*The People Next Door*

The author is T.C.A. Raghavan and the subtitle is The Curious History of India’s Relations with Pakistan.  Here is one excerpt:

The massive rigging of the March 1977 election led to a Bhutto majority the size of which stunned even his supporters and, by some accounts, even embarrassed him.  He and his party had been expected to win but the near-total decimation of the opposition made the election results lose credibility.  “Why did you do this to me?” he is widely believed to have rhetorically asked a group of senior civil servants as the results came in.  In any event, the loss of popularity and personal legitimacy was swift.

This book is must reading for these days, and it will be making my 2019 “best of the year” list.  Order from abroad here, or in the U.S. it comes out in July.