How British Colonialism Contributed to Violence During the Partition of India in 1947

Simone Lilavois
The Still Point
Published in
14 min readFeb 29, 2024
Refugees crowded emergency trains leaving to India or Pakistan c. 1947–1953 (left). These trains continued for years after 1947, such as the train leaving India for Pakistan in 1954 (right).

The partition of India was an impetuous attempt to force peace among a religiously divided nation. The British Indian Empire rushed through the process to grant India its independence, and in doing so, induced the largest mass migration in human history, characterized by its brutal outbreaks of violence and irreparable political damage. Religious conflict, inflamed by British imperialism, was the central instigator of violence during the mass migration following the partition of India in 1947.

Background

The existence of both Hindu and Muslim cultures in India can be traced back to the Islamic conquest of Lahore (today the capital of the Punjab province in Pakistan) in 1021 by Persianized Turks led by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni of the Ghaznavid Empire. Over the next few centuries, a unique merging of the two cultures occurred, creating a blended Indo-Islamic civilization. British rule began at the turn of the 16th century with the creation of the East India Company (EIC) — a corporation flagrantly akin to a power-hungry nation. The EIC transformed over time, originally only meant for trading goods such as cotton, silk, tea, and spices. However, as wealth grew, so did the imperialistic desire for more territory regardless of the effects. By 1803, the EIC had an army of nearly 260,000 soldiers, ready to defend the company and carry out their aggressive colonial objectives. In the 1850s, the EIC’s misguided involvement in local politics began to incite frequent violence and revolts.

In 1857 there was a series of uprisings by Indian soldiers employed with EIC. As the uprisings got increasingly more violent and the lives of British soldiers were lost, the British government decided a more direct rule of India was needed and took control of the EIC’s assets, effectively abolishing the corporation. In 1858, the British Raj assumed control of India without the consent of the people, disrupting decades of peaceful social, cultural, and political development. This was made official on August 2, 1858, with the passing of the Government of India Act, where autocracy was transferred from the company to the royal crown.

Succeeding the Second World War, mass decolonization efforts were instated. With the end of WWII and the formation of the United Nations, the world was in a fragile state. Britain saw their rule over India, as well as all of its major colonies, as outdated and wanted to withdraw as hastily as possible, even at the expense of India’s political stability. On August 15th, 1947, British rule in India officially ended and partition was instated, followed by one of the largest and most violent migrations in human history. The partition was officially declared in the Indian Independence Act 1947 and resulted in the creation of two self-governing independent dominions which legally came into existence at midnight on August 15, 1947, marking the disunion of the British Raj. That night, British India was divided into two independent dominions: The Dominion of India (which is the Republic of India today) and the Dominion of Pakistan (which is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People’s Republic of Bangladesh today). Bengal and Punjab, two major provinces, were also divided during partition based on district-wide non-Muslim or Muslim majorities. The Partition was partially instated out of necessity by the British Empire (they were in economic crisis after the war), however, the social movement led by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi provoked a profound change in the attitude towards colonial powers — something which heavily contributed to the fall of the British Colonial Empire.

Following the partition, millions of Muslims migrated to West and East Pakistan (East Pakistan is now known as Bangladesh), while millions of Hindus and Sikhs migrated to the slightly shrunken India. Partition abruptly ended over two centuries of British rule, simultaneously disrupting decades of coexistence between the two religions. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates nearly 15 million Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims were displaced during the partition of India, with a death toll of up to two million. There was an unprecedented amount of sexually motivated and gender-based violence, with terrifying statistics reporting over 75,000 women raped, with many, many more subject to sexual abuse. Beyond this, there were innumerable, senseless violent acts throughout the migration, including massacres, arson, forced conversions, mass abductions, and child violence.

Indian nationalism first gained attention with the formation of The Indian National Congress (INC) in 1885, which acted as the central opposition party to the British Empire. Partition itself can be traced back to the creation of the INC. The ideology behind partition grew in popularity with the INC and truly began with India’s first direct resistance towards British rule, around WWI. An important turning point in the movement was the explosion in Gandhi’s popularity — The Salt March in April 1930.

Gandhi returned to India in 1915 after two decades of Indian activism in South Africa and began his movement for Indian independence. His first act under the satyagraha campaign of the INC was to protest the British Salt Act of 1882 which prevented Indians from collecting or selling salt. Gandhi organized a 240-mile march of civil disobedience. The original crowd of just under 100 quickly grew as thousands of people joined along the way, united by their oppression. The destination of the march was Dandi, a town on the Arabian Sea. By the time Gandhi and his followers reached the coastal town on April 5th, there were nearly 50,000 people with him. To protest British policy, the plan was to make salt from seawater. It was a clever and effective act of opposition, a challenge to autocratic rule. With his position in the INC and his natural diplomacy, Gandhi quickly grew to fame. He was idolized and in some cases even worshiped and deified for his non-violent methods of protest. He was regarded as “Mahatma” by many of his followers, which translates to “the great-souled one.” As a member of the INC, Gandhi worked constantly to promote Indian Nationalism, for both Hindus and Muslims, peacefully.

Gandhi leading a group of people during the Salt March in March 1930. Source: Wikipedia

On the other side of the spectrum lies Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan. Originally, Jinnah was an advocate of a hybrid Hindu-Muslim civilization. He was a member of the Indian National Congress as well and worked to strengthen bonds between the INC and the All-India Muslim League. In 1916 he was elected president of the Muslim League. However, in 1920, when the INC embraced satyagraha — Gandhi’s ideology of “holding firmly to truth” through nonviolent protest — Jinnah was firmly against the approach and resigned from the INC. At this point, the Muslim League and the INC had significant differences in the objectives and methods by which they carried out their work.

Though the INC was supposed to represent all of India, many Muslims felt overshadowed by the Hindu majority and began to pull back. Most of the issues on which the INC was divided were related to religious disagreement. Then, in the 1937 Indian Provincial elections, the Indian National Congress won by an overwhelming majority and spectacularly failed to represent Muslims. Of the 482 Muslim seats available, the INC contested only 58 of them and won a mere 26. When Jinnah requested to form coalitions between the INC and the Muslim League, he was denied. This marked a major bifurcation in Indian politics, eventually leading to the partition of India. While partition can largely be attributed to imperialistic British rule, the extreme religious division during the mid-20th century was heavily intertwined with the extreme political divide. Specifically, a lot of it came down to the discord between the personalities of Jinnah and Gandhi. The incompatibility of the politicians at the time furthered the tension between the two religious groups, as each was seen as a representative figure of the entire religious body.

Gandhi was imprisoned multiple times in his life, most notably when he demanded British succession from India at the start of WWII. He offered that India would cooperate with the war effort and provide soldiers in return for their absolute independence. In response, British forces imprisoned Gandhi along with the entire INC leadership. During this period, the Muslim League was able to gain strength and popularity, no longer overshadowed by the regular Hindu-majority leaders. As the Muslim nationalist movement grew, it seemed less and less likely for any type of peaceful coexistence. In Lahore in 1940, at a Muslim League session, the first official demand was made for the partition of India. Here it was first suggested to create the Muslim state of Pakistan.

As outbreaks of religiously motivated violence became frequent, congress members who had originally opposed partition began to consider it as the only remaining viable option. According to the New Yorker, “the British realized that they had lost any remaining vestiges of control and began to speed up their exit strategy. On the afternoon of February 20, 1947, the British Prime Minister, Clement Atlee, announced before Parliament that British rule would end on “a date not later than June, 1948.” If Nehru and Jinnah could be reconciled by then, power would be transferred to “some form of central Government for British India.” If not, they would hand over authority “in such other way as may seem most reasonable and in the best interests of the Indian people.”” (The New Yorker, 2015). Then, four months later, in early June, a minor royal named Lord Louis Mountbatten announced August 15, 1947, as the official date for the partition and exit of the British Empire. This transfer of power was now to occur ten months earlier than initially planned. A British judge named Cyril Radcliffe was given only five weeks to redraw the borders of South Asia and halt an impending outbreak of sectarian violence. It was a monumental task that was clumsily rushed through and given to a man who had never before been to India. According to the New Yorker, following the partition, Jinnah regarded the territory given to the Muslims as “a maimed, mutilated and moth-eaten travesty” of the land he had fought for. He warned that the partition of Punjab and Bengal “will be sowing the seeds of future serious trouble.””” (The New Yorker, 2015). This was a major foreshadow for the events to follow.

Map showing the “Radcliffe Line” dividing the newly independent dominions. Source: Wikipedia

Once partition was made official, the British Army was mandated to exit India. According to Stanford University, “In Punjab, confidential instructions insisted that British army units had no operational functions except in emergency to save British lives.” (Stanford, 2019). This was a selfish attempt, an act of self-interest to stay out of “internal conflicts,” especially when India’s own army was unstable, unable to prevent violence, and secretarially divided. It is grossly analogous to the actions of the Belgian army and UN Peacekeepers during the Rwandan genocide. Conditions that had been imposed by the oppressive party were now left to be dealt with by the innocent masses.

Despite all his devoted followers, and despite his own identity as a Hindu, Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu radical on January 30th, 1948. His death brought a public reaction unlike any other: over one million people attended his procession. Gandhi’s embrace of a hybrid Hindu-Muslim civilization eventually brought his downfall — an ironic portrayal of the extent of the religious conflict. The toxic environment that had been created spewed such hatred that a young radical would kill the leader of his own party. Gandhi died a victim of his own principles.

When analyzing the causes and eventual effects of the partition of India, it is imperative to consider the role played by the British Empire. The 1947 partition of India and the violent migration that ensued were direct results of British imperialism and its efforts to exacerbate religious divisions. As written by British historian Alex von Tunzelmann, in Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire, “[when] the British started to define ‘communities’ based on religious identity and attach political representation to them, many Indians stopped accepting the diversity of their own thoughts and began to ask themselves in which of the boxes they belonged.” (von Tunzelmann, 2007). This piece of evidence provides further background context regarding the role that Britain played in exacerbating the conflict. The greed of state formation overtook the independent, stable cultural, religious, and political development of a society. Once politics and religion were intertwined, the line that separated faith and political belief was blurred. This significantly contributed to the religious divide in British India.

Further, as British scholar Yasmin Khan brilliantly writes in The Great Partition, “[Partition] stands testament to the follies of empire, which ruptures community evolution, distorts historical trajectories and forces violent state formation from societies that would otherwise have taken different — and unknowable — paths.” (Khan, 2007). This quote provides insight into the overarching effects of partition as an imperialistic mechanism and how it connects to a much bigger idea about the nature of imperialism. Imperialism inhibits cultural development and in the case of partition, the intertwining of faith and politics led to a failed democracy.

Ayesha Jalal, a Pakistani-American historian, is a descendant of partition survivors. In one of her books, In ​​The Pity of Partition: Manto’s Life, Times, and Work across the India-Pakistan Divide, Jalal quotes her uncle, Saadat Hasan Manto, a Bombay-based writer. She writes, “the pity of partition was not that instead of one country there were now two — independent India and independent Pakistan — but the fact that “human beings in both countries were slaves, slaves of bigotry . . . slaves of religious passions, slaves of animal instincts and barbarity.”” (Jalal, 2013). This quote speaks to the role human nature played in the mass outbreaks of violence and how the hatred spread. The people themselves are not fully at fault — yes, atrocities were committed, but it was the diabolical situation that caused the outbreaks of mass violence. Jalal further says, “His [Manto’s] main point really is that you can’t blame people; that it’s the circumstances that lead people to this kind of human bestiality.” The circumstances were imposed by the British.

The intertwining of faith and politics was the underlying reason for all push factors for the migration during the partition of India in 1947. Gruesomely described in Midnight Furies by Hajari, “Gangs of killers set whole villages aflame, hacking to death men and children and the aged while carrying off young women to be raped. Some British soldiers and journalists who had witnessed the Nazi death camps claimed Partition’s brutalities were worse: pregnant women had their breasts cut off and babies hacked out of their bellies; infants were found literally roasted on spits.” (Hajari, 2015). There was unspeakable violence committed during the migration after the partition of India. This quote reveals the unfiltered reality of the violence that occurred during the partition. It provides information for understanding the horrors that tore communities and families apart. The transition following the partition was not a smooth one. The process of one nation separating into two severed decade-long relations and disrupted the economic stability of both. Agricultural systems were broken apart, some were left without sellers, and some without buyers. Supply and demand chains were dismantled, businesses were forced to close down, and railroads were put out of service. Entire villages were burnt to the ground — their inhabitants massacred. The region was left in a state of seemingly irreparable devastation.

Buildings were destroyed during riots. Source: BBC

Throughout the 1940s, violence between the two religious parties only escalated. Increasingly polarized ghettos were formed and the once abundant blend of cultures was rarely found. According to the New Yorker, “Tensions were often heightened by local and regional political leaders. H. S. Suhrawardy, the ruthless Muslim League Chief Minister of Bengal, made incendiary speeches in Calcutta, provoking rioters against his own Hindu populace and writing in a newspaper that “bloodshed and disorder are not necessarily evil in themselves, if resorted to for a noble cause.”” The mass religious violence that ensued after the partition of India in 1947 was an inevitable manifestation of imperialistic division.

Beyond southern Asia, the reality of the barbaric violence that followed partition was not widely known. This could be attributed to the fact that it was not accurately reported by Britain. Biased media and historical reports distorted the severity of the violence during the mass migration and covered up the role Britain played in exacerbating the conflict by rushing through partition. As said by Nisid Hajari, the author of Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition, “At the time [following partition], there was an impetus to portray the moment of independence as a triumph — that after 200 years of colonial rule, the British could part as friends. If you emphasize the death and violence, that tarnishes the achievement.” This was done to cover up that much of the blame could be placed on Britain. Partition was avoidable up until the last months. Gandhi was adamantly against it, and so was Jinnah, though less vocally. Though tensions had been building up throughout the messy British rule, the British could have put in more effort to exit the country peacefully and sagaciously. Religious violence was only triggered later.

Stanford University put together a virtual partition museum with over 50 interviews with partition survivors. It is an incredible collection of forgotten stories, family traumas, and childhood memories. For far too long the focus of partition has been on the stories of politicians, the leaders of the movement, and well-known historical events. Never has there been enough focus on those who actually suffered from partition, those who were subject to the abhorrent violence: the civilians. As written in The Guardian, “Partition history used to be all about the high politics and the relative responsibilities of Mountbatten, Jinnah, Gandhi and Nehru — these four men have always towered over the story, and ultimately their animosities and the reasons they failed to agree on a constitutional settlement make them the leading actors of an enduring and gripping drama — but today many historians are far more interested in the fate of refugees in the camps, the ways in which villagers experienced the uprooting of 1947, or how they rebuilt their lives in the aftermath.” (The Guardian, 2017). The exhibit available through the Stanford Library is an attempt to tell the world the story of partition before the last generation of survivors can no longer tell it themselves.

One oral history report given by Sardar Tarlochan Singh, a Sikh, who was only 14 when partition took place, is especially moving. Tarlochan said, “Many other nations had situations like ours, but no blood shed like the one we saw, half a million lost lives. It’s hard to imagine how neighbors living next to each other became enemies, we became like animals, I saw people being killed, houses being burned, bodies of the people flowing in the canals and people being shot in trains…one can’t imagine how a human can be so wild.” (Stanford Library, 2012).

Today, India and Pakistan remain in religious conflict. For South Asia, partition was a defining historical event of the 20th century and its effects are still prevalent today, especially as the media continues to spread false information. Since August 1947, there have been three Indo-Pakistani wars over territory. India tested its first nuclear weapon in 1974, followed by Pakistan in 1988. Tensions are only rising. As said in Midnight Furies by Nisid Hajari, “[The conflict between India and Pakistan] is getting more, rather than less, dangerous: the two countries’ nuclear arsenals are growing, militant groups are becoming more capable, and rabid media outlets on both sides are shrinking the scope for moderate voices.” (Hajari, 2015). The conflict is only worsening — if things aren’t eased soon, the spark of tension threatens to once more transform into a raging fire. The effects of partition have no discernable end. It was an unprecedented example of the inhibitions of imperialism and the detestable capabilities of humanity when pushed to hatred. Seeds of division planted by the British Empire flourished into an unavoidable outbreak of violent human nature under a diabolical situation. Partition could have been avoided had the peaceful coexistence of Hindus and Muslims not been besieged by unhinged, manic religious nationalism. Partition was an example of how the bridging of politics and religion is always dangerous: to associate one political party with the voice of God is to condemn the freedom of democracy. This vicious cycle of hatred and violence will only continue unless we can find ways to transcend social labels and the historical baggage they hold.

Jinnah with Gandhi in 1944. Source: Wikipedia

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Simone Lilavois
The Still Point

Simone Lilavois is a NYC high school student passionate about understanding the nature of life in relation to the Cosmos.