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Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnhem.

And me, William Durimple.

Today we're going to do a bit of the partition story that's probably the least familiar to many listeners. I think it's true to say that when people think of the map of

South Asia being formed, they think of 1947, 1948, all the different tumultuous events that led to

the creation of India and Pakistan.

But what we often forget is that the actual map on the map today,

the lines which are drawn demarcating territories today,

was formed as recently as 1971.

Sam, do you want to open by giving us a brief picture of what has happened since we

left the last episode with the accession of Kashmir to India? So let's begin in 1950. A UN-brokid

ceasefire has left Kashmir divided informally between India and Pakistan, with

both countries claiming the entire territory, but only being in control of half of it.

And suddenly there are two nation states where once there was one British India and 565

princely states.

And I think we tend to imagine this as, you know, two nations

born from blood, each hating their sibling. But actually, one of the surprising things, I think,

to come out of the research that I did on this is quite how much both sides move to reconcile

after the UN broke a ceasefire.

So there's a lot of newly declassified intelligence files that have suddenly become available

...