ABSTRACT
The new geography of India had a new cultural dimension, in particular there now existed a new lingua franca that enabled educated people to communicate with one another from furthest north to the deepest south. British India was entirely different. Its Government was a unitary executive - that is to say a single executive structure with responsibility for all of the British Provinces, with the Governor-General/Viceroy at the apex. The British did attempt over the decades from 1857 to 1947 to guide and constrain the different forces at work within a changing constitutional framework. The British attitude to the Indian nationalists during the First, as during the Second, World War, can be summarised: 'please do not cause any trouble while this Great Event passes. An American political geographer writing in the early 1920s identified Hindu-Muslim relationships as the most pressing issue facing the government of India, and there is a hint in his analysis of the partition to come.
