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Encyclopedia :
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Partition of India |
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Partition of IndiaThe Partition of India was the process by which British dependencies and treaty states in the Indian subcontinent were granted independence in the 1940s. The divisions resulted in the creation of four new independent states—India, Burma (now Myanmar), Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Pakistan (including modern-day Bangladesh)—and sowed the seeds for later conflicts between India and Pakistan. The term partition is generally used only in reference to the independence of India and Pakistan in August 1947, which were created largely along religious lines. Ceylon and Burma were granted complete independence separately, on January 4 and February 4, 1948, respectively. For more information, see History of Sri Lanka and History of Burma.
on the Indian subcontinent were granted independence in 1947 and 1948, becoming four new independent states: India, Burma (now Myanmar), Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and Pakistan (including East Pakistan, modern-day Bangladesh). Pakistan and India Two self-governing dominions within the British Commonwealth legally came into existence at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947. The ceremonies for the transfer of power were held a day earlier in Karachi, the capital of the new state of Pakistan, to allow the last British Viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, to attend both the ceremony in Karachi and the ceremony in Delhi. Pakistan celebrates its Independence Day on August 14, while India celebrates on August 15. Background of the partitionSeeds of partitionThe seeds of the partition were sown long before independence, in the struggle between various factions of the Indian nationalist movement, and especially of the Indian National Congress, for control of the movement. Muslims felt threatened by Hindu majorities. The Hindus, in their turn, felt that the nationalist leaders were coddling the minority Muslims and slighting the majority Hindus. The All India Muslim League (AIML) was formed in 1906 as a counterbalance to what it perceived as the Hindu domination of the Indian National Congress. A number of different scenarios were proposed at various times, but at the 1940 AIML conference in Lahore, League leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah made clear his commitment to two separate states, a position from which the League never again wavered:
State of affairs before the partitionThe British colonial administration did not directly rule all of "India". There were several different political arrangements in existence:
Border definition The border between India and Pakistan was determined by a British Government-commissioned report usually referred to as the Radcliffe Award after the London lawyer, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who wrote it. Pakistan came into being with two separate wings, East Pakistan (today Bangladesh) and West Pakistan, separated geographically by India. India was formed out of the majority Hindu regions of the colony, and Pakistan from the majority Muslim areas. Legal arrangements On July 18, 1947, the British Parliament passed the Indian Independence Act that finalized the partition arrangement. The Government of India Act 1935 was adapted to provide a legal framework for the two new dominions. The Princely States The 565 Princely States were given a choice of which country to join. Those states that chose a country at odds with their majority religion, such as Junagadh, Hyderabad, and especially Kashmir, became the subject of much dispute. Expedited, controversial processThe Partition was a highly controversial arrangement, and remains a cause of much tension on the Subcontinent today. British Viceroy Lord Mountbatten not only rushed the process through, but also is alleged to have influenced the Radcliffe awards in India's favor. Some critics allege that British haste led to the heart-rending cruelties of the Partition. Because independence was declared prior to the actual Partition, it was up to the new governments of India and Pakistan to keep public order. No large population movements were contemplated; the plan called for safeguards for minorities on both sides of the new state line. It was an impossible task, at which both states failed. There was a complete breakdown of law and order; millions (no one knows how many) died in riots, massacre, or just from the hardships of their flight to safety. What ensued was the largest population movement in history. However, some argue that the British were forced to expedite the Partition by events on the ground. Law and order had broken down many times before Partition, with much bloodshed on both sides. A massive civil war was looming by the time Mountbatten became Viceroy. The only way the British could have maintained law and order would have been through martial law, and that could not have prevented communal violence throughout India, or the inevitable clashes that would come with partition. If Mountbatten had delayed partition and independence any longer, the death toll would have been in the millions. By rushing the process through, some say, Mountbatten saved more lives than were lost in the Partition. Population exchangesMassive population exchanges occurred between the two newly-formed nations in the months immediately following Partition. Once the lines were established, roughly 13 million people crossed the borders to what they hoped was the relative safety of religious majority. Approximately 7 million Muslims went to Pakistan from India while about 6 million Hindus and Sikhs moved to India from Pakistan. Massive violence and slaughter occurred on both sides of the border—leading to the deaths of as many as five million people—as the newly formed governments were completely unequipped to deal with migrations of such staggering magnitude. The present-day religious demographics of India and PakistanDespite the huge migration during Partition, India still has a large Muslim minority. The current estimates for India:
Present Day Status of Refugees in both India and PakistanBoth nations prodigiously managed to assimilate the refugees in to their societies. Sikhs and Hindu Panjabis mostly settled in the Indian part of Punjab. The responsibility of rehabilitating Hindu Sindhis was borne by all the states in Indian Union, but they mostly settled in the western states of Gujarat and Maharashtra. Sindhis contributed greatly towards indutrializing India. These people have now lost their refugee identities as such. In late 2004 Sindhis vociferously opposed a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court of India calling upon government of India to delete word Sindh from the Indian National Anthem (written before the partition) on the grounds that it infringed upon the sovereignity of Pakistan. These people have also played an active in Indian politics with the current Indian Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh (a Sikh) and leader of opposition Mr.L.K Advani (a Sindhi) both born in what is now known as Pakistan. The descendents of refugees in Pakistan are called Muhajirs. Muhajir or Mohajir is essentially an ethnic group within Pakistan. Muhajirs are Urdu-speaking people who originally emigrated from India to Pakistan during the partition of 1947. While Muhajirs form what amounts to an ethnic group within Pakistan, the group is actually comprised of people from different ethnic groups and regions in India, such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Hyderabad. They are united by the Urdu language. Aftermath Violence between Hindus and Muslims, or between India and Pakistan, They have also engaged in a nuclear arms race which has at times threatened to erupt into nuclear war. The British-Tibetan border, winding as it did through the Himalayas, had never been definitively surveyed or marked. India, as the inheritor of a long stretch of the British borders, and the People's Republic of China, as the conqueror of Tibet, eventually clashed, leading to the 1962 Sino-Indian War. All of the four nations resulting from the Partition of the British Raj have had to deal with endemic civil conflicts. These include:
See alsoExternal links
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