... was only when faced with total administrative collapse and the prospect of being bodily thrown out that the British decided to cut their losses and run. Even then they exacted a price in the form of a hastily improvised settlement and a partitioned sub-continent. In this scenario power was assumed from Britain as an act of rightful if overdue seizure. THE CHALLENGE OF REVISIONISM With the opening up of public and private archival collections at the end of the 1960s, both simplified if divergent constructs were subjected to revisionary analysis. In the latter's case the 'Cambridge School' of historians, led by Dr Anil Seal, revealed nationalists not as do-or-die patriots bent on overturning the colonial regime, but as competing, westernized elites prepared to collaborate with it in return for official favours and new positions of influence. Gone was the concept of selfless anti-imperialism and in its place was put a somewhat unedifying ...

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