Gandhi and Indian Unity around Independence

Pages:256-257
Rajni Kumari (Research Scholar, M.D.University, Rohtak, Haryana)

This work examines Gandhi’s political progress during the last four years of his life in which he saw the end of British rule in India and, the emergence of the sovereign states of India and Pakistan. It provides an account of how and why the independence of India was accompanied by partition. In the period from 1944 to 1948, Britain ended its rule over India. The British progressively divested themselves of the power and impediment of Empire, by degrees, delivering the reins of government to Indian hands. But independence in India was accompanied by a parallel development: the partition of the east while imperium into two sovereign states – India and Pakistan. For most Indian nationalists the achievement of independence was flawed by this division of the subcontinent.