Divided in equal parts between straight-up military, political and socioeconomic concerns the author is essentially sorting out for himself a question that has been haunting him since he was an officer cadet in the Indian Army; just how does World War II relate to the fate of India? This is seeing that the great global conflict of 1937-45 tends to get marginalized in a society that is mostly concerned with events since the Great Partition, leading Raghavan to mount a general assessment of what it all meant. Of particular value is that Raghavan doesn't attempt to engage in a great deal of counter-factual history of how things might of worked out otherwise, staying very hard-headed about contemporary realities; that all leadership factions were taken aback by the violence of the Partition demonstrates the virtues of keeping analysis basic. That said, one does get some sense that the author looks at the acts of unreconstructed imperialists such as Prime Minister Churchill and Viceroy Linlithgow with a gimlet eye regarding men who helped to create a worst-case scenario with their divide-and-conquer mentality towards Indian politics. ( )