On Sun, 8 May 2005, Chris Doss wrote:
> Do you think there was a realistic alternative to partition? I don't know
> the history.
Now that you bring it up, Partition really puts Putin's comment about the Soviet Union's break-up being "the greatest geo-political disaster of the last century" in proper perspective. Partition caused a million deaths, many of them in truly horrible ways, plus countless rapes and beatings and 20 million refugees. The Soviet Union's break-up was a bad thing, but not in the same class. (Heck, come to think of it, it wasn't even the worst geo-political disaster of the last 15 years in Europe. Yugoslavia was.)
As for alternative, in the short term, the answer is sure. Partition might have happened eventually -- the pressures were real and urgent. But if the British had decided to leave it in one piece when they left, partition as we know it wouldn't have happened. And whatever might have happened in its stead, it couldn't possibly have been worse.
Michael