In the wake of a major Indian uprising against East India Company, most of South Asia fell under the direct rule of the British Crown. The British ruled the remaining 40% of the subcontinent indirectly, through semi-independent ‘Princely states’.
United India was a vast and diverse place: it had thousands of ethnic groups, and four-fifths of the population of the British Empire. It included the largest Hindu, Muslim and Sikh populations on the planet, in addition to numerous other religious communities.
In the wake of WW1, the nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi transformed regional campaigns for independence into a national movement. His secular political party, the Indian National Congress, led non-violent protests for Indian Independence.
However, not everyone agreed that India should remain united after the British left. Indian Muslims feared their interests would be side-lined by the Hindu majority in a united India. The British used tensions between Hindus and Muslims to their advantage and attempted to divide the nationalist movement.
The unravelling of India’s profoundly intertwined Hindu and Muslim communities happened over just a few decades. By the 1940s, many believed that it might be impossible for Hindus and Muslims to coexist peacefully.
A year into WW2, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim league, a political party for Indian Muslims, called for a separate homeland to be carved out from India’s Muslim majority areas. This proposed country would be called Pakistan.
In the wake of WW2, Indian elections revealed the extraordinary popularity of the Pakistan demand among Indian Muslims. 87% of Muslim seats went to Jinnah’s Muslim League, a dramatic reversal from the previous election where Muslims had overwhelmingly voted for the Indian National Congress.
After political negotiations for the Pakistan demand failed, the Muslim League announced a nationwide ‘Direct Action Day’ protest to highlight the demand for Partition. The protest rapidly descended into sectarian massacres between Hindus and Muslims - the first bout of Partition violence in the subcontinent.4000 people were killed and 30,000 people fled the city, spreading stories of sectarian violence across Bengal. Panic and retaliatory violence spread across Bengal and up the Gangetic plains to Bihar and UP.
As their Raj crumbled, the British focused on transferring power as quickly as possible, failing to stop the spread of violence. One of the most affected regions was Punjab, roughly divided between a Muslim majority West and a Hindu-majority East. In March 1947, it descended into ethnic cleansing as neighbours turned on one another. As the Indian army demobilized from WW2, Punjabi soldiers arrived home with weapons and military training. In just six months, eleven million people had been driven from their homes and two million were killed. Some eighty-three thousand women were abducted and raped.
As genocidal violence spread across the country, the British Viceroy announced that India would be partitioned into two new nation-states: India and Pakistan. The Viceroy controversially brought the date of independence forward to 15 August 1947 to try and force Jinnah to cooperate with the Indian National Congress. This decision ultimately condemned the Partition process to failure.
Turning the idea of a Muslim homeland into reality proved extraordinarily difficult.Because the Muslim population was scattered across the subcontinent, Pakistan was to have an Eastern and a Western component, separated from one another by thousands of miles of hostile Indian territory. Moreover, Partition involved dividing India’s most religiously diverse provinces - Punjab, Bengal and Assam- based on which districts happened to be Muslim-majority.
A British civil servant called Cyril Radcliffe was tasked with drawing the new border. Radcliffe had never been east of Paris and was given just one and a half months to acquaint himself with the subcontinent and decide the border that would slice through it.
India and Pakistan celebrated their bittersweet independence in the midst of the largest mass migration in human history. Mohammad Ali Jinnah was sworn in as the first Governor General of Pakistan. Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi’s protege, became the first Prime Minister of India.
Drawing the borders between the two new countries was so chaotic that the exact whereabouts of the border were unknown until 2 days later.
Within just two months of Independence, India and Pakistan would be at war over the princely state of Jammu & Kashmir. Mass Partition violence in the winter capital of Jammu provoked the first example of irregular warfare across the Indo-Pakistan border. This sparked the first of many wars between India and Pakistan.
In the wake of a major Indian uprising against East India Company, most of South Asia fell under the direct rule of the British Crown. The British ruled the remaining 40% of the subcontinent indirectly, through semi-independent ‘Princely states’.
United India was a vast and diverse place: it had thousands of ethnic groups, and four-fifths of the population of the British Empire. It included the largest Hindu, Muslim and Sikh populations on the planet, in addition to numerous other religious communities.
In the wake of WW1, the nationalist leader Mahatma Gandhi transformed regional campaigns for independence into a national movement. His secular political party, the Indian National Congress, led non-violent protests for Indian Independence.
However, not everyone agreed that India should remain united after the British left. Indian Muslims feared their interests would be side-lined by the Hindu majority in a united India. The British used tensions between Hindus and Muslims to their advantage and attempted to divide the nationalist movement.
The unravelling of India’s profoundly intertwined Hindu and Muslim communities happened over just a few decades. By the 1940s, many believed that it might be impossible for Hindus and Muslims to coexist peacefully.
A year into WW2, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim league, a political party for Indian Muslims, called for a separate homeland to be carved out from India’s Muslim majority areas. This proposed country would be called Pakistan.
In the wake of WW2, Indian elections revealed the extraordinary popularity of the Pakistan demand among Indian Muslims. 87% of Muslim seats went to Jinnah’s Muslim League, a dramatic reversal from the previous election where Muslims had overwhelmingly voted for the Indian National Congress.
After political negotiations for the Pakistan demand failed, the Muslim League announced a nationwide ‘Direct Action Day’ protest to highlight the demand for Partition. The protest rapidly descended into sectarian massacres between Hindus and Muslims - the first bout of Partition violence in the subcontinent.4000 people were killed and 30,000 people fled the city, spreading stories of sectarian violence across Bengal. Panic and retaliatory violence spread across Bengal and up the Gangetic plains to Bihar and UP.
As their Raj crumbled, the British focused on transferring power as quickly as possible, failing to stop the spread of violence. One of the most affected regions was Punjab, roughly divided between a Muslim majority West and a Hindu-majority East. In March 1947, it descended into ethnic cleansing as neighbours turned on one another. As the Indian army demobilized from WW2, Punjabi soldiers arrived home with weapons and military training. In just six months, eleven million people had been driven from their homes and two million were killed. Some eighty-three thousand women were abducted and raped.
As genocidal violence spread across the country, the British Viceroy announced that India would be partitioned into two new nation-states: India and Pakistan. The Viceroy controversially brought the date of independence forward to 15 August 1947 to try and force Jinnah to cooperate with the Indian National Congress. This decision ultimately condemned the Partition process to failure.
Turning the idea of a Muslim homeland into reality proved extraordinarily difficult.Because the Muslim population was scattered across the subcontinent, Pakistan was to have an Eastern and a Western component, separated from one another by thousands of miles of hostile Indian territory. Moreover, Partition involved dividing India’s most religiously diverse provinces - Punjab, Bengal and Assam- based on which districts happened to be Muslim-majority.
A British civil servant called Cyril Radcliffe was tasked with drawing the new border. Radcliffe had never been east of Paris and was given just one and a half months to acquaint himself with the subcontinent and decide the border that would slice through it.
India and Pakistan celebrated their bittersweet independence in the midst of the largest mass migration in human history. Mohammad Ali Jinnah was sworn in as the first Governor General of Pakistan. Jawaharlal Nehru, Gandhi’s protege, became the first Prime Minister of India.
Drawing the borders between the two new countries was so chaotic that the exact whereabouts of the border were unknown until 2 days later.
Within just two months of Independence, India and Pakistan would be at war over the princely state of Jammu & Kashmir. Mass Partition violence in the winter capital of Jammu provoked the first example of irregular warfare across the Indo-Pakistan border. This sparked the first of many wars between India and Pakistan.
