If British India had not been partitioned in 1947, its population would today be comfortably the world’s largest. At c1.5 billion, Midnight’s Descendants (the offspring of those affected by ‘the midnight hour’ Partition) already outnumber Europeans and Chinese; and they are growing faster than either. By 2020 they will constitute a quarter of the world’s entire population. As well as comprising the peoples of what is now called ‘South Asia’ (the preferred term for the partitioned subcontinent of modern India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, plus Nepal and Sri Lanka) they are widely established across the globe.Midnight’s Descendants is the first general history ever published to treat the region as a whole. Correlating and contrasting the fortunes of all the constituent nations over the last six decades affords unique insights into the tensions and conflicts that divide what is being hailed as one of the world’s most dynamic regions.Written by a widely respected expert on the region, the book will be the first account to incorporate the rich story of South Asia’s transnational, or ‘diasporic’, peoples. It will examine attitudes towards their homeland of the 22 million overseas South Asians, and will assess their contributions to the self-image of the parent states, to economic survival in the case of Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and to India’s globalised achievement.Like Midnight’s Children, Midnight’s Descendants will be expansive and tumultuous in the great tradition of India’s narrative epics.
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John Keay. Midnight’s Descendants: South Asia from Partition to the Present Day
Copyright
Illustrations
Maps and Charts
Author’s Note
Introduction
1. Casting the Die
2. Counting the Cost
3. Who Has Not Heard of the Vale of Cashmere?
4. Past Conditional
5. Reality Check
6. Power to the People
7. An Ill-Starred Conjunction
8. Two-Way Tickets, Double Standards
9. Things Fall Apart
10. Outside the Gates
11. India Astir
Epilogue
Postscript
Picture Section
Notes. Introduction
Chapter 1 – Casting the Die
Chapter 2 – Counting the Cost
Chapter 3 – Who Has Not Heard of the Vale of Cashmere?
Chapter 4 – Past Conditional
Chapter 5 – Reality Check
Chapter 6 – Power to the People
Chapter 7 – An Ill-Starred Conjunction
Chapter 8 –Two-Way Tickets, Double Standards
Chapter 9 – Things Fall Apart
Chapter 10 – Outside the Gates
Chapter 11 – India Astir
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
By the same author
About the Publisher
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In Memory of Julia Keay
Title Page
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In 1947 the majority of refugees headed for the nearest of the new borders. If they made it to the other side – a big ‘if’ in the Punjab – they settled down among their co-religionists in India or Pakistan. Some were allocated land that had been vacated by refugees moving in the opposite direction; others swelled the populations of the cities and thereby transformed the parent state’s demography. Karachi, the interim capital of Pakistan, attracted so many displaced Muslims from India that these muhajirs soon outnumbered the city’s native Sindhis. Delhi, if judged by its taxi-drivers, became a city of Sikhs, mostly refugees from Lahore; Lahore became a city of Muslims with scarcely a beturbanned Sikh to be seen; and Calcutta lost its public spaces when parks, gardens, railway stations and even cricket pitches were turned into makeshift dormitories by the displaced from all over eastern Bengal.
A few migrants quickly changed their minds and went back, some doing so several times. Others had their minds changed for them. When in 1971 East Pakistan became Bangladesh, refugees from India who had been welcomed into East Pakistan as Muslims in 1947 found themselves interned as non-Bengalis in a now proudly Bengali Bangladesh. Perhaps 100,000 of these so-called ‘Biharis’ are still there, eking out a pitiful existence in Bangladesh’s refugee camps; others have been shunted across India to Pakistan; and a lucky few have since obtained visas to reside overseas.
