Nehru: The Invention of India

by Shashi Tharoor

The distinction between heart and head was poignant, and telling. On 3 June, Jawaharlal, Jinnah, and the Sikh leader Baldev Singh broadcast news of their acceptance of Partition to the country. The occasion again brought out the best in Jawaharlal: We are little men serving a great cause, but because that cause is great something of that greatness falls upon us also. Mighty forces are at work in the world today and in India . . . . [It is my hope] that in this way we shall reach that united India sooner than otherwise and that she will have a stronger and more secure foundation . . . . The India of geography, of history and tradition, the India of our minds and hearts, cannot change. But of course it could change: geography was to be hacked, history misread, tradition denied, minds and hearts torn apart. Jawaharlal imagined that the rioting and violence that had racked the country over the League’s demand for Pakistan would die down once that demand had been granted, but he was wrong. The killing and mass displacement worsened as people sought frantically to be on the ‘right’ side of the lines the British were to draw across their homeland. Over a million people died in the savagery that bookended the freedom of India and Pakistan; some seventeen million were displaced, and countless properties destroyed and looted. Lines meant lives. What Jawaharlal had thought of as a temporary secession of certain parts of India hardened into the creation of two separate and hostile sta...