I think this book largely accomplished what it set out to accomplish, i.e. outlining Partition narratively and establishing chaos and uncertainty as its essential characteristics. So my rating isn't so much about that, but moreso about my personal reaction to it.
First of all, I kind of hated how this was written, and my stylistic objection got worse as it went on. I just wish Khan had used more commas. Second, I think that because I already knew a fair bit about Partition, this felt pretty simplistic. Especially because I had just read [b:When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda|66419|When Victims Become Killers Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda|Mahmood Mamdani|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388515349l/66419._SY75_.jpg|1340078], I felt like this left me with a lot of questions parallel to those Mamdani asked in his book - How did the political identities of 'Hindu' and 'Muslim' change, and why? What were the regional patterns which contributed to Partition even being possible, and where prior to World War II did its origins lie? I get that this wasn't really the goal of this book, so I can't really fault it for not including such questions, but for me personally the whole thing felt kind of basic. But if you're looking for a good introduction to Partition in its own time, this is pretty solid.

In a word - boring. It's rather astounding how someone can take an extraordinary turbulent period in history which had such far reaching consequences and write an account that was truly a struggle to wade through. She basically just repeats the same ideas over and over again and offers very little analysis of events. Very disappointing.

The Great Partition served as my entry point into the history of British colonialism in South-east Asia, for which I’m glad, though I’d like to see (or be made aware of—if you know any, recommend me some!) more books about the experience of first-generation Indian and Pakistani immigrants to the UK. My primary takeaway from Khan’s book is that the Hindu/Muslim divide and subsequent violent religious nationalism was not a natural one; it was identified and stoked by British colonial officials, who could not conceive of the rivalries that did exist but were divided along different lines. Instead, by imposing their own expectations of faith-based conflict upon residents of the subcontinent, colonial officials created a self-fulfilling prophecy: fear and tensions between religious communities contributed to, essentially, an arms race, which exploded bloodily in the summer of 1947. I also learned that the Radcliffe line, which created both West Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), was drawn by a Briton who had never been to the regions in question, was not a cartographer or politically aware, and had spent about ten days in India, in total. The staggering arrogance of the project needs no further elaboration.

Super slow read, but overall informative if you want a deeper dive into the Partition. I'm not a fan of Ghandi and there felt like there was a bias towards him and Nehru, but if you can step away from that when you're reading, it's a fine book.