Partition Of India The British Conspiracy: Britain declared India as an Independent Nation on August 15, 1947. In 1947, the partition forced millions of Indians and Pakistanis (Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims) to leave their homes. Over a million people died. Some sought refuge in India, others in Pakistan. Many never made it to either country.
However, Pakistan (then a British colony) and Punjab (now a province of Pakistan) disputed the decision to turn India into an Independent State. The partition resulted in the creation of a new nation of India and Pakistan, and millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs fled their homes. Thousands of people died on both sides of the border. In 2015, the BBC reported that a survey carried out in Pakistan and India revealed that more than 150,000 people had been identified as 'lost' in the partition.
History Of Indian Independence Struggle:
The movement for Indian Independence began in 1857, with the Indian Rebellion of 1857, which was suppressed by the British. During the aftermath of the rebellion, the British Government began to pursue policies to bring the provinces of the Punjab and Bengal in India into the British Raj as colonies. This prompted the Indian Rebellion of 1857 – 1858, in which the remnants of the Indian Army revolted against the British. The rebellion was unsuccessful but led to the Indian Mutiny of 1857–1858.
The King of England ascended the throne in January 1901, following the death of Queen Victoria. As a result, the British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, advocated for India to be "separated" from the United Kingdom following the independence of the United Kingdom in 1932. Following the lead of the Indian Home Rule Movement, the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League founded the All India Muslim League in 1906, seeking greater political autonomy for the Muslims of India. By 1913, the Congress and the League had united and formed the United Provinces Muslim League, which called for the creation of a separate Muslim state in the east. This unified party formed the basic structure of the Hindu Mahasabha, which later merged into the Hindu Mahasabha in 1921.
The British Raj came to an end when it was forced to resign in August 1947 due to ongoing instability and the independence of India and Pakistan. The British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, feared that India might fight a war against Pakistan, and proposed that the country be partitioned to avoid this.
Events That Unfolded Since Independence, 1947 And Created The Separate Countries, Pakistan And India
The Partition of India and Pakistan (or Pakistan's Partition) occurred in two phases, separated by a period of political maneuvering and military action, on 15th August 1947 and 14th December 1947. Between these dates, the two Dominion of India and the Dominion of Pakistan were divided along religious lines by the British Raj. This involved the exit of the British Indian Army from the Indian subcontinent, the displacement of millions of citizens, and the murder of over a million people.
This timeline details the four partitioning events between the two nations which resulted in the destruction of 1.2 million homes and the killing of at least 500,000 people. It also contains a timeline of other events surrounding the creation of Pakistan and India and their ensuing relationship. It shows the eventual allegiance of the two countries' respective people.
In 1947: British Indian Empire granted independence to the four provinces within it, forming the Indian sub-continent 1947. One-third of British Indian troops were sent to fight in the two World Wars, and it was felt that independence would weaken their effectiveness as a fighting force. British Indian troops were asked to remain in Iraq and Ireland, as well as Hong Kong and Kenya. The Indian Army consisted of about 800,000 men in two brigades. The Indian Navy had five dreadnought battleships, twelve cruisers, and seven destroyers at the outbreak of war.
Demands for separate dominion status for India grew in the 1940s, as Prime Minister Winston Churchill began to support the idea. Britain had fought two world wars to defend the British Raj and wanted to avoid another. After the war, Churchill announced his support for an independent India and immediately announced the creation of a three-member committee of British and Indian leaders, to consider and discuss the future of India. On the same day as the adoption of the name Pakistan, the name of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh was dropped from the proposed partition. East Pakistan was seen as being more religiously and culturally Indian than West Pakistan. The Muslim majority region had already enjoyed some self-government through the British Raj. Most Muslim leaders saw West Pakistan as a Central Asian state. East Pakistan was relatively prosperous and an area of economic growth, giving it more autonomy than West Pakistan.
Along with this partition of India, the British Empire began the process of dissolution of the empire. India was now independent of the empire, with Singapore being the last British-ruled colony to leave the British Empire in August 1965. Pakistan's creation was approved in the vote in the United Nations in October 1947, and India gained independence in August 1947. The states of the Muslim League, led by Jinnah, sought the union of India and Pakistan to avoid conflict between the Muslims and the Hindus.
After independence in 1947, the constituent Indian states quickly disintegrated into violence, as did the new Muslim state of Pakistan, as the fighting began in East Pakistan and Pakistanis in the west, led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan's Khudai Khidmatgar Movement, launched violent attacks across the border to seek the unification of the subcontinent. On 11 December 1947, Pakistan and India signed a pact called the Instrument of Accession, which ended the fighting and formalized the creation of Pakistan.
The Nizam of Hyderabad became the last remaining independent principality to lose its independence and become a province of India, in 1948. The state of Junagadh, which had acceded to India in 1946, was transferred to Pakistan in 1948 after a five-year-long war.
Meanwhile, the Muslim League, through the Pakistan League, had won the Lahore University elections in 1951 and merged it into its party, although it was never officially recognized by the Election Commission. This led to violent riots in East Punjab, where Muslims killed, raped, and displaced Hindus, which was at the time the only province where Hindus were in a majority. The violence turned into a religious war between Hindus and Muslims. Hindus fleeing from East Punjab migrated in large numbers to West Punjab, causing severe economic problems in the region. The Bombay and the Madras sessions of the Indian National Congress in 1953, which called for more autonomy for the Indian states, were marred by violence and mass rioting. Muslims constituted a majority in West Punjab and the Bombay and Madras sessions.
Pakistan had inherited the British policy of discrimination against the Indian Muslims and the widespread practice of preferential treatment to the Muslims of British India in the decision-making process. This preferential treatment resulted in the marginalization of the Hindus and other minorities in Pakistan. Some of the policy measures instituted by the Pakistan government discriminated against the minority Hindu communities, including the State Subject Law of 1923, which discriminated against the Hindus of Pakistan. The Pakistan Government implemented several policies, such as the Indianisation Policy, the Jinnah-Mandela Policy, and the Jinnah-Matilal Pact, which had the direct result of increasing the separation of the Hindus from the Muslim communities. The policies were perceived by the Muslims as a grave threat to the idea of Pakistan and a betrayal of the Muslim community by the Pakistan Government.
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| Hindustan Newspaper |
The mass influx of Muslims into India during the Partition of India, as well as the deterioration of the lives of Hindus in the newly created states of Pakistan and India, resulted in the mass migration of Hindus from the newly created Muslim-majority provinces of Pakistan to the Hindu-majority provinces of India. Hindus in Pakistan continued to face discrimination at the hands of the Pakistan Government. This resulted in the growth of several extremist communal organizations in South Asia, including the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), the Al Badr, and the Ahle Suntan Wal Jamaat, which became terrorist organizations.
In 1948, the Hindu refugee crisis worsened when the Pakistan government declared that Hindus of East Pakistan would have to choose between staying in East Pakistan and having their property nationalized or migrating to India. An estimated four million people fled from East Pakistan to India and most settled in West Bengal. A sizable number of Hindus also migrated to West Bengal from the western districts of East Pakistan. Hindu-majority districts such as 24 Parganas, 24 Midnapore, 24 Birbhum, 29 Bankura, 10 Dakshin Dinajpur, 14 Jalpaiguri, 8 Cooch Behar, 5 Darjeeling, 12 Hojai, 12 Jalpaiguri, 10 Alipurduar, 16 West Midnapore, 8 Dakshin Dinajpur, 5 Malda, 17 Mirik and 14 Purulia and 18 areas in the Birbhum district were entirely Hindu in 1947.
By 1949, an estimated Two Million Hindus had moved to India from the districts of Bengal; in 1951, the estimate was 1.8 million. In addition, an estimated 600,000 Hindus migrated from East Pakistan to West Bengal between 1948 and 1951.
Between Pakistan's independence and the independence of Bangladesh, Hindus constituted a majority of the population of East Pakistan. However, the Pakistani state implemented discriminatory policies against the Hindus of the region.
In 1958, Pakistan enacted the East Pakistan Riots Act, which was used to suppress the activities of extremist communal organizations. Following protests by the government and public, the law was subsequently repealed in 1962. However, the Pakistan Government continued to target the Hindus of East Pakistan.
In 1971, East Pakistan was invaded and eventually occupied by the military of India. A large number of Pakistani Hindus fled East Pakistan to India, many of them migrating to West Bengal.
Following the independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971, the Pakistani government continued to target the Hindus of East Pakistan, with a range of discriminatory policies and acts. Some of the anti-Hindu policies include the establishment of the Hindu-majority district of Mymensingh (1966) and the Shahbagh bombing (1971) which killed over 2,000 people. Additionally, following the 1974 elections, the Awami League party assumed power and implemented further discriminatory policies against the Hindu community. These included the Shahbagh and Kamalpur massacres, which occurred in 1977 and 1978, respectively. The government also forced the Hindus to leave the region and move to India, with around 90% of the Hindus in Khulna migrating to India.
Most of the Pakistan Hindu population is concentrated in East Pakistan, except for India. The largest population of Pakistan Hindus is in West Bengal, particularly in the districts of West Midnapore, Birbhum, and Murshidabad. There are also significant populations of Pakistan Hindus in Delhi and Bhopal in India and the cities of Ahmedabad in Gujarat, Vishakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, and Chennai in Tamil Nadu.
Partition And Its Aftermath
In October 1946, the British Indian government issued the States Reorganisation Act, which divided the provinces of Bengal, Orissa, and Bihar into the new states of West Bengal, Orissa, and Madras.
The Hyderabad State was formed as a new state by the union of Hyderabad and Mysore states in the Deccan in July 1947. Sikkim was constituted in December 1947, and the North-Eastern states were formed in March 1948.
Bengal was divided into east and west and reconstituted in 1947. Many parts of the old Bengal were taken into East Pakistan (later renamed East Pakistan and now Bangladesh) and the Assam province was dissolved and made into three states of Assam, Meghalaya, and Tripura.
Punjab (now known as Pakistan), was divided into two provinces: a northern and a southern province, with the Punjab province to the south also becoming a part of the new Dominion of Pakistan.
The state of Bengal, the birthplace of British India, was made into two new provinces: the province of East Bengal and Assam. Assam was further split to form the new states of Tripura and the new state of Mizoram.
In 1947, the coastal provinces of Odisha and West Bengal formed the new state of Orissa. The state of Odisha became part of the new state of Orissa in July 1953.
The British partitioned the princely states into the princely states of Hyderabad, Junagarh, Bhopal, and Gwalior, with the former two also forming new states of Telangana and Madhya Bharat. The remaining states, including Mysore and Bengal, became states of the Union of India.
The new states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were formed in November 1947. The states were carved out from the existing regions of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, thereby creating twenty-eight states in total.
The provinces of Rajasthan and Gujarat were formed in December 1949 and January 1950 respectively.
In December 1950, an ordinance was issued, and in February the same year, the new states of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand were formed by splitting the territories of Jammu and Kashmir.
From the summer of 1947 until January 1950, a bloody civil war was waged in Bengal. The Bengali nationalists (along with collaborators), who favored merger with Pakistan, fought to achieve this goal against the forces of the Bengal Liberation Front (an alliance of Bengali Muslims and the Bengali Hindu "first front") and the British Indian government in alliance with the Pakistani army.
The civil war ended on 16 December 1952, when the nationalists, with the aid of the Indian Army, expelled the Pakistanis from East Bengal. The Pakistan Army retreated to East Pakistan, which was now under its control. The civil war cost the lives of nearly One and a Half Million people.
Partitioning of Bengal and Pakistan in 1951 was the last step in the partition of India. Four days later (17th January), India became an independent state.
Migration Of Hindus And Sikhs Amidst Violence
After the independence of Pakistan in August 1947, many Kashmiri Pandits migrated to India, as well as several Hindus and Sikhs who were displaced in East Pakistan arrived in Punjab. Many people are still unaware of the atrocities committed by Muslim mobs against Hindus and Sikhs in the aftermath of Partition. Hindus and Sikhs were massacred, women raped, homes were looted and converted into mosques, and Hindu and Sikh temples were destroyed.
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| Chicago Daily Tribune |
The East Pakistan Conference of December 1947, at which the Indian leadership insisted upon sovereignty over the state of East Pakistan, resulted in a violent clash between Hindus and Muslims. In December 1947, after most of the Muslim League leaders fled to West Pakistan, Islamist organizations like the Razakars were created to protect the interests of Pakistan. Between 20th and 31st December 1947, the Pakistani Army forced the Hindu and Sikh minority to flee to India. Indian atrocities were responsible for many deaths in East Pakistan, including thousands of Hindus and Sikhs in the Khulna and Comilla areas in February and March.
The Pakistan Army launched the province into chaos in March and April, establishing separate administration for the East Pakistanis, who formed the East Pakistan Muslim League and formed an opposition government. From June the same year, the government had suspended the constitution. Muslim extremists tried to force the transfer of the Sindhi-speaking part of East Pakistan, comprising the city of Karachi, to West Pakistan, but a referendum in 1946 rejected such a move.
The Pakistan Partition Ordinance was passed on 23 March 1947. In this ordinance, all Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan were declared illegal and their property confiscated. This move was opposed by Muslim leaders, and in 1947 the ruling Muslim League was renamed the Pakistan Muslim League. The Muslim League was elected in the first elections held in Pakistan in 1950.
In March and April 1949, when Pakistani forces tried to retake East Pakistan, Indian troops intervened and stopped the advance. During the conflict, India refused to allow the United Nations to investigate and report on the conflict.
In January 1950, Pakistan began to recruit volunteers to fight in India. The ethnic cleansing campaign continued, and Two and a Half Million Bengalis fled to India to escape the fighting.
On 18 March 1950, India signed the Lahore Agreement with Pakistan. The agreement was a cease-fire and later the result of the Lahore Conference. The agreement required Pakistan to end all persecution against the Bengali Hindus and Sikhs, who were not Muslims, as well as to establish a government for the people of East Pakistan.
Migration From West Bengal To Bombay
The British Raj dissolved, and with it, the Bombay provincial government, which became an Indian state, with Mumbai as the capital. However, migrants from West Bengal continued to arrive at work in the East Indian Railways, the BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation), and other service sectors.
By the late 1960s, a small number of people of "untouchable" castes like the Bhils, Doms, and Yadus had joined their older Hindu cousins.
In 1961, many Bengali-speaking migrants and their families (largely Muslim) began to arrive in urban centers. According to one estimate, 200,000 Muslim families settled in Bombay alone, the capital of the Bombay province, alone. The government of India began implementing the Enemy Aliens Ordinance, 1950, to control the movement of non-national people in major cities. This led to inter-communal violence, in which Hindu mobs were accused of attacking Muslims.
In the 1970s, West Bengal's political climate was relaxed, and violence between Hindus and Muslims declined.
The migration to Bombay continued until 1985.
Life As An Indo-Pakistani In Exile
After partition in 1947, the Hindus in East Pakistan found themselves in a position similar to that of Muslims in West Pakistan: confined to East Pakistan while suffering persecution at the hands of Pakistani Hindus. However, unlike Muslims, they could not find a way to seek refuge in India. Thousands of Hindus were killed, imprisoned, or forced to flee to India. In the 1950s and 1960s, the migration of Indians to West Pakistan was rampant, while at the same time the exodus of East Pakistani Hindus was on the rise. The migration of Hindus from East Pakistan to West Pakistan was so widespread that the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that 80% of Hindu refugees who arrived in India were Pakistanis, rather than refugees from East Pakistan.
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| Hindus Migration From Pakistan To India |
The exodus from East Pakistan is notable because it was largely a spontaneous migration with the East Pakistanis fighting each other in bloody internal battles along the migration routes. Historians and journalists believed that the large number of people moving on foot across the Bangladesh-India border were compelled to leave for economic reasons, rather than communal strife. The East Pakistan government's persecution of non-Muslims (mainly Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs) after the Partition of India in 1947 forced the Hindus to flee to India. The government treated the Hindus as second-class citizens, forbade them from practicing their religion and building religious places of worship, confiscated their property, and in some cases even ordered executions of those who resisted.
The general atmosphere of brutality that prevailed in East Pakistan drove tens of thousands of people into neighboring India. Estimates of the number of Bengali Hindus who crossed the border in the immediate post-partition period vary. An unnamed British-educated Indian diplomat in Dhaka estimated it to be "ten to fifteen thousand", according to Janaki Lenin in The Indian Express, "but some years later when he returned to Delhi, Mr. H.N. Goswami, with the assistance of retired officials of the Indian Home Department, produced a much higher figure of three to four million," while the figure that has gained the most traction is that of Arthur J. Wood, an official of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, who stated in 1954 that 50,000 Hindu refugees had arrived in India. However, Wood's figures were challenged by British-educated Indian historian Anjan Dutt and a report by the Indian Parliament stated that a lower figure of 20,000-30,000 had reached India.
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| Refugee Camp - India |
Muslims rioted, killing Sikhs, as they claimed that the Pakistan Partition Ordinance was an attempt to annihilate Muslims, and Hindus were also targeted. Since Hindus were unable to move out of Pakistan and so, out of fear, Hindus migrated to India in large numbers.
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| Series Of Events |
India-Pakistan Partition And Kashmir Dispute
India and Pakistan partition was called the Great Partition of British India. Thus the country was divided into many parts in the year 1947. The British possessions and the princely states with their respective rulers came under one territory called Pakistan and the British possessions with their respective rulers came under another territory called India. As a result of this partition, for the first time, an ethnic group was deprived of its sovereignty.
Though Pakistan gained independence from the British, the Maharaja of Kashmir refused to sign the instrument of an accession under the Indian Independence Act 1947. Thus Kashmir remains as a self-governing state with a Muslim majority while India is in control of Jammu & Kashmir (a territory that lies south of Kashmir and is in a somewhat different geopolitical zone) where Hindus form a small minority.
This has resulted in the existence of a disputed region on the northern side of Kashmir (known as Azad Kashmir) which has been under effective Indian control for nearly seven decades (since 1947), with Kashmiri nationalists protesting against the imposition of Indian rule. Though India considers Kashmir as its integral part.
On the other hand, the majority of the Hindu population living in Jammu (in the Indian part of Jammu & Kashmir), was relocated from their original homeland by the authorities under Indian occupation, after Pakistan had taken control of the state and retained Kashmiri control over it.
As a consequence of this mass displacement and the restrictions on the freedoms and rights of the local population, there is tension and bitter emotions on the issue in Kashmir.
The two neighboring countries and their disputed territory share an even more troubled relationship because of what they believe is the illegal occupation of Kashmir by India, by the fact that Jammu and Kashmir are an integral part of India, and by religious animosity and intolerance between Muslims and Hindus in India.
Since 1947, India has been at odds with Pakistan, India refused to ratify the Simla Agreement and kept on demanding Kashmir's accession to India.
In 2002, India proposed the 'New Delhi Principles' as a settlement to the Kashmir issue.
In 2014, on the anniversary of the independence of Pakistan and India, a social media campaign called "Kashmir Solidarity Day" was launched on social media in India to support Kashmiris' struggle for their right to self-determination.
In February 2018, there was widespread protest throughout India against rising Islamophobia after an imam was murdered in Rajasthan and an Indian Muslim professor at Kent University in the UK was assaulted on campus for wearing a traditional Indian headscarf.
In March 2018, Kerala proposed International Yoga Day as a way of bridging the gulf of differences between India and Pakistan. On March 19, 2018, India celebrated International Yoga Day and Prime Minister Narendra Modi performed a yoga session along with millions of people.
Present State Of Hindus And Sikhs In Pakistan
To this day, almost 96.47% of Pakistanis are Muslims while almost 2.14% are Hindus and 1.27% are Christians. Other ethnic groups who constitute nearly 0.12% of Pakistan's population [pakistan census 2017]
Many non-Muslims have lived in Pakistan for a long time, even before the formation of the modern state of Pakistan. They include Balochi and Pashtun tribes, Sindhi and Punjabi Hindu and Christian communities, Kashmiri Pandits, Memons, Shias, and Ahmadi Muslims.
The majority of Hindus in Pakistan are concentrated in Sindh, Balochistan, and Punjab. Of all the Pakistani states, Punjab has the highest number of Hindus with around 14.6% of the population in the province.
The Hindus of Punjab are particularly concentrated in districts such as Mona and Khushab. The tribal belt is also home to a large number of Hindus, mainly of Rajput and Brahmin communities who migrated from Rajasthan and other parts of Punjab.
The Muslim and Sikh minorities of Sindh and Balochistan are predominantly Hindu, while the Hindus of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Hazara regions are non-Muslim and largely belong to the Yousafzai community, who belong to the Shias.
The most widely spoken language in Pakistan is English. Other languages in Pakistan include Urdu, the national language; Punjabi, a historical and official language, belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European
Pakistan The Pseudo Democracy
History of India Pakistan partition India and Pakistan is considered as one country by the international community but Pakistan wasn't recognized internationally as an independent country till 29th October 1947, and so neither were united in maryland
It seems that Pakistan is becoming a crime scene at the moment. From the sit-in protest in Islamabad to the murder of a murdered activist in the east of the country to the storming of a police station in Karachi. Pakistani politics seems to be spiralling out of control with rioting, terrorist attacks, and the army being called in. Those who would have called it a military coup ten years ago have since accepted it as a matter of life and death for the country. We know that one thing with dictatorships is that one wrong move could result in a worldwide manhunt, no matter how short a time it’s been. What does Pakistan face? What is happening? And what’s this danger called Balochistan that’s caught the eyes of the world?
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| Map of India Pre and Post Independence |
Conclusion
1) 1600: British East India Company is established
2) 1707: Mughal Empire collapsing;Indian states begin breaking away from Mughal control
3) 1757: Robert Clive leads victory at Battle of Plassey; begins East India Company (British) leading power in India
4) 1800: Many Indians begin thinking more modernly, changing traditional ideas. Some take ideas wanting to govern themselves
5) May 10,1857: Indian Rebellion of 1857 (Sepoy Mutiny) starts. Challenges East India Company as fierce fighting breaks out
6) 1858: British government takes direct command of India, from East India Company.
7) Late 1800: Nationalism surfaces in India
8) 1885: Indian National Congress is formed
9) 1906: Muslim League formed
10) 1930: First proposed idea of partition by philosopher Allama Iqbal
11) Late 1930: Muslims begin exiting Congress
12) 1943: Muslim League proposes "Divide and Quit" plan
13) July 18,1947: Mountbatten Partition Plan is finalized
14) August 14-15,1947: Independence is gained from Britain. Pakistan is formed immediate next day
15) 1947: Initial amalgamation of princely states into the Union of India to form nation
16) 1948: Separation of India in 1947 from united Kashmir state
17) 1951: Entire east India
17) 1952: India came into existence, and a bicameral parliament was formed
18) 1954: Existing Indian constitution of 1952 amended and adapted to the new constitution of India (28th amendment)
19) 25th August 1966: President's rule introduced in India for 60 days
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