Indian Summer: Review

Indian Summer by Alex von Tunzelmann is a work of almost breathtaking scope, and it is well written and at times wickedly witty. But as the old saying goes all that glitters is not gold. From the very beginning with her contrast between Elizabethan England and Akbar’s Mughal Empire in northern India, she shows a willingness, perhaps unconscious, to subordinate historical accuracy to dramatization. Although it is true that Akbar was considerably more enlightened than Elizabeth, his predecessors and successors were no better than she and in at least once instance, that of Aurangazeb, somewhat worse.

This early slant grows as the work goes on and finally leads to open misrepresentation when the author begins to treat the Partition Riots following the creation of the two separate nations, India and Pakistan, and the unfortunate result never shows more clearly than when she deals with the first Indo-Pakistan war (1947-48). Throughout her discussion of this war, she insists that only the Pathan tribesmen of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province carried out the invasion of the State of Jammu and Kashmir, but the capture by Indian forces of Lt. Col. Sikander Khan of the Pakistani regular army, several other Pakistani regulars, and vast quantities of Pakistani materiel proved to the United Nations Commission on India and Pakistan (UNCIP) that Pakistan had involved itself in the hostilities.

And Ms. von Tunzelman again almost totally misrepresents the result of India’s appeal to the UN in 1948. She asserts that the UN action was a “huge disappointment” to Nehru, but, because the resolution (UNCIP Resolution S/1100) adopted unanimously by the Security Council (August 13, 1948) gave India everything it asked for one must conclude that Nehru was greatly elated.

The ease with which one may recover these facts leads one to wonder about Ms. von Tunzelmann’s abilities as a historian. Does she write fiction? Is she a lobbyist for Pakistan? Certainly what she has written is not in all respects reliable history.