DELHI REBORN
Rotem Geva sees decolonization as a process that unfolded from the late 1930s into the mid-1950s, and looks carefully at the structural changes that impacted the politics of both the Muslim League and the Congress. Why is it, she asks, that the demand for Pakistan took root in Delhi when its strongest advocates would ultimately find themselves outside its borders? Why did a relatively peaceful city in previous decades, a centre of Muslim life, erupt in violence in 1947, and that too on such a massive scale? How did the ethnic cleansing that happened reshape the city? And what does the official response to the law-and-order crisis reveal about the architects of independent India and their visions for the new nation?