An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

by Shashi Tharoor

QUITTING INDIA, CREATING PAKISTAN In that last mad headlong rush to freedom and partition, the British emerge with little credit. Before the war they had no intention of devolving power so rapidly, or at all. The experience of the elected governments in the last years of the British Raj confirmed that the British had never been serious about their proclaimed project of promoting the responsible governance of India by Indians. When the Congress ministries quit, the British thought little of appointing unelected Muslim Leaguers in their place and in many cases assuming direct control of functions that had supposedly been devolved to Indians. The British, who had been dismayed by the League’s inability to win a majority of Muslim seats anywhere, thereby undermining the strength of divide et impera, welcomed the opportunity to assume the power they had partly ceded, and to shore up the League as the principal alternative to the Indian National Congress in the process. They openly helped the Muslim League take advantage of this unexpected opportunity to exercise influence and patronage that their electoral support had not earned them, and to build up support while their principal opponents languished in jail.