281. Partition: Why Was India Split In Two? (Part 4)

Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnand. And me, William De Rumpel. And we are in the midst of our mammoth romp through This rather excellent book by Sam DeRimple, yes, related, not to me, but uh, of the author of Shattered Lands, a story of five partitions. Sam, thank you so much for coming back to us.

So look, the last time we left you in this uh series, we had talked about Direct Action Day in Calcutta, which really was, if you like, a foreshadowing of what would happen and the kind of violence that could be unleashed on a country where Hindus and Muslims had lived together, got along together. for centuries and how quickly that can just flare up into the most unspeakable violence. So we are now going to jump to Britain in 1947 because it's really important to point this out. People often ask this when we have like our Discord chats, did the Empire fall because the British were knackered or the Indians did it.

Yes, it's a big it's a big divide, isn't it? If you go to India, everyone's it's of course the triumphant freedom fighters drove out the wicked perfidious seeds of Albion. But here, the overall opinion in in I'm speaking from London, uh, it it was, you know, sort of post-war exhaustion. We'd just beaten the Nazis uh and couldn't be asked to carry on. That's the kind of view this Well, I mean just just before we bring salmon, I mean let's let's

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