In August 1947, Great Britain granted independence to India. The former British colony was later divided into India and the new state of Pakistan (East Pakistan later became Bangladesh).
This led to an eruption of violence, in which about 15 million people were displaced and about a million died. India and Pakistan have remained rivals ever since.
Why did the split happen?
In 1946 Britain announced that it would give independence to India. He could no longer afford to dominate the country and wanted to get out as quickly as possible.
The last Governor, Lord Louis Mountbatten, set the date for August 15, 1947.
At that time about 25% of India’s population was Muslim. The rest were mostly Hindu. But there were also Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians, and members of other minority religions.
“The British used religion as a way to categorize people in India,” says Professor Navtej Purewal, an Indian member of the British government’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
“For example, they created separate lists of Muslim and Hindu voters for local elections. There were seats reserved for Muslim politicians and seats reserved for Hindus. Religion became a factor in politics.”
“When India seemed likely to gain independence,” says Gareth Price of the UK-based foreign policy institute Chatham House, “many Indian Muslims began to worry about living in a Hindu-majority country.”
“They thought they would be under pressure,” he says.
“They have begun to support political leaders who are campaigning for a separate Muslim homeland,” he said.
The leaders of the independence movement in Congress, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, said they wanted a united India that embraced all religions.
However, the leader of the Muslim League, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, demanded partition as part of the independence agreement.
“It would take a long time to agree on how a united India would work,” Price says.
“Dividing seemed like a quick and simple solution.”
How much pain did the split cause?
The new borders between India and Pakistan were drawn in 1947 by a British officer, Cyril Radcliffe.
He roughly divided the Indian subcontinent into the Hindu-dominated central and southern parts, and the Muslim-majority northwest and northeast parts.
However, there were Hindu and Muslim communities scattered across British India. This meant that after the split, about 15 million people often moved hundreds of kilometers to cross the newly created borders.
In many cases, people were driven from their homes because of community violence. The first example of this was the Kolkata Murders of 1946, in which about 2,000 people were killed.
“The Muslim League formed militias as well as right-wing Hindu groups,” says Eleanor Newbigin, professor of South Asian history at SOAS University in London.
“Terrorist groups have driven people out of their villages to gain more control on their side,” he said.
It is estimated that between 200,000 and one million people were killed or died of disease in the refugee camps.
Tens of thousands of women, both Hindu and Muslim, were raped, abducted or disfigured.
What were the consequences of the split?
India and Pakistan have been fighting over who will control the state of Kashmir since partition.
They fought two wars for it (in 1947-1948 and 1965) and also clashed in the 1999 Kargil crisis in Kashmir.
Both countries claim the province as their own and currently administer different parts of the province.
India also struggled with Pakistan when it intervened in 1971 to support East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in its war of independence against Pakistan.
Less than 2% of Pakistan’s population is currently Hindu.
“Pakistan has become more and more Islamic,” says Price, “in part because a large proportion of its population is now Muslim, and there are very few Hindus there.”
“And India is now more heavily influenced by Hindu nationalism.”
“The legacy of partition is troubling,” Newbigin says.
“It has created strong religious majorities in both countries. Minorities have become smaller and more vulnerable than before.”
According to Professor Navtej Purewal, the split could have been avoided.
“It would have been possible to create a unified India in 1947. It could have been a federation of states, including Muslim-majority states,” he says.
“But Gandhi and Nehru insisted on having a centrally controlled unified state. They didn’t really think about how a Muslim minority could live in such a country.”
source: Noticias
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