ABSTRACT
A contemporary European reader may perhaps be best able to put into perspective the events in South Asia since 1945 if she first reflects on the events of her own sub-continent. At the end of the First World War older empires in Europe disintegrated, and were replaced by many small nation states. This could have been a retrograde step economically, but it was inevitable in the search for self-determination. After Hitler's failed attempt at the coercive re-integration of Europe within the German Reich, some of the previously sovereign states of Europe regained their sovereignty, whereas others found the Soviet yoke replacing the German. The confrontation between the two super -powers during the Cold War years was nowhere more evident than in the Iron Curtain of barbed-wire and mine-fields that rendered Europe asunder.
