Partition, OBOR, and India's Relationship With China: Q&A With Author Nisid Hajari Ahead of Feb 6 Bookworm Talk

Although 70 years have passed since the Partition of India, its reverberations are by no means restricted to that era or that region. In fact, journalist and author Nisid Hajari won the esteemed 2016 Colby Award for his book about that ongoing diplomatic fallout, Midnight's Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition. The Mumbai-born, Seattle-raised author says the ensuing fissure between India and Pakistan poses serious hurdles for China's ascent on the world's stage, just one of the facets that he'll discuss at his Feb 6 Bookworm talk. Ahead of his appearance, Hajari tells us more about working on the award-winning book, his stint at Newsweek with would-be CNN host Fareed Zakaria, and India's changing relationship with China. 

What is one of the biggest ways that the "traumatic history of the India-Pakistan frontier" affects Beijing's One Belt One Road initiative, as a press release for your event describes it?
The Partition of India still casts a shadow over that entire region, through which China is hoping to build a network of roads, pipelines, ports, and power plants. Pakistan's paranoia about India – its fear that its neighbor poses an existential threat – drives all of the country's most destabilizing behaviors: its support for the Taliban, its support for other Islamist militant groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba that seek to bleed India in Kashmir, and the growth of its nuclear arsenal. Some of the militants that Pakistan once supported have turned against the state and potentially threaten Chinese projects and Chinese workers. More broadly, the general chaos and instability bred by the India-Pakistan conflict has to make Chinese policymakers think twice about investing billions of dollars in what could become a potential war zone.

Your book delves into deeply into each of those points and more. What was the most challenging aspect of researching all that turmoil?
The toughest part was dealing with the question, why write another Partition book? What is there left to say? This was a welcome challenge, though, in that it pushed me to dig deeper into the archives and to cast my net wider, to include generals and journalists and diplomats that other Partition books haven't always examined, in the hunt for a clear narrative that would explain not just why the Partition happened, but why it went so terribly wrong – how what could have been a peaceful separation carved out this rift that has not healed to this day. I spent over a year in the archives in New Delhi, London, and Washington DC before I even set pen to paper, trying to find those nuggets that would set the narrative apart.

Tell us more about some of those nuggets that you unveiled.  
There were many, in fact. I'll just mention one: There's long been a debate about why the British left India so quickly – barely two and a half months after making the decision to split the subcontinent. The last Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, liked to say that he'd plucked the date out of thin air at a press conference; conspiracy theorists believe the British rushed on purpose in order to leave India and Pakistan in a weakened state. In fact, it turns out that the British initially planned to hand over to India quickly – because it already had a government largely in place – but not to Pakistan. Of course, no one appears to have asked the Pakistanis what they thought of this idea. After speaking to the British prime minister about it, the US ambassador in London wrote back to his superiors in Washington DC that the Brits didn't seem to have given the slightest thought to the consequences of such a momentous decision.

All that research, among other factors, helped you win the 2016 Colby Award for the book. How did it feel to win that award?
It was a great honor and an even bigger surprise, in a way. The award has gone to some truly great authors in the past, such as Karl Marlantes and Dexter Filkins. And they've all been American writers writing about American wars or the US military. Picking a book about a conflict in India would seem a strange choice, but I think it is a testament to the fact that the repercussions of the Partition – this rivalry I mentioned earlier – are now recognized as posing a clear threat to US security and America's efforts to resolve the war in Afghanistan. Indeed, one of the judges told me later that it was the first unanimous, first-ballot selection they'd ever had.

Before your success as an author, you cut your teeth as an editor, working under would be CNN host Fareed Zakaria when you were both at Newsweek. What was that experience like?
This too was an honor – and a pleasure. Fareed, as any viewer of his CNN show will recognize, is one of the most original foreign policy thinkers in the world. He's someone with an unpredictable mind, who develops positions based not on ideology but on facts and data, and who has a virtually unparalleled ability to communicate those complex policy issues to a very broad audience. That fact that he's also one of the nicest, most gentlemanly people I've met is an added bonus.

Anything else you'd like to add?
Just that I'm very excited to be discussing this topic in Beijing. People in India tend to forget, but just as India was working through whether it would be one nation or two, China was engulfed in its own civil war. Strategists in Washington DC and London feared that if Asia's other giant also succumbed to civil war, that the postwar world would be thrown into chaos – and the Soviets would take advantage. The fates of the two countries have diverged greatly since then, but how they resolve the issues still lingering from 70 years ago, how they manage relations with their smaller and more vulnerable neighbors, is still key to the future not just of the region but, arguably, of the world.

Nisid Hajari will speak at The Bookworm on Feb 5 at 8pm. Tickets are RMB 50 presale, RMB 70 at the door (includes a drink). For more information, click here.

More stories by this author here.
Email: kylemullin@truerun.com
Twitter: @MulKyle
Instagram: mullin.kyle

Photos: Indian Express, YouTube, Post Western World