The tragedy of India’s partition – Was the bloody path to independence really necessary?
After watching the YouTube video clip “Partition The Day India burned” I was negatively surprised how bloody the partition of India really was. Since the end of World War I, Indian nationalists believed it was only a matter of time before British India would be independent. However, the British thought at any time of independence for their colony.
With partition of India results the creation of the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India on 15 August 1947 due to religious and ethnic disputes. It marked the end of the British rule in the Indian subcontinent. The division involved in addition to the geographic divisions and the redistribution of the Indian railways, the British Indian Army, the administrative apparatus of the former Indian Civil Service and all public finances.
After the independence of the two sovereign states India and Pakistan, there was a massive population exchange along the new borders. During the exchanges on both sides of the border, there was intensified violence between Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus where hundreds of thousand people were killed. In addition, a countless number of women were raped, abducted, forced into marriage or into prostitution. The partition of India is remained subject of fierce debate in India, Pakistan and mainly in the UK. Especially Mountbatten is criticised to have precipitated the final decision on the boundary lines under enormous time pressure. Why not spending more time for the development of boundary lines?! For more than ten million people on both sides of the new border is was synonymous with resettlement, flight and expulsion.
