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Pakistan and India were born on the same days, August 14 and 15, 1947, in the midst of savage inter-religious violence: Hindus and Sikhs on one side and Muslims on the other. The partition of British India into these two new states resulted in the displacement of 12.5 million refugees and the death of more than one million people. The violence has continued for 67 years. Following the partition, India and Pakistan have fought three wars and have each developed an arsenal of nuclear weapons in a dangerous game of one-upmanship. The 460-mile Line of Control in disputed Kashmir remains one of the most dangerous frontiers in the world, with around 400,000 soldiers stationed on either side. It is as if that August never ended. In "The Longest August" renowned scholar and journalist Dilip Hiro provides a comprehensive and riveting account of the relationship between India and Pakistan and how they arrived at this seemingly unending impasse. Hiro argues that the roots of the conflict are based on the troubled history between the Hindu majority and the Muslim minority in the Indian subcontinent, a clash that dates back eight centuries. The differences between the two countries intensified as they took very different paths after Partition. Pakistan was dominated by a series of military dictatorships and its economy did not take off in the same way as its eastern neighbor, where a population boom made India the world's largest democracy. Hiro explores the geopolitical importance of the India-Pakistan dispute. Both countries share a border with China and were implicated in the Cold War, as Pakistan choose to align itself with the United States while India remained neutral and made deals with both the U.S. and Russia. In recent years, Pakistan's place in the United States war on terror has placed it under more international scrutiny, raising tensions in the region once again. "The Longest August" presents the definitive history of one of the world's longest-running and most intractable conflicts.
