Pint of View Lecture Over Drinks: The Birth of a Nation

Welcome to Pint of View, Bangalore’s first-ever community where classroom-styled lectures meet drinks in relaxed spaces. About the Lecture When the British decided to leave India in 1947, independence was far from a settled question. Across nearly two-fifths of the subcontinent, hundreds of princely states were ruled by kings, nawabs and maharajas. Many had no intention of simply joining the new India. Some imagined themselves as independent nations. Others were negotiating with the British, Pakistan and the Congress, trying to work out what the end of empire might mean for their thrones. In the tense weeks between the British announcement of withdrawal and the birth of independent India, the future of the subcontinent hung in the balance. What happened behind closed doors? How did Sardar Patel and V. P. Menon persuade hundreds of rulers to give up sovereignty? What role did Gandhi, popular movements and public pressure play? And how close was India to breaking apart into a patchwork of independent kingdoms? Drawing on newly accessible archival material, this lecture enters the rooms where these decisions were being made: secret communications between princes and London, reports from Hyderabad, orders to destroy sensitive documents, and negotiations that could have changed the map of South Asia forever. In this lecture, awardwinning journalist and author Josy Joseph takes you on the story of the 21 days in which a new nation had to be assembled, state by state, before the clock ran out. Because India's independence was not simply about ending British rule. It was also about making sure there was an India left to inherit. About the Speaker Josy Joseph is a writer-journalist based in New Delhi, and the founder of Confluence Media, a platform-agnostic investigative journalism outfit. He is the author of the award-winning A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India (2016) and the critically acclaimed The Silent Coup: A History of India’s Deep State (2021). Josy has won several awards for his journalism, including the Prem Bhatia Trust’s ‘India’s Best Political Reporter’ in 2010 “for his scoops and revelations, which include a list of scams that have become familiar names in the political lexicon”, as well as the ‘Journalist of the Year’ Ramnath Goenka award in 2013. Josy has exposed some of India’s biggest scandals—among them, the Mumbai Adarsh Housing scam and the 2010 Commonwealth scam—and his stories have played a significant role in impacting the country’s social & political narrative. He was the National Security Editor of The Hindu newspaper until August 2018, when he left to start Confluence Media. Previously, he worked with The Times of India as its Editor, Special Projects, with Daily News and Analysis (DNA) as an Associate Editor and with several other mainstream publications. At Confluence Media, Josy is experimenting with creating a commercially viable, scalable, quality journalism outfit. Event Details 📅 S…