I just finished reading "The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan". It could be looked at as a cautionary tale: the end of the British Raj in India led to the same kinds of problems that the death of Tito eventually led to in the balkans (and, for that matter, what the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires led to in Eastern Europ during the 20's). If anything, the end of the British era led to an accelerated period of violence and ethnic cleansing on the sub-continent - it was mostly over by the early 50's (although the author makes the point that the scars linger to this day).

I literally had no idea how badly this had gone; what little I learned about this in school blipped over it as a non-event. The book doesn't go into great detail, and you'll want a map handy as you read it (unless the geography of the area is familiar to you) - but it's a great introduction to that era in Inidan and Pakistani history.

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