In 1905 the British Raj looks eternal: one viceroy over 300 million people, a charcoal map from the Khyber to Rangoon — except that two-fifths of it, look closely, is a tan patchwork of 565 princely states Britain rules only at one remove. This atlas follows the forty-three years in which that map is argued, marched, fasted and finally torn into freedom: the largest mass movement in history against the largest empire in history, ending in the world’s largest migration.
Twelve chapters carry the story from Curzon’s partition of Bengal to Gandhi’s assassination: Amritsar and the end of consent, the salt march traced step by step, the electoral map of 1937 that foreshadows the border of 1947, Quit India and the Bengal famine, the year of the knife, and freedom at midnight — with the Radcliffe line drawn across it in five weeks. Freedom AND catastrophe, argued together. Take the guided tour, or scrub the timeline and interrogate the map yourself.
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