Partition of India

The Partition of India refers to Britain's division of India into two states, India and Pakistan, in 1947. From the mid-eighteenth century onward, India had been under harsh colonial rule. While the British left voluntarily, little went smoothly. The transition from colonial rule to two independent countries, one primarily Hindu and the other primarily Muslim, was one of the most violent and dramatic events of its century. In the mass migration of Hindus to India and Muslims to Pakistan, more than a million people were killed.

Overview

India's independence came at a crucial point in international history. Before the end of World War II, the British crown had called a great deal of its subjects in India to fight. The Indian population believed it had more than earned the right to rule itself. Additionally, Britain was not the international powerhouse it once was. The British government had come to realize that it could not afford to keep the amount of territory it currently possessed. The nationalist movements in India had become more and more widespread, in large part due to the charismatic leadership of figures like Mahatma Gandhi and Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

While the Indian public was united in its desire for an end to British rule, it was united in very little else. The most prominent societal division of the time was that between the Hindu majority and the Muslim minority. Historically, the two groups had repeatedly traded power. Now the Muslim minority felt underrepresented and was demanding a state of its own—Pakistan, which translates to "land of the pure." Gandhi vehemently opposed this split and campaigned for a tolerant and united India. Jinnah, however, believed that a Hindu-ruled India could never accurately represent the needs and desires of its Muslim population and would settle for nothing less than a separate Islamic state.

As of 1946, the British continued to try to convince the two sides to compromise. As a desperate, last-ditch attempt to unify India, Gandhi suggested a single government with his rival Jinnah as the head. This was controversial, and many insinuated that Gandhi had lost his mind in his old age. Gandhi's suggestion most likely contributed to his assassination, which occurred when a Hindu nationalist shot him three times during a speech. Violent riots followed, during which fifteen people were killed.

With that failure in mind, the British gave the Muslim populace control of the few states where it held a majority. These states became Pakistan, and the rest of the states became independent India. Nehru, an experienced Indian politician, took command of India while Jinnah was overwhelmingly elected governor-general of Pakistan. Though planned well, Pakistan inherited a host of problems with its creation. First, geographic Pakistan consisted of two territories that were separated by the widest part of India. The larger one, West Pakistan, contained the new nation's capital city. The smaller chunk of territory, East Pakistan, would later rebel against West Pakistan and become the independent nation of Bangladesh. Second, almost all the territory Pakistan received was border territory and thus difficult to maintain. Third, the territories Pakistan was given were unusually weak economically, comprising only 17 percent of the former British India's estimated wealth and only 25 percent of its land.

Despite repeated warnings, neither the fledgling government of Pakistan nor the established government of India was ready for the floods of refugees and migrants that sprung up during the partition. While Pakistan was originally intended to be an officially secular state and had planned to accommodate a 20-percent minority comprised of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and other non-Muslims, much of the non-Muslim populace felt unsafe in Pakistan. Mass-emigrations to Indian territory began almost immediately. A similar situation occurred throughout India, with Muslims suddenly uprooting themselves and moving to Pakistan. Mob violence between the competing groups quickly became commonplace, with Muslims trying to drive non-Muslims out of Pakistan and Muslims being driven out of India.

This emigration of more than ten million people went worse than could have been imagined. Entire trainloads of Hindus and Sikhs were mercilessly murdered. More than seventy thousand women of both sides of the partition were kidnapped, assaulted, or killed. Many, especially the Sikh minority, died defending their homes and families from mobs attempting to drive them off their land. Honor killings, which are the killings of women and children so that the enemy cannot take them and dishonor the family name, became very common. Many families left most of their possessions because they expected to be able to return in the coming weeks to claim them. However, as violent looting and vandalism became increasingly popular, most families returned to find nothing left. Additionally, various former Indian states that desired to remain independent, such as Kashmir and the Punjab, became flashpoints for full-scale military conflict as both nations tried to claim them.

Significance

Scholars and historians disagree about the number of people killed during the partition itself, but conservative estimates place the number at more than one million. While many wished for peace after the partition, the tension between the two nations never fully dissipated. India and Pakistan have been to war multiple times since the partition, and Pakistani terrorist attacks on Indian soil became an increasing threat to India's people. The India-Pakistan border remained heavily militarized, and both sides continued to skirmish well into the early twenty-first century. International tensions rose in 2019 after a suicide bombing in India by a pro-Pakistani paramilitary group led to a series of airstrikes between the two powers in the Kashmir region that caused many to fear that India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers, intended to escalate the standoff. Conflict persisted into 2020, and the exchange of small arms and artillery fire in November of that year led to more than twenty casualties. In 2021, following a continuation of hostilities, both powers committed to ceasefire measures, yet tensions remained high along the border well into 2022, where the seventy-fifth anniversary of the partition of India occurred in August of that year.

Tyler J. Biscontini

Bibliography

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