TY - BOOK AU - Narendra Singh Sarila AU - SARILA (Narendra Singh) TI - Shadow of the Great Game:The Untold Story of India's Partition SN - 8172235690 U1 - 954.035 23 PY - 2005/// CY - New Delhi PB - Harpercollins KW - Islam and politics -- India -- History KW - India -- History -- Partition 1947 KW - Great Britain -- Foreign relations -- India KW - Great Britain -- Foreign relations -- 1945-1964 N2 - A saga of power and passion and betrayals revealing the true motives of the British at the time of partition and how Indian leaders were outmanoeuvred by them Historians and political analysts have not paid enough attention to the crucial link between India’s partition and British fears about the USSR gaining control of the oil wells of the Middle East – the wells of power. Once the British leaders realized that the Indian nationalists would not join them to play the Great Game against the Soviet Union, they settled for those willing to do so. In the process, they did not hesitate to use Islam as a political tool to fulfil their objectives. How this operation was conceived and carried out, behind a thick smoke screen, forms the theme of this untold story of India’s partition. The top-secret documentary evidence unearthed by the author throws new light on several prominent figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Lord Louis Mountbatten, Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, Lord Archibald Wavell, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose, Sardar Patel and the two Menons (V.P. and Krishna). The contents also bring out little known facts about the unobtrusive pressure that the USA exerted on Britain in favour of India’s independence – as well as unity – in the hope of evolving a new post-colonial world order. The author also traces the roots of the present Kashmir imbroglio and how the matter was dealt with in the UN. This timely volume sends out a cautionary signal to present-day Indians: to avoid misplaced idealism, superciliousness and escapism, to which some of their ancestors fell prey ER -