Re: India Pakistan Partition BBC Special Presentation
I agree 100 hundred percent that the British were responsible. And in fact, the documentary did explore that opinion. The people they interviewed made this point throughout, that the British were not present when the violence started and they were not present to stop it or prevent it. The only one’s who supported the British position were the two british they interviewed, Mountbatten’s daughter and Radcliffe’s close friend.
That they included the british perspective on the issue lends credence to their credibility. Every coin has two sides, and so one could have concluded there was bias if the British perspective were NOT expressed.
And yes, perhaps they should have included Kashmir somewhere along the way, but the documentary i believe was more on the issue of what led up to the division, and how it effected people involved. The time frame which they covered involved only the time preceding partition, the run up to the actual division, where as Kashmir became a major issue following the partition. if they would have included the politics in any great length, the documentary would have turned into an epic marathon event, and would have defeated the purpose of the documentary itself, which was to discuss the human cost of partition. That they did not mention Kashmir is not a flaw, but as any good writer will tell you and any good documentarian will tell you, one must stick to the initial thesis of the piece. it is very easy to go of on a tangent and lose sight of your topic. Citing Kashmir would have done that, create a tangent in which the human cost is lost in the politics.