Experience in North-West India(Oxford University Press, 1996); Shila
Sen, Muslim Politics in Bengal, 1937–47(Impex India, 1976). Sulagna Roy,
‘Communal Conflict in Bengal, 1930–1947’, unpublished PhD dissertation
(University of Cambridge, 1999), combines archival material and interviews
to problematise the connections usually claimed between elite and popular
politics. See also the essays in Mushirul Hasan (ed.), Inventing Boundaries:
Gender, Politics and the Partition of India(Oxford University Press, 2000).
The work of R.J. Moore is useful on British imperial policy in the last
years of empire: see his Churchill, Cripps and India 1939–1945(Clarendon
Press, 1979); Escape from Empire(Clarendon Press, 1983); Endgames of
Empire(Oxford University Press, 1988). On the Cripps-Nehru relationship,
crucial to transfer of power negotiations, told from Cripps’ point of view, see
the relevant sections of Peter Clarke, The Cripps Version: the Life of Sir Stafford
Cripps 1889–1952(Allen Lane, 2002). (No nuanced understanding of Indian
politics should be expected from this book.) See also Ian Copland, The
Princes of India in the Endgame of Empire 1917–1947(Cambridge University
Press, 1997).
Some useful work on the transition from colonial rule to independence
is now available. On the end of empire and the beginning of the Cold
War, an overview of the imperial context is available in P.J. Cain and A.G.
Hopkins, British Imperialism: Crisis and Deconstruction 1914–1990(Longman,
1993). On Indo-British relations, the Cold War and US and British concerns
regarding regional politics in South and South-East Asia, see R.J. Moore,
Making the New Commonwealth(Clarendon Press, 1987); Anita Inder Singh,
The Limits of British Influence: South Asia and the Anglo-American Relationship
1947–56(Pinter Publishers, 1993); Philip Joseph Charrier, ‘Britain, India and
the Genesis of the Colombo Plan, 1945–1951’, unpublished PhD dissertation
(University of Cambridge, 1995).
On Kashmir, accounts of 1947–8 can be found in H.V. Hodson, The Great
Divide, R.J. Moore, Making the New Commonwealthand, more recently,
C. Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy in Kashmir, 1947–48(Sage, 2002). There is
much material on Kashmir in general and on later events: a useful short
account, arguing that Kashmir’s autonomy within the Indian Union should
have been respected and ought to be restored, can be found in Balraj Puri,
Kashmir: Towards Insurgency(Sangam, 1993); and in a comparative and
historical framework, although addressing current concerns, Suranjan Das,
Kashmir and Sindh: Nation-Building, Ethnicity and Regional Politics in South
Asia(Anthem, 2001).
For the post-independence period, not nearly enough historical research
has been done, largely because of the problems of availability of archival
evidence. Nehru’s analyses and commentaries on Indian affairs in his
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