SHATTERED LANDS: In conversation with Sam Dalrymple

SAM DALRYMPLE is an award-winning filmmaker and historian. A Scot raised in Delhi, he graduated from Oxford University as a Persian and Sanskrit scholar. In 2018, he co-founded Project Dastaan, a peace-building initiative that reconnects refugees displaced by the 1947 Partition. His work has been published in The New York Times, Spectator and featured in TIME, the New Yorker and Economist. He is a columnist for Architectural Digest and in 2025, Travel & Leisure named him 'Champion of the Travel Narrative'. His debut book Shattered Lands was a bestseller on the first day of preorders.

FILM SCREENING

We will be screening animated short productions created by Project Dastaan.

DINNER - OPTIONAL POTLUCK

In observation of Cinco De Mayo and a unique aspect of South Asian American pioneer history from 19th century California, we will be serving a Punjabi-Mexican inspired meal: fusion tacos. Guests are welcome to bring a dish to share.

Pre-registration is required. The event is free. Donations are optional.

A history of modern South Asia told through five partitions that reshaped it.

As recently as 1928, a vast swathe of Asia—India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait—were bound together under a single imperial banner, an entity known officially as the ‘Indian Empire’, or more simply as the Raj.

It was the British Empire’s crown jewel, a vast dominion stretching from the Red Sea to the jungles of Southeast Asia, home to a quarter of the world’s population and encompassing the largest Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Zoroastrian communities on the planet. Its people used the Indian rupee, were issued passports stamped ‘Indian Empire’, and were guarded by armies garrisoned forts from the Bab el-Mandab to the Himalayas.

And then, in the space of just fifty years, the Indian Empire shattered. Five partitions tore it apart, carving out new nations, redrawing maps, and leaving behind a legacy of war, exile, and division.

Shattered Lands, for the first time, presents the whole story of how the Indian Empire was unmade. How a single, sprawling dominion became twelve modern nations. How maps were redrawn in boardrooms and on battlefields, by politicians in London and revolutionaries in Delhi, by kings in remote palaces and soldiers in trenches.

Its legacies include civil wars in Burma and Sri Lanka, ongoing insurgencies in Kashmir, Baluchistan, Northeast India, and the Rohingya genocide. It is a history of ambition and betrayal, of forgotten wars and unlikely alliances, of borders carved with ink and fire. And, above all, it is the story of how the map of modern Asia was made.

Sam Dalrymple’s stunning debut is based on deep archival research, previously untranslated private memoirs, and interviews in English, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Konyak, Arabic, and Burmese. From portraits of the key political players to accounts of those swept up in these wars and mass migrations, Shattered Lands is vivid, compelling, thought-provoking history at its best. Learn more here.

PARKING AND ACCESSIBILITY

Street parking is available in abundance in the area, some with 2 hour limit and some unlimited (please note the posted signs). Our block is also serviced by the AC Transit Bus 12 and Bus F. Additionally Bus 18 stops just a few blocks away, while the Ashby BART Station is just a 7 to 10 minute walk from here. The exhibit space is wheel chair accessible.

EVENT SPONSORS

This event is co-sponsored by the Institute of South Asia Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

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