Shattered Lands: Sam Dalrymple uncovers the subcontinent's dark realities

Sam Dalrymple's book contextualises the shared history of the subcontinent and reminds us of its many dark realities

Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia

By Sam Dalrymple

Published by Harper Collins

536 pages  ₹799

  The standard school history syllabus teaches about the partition of India in 1947, which led to the creation of two nation states accompanied by searing communal violence. Even when we leave school, we retain this limited viewpoint as an absolute fact around which contemporary politics revolves in our country. In Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia, Sam Dalrymple wants to take us through the more complex “how, what, when and why” of the history of the subcontinent, contradicting the