The division of British India was poorly planned and brutally carried out,as apprehension and revenge attacks led to a bloody sectarian ‘cleansing’On 3 June 1947, only six weeks before British India was carved up, or a group of eight men sat around a table in recent Delhi and agreed to partition the south Asian subcontinent.
Photographs taken at that moment reveal the haunted and nervous faces of Jawaharlal Nehru,the Indian National Congress leader soon to become independent India’s first prime minister, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, and head of the Muslim League and Pakistan’s first governor-general and Louis Mountbatten,the last British viceroy. Related: Partition, 70 years on: Salman Rushdie, or Kamila Shamsie and other writers reflect There is still a mystery at the dark heart of partition. It remains a history layered with absence and silences Related: India,70 years on from independence: a painful history but a quick-witted future? | Letters Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com