In retrospect, it is striking that Britain’s shameful role in partition has not received harsher scrutiny. Certainly, it was the end point of an empire rooted in violence and sectarianism. British officials had long exploited India’s religious fissures to divide and rule, pitting Muslim against Hindu. Their rule was underwritten by pitiless counter-insurgency campaigns and periodic massacres, such as the shooting of unarmed protesters at Amritsar in 1919 and Peshawar in 1930. But the sheer ineptitude and cynical abandonment of partition – more hit-and-run than divide-and-rule – meant that
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