Getting Out : The First Rule of Holes

SCHOLARLY WRITING explains British withdrawal from India in terms of a crisis of the colonial state precipitated by Britain's expansive involvement in the Second World War and the sustained anticolonial struggle of Indians led by leaders such as Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Fearful of burgeoning Russian influence in the area between Turkey and India, and worrying that the Indian National Congress might be susceptible to such influence, Britain felt that a concessive stance toward the demand for a separate state of Pakistan would better protect British interests in the subcontinent. True, Congress leaders knew of the existence of private armies of political parties, hell-bent on creating unrest through planned and systematic onslaught