num_pages: 304
description: Nobody expected the liberation of India and birth of Pakistan to be so bloody  it was supposed to be an answer to the dreams of Muslims and Hindus who had been ruled by the British for centuries. Jawaharlal Nehru Gandhis protg and the political leader of India believed Indians were an inherently nonviolent peaceful people. Pakistans founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah was a secular lawyer not a firebrand. But in August 1946 exactly a year before Independence Calcutta erupted in riots. A cycle of street-fighting  targeting Hindus then Muslims then Sikhs  spun out of control. As the summer of 1947 approached all three groups were heavily armed and on edge and the British rushed to leave. Hell let loose. Trains carried Muslims west and Hindus east to their slaughter. Some of the most brutal and widespread ethnic cleansing in modern history erupted on both sides of the new border searing a divide between India and Pakistan that remains a root cause of many evils. From jihadi terrorism to nuclear proliferation the searing tale told in Midnights Furies explains all too many of the headlines we read today.
language: English
title: Midnight's Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition
publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt