“Why don’t you be a good boy and just die?” - Sean Bean as Alec Trevelyan 006, in Goldeneye (1995) The disintegration of the modern Indian union of states has oft been predicted, but somehow hasn’t happened yet. Mo st recently, in his award-winning novel River Of Gods the British science fiction author Ian McDonald posited an India in 2047 broken up into 12 semi-independent states! Perhaps among the first to start the ball rolling was Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck , the last British Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army. This worthy intoned that the 1947 partition of India was a harbinger of further future divisions of the sub-continent. Or words to that effect... This was rightly seen at the time as a case of sour grapes (See, you won’t be able to hold yourself together without the paternalistic guiding hand of the British Raj!) on the part of a retreating colonialist towards ...