Indian Summer Quotes

“IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WERE TWO NATIONS. ONE WAS A vast, mighty and magnificent empire, brilliantly organized and culturally unified, which dominated a massive swathe of the earth. The other was an undeveloped, semi-feudal realm, riven by religious factionalism and barely able to feed its illiterate, diseased and stinking masses. The first nation was India. The second was England.”
― Alex von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire

“In Stalin’s famous words, one death is a tragedy; one million deaths is a statistic. In this case, it is not even a particularly good statistic. The very incomprehensibility of what a million horrible and violent deaths might mean, and the impossibility of producing an appropriate response, is perhaps the reason that the events following partition have yielded such a great and moving body of fictional literature and such an inadequate and flimsy factual history. What does it matter to the readers of history today whether there were 200,000 deaths, or 1 million, or 2 million? On that scale, is it possible to feel proportional revulsion, to be five times more upset at 1 million deaths than at 200,000? Few can grasp the awfulness of how it might feel to have their fathers barricaded in their houses and burnt alive, their mothers beaten and thrown off speeding trains, their daughters torn away, raped and branded, their sons held down in full view, screaming and pleading, while a mob armed with rough knives hacked off their hands and feet. All these things happened, and many more like them; not just once, but perhaps a million times. It is not possible to feel sufficient emotion to appreciate this monstrous savagery and suffering. That is the true horror of the events in the Punjab in 1947: one of the vilest episodes in the whole of history, a devastating illustration of the worst excesses to which human beings can succumb. The death toll is just a number.”
― Alex von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire

“Whatever may be said about Mountbatten’s tactics or the machinations of Patel, their achievement remains remarkable. Between them, and in less than a year, it may be argued that these two men achieved a larger India, more closely integrated, than had 90 years of the British raj, 180 years of the Mughal Empire, or 130 years of Asoka and the Maurya rulers.”
― Alex von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire

“It was constantly suggested that the high point of female heroism was to commit suicide rather than face the ‘dishonour’ of rape, as if the shame and guilt for the crime would fall on the victim rather than on the perpetrator.”
― Alex von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire

“Hundreds of bodies, riddled with German bullets, were washed out to sea by the gentle swell of the waves.”
― Alex von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire

“The use of rape as a weapon of war was conscious and emphatic. On every side, proud tales were told of the degradation of enemy women.”
― Alex von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire

“Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had made unequivocal his opinion: ‘I would rather have every village in India go up in flames than keep a single British soldier in India a moment longer than necessary.”
― Alex von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire

“India’s population could not be divided into neat boxes labelled by religion and cross-referenced with social position. India was an amorphous mass of different cultures, lifestyles, traditions and beliefs.”
― Alex von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire

“If Jinnah is regarded as the father of Pakistan, Churchill must qualify as its uncle; and, therefore, as a pivotal figure in the resurgence of political Islam.”
― Alex von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire