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Read other letters about this article
Thanks so much for responding.
The book is new, from Yale University Press, 2007. It is subtitled "India since the Great Rebellion"
Her analysis of the way Britain first turned India's manifold religious differences or differentiations into religious divisions is stunning. What Britain did, as she describes it, is disquietingly like a blueprint for the actions of economic and political colonialism ever since.
I'm about at the place where Britain is "negotiating" with Indian leaders(Gandhi, Nehru and others), the process which resulted in the end of the Raj, and Partition.
It doesn't hurt that Ms. Misra is pictured on the back fly-leaf, and looks absolutely gorgeous, in one of those white cotton shirts with about a hundred buttons up the front. (My HS girlfriend used to wear those. I look at her picture when I get completely frustrated trying to keep the names straight, or even pronounce them.)
Seriously, tho, it is really something to read about this stuff from the 1850s to WW1 and say, My God, that is exactly what we still do. Exploit differences into division, divide and exploit, wash, rinse, repeat.
