Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India

by Stanley Wolpert

Book Overview

Britain's precipitous and ill-planned disengagement from India in 1947--condemned as a "shameful flight" by Winston Churchill--had a truly catastrophic effect on South Asia, leaving hundreds of thousands of people dead in its wake and creating a legacy of chaos, hatred, and war that has lasted over half a century.
Ranging from the fall of Singapore in 1942 to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, Shameful Flight provides a vivid behind-the-scenes...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195151984
• ISBN13: 9780195151985
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.22 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.3" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Another example of British thoughtfullness

A very well written history of how the British in their precipitous and thoughtless departure from India caused the death of millions and left us with an artifical and dangerous state! It is clear that Mountbatten was an idiot!

Shameful Indeed!!!

This is such a disturbing book because it throws light on the personalities involved, and what a bunch of utterly selfish, egotistical incompetent, racists/casteists buffoons, all of them, Dickie, Bapu, Chahcha, Sardar and Quaid-i-azam. These people should have been hanged instead they have these endearing names and titles. There are people who are still looking for family members, and still trying to build roots in USA, UK etc. Not to mention that Punjab lost its culture, language, history and economic strength. It has become so easy to throw numbers 12 million migrated 1 to 2 million killed....Anyway this book should be in High Schools, it is an easy read but with enough details and references. A must read for Sikhs as they are the biggest losers, we lost Lahore, Guru Nanaks birth place in fact Sikhi's birth place, our history since Urdu and Persian were the first to be banned in secular India. The biggest victory for that Pundit was that he greased Dickie enough and kept the name "India" thereby extending the History of present India from 50 years to Ancient Times. Pakistan where most of India's Ancient history occured and got the name (INDUS) got zilch, good job Mr. Jinnah.

Easy to read

Previous knowledge of the history of the region is helpful to better appreciate this book. Even if you don't have extensive knowledge surrounding India's independence, the book is still a startling reminder of how a "cut and run" policy can have disastrous consequences. Most of the major players in the book, whether British, Indian, or Pakistani come out looking unimpressive, so I don't really see there being a question of author bias. I highly recommend this book in view of the current events in Iraq as there are some striking parallels.

Comprehensive for the time-period yet uni-dimensional

This book can be summed up as a comprehensive compendium of events that took place before the partition of the Indian sub-continent. As someone from India, I really appreciated the research of the author in bringing these facts to light. History lessons in school are almost always over-simplified and it is only through books like this that we see the leaders in flesh and blood. After finishing this book, I have gained a renewed sense of how inevitable partition of the sub-continent was - the fissures between the 2 major communities, accentuated by 900 years of warfare, were too deep to be puttied over. It was also disheartening to read how divisive the so-called 'great leaders' were - a recurring feature of Indian politics is the lack of collective discipline and it was no different at the time of partition. As another reviewer remarked, this book is solely written from a British perspective and so it is definitely not multi-dimensional. This maybe a short book, but the style is terse and academic, and the text is heavy with references. There are also no lurid details of the massacres or any detailed anecdotes (like in 'Freedom at Midnight') and because of the absence of personal stories, this book would appeal more to the history student than to the general public.

An incompetent colonial rule's inept exit

The book is outstanding for many reasons: It is written in an easy style that would force you to read it one go, quite rarely seen in books covering history. Yet the book has sufficient background research that can only be expected from UCLA's professor of history. It has a balanced presentation of facts by a scholar far removed by geography and time from the events. Stanley Wolpert provides some interesting insights: British rule of India is a tale of incompetence: In 1943, India produced 50 million tons of food grains - enough to feed its population of 400 million. Yet 1.5 million people died of starvation in Bengal that year primarily due to mismanagement. Bengal's governor Herbert and Viceroy Lord Wavell pleaded for food grains to be sent to Bengal. Britain's war transport minister Baron Frederick James Leathers kept 6 million tons stored in ships in Indian Ocean unused. Wavell's report to London says "the famine in Bengal was largely due to ministerial incompetence". The incompetence was acknowledged in London as well. Churchill's Secretary of State for India Leopold Amery confesses in a private letter to the Viceroy Linlithgow "nothing has convinced me more than the Cabinet meetings.... of the fundamental incapacity of a British cabinet to try and govern India". Viceroy Wavell condemns Churchill four years later after sitting in one cabinet meeting: "He hates India and everything to do with it. Winston knows as much of the Indian problem as George III did of the American colonies!" British rule of India is a tale of political insensitivity. The best example of this insensitivity is Winston Churchill's peevish telegram to his Viceroy asking "why Gandhi has not died yet?" after releasing the Mahatma from prison because of medical conditions. Not a class-act in international politics. Partition could have been avoided with greater wisdom in Indian/British leadership. In 1937 provincial elections the Congress won clear majority in six of the eleven provinces. Jinnah's Muslim league failed to win a single province. Jinnah appealed to Nehru to agree to coalition ministries in the multicultural provinces. Nehru refused and retorted that there were only two parties left: "the British and the Congress". Jinnah devoted the next ten years to create Pakistan. If Nehru had pursued an "inclusive style of politics" there would have been no opportunity to "divide and rule". 1946 offered another opportunity to unite. British Secretary of State, Lord Pethick Lawrence advocated a coalition cabinet (made up of Congress and Muslim League) that decides by consensus and not by majority vote. Nehru declined to cede parity to Muslim league and share power. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad sadly reflected in his autobiography that "Jawaharlal's mistake in 1937 had been bad enough. The mistake of 1946 proved even more costly". This resolved Jinnah to insist on partition. Britain played the "divide and rule" card to the long term detriment o