What is Reddit's opinion of Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Certainly the Pakistanis started as secularists. I mean, Jinnah enjoyed drinking wine, styled himself as a proper gentleman, while his counterpart in India, Abul Kalam Azad was a pious theologian that opposed partition. In fact, the Deobandi movement and the Jamaat e-Islami staunchly opposed partition. However, when it happened, they split largely on geographical location, though there were some who left India and went to Pakistan.

You hear lots of confusing and almost bipolar views from the founders of Pakistan. Jinnah was quoted as saying that he hopes India and Pakistan find a way to unite once again. Muhammad Iqbal in his writings jumped back and forth from purporting this idea of Pakistani/Indian-Muslim nationalism to Indian nationalism and so forth.

Bacha Khan (Khan Ghafur Khan) was one of Gandhi's close confidants. He moved to Pakistan despite opposing partition. In fact, he opposed the Durand line separating Pakistan and Afghanistan. His ideal of India was one ranging from Afghanistan all the way to Bengal (Bangladesh) and Tamil Nadu (imagine an India like that).

I think the Muslim League leaders were a combination pragmatic, greedy, idealistic, and genuinely concerned for Muslims of India. I mean we're all human and we all have different qualities about ourselves, sometimes in conflict with each other. I think they knew Muslims would be marginalized and that there would be widespread conflict in India. They were greedy because a Pakistan assured Islamic leadership, more specifically, power for them whereas they would have been brushed aside in Hindu majority India. Genuinely concerned because India most likely would have delved into a far bloodier civil war than what we saw during partition.

The British played the divide the different religious communities game and the Independent movement leaders knew this, but they were powerless against the masses. They could have resolved these issues among themselves, but could 400-500 million Indians do the same? They thought not, and that's where the ML pushed for Pakistan with British support. Interestingly enough, despite the British being pro-partition, they were more pro-India than they were pro-Pakistan.

>Could you source me on this? It's not that I doubt you necessarily, it's just a very interesting read that I'm not terribly familiar with. Partition history is something that gets rewritten and fudged time and time again; I've heard Sikhs say that Gandhi was responsible for the Partition of Punjab when it was in fact the Sikhs that directly pushed for that action.

I guess I was speaking more generally than the partition of Punjab. The story of partition is incredibly murky and there are all sorts of stories from Gandhi being blatantly anti-Pakistan to pro-partition to Gandhi pleading for Indian unity.

As far as the partition of Punjab is concerned, I agree. It was more the Sikh leadership than Gandhi.

>I would say that the marginalization of religious minorities doesn't exist in getting leadership positions so much as how they are characterized and caricatured within the state. For example, Punjabis and Kashmiris who had legitimate concerns regarding their regional rights were painted as hardcore anti-Hindu Khalistani and Islamicist fanatics. There is an expectation for minorities in India to act a certain way; which is why faux-secular parties like Congress appointed Sikhs, but only that fit to a certain narrative of what India and Indians should be like and how Sikhs fit into that role.

I think you nailed it here. I think the situation of minority groups, Muslims (more specifically Kashmiri Muslims) and Sikhs is akin to what we see in the US. The majority recognizes that there maybe issues with minority groups, but that's because its the minorities and their culture mostly and not the majority.

This was a pretty intriguing book by the way:

http://www.amazon.com/Indian-Summer-Secret-History-Empire-ebook/dp/B008KP35TU/ref=sr_1_39?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1423368227&sr=1-39