Sunil Khilnani wrote in his book The Idea of India, Partition was ‘the greatest violation of Gandhi’s idea of India as a civilisational unity’ by ‘irrational forces’. Khilnani mentions the ‘larger conceptual enigma of Partition’ and wonders if it should be seen as the ‘division of one territory between two “nations” or peoples? Or the breaking of one civilisation into two territories?’
