Publisher's Synopsis
"The Shade of Swords" unwraps two hundred years of India's history, focusing on the inter-communal, sectarian strife that has so blighted the country and the lives of its peoples. The Hindu-Muslim divide, like sectarianism in Northern Ireland, is seen by many both inside and outside India as an interminable and accepted fact of life. It has led to massacres, political assassinations, to the destruction of mosques (most provocatively the Barbi mosque in 1992) and alarming nuclear stand-offs between India and Pakistan.;M.J. Akbar offers a re-interpretation of India's history. He argues that the Hindu-Muslim divide is more the fruit of imagination than reality. Through tragic and colourful episodes in India's history he asserts that the dividing line between Hindu and Muslim has always been fine, and that differences have been exaggerated and exploited in the political interests of certain groups; it has distorted India's history and created false and mythologised traditions among both Hindus and Muslims.
