Big Ideas Shattered lands — Sam Dalrymple on the five partitions of British India
Mar 12, 2026
Husnara Khanum, poet, writer and researcher who moderates and probes with sharp questions. The conversation traces five partitions from British India to modern borders. They explore hidden archives, hastily drawn lines, princely states’ choices, and how personalities and wartime pressures reshaped nations. Oral histories and declassified files surface forgotten paths and displaced lives.
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Gulf States Were Once Linked To Bombay
- Large parts of the Gulf were administered from Bombay and effectively provinces of the Raj before oil transformed them.
- British decisions in the 1920s to detach the Gulf and India’s refusal to govern the Gulf predated the oil boom that later made them wealthy.
Maps Hid Colonial Administrative Realities
- The British often kept sensitive territorial links off public maps to avoid offending the Ottomans, hiding administrative ties to places like Qatar and Aden.
- Recent archival projects (Qatar Digital Library) revealed Bombay-held records that reframe Gulf history.
Archives And Oral Memory Shape What We Know
- Declassification windows (often ~50 years) and surviving eyewitnesses shape historical knowledge; many crucial letters remain sealed.
- Some key correspondence, e.g., Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten letters, remain restricted despite known locations.
