Bikramjit Dey

Anita Inder Singh " s The Partition of India, the book under review, was published more than a decade ago. A reassessment of this thesis after so many years, however, continues to be both timely and necessary since the subject, the partition of India, remains relevant in contemporary Indian politics, mainly for four reasons: firstly, the vast body of partition literature continues to dominate South Asian studies, which includes not only history, but also law and sociology. Secondly, this book places the study of India " s partition in the backdrop of the partitions of other European countries through the twentieth century that makes this study extremely relevant and suitable for review more than a decade after its original publication. Thirdly, the study of South Asian politics affecting and affected by the partition needs to be explained and reviewed freshly to reveal the causes that went into the making of the vivisection. And fourthly, this book continues to be relevant since the partition still haunts the public memory of numerous Indians, quite a few of whom lived in this subcontinent at the time of the vivisection. The relevance of the topic, given the magnitude of the crisis and its aftereffects, does not diminish in merely a decade. This book offers a well crafted explanation of the course of events that eventually led to the division of two of the largest and most densely populated provinces of British India at the time of the India " s independence from British rule in the middle of the twentieth century. Written from the point of view of high politics, this book offers a plausible explanation of the factors that led to the endgame of empire and its final denouement, leading to the creation of India and Pakistan, the two successor states of the British Empire in South Asia. The author reveals not only a detailed but also a nuanced grasp over the development of political events that were responsible for the first partition of the Punjab and the second partition of Bengal in 1947. These two vivisections adversely affected the lives of millions of Indians in the aftermath of the dismantling of an empire, changing the course of the history and politics of South Asia in a way that few other partitioned provinces or regions in the world have had to cope with in the last century.

This paper seeks to address factors that were responsible for the making of the Ganges and Teesta water dispute, a transboundary water dispute between India and Bangladesh, after the start of decolonisation of South Asia. Drawing on both primary and secondary sources, it seeks to explore historical, political and socio-cultural circumstances behind the making of a bitterly contested international water dispute spanning over sixty years. No study of contemporary South Asian law and politics is complete without a critical analysis of the democratic institutions, structures and processes that were involved in the creation and development of one of the most intractable international water crises of the second half of the twentieth century. The roles of the respective governments of these two South Asian neighbours in the manifestation and resolving of this dispute is evaluated in the context of the Indian government's legitimate demand for the use of these two rivers for the successful implementation of its interlinking of rivers project.

This article deals with factors that led to the outbreak of the Great Bengal famine of 1943-44, which claimed more than an estimated sum of three million lives. Dealing with the extensive literature on the causes of the famine, it provides administrative and statistical data on the role of both central and provincial governments in its aggravation. The timely installation of a proper mechanism for prevention of the food crisis could have effectively checked spiraling of prices and hoarding of rice. It demonstrates the government’s inability to provide adequate relief and rehabilitation measures to the victims of starvation during and after the official termination of food scarcity. The establishment of a new procurement system by the government proved abortive, especially due to bureaucratic delays and refusal to acknowledge in the early stages of the famine that there was a serious danger of food shortage in Bengal. Bureaucratic red tapism also took its toll on efforts at conceptualization and implementation of a new rationing policy supposedly drawn up by the policy-makers to cope with the crisis.