Najam OpEd Looks Back at Mountbatten, Partition
Adil Najam, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published a recent Op-Ed examining the flawed partition process that led to the birth of Pakistan and the independence of India in August 1947. Najam specifically focuses on the role Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of British India, played in the partition process.
Najam’s Op-Ed, entitled “How British Royal’s Monumental Errors Made India’s Partition More Painful,” was published by The Conversation on August 15, 2017.
From the text of the article:
The midnight between August 14 and 15, 1947, was one of history’s truly momentous moments: It marked the birth of Pakistan, an independent India and the beginning of the end of an era of colonialism.
It was hardly a joyous moment: A botched process of partition saw the slaughter of more than a million people; some 15 million were displaced. Untold numbers were maimed, mutilated, dismembered and disfigured. Countless lives were scarred.
Two hundred years of British rule in India ended, as Winston Churchill had feared, in a “shameful flight”; a “premature hurried scuttle” that triggered a most tragic and terrifying carnage.
The bloodbath of partition also left the two nations that were borne out of it – India and Pakistan – deeply scarred by anguish, angst, alienation and animus.
By 1947, the political, social, societal and religious complexities of the Indian subcontinent may have made partition inevitable, but the murderous mayhem that ensued was not.
As a South Asian whose life was affected directly by partition, and as a scholar, it is evident to me that the one man whose job it was, above all else, to avoid the mayhem, ended up inflaming the conditions that made partition the horror it became.
The full text of the Op-Ed can be read here. The article has since been widely republished around the world, including in Quartz, and via the Associated Press in online portals of the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and South Asia Journal.
Adil Najam is the Inaugural Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies and was a former Vice Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan. Najam’s research focuses on issues of global public policy, especially those related to global climate change, South Asia, Muslim countries, environment and development, and human development.