India Be Damned: A Novel of Partition

by Peter Popham

An epic thriller set in India during the last days of the British Raj.
India Be Damned traces the fate of a group of Indians and foreigners who are ripped from their moorings by the first murderous months of independence, their long-held certainties shattered.
Vandana Singh shook a cigarette from her bag, leaned into the candle flame and exhaled a long plume of smoke. "Don't be silly, Fred," she said. "Where does 'silly' come into it?" "Fred dear, you're British. The Raj is dying on its feet." "Why is this a problem?" "You people are in power," she explained gently. "Outrageous though it seems, you've been in power here for centuries. What do you imagine your life here would be like if you weren't?" He furrowed his brow. Of course the British were leaving. Their departure was long overdue. But life - his own charmed life - would go on much as before, wouldn't it?
As the independence deadline approaches, Britain plays a wild card, appointing world-famous war hero Lord Mountbatten the last Viceroy. "Dickie" and his socialist wife Edwina imbue the end of empire with their legendary panache, and for foreign journalists and freedom fighters alike it's a dazzling show. But inscrutably, Mountbatten decides to rush the process to its conclusion - damning India to a baptism of blood.
India Be Damned is a gripping tale of love and paranoia, hope and despair, steeped in the flavours of the subcontinent. Peter Popham's debut novel deftly draws the reader on, ratcheting the tension right up to the shocking conclusion.

456 pages, Paperback

Published October 31, 2023

Reviews

[Jan McGirk · Rating 5 out of 5]

“India Be Damned.” Quite a lurid title. A curse, in fact. But don’t let it put you off. The author, Peter Popham has applied his elegant style to the most damnable of times: The British Crown’s appallingly hasty exit from its Indian empire.
In the bloodshed that ensued during Partition in 1947, when modern India and Pakistan were born, more than one million people were killed and another 20 million turned into refugees. The wounds are still fresh. The two nations, and its peoples, hate –and perhaps love-- each other as only feuding brothers can. Hence the curse.
There are some great books written about the Partition. Salman Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’ and Khushwant Singh’s ‘Train To Pakistan’ come to mind. Do we really need another, written by an Englishman, no less? Yes. We do.
Pophlam has an original take. He opens his novel in the lead-up to the Partition, and through his three main characters –all foreign correpondents—he deftly pulls open the curtain showing how Britain is clumsily pulling the strings to this macabre puppet dance that will doom multitudes to death and misery. Two are Brits: Zachary, ferrety and venal, looking for a scoop on Mahatma’s Gandhi’s sex life; Fred, a dreamy idealist, now the man from The Times, and Joe, a weary American, who, since Hiroshima, has been a chaser of wars and man-made catastrophies.
There are some fine cameos of real people: the outgoing Viceroy Lord Archibald Wavell, citing a poem as he slices vegetables for dal in Fred’s kitchen –much as he is expected to slice and dice up the empire; Dickie Mountbatten giving a tour of his Viceroy’s office, which, in his barmy, boyish enthusiasm, he has converted into a replica of a naval officer’s cabin, complete with brass portholes. Such delightful detail gives Popham’s novel its ring of period authenticity.
Much like his characters, Popham himself was a foreign correspondent in India,although more than half a century later. His perception of India runs deeper, and is far more canny, than that of his three hapless but engaging reporters, and he’s a joy to read. (This review is from my partner, Tim McGirk. I thoroughly agree.)

[Humphrey Hawksley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerfully evocative, veteran foreign correspondent Peter Popham’s India Be Damned takes us through the over hasty last days of British rule in India and that dreadful and harrowing era that followed with the Partition and war with Pakistan. Atmospheric scene setting unfolds alongside tense, edge-of-your-seat narrative told through the eyes of compelling characters -- Fred Niblett, the correspondent of the Times, Vandana Singh, a Delhi aristocrat, and Hilda Flood, long time assistant to Mahatma Gandhi. This superb novel is even more salient because of the new accounts coming to light now of how Britain ran its empire. As Popham writes of the Lord Mountbatten, India’s last viceroy: “He was going to close down the Empire, and hand over the keys and all the money and everything else to India, with a movie star smile and a self-deprecating joke.” That is exactly what happened. Then, Britain washed its hands of India and the slaughter began. India Be Damned is a must-read for anyone interested in historical fiction and Britain’s colonial legacy.

[Simon Prentis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set in the last days of the British Raj, the novel threads itself around a pivotal moment in history – one that unleashed a cultural conflict that killed millions of people, and still resonates today. But it’s a very personal drama for all that. The story unfolds gradually from multiple perspectives; we see India through the eyes of three very different journalists and their professional and romantic partners. It’s a rollicking good read, an engaging tale seasoned with the cynicism of an experienced foreign correspondent from which no one emerges with any glory; not the outgoing British administration, not the politicians who are to replace them, nor any of the protagonists as they diligently seek out their own salvation in whatever way they can. But Popham also brings the journalist’s sharp eye for detail, a telling phrase, and the knack of knowing what makes a good story. A swashbuckling tale of derring-do with a side-order of romance, it sweeps you along with unexpected twists and turns to a conclusion that, while inevitable, still takes you by surprise. Recommended!

[David Blowers · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is set during the last days of the Raj, concluding with the partition of India; centred on fictional characters, but featuring historical ones like Gandhi. It's blurbed as an epic thriller but was far more literary than that sounds, with a lovely turn of phrase. Amongst the action and romance is also a rather Hesse-like story of spirituality and themes of spiritual life vs worldly life. There's a large cast, drawn well, and the whole thing is shot through with realism, since there was obviously a lot of research, but the author also used to live in India, a journalist, like his protagonists. Excellent.

[Eibhlin Tuohig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deeply appreciated this book that revealed the major sufferings of a whole subcontinent damaged by a hasty partition alongside the individual trials of being a foreign journalist in India at that time. We have vignettes about Gandhi and his followers’ disillusionment and the Mountbatten’s grandiosity, as well as feeling touched by the lives of ordinary servants and villagers.

A large cast for a gripping, harrowing tale, interspersed with episodes of high humour and the balm of human love.

[Stephen Vines · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can learn a great deal about the tense years surrounding India's partition from this book but more importantly it is a both a gripping and entertaining read. Highly recommended!