Shattered Lands

A history of modern South Asia told through five partitions that reshaped it. As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia - India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait - were bound together under a single imperial banner, an entity known officially as the 'Indian Empire', or more simply as the Raj.It was the British Empire's crown jewel, a vast dominion stretching from the Red Sea to the jungles of Southeast Asia, home to a quarter of the world's population and encompassing the largest Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Zoroastrian communities on the planet.