2008-08-10 Gripping and excellent "Indian Summer"

I purchased this book and decided to read it on my regular flight to India.It is a very well written book and brings Lord Mountbatten to view in a real sort of way. It clearly shows what a mediocre bungling man Mountbatten really was....and maybe he and Jinnah should shoulder the deaths of the poor millions who died in the Partition riots...Freedom at Midnight by Larry Collins and Dominque Lapierre is something which I still read again and again but this book by Miss Tunzelman brings out so much in historical details which we never knew easily before. The narrative on Kashmir is excellent. (see Mr Santhanakrishnan's review) Its fascinating to know that Britain had cooly sold Kashmir for over a million pounds to Maharaja Singh, an Indian given that Britain did not own India in the first place! Perhaps in times to come ordinary down-to-earth Indians and Pakistanis may one day hopefully realise that they are two parts of one country with a similar culture and ethnicity which was divided by an alien power (in particular Churchill)with the singular intention of keeping instability in the region. Maybe then, they would throw their borders open and live in peace and happiness helping the the poor millions with moneys which are being wasted on firearms. In various parts of the world (Ireland, Middle East!!) where strife and wars occur between neighbouring countries one can always see the scheming colonial hand of the Great Britain that it was.