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Middle East Eye
3 hours ago
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Shattered Lands: How Doha and Dubai could have joined India or Pakistan in 1947
A century ago a large part of the Arabian peninsula, including modern-day Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, was legally part of India. Today most people, including in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent, have no idea about this, and many would find the idea ludicrous and absurd. But it was indeed the case, as historian Sam Dalrymple shows in his newly published book Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia. It is a remarkable fact that Dubai and Doha could easily have ended up as part of modern India or Pakistan. Very rarely can a book on history transform the public's understanding of an entire continent and region's past. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters But this could be such a rarity. Shattered Lands, Dalrymple's first book, is magisterial. In fact, I can confidently say it is groundbreaking. Drawing on evidence from myriad archives and private memoirs and interviews in several languages, Dalrymple has produced an outstanding debut. But better than that, it is a delight to read. Too many history books render extraordinary characters and events dull. Shattered Lands, out now, is published by Harper Collins. (Supplied) Dalrymple's energetic, electrifying prose is thus a breath of fresh air. Every paragraph is practically bursting with colour. The scope of the work is enormous. The premise is that as recently as 1928, 12 modern nations - India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait - were "bound together" as part of Britain's Indian empire, the Raj. An entity of its own, the Raj housed a quarter of the world's population and was governed by the Indian rupee. Shattered Lands documents how, over half a century, this vast empire was torn apart. The book is vast in scope but particularly pertinent to Middle East Eye readers is the story of the Arabian Peninsula and how it was split off from India. Much of the British Raj was hidden. Official maps never depicted the whole empire. To avoid the ire of Istanbul, Arab states bordering the Ottoman Empire were bizarrely left off maps "as a jealous sheikh veils his favourite wife", in the words of one Royal Asian Society lecturer. Oman, like Nepal in the east, was not officially part of the Indian empire, but it was governed as an informal protectorate by the viceroy of India and included in the list of Indian princely states, which were under indirect British rule. As Dalrymple writes: "The standard list of princely states even opened alphabetically with Abu Dhabi, and Viceroy Lord Curzon himself argued that Oman should be considered 'as much a Native State of the Indian Empire as Lus Beyla or Kalat'." 'Central to the very idea of India' Muscat, Doha and Dubai were legally part of India under the Interpretation Act of 1889. The wealthy Gulf states today are thus some of the few Indian princely states that actually survived; the larger ones which went to India or Pakistan were doomed. Dalrymple tells us that "the Arabian and Burmese frontiers of the Raj were once central to the very idea of India, and several of the founding fathers of Yemen and Burma had even once conceived of themselves as Indian nationalists". Close ties between the Gulf and the subcontinent stretched back long before the onset of British rule: "For more than two millennia, South Asian communities and their cultures had spread across Asia into China, Afghanistan and Arabia." Persian or Arabian Gulf? A brief history Read More » But the British Empire took this to an unprecedented level. In the early 20th century many Arab elites were educated in Bombay and Aligarh in India, and wore Indian-style sherwanis. The partition of the Arabian peninsula from the Indian empire began in 1937 with the separation of Yemen. That same year it was also decided that India would "not be allowed to run the Persian Gulf" if it became independent. A decade later, in April 1947, the Gulf states were partitioned from India and ceased to be run by the Indian Political Service (staffed mainly by Indians). Indian soldiers were replaced by British ones, and India and Pakistan lost the (then largely undiscovered) vast oil wealth of Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the UAE. As Dalrymple argues, this was "India's greatest lost opportunity". It was only decades later, in 1971, that Britain finally abolished its protectorates over the Gulf states. An age of nationalism One of the book's most fascinating sections examines the crucial role played by Hindu nationalism in the partition of the Arabian peninsula. Because many Indian nationalists fixated on the ancient Hindu holy land of Bharat as their historical reference point, they were uninterested in Burma and Arabia. This weakened Indian nationalism in those parts of the Raj and boosted alternative political visions. We are introduced at one point in the book to the young Arab journalist Muhammad Ali Luqman, who in Aden served as the Gujarati-Arabic translator for one Mahatma Gandhi when he visited before Aden's separation from India. Gandhi's supporters unfurled an Indian flag to "mad cheers by all those present". But many in Aden were turning against Indian nationalism. Shattered Lands is Sam Dalrymple's first book (Supplied) After its separation from India, the discovery of oil turned Aden into one of the world's most important ports. By the 1950s, it was a "vibrant city of businessmen and dreamers where cruise ships jostled alongside the old Arabian dhows and Yemeni Jews mingled with Gujarati Hindus and Somali Muslims". But monumental changes arose with the rise of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who became president of Egypt in 1954. 'A dangerous environment for non-Arabs' Nasser's brand of Arab nationalism spread like wildfire across the region. "In quick succession states all over the Arabian Raj formally tied citizenship to 'a fair knowledge of Arabic' and being 'Arabs belonging to an Arab Country'," Dalrymple writes. "In the process the once cosmopolitan Indian Ocean society would gradually be replaced by arbitrary new national identities." And nearly everywhere South Asians "found themselves on the wrong side of the citizenship line and were forced to sell their properties". 'So ended the idea that 'Arab' could be an Indian ethnicity like Bengali or Punjabi - one that had been common for centuries' - Shattered Lands, Sam Dalrymple By this point, Luqman, once an Indian nationalist, was campaigning for a "Greater Yemen". The Aden Trade Union, meanwhile, announced it aimed to create "a hostile and dangerous environment for non-Arabs". Anti-Indian sentiment was also fuelled by the consequences of the fall of Hyderabad, India's largest princely state - which was widely recognised as a centre of the Islamic world. Hyderabad had a population of tens of thousands of Arabs. Indian soldiers rounded them up and detained them when the state was annexed by the fledgling Indian nation in September 1948. In the end many left and a few thousand were deported. "So ended the idea that 'Arab' could be an Indian ethnicity like Bengali or Punjabi - one that had been common for centuries," Dalrymple writes. Imperialism was often a brutal and oppressive affair, but it could also be cosmopolitan and multicultural. Nationalism could be just as brutal - and regularly very bloody. Much that was complex and attractive was destroyed in the violent convulsions of decolonisation. The Qu'aiti sultanate Under the rule of the nizam, the richest man in the world and the patron of the deposed Ottoman caliph, Hyderabad had effectively governed the Qu'aiti sultanate - the third-largest state in the Arabian peninsula - as a vassal. This gave rise to a rich cultural fusion which produced, among other things, the famous dish of haleem - a Hyderabadi variation on the Arabian dish harees that is famous today. One of the most remarkable figures Dalrymple interviewed for Shattered Lands is Sultan Ghalib al-Qu'aiti, the charming and scholarly former ruler of the sultanate, whose mother was the nizam of Hyderabad's niece. The seventh nizam of Hyderabad (centre) with some members of the ruling family of the Qu'aiti sultanate in around 1940 (Wikimedia Commons) In 1966, he became ruler of the Hadhramaut region of southern Yemen at the age of 18. Enormously popular with his people, Sultan Ghalib worked with manual labourers three times a week to convey "the true meaning of socialism in conformity with the teachings of Islam". But in 1967 the young ruler was betrayed by the British and overthrown in a coup by the National Liberation Front, an Arab nationalist militia, which declared the socialist republic of South Yemen. After he was deposed, he went to Oxford and Cambridge and became a distinguished historian. To this day, however, Sultan Ghalib remains tragically stateless. 'Unimaginable class reversal' Another fascinating fact Dalrymple documents is that Omani sultans owned the port of Gwadar on the Pakistani coastline until the mid-1950s (a Baluchi khan had given Gwadar to an Omani prince in 1783). The Omani Sultan Said bin Taimur was educated as an Indian prince in Ajmer, and was so Indian in his tastes and sensibilities that the British consul-general called him "Babu". Revealed: Why there is an abandoned Ottoman tomb in remote India Read More » The sultan even discriminated against Arabs in his own polity, denying them education and government positions. Unsurprisingly, he was spectacularly unpopular and was ultimately replaced by his reformist son, Sultan Qaboos. Qaboos bucked the Arab nationalist trend by declaring "many communities from across the Indian Ocean as indigenous tribes". He even declared Kanak Khimji, a Gujarati merchant, to be a sheikh with responsibility for Oman's 200,000 Hindus - the first Hindu sheikh in Arab history. Few non-fiction books are worth reading cover to cover, but Shattered Lands is a rare exception. Outside of some academic circles, the history of the Arabian Raj has been largely forgotten. Dalrymple's book should make waves in the Gulf, which today hosts a massive South Asian population - mostly poor migrant labourers, in what Dalrymple calls an "unimaginable class reversal". But the book will also shatter historical orthodoxies in the subcontinent itself. Shattered Lands is a triumph - and I strongly suspect Dalrymple has much more up his sleeve.
Indian Express
a day ago
- Politics
- Indian Express
‘Nationalist history presents India as this ancient thing called Bharat Varsha, with geography from the Mahabharata that remained constant. But the British were conquering random territories based on economic sense, not Indianness': Sam Dalrymple
Sam Dalrymple is in the United Kingdom when we speak, where he will be based until October. It is a fitting location from which to reflect on Shattered Lands (Harper Collins; 536 pages; ₹799), his ambitious debut on the British Empire's afterlives, which traces five partitions that dismantled what was once known as the Indian Empire. From Burma's separation in 1937 to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, Dalrymple reconstructs the imperial geography, one where Indian rupees circulated in Dubai, Yemeni Jews carried Indian passports, and loyalty to the Viceroy stretched from Aden to Assam. A Delhi-raised Scottish, Dalrymple, 28, studied Persian and Sanskrit at the University of Oxford. He also speaks Hindi and Urdu fluently. His work spans media — print, film, and virtual reality with projects exploring migration, memory, and the afterlives of empire. If the surname rings familiar, it is not incidental. He is the son of historian William Dalrymple, one of the most prominent chroniclers of South Asia's early modern past. In this conversation with The Indian Express, Dalrymple speaks about erased borders, nationalist cartographies, Jinnah's contradictions, and advice from his father. Edited excerpts: The key moment was visiting Afghanistan's Bamiyan Buddhas at 16. But the real inspiration was Project Dastaan, founded with friends at Oxford. We noticed Indians and Pakistanis mingled freely abroad unlike Israelis and Palestinians, yet could not visit each other's homelands. We used Virtual Reality to reconnect Partition-separated families. One man, Iqbal, wanted to find his Hindu friend Narendra Singh, who had preserved their ancestral mosque amid horrific violence. We found Narendra's family in Mohali near Chandigarh. Though Narendra had passed, his widow immediately suggested they all vacation together. My co-founder Sparsh Ahuja's family was saved during Partition riots by Muslim neighbours in what is now Pakistan. When we visited, he heard for the first time their side of the story — how they hid his family in their barn when mobs came looking for Hindus to kill. Project Dastaan showed me how Partition severed connections that persisted despite official hostility. Reconnecting families made me want to explore how these borders came to be – not just 1947 but all the partitions that shattered the Indian Empire. The way that India is defined by the British is very clearly laid out in the Interpretation Act of 1889: that everything ruled and governed under the Viceroy will be defined as part of India. This includes both directly ruled British India as well as the princely states and protectorates: all these maharajas, nawabs, sultans and sheikhs who had handed over their foreign policy and defence to the Indian government, though they ranged from being internally completely independent to having significant state involvement like Jaipur. States such as Bhutan and Sikkim were very much internally independent with only minor British interference. The definition was simply the territories inherited by the East India Company. Everything ruled by the East India Company in 1858 was nationalised by the Crown, though random distant territories such as Hong Kong and Singapore were separated within the first few years. What's remarkable is that this vast swathe from Yemen to Burma was given Indian passports. In the book, I've included a picture of an Indian passport given to a Yemeni Jewish woman who wanted to migrate to Mandate Palestine after the Balfour Declaration. To think that in order to migrate from Yemen you had to get an Indian passport is bizarre. The way nationalists have written history presents India as this ancient thing called Bharat Varsha, with geography from the Mahabharata that remained constant. But the British were just conquering random territories based on economic sense, not on 'Indianness'. Gandhi and other nationalists were certain independent India should stretch from Sindh to Assam, but when Gandhi went to Burma he argued for its separation. Hindu nationalists from the Mahasabha said Arabian states shouldn't be part of India because Arabia was a separate civilisation. Modern India traces its origins to this Bharat idea that excludes places the British conquered but nationalists don't consider part of India. Also, Yemen and Burma have been racked by civil war, their archives often burnt, so few historians have looked into them. In the Gulf, historian James Onley discovered that 99 per cent of Qatar's history is kept in the Bombay archives. He wrote The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj (2007) because these areas never appeared on maps of British India – it was always kept somewhat secret. Of all the characters, Jinnah was the most surprising and complex. In the 1920s, he was considered the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity — Sarojini Naidu gave him a trophy with that title. He married 'Rutti', a much younger Parsi woman, believing in interfaith marriage, but she was ostracised by her community. This disillusioned him about India moving past religious boundaries. Later, as a leading Congressman, he was overshadowed by Gandhi and Nehru who treated him poorly. We're used to the Jinnah of the 1940s, but in the 1920s he was a secular man who ate pork, drank whiskey, and had a Parsi wife. His transformation into the founder of the first Islamic republic is fascinating. In 1946, he accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan where Pakistan would exist as a province within a united India — like countries within the United Kingdom today. It is fascinating to think how much bloodshed could have been avoided had this gone through. Gandhi and Jinnah ultimately pulled out of this idea. It was Hindu nationalism, Muslim nationalism — all of them. But Hindu nationalists wanted a nation resembling Bharat Varsha. The idea of Bharat Mata is key to why Burma and Arabia were separated. Nationalist maps of Bharat Mata never included these areas. The British, seeing India might soon be independent, considered separating these regions to maintain economic control, knowing nationalists didn't want them. Fascinatingly, there were nationalists in Burma and Yemen who saw themselves as Indian and wanted to remain part of India, but figures such as Mahatma Gandhi pushed against this. U Ottama, a Burmese Buddhist monk who became Savarkar's predecessor in the Hindu Mahasabha, argued that Burma was part of Bharat and that Buddhism was part of Hinduism, but was booed down at Mahasabha meetings and eventually resigned. He actually pushed me to write this as a book. Originally it was a documentary project with National Geographic, but when Covid hit and we could not film, he suggested turning it into a book. He read two drafts – one after my first draft and one before final submission. But my mother was the real editor-in-chief, reading everything meticulously. My father's work focuses on medieval through early modern history, while mine relies heavily on oral histories, techniques I learned from mentors such as Aanchal Malhotra and Kavita Puri who specialise in Partition testimonies. That said, I owe my historical interest to him dragging me around Rajasthan's hill forts, Bengal's delta, and Kerala's theyyam dancers since childhood. I've lived in Delhi for 22 years because he moved us here. I do not see them in conflict at all. Globally, academic historians do research while others popularise it accessibly. My book uses sources in eight languages from multiple archives, as rigorous as any academic work, but written for general readers. It reveals new research like Burma and Dubai's separation from India. Good popular history like films about Rome builds on scholarship. The distinction is when popular works lack footnotes or obscure sources — but you can absolutely write academically rigorous history for the public. Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics. She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks. She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year. She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home. Write to her at or You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More
