Critical Summary & Review : Facts Are Facts

Description

AUTHOR : Abdul Wali Khan

Facts Are Facts: The Untold Story of India’s Partition is Abdul Wali Khan’s deeply political and personal interpretation of one of the most consequential events in South Asian history: the Partition of British India and the creation of Pakistan in 1947. First published in 1987, the book presents the Partition not simply as the inevitable outcome of Hindu-Muslim differences, but as the product of a complex interaction among British imperial interests, communal politics, the Muslim League, the Congress, regional political movements, and competing visions of India’s future. The author writes from the perspective of a political participant and, above all, as a member of the Khudai Khidmatgar tradition associated with Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan.
The book’s stated purpose is to challenge what Wali Khan regards as an official, incomplete, or politically convenient version of history. He explains that he consulted recently released British archival documents and correspondence between British officials in India and London. He presents these materials as evidence for his argument that British strategic interests, especially their concerns about the Soviet Union and the geopolitics of the north-western region, played a major role in shaping their policy toward India.