Foreword by Lucy Chester
Acknowledgements

Introduction: Connecting the partitions of India and Palestine: institutions, policies, laws and people – Victor Kattan and Amit Ranjan

Part I The partition of British India
1 The Mountbatten Viceroyalty reconsidered: personality, prestige and strategic vision in the partition of India – Ian Talbot
2 The paradigmatic partition? The Pakistan demand revisited – Ayesha Jalal

Part II The partition of Palestine
3 Partition and the question of international governance: the 1947 United Nations Special Committee on Palestine – Laura Robson
4 Fighting for Palestine as a holy duty? The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and the partition of Palestine in 1947 – Mohamed-Ali Adraoui

Part III The partitions of India and Palestine compared
5 The communal question and partition in British India and mandate Palestine – Amrita Shodhan
6 India’s dilemmas of pragmatism v. principles: Nehru’s preference for a partitioned India but a federal Palestine – P. R. Kumaraswamy

Part IV The consequences of partition for South Asia, the Middle East and beyond
7 The partitions of India and Palestine and the dawn of majority rule in Africa and Asia – Victor Kattan
8 ‘Unfinished’ partition: territorial disputes, unequal citizens and the rise of majoritarian nationalism in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – Amit Ranjan
9 Civil war, total war or a war of partition? Reassessing the 1948 war in Palestine from a global perspective – Arie M. Dubnov
10 Partitioned identities? Regional, caste and national identity in Pakistan – Iqbal Singh Sevea

Afterword: Partition as imperial inheritance – Penny Sinanoglou

'This fascinating collection offers systematic analysis of partition in India and Palestine as processes connected through supranational politics, international law, and transnational networks. Thought provoking, often harrowing and always original, the essays collected here make essential reading for anyone interested in where partitions fit within global decolonisation.' Martin Thomas, University of Exeter

'This is an original book on the momentous years of 1947 and 1948 in the Indian subcontinent and Palestine. By showing how partition failed to resolve the nationality "problems" it was designed to solve, the multi-scalar analyses demonstrate how the seeds were sown for the illiberal majoritarian democracies in these places today.' A. Dirk Moses, City College of New York

The breakup of India and Palestine is the first study of political and legal thinking about the partitions of India and Palestine in 1947. It explains how these two formative moments collectively contributed to the disintegration of the European colonial empires, and unleashed political forces whose legacies continue to shape the modern politics of the Middle East and South Asia.

With contributions from leading scholars of partition, the volume draws attention to the pathways of peoples, geographic spaces, colonial policies, laws and institutions from the vantage point of those most engaged in the process: political actors, party activists, jurists, diplomats, writers and international representatives from the Middle East, South Asia and beyond. The book investigates some of the underlying causes of partition in both places, such as the hardening of religious fault-lines, majoritarian politics and the failure to construct viable forms of government in deeply divided societies. It analyses why, even 75 years after partition, the two regions have not been able to address some of the pertinent historical, political and social debates of the colonial years.

The volume moves the debate about partition away from the imperial centre, by focusing on ground-level arguments about the future of post-colonial India and Palestine and the still unfolding repercussions of those debates.