Why did the India-Pakistan partition become one of the deadliest in history?
The story that shaped the lives of 1.7 billion people of the subcontinent
The British Raj of India ended in August of 1947, following a decades-long struggle for independence. But it was not the way most of them had dreamed of. Owing to religious tensions between Hindus and Muslims, British India was to be split into two dominions — a Muslim majority Pakistan and an essentially secular state of India. What followed was months of bloodshed along the borders of the two newly-formed nations.
About 15 million people became refugees. They had to leave their homes and their belongings and travel to a new land, a land where they would be accepted. Muslims migrated westward, from what would be Indian land, and Hindus and Sikhs migrated eastward towards India. These refugees witnessed one of the bloodiest periods in the history of the subcontinent.
The death toll estimates range from 200,000 to 2 million along with hundreds of thousands of women raped and injured. Complete villages were wiped out, children saw their families being murdered while hiding to save their own lives. So-called “blood trains” carrying refugees from one country to the other were butchered by mobs en-route.
“Some people said they had gone temporarily crazy”
— Nisid Hajari, the author of “Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition”
One can just ask — How did it get this far? To understand this, let’s go back to 1939.
Hitler-led Germany was wreaking havoc in Europe as Britain decided to join the war, dragging India along with it. Nearly 2.5 million Indian soldiers fought in the war for Britain and the Allies. The Indian National Congress was not happy with this forceful inclusion in the war. The decades-long independence movement became stronger than ever led by Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. They launched the ‘Quit-India’ movement in 1942 and were subsequently jailed till 1945.
In need of local support, the British made a pact with the All-India Muslim League, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, promising the creation of separate states at the end of the war. The Muslims made up only 25% of the population and were the largest religious minority in British India. Jinnah feared that after the British left, Muslims would face oppression, and hence demanded the creation of a separate Muslim state, Pakistan.
After the war, Clement Attlee’s Labour government recognized that Britain’s crippled economy could not support the cost of the over-extended empire. A Cabinet Mission was dispatched to India in early 1946, and Attlee described its mission in ambitious terms:
“My colleagues are going to India with the intention of using their utmost endeavours to help her to attain her freedom as speedily and fully as possible. What form of government is to replace the present regime is for India to decide; but our desire is to help her to set up forthwith the machinery for making that decision.”
Lord Louis Mountbatten arrived in India in March 1947 as the last Viceroy, with the objective of finding a speedy way to bring the British Raj to an end. The transfer of power was scheduled in June 1948. But on June 3, 1947, Mountbatten announced that the independence would be moved up to August 1947.
The Boundary Commission was formed, led by British lawyer Cyril Radcliffe who had never been to India before. The commission had only five weeks to draw a line and so took hasty decisions. They decided that all the Muslim majority population in the Northwestern part of India would go to Pakistan and the Hindu majority to India. Similarly, in the east, Bengal was partitioned, and East Bengal, with a Muslim majority, would become East Pakistan.
However, the boundary was not that simple.
- Firstly, not all Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs wanted the partition.
- Secondly, in order to draw a proper boundary, many Hindu dominated districts had to be left in Pakistan and vice-versa.
- In addition to that, the religious communities in the region of Punjab and Bengal who had been co-existing for hundreds of years were so intertwined, that districts with a Muslim majority had a sizeable population of other religions and vice-versa.
The hasty creation of this boundary ensured that millions were left homeless and had to migrate. Radcliffe later confessed that drawing up a boundary in such a complex region would have taken years. He also confessed to have used outdated maps and census charts showing religious demographies in the region.
Pakistan got independence on August 14 and India on August 15. Two days later, on August 17, 1947, the boundary was made public. Pakistan was separated into two parts by 1700-km of Indian territory. East Pakistan would later for the country of Bangladesh. Nehru would become the first Prime Minister of India and Jinnah, of Pakistan.
On the day the boundary was made public, a sudden mass migration started. Along with them, riots. Neigbours who had co-existed for years turned to kill each other.
The British wanted to leave India as soon as possible and left without deploying troops to stop the mass bloodshed. Both the countries, who still did not have a constitution, tried to intervene but it was already too late. They also now had a new, larger border dispute at hand — the state of Kashmir. Both countries claim the land to this day.
The horrors of the partition are still fresh in the minds of survivors. They were kids when they saw all of their family killed. India and Pakistan have fought 4 wars, including the one for the creation of Bangladesh, along with countless border disputes and terror attacks.
The irony is that the two countries share the same languages, culture, food, history, and roots. Border cities like Amritsar (India) and Lahore (Pakistan) share the same distinct smell. One can’t help but imagine how a few inept decisions by the inefficient management in times of turmoil caused millions of broken families and shaped the future of the subcontinent.
