures of Mohenjo-daro, Harappa or Dholavira but I'm unable to relate to these ancient ancestors that traversed the same land where I was born thousands of millennia later.

Seal from Indus Valley Civilization

Living Modern History

And then I have the modern history of India when the entire concept of India was formed from scratch. It was in the time of Dadabhai Naoroji, Gopal Krishna Gokhale,  Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Motilal Nehru, Mahatama Gandhi and other leaders of modern India spent decades of their lives to build the country where I live. This is the part of history that was presented to us in mere captions in the history books I read during my school years. What really happened in the 19th and first half of the 20th century that unchained the shackles of colonialism whether by Mughals or by Britishers later.

Mahatama Gandhi

We proudly used words like democracy, secular, liberal, etc. in the modern context but unless you delve into the historical events that shaped modern India you'll never realize the importance of freedom we celebrate every year. I don't remember much of the history I read during my school years as it never helped to form a timeline in my head. At best it was a collection of scattered events with no background on the significance of each event in shaping India and even the world we live in the current times.

The Book - Shadow of the Great Game

Shadow of the Great Game

With these gaps in historical knowledge and an equal amount of curiosity in understanding the history of my own country, I turned to the book 'The Shadow of the Great Game (The Untold Story of India's Partition)' by Narendra Singh Sarila. A few words about the author first, Narendra Singh was heir to the tiny princedom of Sarila in central India and later became the aide-de-camp to Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy of India i.e. last of the representative of British Monarchs who had absolute powers over affairs in India as well as the first governor-general of Independent India. 

Narendra Singh witnessed history as Lord Mountbatten worked with Indian nationalists to not only achieve Purna Swaraj but also help accede over 500 princely states to form the modern Indian map. He saw the internal dynamics of the process that partitioned India into India and Pakistan. An event that was disordered at best and driven by the British view of their future strategic interest than by any other influencing factor. This book is the story of the agreement to partition India that was announced on 3rd June 1947 but decades of associated events filled prejudices, hidden agendas, betrayals and violence that culminated in two countries that continue to have discord on the unsolved issues from those time. 

The Great Game - Partition of India was about Oil! And 'Divide and Rule' was all Business.

Special Refuge Train in Ambala

Britain during those years was the dying superpower that was slowly and unwantedly handing that mantle to the US, the undoubted leader of the Western world in the fight against the Axis Powers. Britain had realized that the US will support India's freedom from colonialism and in fact, recognized the Indian aspirations for full freedom after Congress voted for it in 1930. The Allied Powers, including Britain and the US, had already begun to entangle with the growing influence of the former USSR. And Britain had earmarked northwest of India 'abutting Afghanistan and Iran' as the next battleground for the fight against communism. The book quotes Ernest Bevin, the British foreign secretary, stating 'the division of India would help to consolidate Britain in the Middle East'. 

And some of the quotes from the book opened my eyes about the geopolitics of those times:

• The three Afghan wars of 1839–42, 1878–80 and 1919 were to ensure 'India's western approached from slipping under Russian influence'. 
• It's also interesting to read how the end of the First World War help Britain 'carve out the states of Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Jordan from the remnants of the now-defeated Ottoman Empire'. 
• And equally interesting to know the intentions of the British to carve out a territory from northwest India to protects the 'big oil fields of Mesopotamia and Persia'. 'British interest in souther Persia was centered around oil', Ardershir Zahedi, son-in-law of the foreign minister of Iran in 1920s. 
• On the day Germany surrendered, Prime Minister Churchill ' ordered an appraisal of the long-term policy required to safeguard the strategic interests of the British Empire in Inda and the Indian Ocean'!
• The aforementioned report talked about detaching Baluchistan from India and every subsequent report talked about the special importance of northwest India
• The book also states that the British intended to use their "link" with Pakistan as a stabilizing effect on India as a whole i.e. an attack by Hindustan on Pakistan would involve Hindustan in war, not with Pakistan alone, but also with the British Commonwealth. 
• And it believed that maintain relations between the tribes and Pakistan would be easier than they could be with a united India. 

The book also takes you through Jinnah's political struggle and eventually his idea of Pakistan. And ponders on the question 'how could the Jinnah's scheme of Two Nation Theory be justified when nearly 25 to 30 million Muslims would be left out of the Islamic state of Pakistan?' 

And how the Kashmir imbroglio was mainly driven by British belief that if India acquired Gilgit it would not permit any anti-Soviet moves to be made from there. And on the other hand, Jinnah had already agreed to cooperate with Britain on matters of defense! 

Kashmir, Jammu & Ladakh

It startled me that two British Officers of the Gilgit Scouts, William Alexander Brown and A.S. Mathieson swore to serve the Maharaj of J&K but continued to coordinate with Peshawar in Pakistan! Fast forward a few decades and you can see that this misplaced sense of loyalty is the reason that this region is still troubled with violence. And how Britain used this to enforce the now so-called line of control. And the Pakistani tribal invasion of Kashmir, Jammu & Ladakh, which under the guise of liberating Muslims tried to annex a Buddhist majority Ladakh as well!  

Overall this book gives an interesting viewpoint on the underlying game that was played to divide India into two countries. A must-read for any history enthusiast.