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Many ethnic minorities chafed at the postcolonial nationalism of India and Pakistan, and some rebelled.

Though blessed with many able administrators, the British found India just too large and diverse to handle. Many of their decisions stoked Hindu-Muslim tensions, imposing sharp new religious-political identities on Indians.

During the 19th century, Britain fought two wars in unsuccessful attempts to subjugate the Afghans. When Britain finally drew a border between India and Afghanistan in 1893, Pashtun tribes in southern Afghanistan were cut off from related tribes across the border in what was then India and is now Pakistan.

I feel like the history between Israel and Palestine has a lot in common with the history between India and Pakistan.

Ineptitude and negligence directed British policies in India more than any cynical desire to divide and rule, but the British were not above exploiting rivalries.

When a certain swathe of India's population considers the country's ancient past, it doesn't see a country fragmented into kingdoms, savaged by caste divisions, and mired in poverty; rather, what's envisioned is a vast, unified Hindu empire stretching from Kashmir to the Indian tip at Kanyakumari.

The emergence of Pakistan, a decade ago, was an act of protest against the existence of privilege in the social order of the subcontinent of India.

India was formed on the idea 'Let's get the British out.'

More and more do I see that only a successful revolution in India can break England's back forever and free Europe itself. It is not a national question concerning India any longer; it is purely international.

Margaret Thatcher inherited a country in transition. The British Empire was still a considerable entity well into the 20th century.