Even if you reject everything, it is always better to know what it is you are rejecting. - Tariq Ali

"The Pashtun tribesmen under Khurshid Anwar`s command halted after reaching Baramula, only an hour`s bus ride from Srinagar and refused to go any further. Here they embarked on a three-day binge, looting houses assaulting Muslims and Hindus alike, raping men and women and stealing money from Kashmir treasury. The local cinema was transformed into a rape centre. A group of Pashtuns invaded St Joseph's convent, where they raped and killed four nuns, including the mother superior and shot dead a European couple sheltering there. News of the atrocities spread, turning a large numbers of Kashmiris against their would be liberators. When they finally reached Srinagar, the Pashtuns were so intent on pillaging the shops and bazaars that they overlooked the airport, already occupied by the Sikhs".

Powell did strike me, however, as an extremely capable and intelligent Conservative politician. There was no fanatical gleam in his eyes, though I do remember feeling that his attitude to India was slightly strange. I could not place it at the time; it was neither jingoism nor simply nostalgia, but nor was it the scholarly interest of a historian or the detached reflections of a logician. Many years later when I was reading Paul Scott's opus on the British in India, I suddenly remembered Powell. One of the major characters in Scott's novels reminded me of him. It was Ronald Merrick, whose ambiguous class background in Britain ultimately exploded in colonial India. This was a reflection of something that ran very deep in many middle- and lower-middle-class Englishmen and women who had served as colonial administrators or officers in India.

The Muslim League was always an extremely weak organization by comparison. Originally created by Islamic princes and nobles in 1906 "to foster a sense of loyalty to the British government among the Muslims of India" (to cite from its statement of aims), it was captured by the educated Muslim middle class led by Jinnah in the 1930s and for a brief period was in alliance with the Congress Party. However, its main thrust was always anti-Hindu rather than anti-British.