What is Partition Of India?

The Partition of India is the process that led to the creation, on 14 August 1947 and 15 August 1947, respectively, of the sovereign states of Dominion of Pakistan (later Islamic Republic of Pakistan) and Union of India (later Republic of India) upon the granting of independence from the British Empire, marking the end of the British rule of India. In particular, it refers to the partition of the Bengal province of British India into the Pakistani state of East Bengal (later East Pakistan, now Bangladesh) and the Indian state of West Bengal, as well as the similar partition of the Punjab region of British India into the Punjab province of West Pakistan and the Indian state of Punjab.

The secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War is not covered by the term Partition of India, nor are the earlier separations of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Burma (now Myanmar) from the administration of British India. Ceylon, part of the Madras Presidency of British India from 1795 until 1798, became a separate Crown Colony in 1798. Burma, gradually annexed by the British during 1826 – 86 and governed as a part of the British Indian administration until 1937, was directly administered thereafter. Burma was granted independence on January 4, 1948 and Ceylon on February 4, 1948. (See History of Sri Lanka and History of Burma.)

The remaining countries of present-day South Asia — Nepal and Bhutan — having signed treaties with the British designating them as independent states, were never a part of British India and therefore their borders were not affected by the partition.

Pakistan and India

Two self governing countries legally came into existence at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947. The ceremonies for the transfer of power were held a day earlier in Karachi, at the time the capital of the new state of Pakistan, to allow the last British Viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, to attend both the ceremony in Karachi and the ceremony in Delhi. Pakistan celebrates Independence Day on August 14, while India celebrates it on August 15.

Background of the partition

Late 19th and early 20th century

1909 Prevailing Religions, Map of British Indian Empire, 1909, showing the prevailing majority religions of the population for different districts.	1909 Percentage of Muslims, Map of British Indian Empire, 1909, showing percentage of Muslims in different districts.	1909 Percentage of Hindus, Map of British Indian Empire, 1909, showing percentage of Hindus in different districts.	1909 Percentage of Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains. Map of British Indian Empire, 1909, showing percentages in different districts.

1909 Prevailing Languages (Northern Region), Map of British Indian Empire, 1909, showing the prevailing (Aryan) languages of the population for different districts.

1901 Population Density, Map of British Indian Empire, 1909, showing the population density in 1901.

The seeds of partition were sown long before independence. Shirin Keen claims that the British, still fearful of the potential threat from the Muslims who had ruled the subcontinent for over 300 years under the Mughal Empire, followed a divide and rule policy.^[1] Organization of citizens into religious communities was also a feature of Mughal rule. When the Indians under British rule started to organize for independence, two main communal factions of the Indian nationalist movement, and especially of the Indian National Congress, struggled for control of the movement and eventual control of the country. Muslims felt threatened by Hindu majorities. The Hindus, in their turn, felt that the nationalist leaders were coddling the minority Muslims and slighting the majority Hindus.

1920–1932

The All India Muslim League (AIML) was formed in Dhaka in 1906 by Muslims who were suspicious of the mainstream, secular but Hindu-majority Indian National Congress. A number of different scenarios were proposed at various times. Among the first to make the demand for a separate state was the writer/philosopher Allama Iqbal, who, in his presidential address to the 1930 convention of the Muslim League said that he felt a separate nation for Muslims was essential in an otherwise Hindu-dominated subcontinent. The Sindh Assembly passed a resolution making it a demand in 1935. Iqbal, Jouhar and others then worked hard to draft Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who had till then worked for Hindu-Muslim unity, to lead the movement for this new nation. By 1930, Jinnah had begun to despair of the fate of minority communities in a united India and had begun to argue that mainstream parties such as the Congress (of which he was once a member) were insensitive to Muslim interests. At the 1940 AIML conference in Lahore, Jinnah made clear his commitment to two separate states, a position from which the League never again wavered:

The Hindus and the Muslims belong to two different religions, philosophies, social customs and literature… To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built up for the government of such a state.

1932–1937

However, Hindu organisations such as the Hindu Mahasabha, though against the division of the country, were also insisting on the same chasm between Hindus and Muslims. In 1937 at the 19th session of the Hindu Mahasabha held at Ahmedabad, Veer Savarkar in his presidential address asserted:^[2]

India cannot be assumed today to be Unitarian and homogeneous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main — the Hindus and the Muslims.

1937–1942

Most of the Congress leaders were secularists and resolutely opposed the division of India on the lines of religion. Mohandas Gandhi was both religious and , believing that Hindus and Muslims could and should live in amity. He opposed the partition, saying,

My whole soul rebels against the idea that Hinduism and Islam represent two antagonistic cultures and doctrines. To assent to such a doctrine is for me a denial of God.

For years, Gandhi and his adherents struggled to keep Muslims in the Congress Party (a major exit of many Muslim activists began in the 1930s), in the process enraging both Hindu Nationalists and Indian Muslim Nationalists. (Gandhi was assassinated soon after Partition by Hindu Nationalist Nathuram Godse, who believed that Gandhi was appeasing Muslims at the cost of Hindus.) Politicians and community leaders on both sides whipped up mutual suspicion and fear, culminating in dreadful events such as the riots during the Muslim League's Direct Action Day of August 1946 in Calcutta, in which more than 5,000 people were killed and many more injured. As public order broke down all across northern India and Bengal, the pressure increased to seek a political partition of territories as a way to avoid a full-scale civil war.

1942–1946

Until 1946, the definition of Pakistan as demanded by the League was so flexible that it could have been interpreted as a sovereign nation Pakistan, or as a member of a confederated India.

Some historians believe Jinnah (whose catch-phrase was that India would be "divided or destroyed") intended to use the threat of partition as a bargaining chip in order to gain more independence for the Muslim dominated provinces in the west from the Hindu dominated center.^[3]

Other historians claim that Jinnah's real vision was for a Pakistan that extended into Hindu-majority areas of India, by demanding the inclusion of the East of Punjab and West of Bengal, including Assam, all Hindu-majority country. Jinnah also fought hard for the annexation of Kashmir a Muslim majority state with Hindu ruler; and the accession of Hyderabad and Junagadh Hindu-majority states with Muslim rulers.

The British colonial administration did not directly rule all of "India". There were several different political arrangements in existence: Provinces were ruled directly and the Princely States with varying legal arrangements, like paramountcy.

The British Colonial Administration consisted of Secretary of State for India, the India Office, the Governor-General of India, and the Indian Civil Service. The Indian Political Parties were (alphabetically) All India Muslim League, Communist Party of India, Hindu Mahasabha, Indian National Congress, and the Unionist Muslim League (mainly in the Punjab).

The partition: 1947

The Mountbatten Plan

The actual division between the two new dominions was done according to what has come to be known as the 3rd June Plan or Mountbatten Plan.

The border between India and Pakistan was determined by a British Government-commissioned report usually referred to as the Radcliffe Award after the London lawyer, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who wrote it. Pakistan came into being with two non-contiguous enclaves, East Pakistan (today Bangladesh) and West Pakistan, separated geographically by India. India was formed out of the majority Hindu regions of the colony, and Pakistan from the majority Muslim areas. On July 18, 1947, the British Parliament passed the Indian Independence Act that finalized the partition arrangement. The Government of India Act 1935 was adapted to provide a legal framework for the two new dominions. Following partition, Pakistan was added as a new member of the United Nations, while the Republic of India assumed the seat of British India as a successor state.^[4]

The 565 Princely States were given a choice of which country to join.

The geography of the partition: the Radcliffe Line

The Punjab — the region of the five rivers east of Indus: Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej — consists of interfluvial doabs, or tracts of land lying between two confluent rivers. These are the Sind-Sagar doab (between Indus and Jhelum), the Jech doab (Jhelum/Chenab), the Rechna doab (Chenab/Ravi), the Bari doab (Ravi/Beas), and the Bist doab (Beas/Sutlej) (see map on the right). In early 1947, in the months leading up to the deliberations of the Punjab Boundary Commission, the main disputed areas appeared to be in the Bari and Bist doabs, although some areas in the Rechna doab were claimed by the Congress and Sikhs. In the Bari doab, the districts of Gurdaspur, Amritsar, Lahore, and Montgomery were all disputed.^[5] All districts (other than Amritsar, which was 46.5% Muslim) had Muslim majorities; albeit, in Gurdaspur, the Muslim majority, at 51.1%, was slender. At a smaller area-scale, only three tehsils (sub-units of a district) in the Bari doab had non-Muslim majorities. These were: Pathankot (in the extreme north of Gurdaspur, which was not in dispute), and Amritsar and Tarn Taran in Amritsar district. In addition, there were four Muslim-majority tehsils east of Beas-Sutlej (with two where Muslims outnumbered Hindus and Sikhs together).^[5]

Before the Boundary Commission began formal hearings, governments were set up for the East and the West Punjab regions. Their territories were provisionally divided by "notional division" based on simple district majorities. In both the Punjab and Bengal, the Boundary Commission consisted of two Muslim and two non-Muslim judges with Sir Cyril Radcliffe as a common chairman.^[5] The mission of the Punjab commission was worded generally as: "To demarcate the boundaries of the two parts of the Punjab, on the basis of ascertaining the contiguous majority areas of Muslims and non-Muslims. In doing so, it will take into account other factors." Each side (the Muslims and the Congress/Sikhs) presented its claim through counsel with no liberty to bargain. The judges too had no mandate to compromise and on all major issues they "divided two and two, leaving Sir Cyril Radcliffe the invidious task of making the actual decisions."^[5]

Independence and population exchanges

Massive population exchanges occurred between the two newly-formed states in the months immediately following Partition. Once the lines were established, about 14.5 million people crossed the borders to what they hoped was the relative safety of religious majority. Based on 1951 Census of displaced persons, 7,226,000 Muslims went to Pakistan from India while 7,249,000 Hindus and Sikhs moved to India from Pakistan immediately after partition. About 11.2 million or 78% of the population transfer took place in the west, with Punjab accounting for most of it; 5.3 million Muslims moved from India to West Punjab in Pakistan, 3.4 million Hindus and Sikhs moved from Pakistan to East Punjab in India; elsewhere in the west 1.2 million moved in each direction to and from Sind. The newly formed governments were completely unequipped to deal with migrations of such staggering magnitude, and massive violence and slaughter occurred on both sides of the border. Estimates of the number of deaths range around roughly 500,000, with low estimates at 200,000 and high estimates at 1,000,000.^[6]

Punjab

Bengal

The province of Bengal was divided into the two separate entities of West Bengal belonging to India, and East Bengal belonging to Pakistan. East Bengal was renamed East Pakistan in 1955, and later became the independent nation of Bangladesh after the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971.

Sindh

Hindu Sindhis would have remained in Sindh following the Partition, if it were not for the violence that erupted when massive amounts of Urdu speaking Muslims started pouring into Sindh. They began attacking the Hindu population. Before the announcement of the Partition, there were 1,400,000 Hindu Sindhis in their ancestral land Sindh. However, in a space of less than a year approximately 1,200,000 Hindus Sindhis fled their homes, most of them leaving with little more than the clothes on their bodies.

Historically, there had been some minor clashes from time to time, but, by and large, both Hindu and Muslim Sindhis co-existed without too much tension. While some Muslim Sindhis rejoiced at the departure of their rich Hindu neighbours because they felt they would gain from their departure, many Muslim Sindhis, in fact, helped Hindu Sindhis escape to India and saved them from non-Sindhi Muslim mobs. The fate of Hindu Sindhis was tragic. While most of them had been prosperous in their homeland, now they became stateless and took refuge in others parts of India, living in penury and deprivation.

Perspectives

British perspective

Indian perspective

The Partition was a highly controversial arrangement, and remains a cause of much tension on the subcontinent today. British Viceroy Louis Mountbatten has not only been accused of rushing the process through, but also is alleged to have influenced the Radcliffe Awards in India's favor since everyone agreed India would be a more desirable country for most.^{[7] [8]} However, the commission took so long to decide on a final boundary that the two nations were granted their independence even before there was a defined boundary between them. Even then, the members were so distraught at their handiwork (and its results) that they refused compensation for their time on the commission.

Some critics allege that British haste led to the cruelties of the Partition.^[9] Because independence was declared prior to the actual Partition, it was up to the new governments of India and Pakistan to keep public order. No large population movements were contemplated; the plan called for safeguards for minorities on both sides of the new state line. It was an impossible task, at which both states failed. There was a complete breakdown of law and order; many died in riots, massacre, or just from the hardships of their flight to safety. What ensued was one of the largest population movements in recorded history. According to Richard Symonds^[10]

at the lowest estimate, half a million people perished and twelve million became homeless

However, some argue that the British were forced to expedite the Partition by events on the ground.^[11], Law and order had broken down many times before Partition, with much bloodshed on both sides. A massive civil war was looming by the time Mountbatten became Viceroy. After World War II, Britain had limited resources^[12], perhaps insufficient to the task of keeping order. A hasty exit may have been seen as preferable, and perhaps less bloody than the slow disintegration of the Raj.

Demographics of the partition 1947–1965

History of settlement of partition refugees

Refugees settled in India

Many Sikhs and Hindu Punjabis settled in the Indian parts of Punjab and Delhi. Hindus migrating from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) settled across Eastern India and Northeastern India, many ending up in close-by states like West Bengal, Assam, and Tripura. Some migrants were sent to the Andaman islands.

Hindu Sindhis found themselves without a homeland. The responsibility of rehabilitating Hindu Sindhis was borne by all the states in Indian Union, but most Sindhis settled in the western states of Gujarat and Maharashtra. Refugee camps were set up for Hindu Sindhis. Many refugees did consider returning to Sindh once the violence settled down, but it was found that this was not possible, as they found their homes, businesses and other property had been seized by looters and the State. Many Hindu Sindhis overcame the trauma of poverty. The loss of a homeland has had a deeper and lasting effect on Sindhi culture which is in decline. The Sindhi language usage is dropping amongst younger Sindhis as they adopt the language, culture and tradition of their host state. The lack of spoken Sindhi on television and radio programmes has been a contributing factor in decline. The Sindhi language does remain in use in Sindh, but the dialect used by Hindus is different.

In late 2004, the Sindhi diaspora vociferously opposed a Public Interest Litigation in the Supreme Court of India which asked the government of India to delete the word "Sindh" from the Indian National Anthem (written by Rabindranath Tagore prior the partition) on the grounds that it infringed upon the sovereignty of Pakistan.

Refugees settled in Pakistan

Refugees or Muhajirs in Pakistan came from various parts of India. There was a large influx of Punjabi Muslims from East Punjab fleeing the riots. Despite severe physical and economic hardships, East Punjabi refugees to Pakistan did not face problems of cultural and linguistic assimilation after partition. However, there were many Muslim refugees who migrated to Pakistan from other Indian states. These refugees came from many different ethnic groups and regions in India, including Uttar Pradesh (then known as "United Provinces of Agra and Awadh", or UP), Madhya Pradesh (then Central Province or "CP"), Gujarat, Bihar, what was then the princely state of Hyderabad and so on. The descendants of these non-Punjabi refugees in Pakistan often refer to themselves as Muhajir whereas the assimilated Punjabi refugees no longer make that political distinction. Large numbers of non-Punjabi refugees settled in Sindh, particularly in the cities of Karachi and Hyderabad. They are united by their refugee status and their native Urdu language and are a strong political force in Sindh.

Artistic depictions of the Partition

Main article: Artistic depictions of the partition of India

In addition to the enormous historical literature on the Partition, there is also an extensive body of artistic work (novels, short stories, poetry, films, plays, paintings, etc.) that deals imaginatively with the pain and horror of the event. See artistic depictions of the partition of India for further discussion and a list of relevant works.

See also

• British East India Company
• British Empire
• British India
• List of Indian Princely States
• Indian independence movement
• Pakistan Movement
• East Bengal
• History of Bangladesh
• History of India
• History of Pakistan
• Indo-Pakistani War of 1947
• Artistic depictions of the partition of India
• India (disambiguation)

Notes

References

Further reading

Popularizations

• Collins, Larry and Dominique Lapierre: Freedom at Midnight. London: Collins, 1975. ISBN 0-00-638851-5
• Zubrzycki, John. (2006) The Last Nizam: An Indian Prince in the Australian Outback. Pan Macmillan, Australia. ISBN 978-0-3304-2321-2.

Memoir

• Azad, Maulana Abul Kalam: India Wins Freedom, Orient Longman, 1988. ISBN 81-250-0514-5

Academic monographs

• Ansari, Sarah. 2005. Life after Partition: Migration, Community and Strife in Sindh: 1947—1962. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. 256 pages. ISBN 019597834X.
• Butalia, Urvashi. 1998. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 308 pages. ISBN 0822324946
• Chatterji, Joya. 2002. Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932—1947. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. 323 pages. ISBN 0521523281.
• Gilmartin, David. 1988. Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press. 258 pages. ISBN 0520062493.
• Gossman, Partricia. 1999. Riots and Victims: Violence and the Construction of Communal Identity Among Bengali Muslims, 1905-1947. Westview Press. 224 pages. ISBN 0813336252
• Hasan, Mushirul (2001), India's Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilization, Oxford and Delhi: Oxford University Press, 444 pages, ISBN 0195635043.
• Ikram, S. M. 1995. Indian Muslims and Partition of India. Delhi: Atlantic. ISBN 8171563740
• Jalal, Ayesha (1993), The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 334 pages, ISBN 0521458501.
• Khan, Yasmin (September 18 2007), The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 250 pages, ISBN 0300120788.
• Page, David, Anita Inder Singh, Penderel Moon, G. D. Khosla, and Mushirul Hasan. 2001. The Partition Omnibus: Prelude to Partition/the Origins of the Partition of India 1936-1947/Divide and Quit/Stern Reckoning. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195658507
• Pandey, Gyanendra. 2002. Remembering Partition:: Violence, Nationalism and History in India. Cambride, UK: Cambridge University Press. 232 pages. ISBN 0521002508
• Raza, Hashim S. 1989. Mountbatten and the partition of India. New Delhi: Atlantic. ISBN 81-7156-059-8
• Shaikh, Farzana. 1989. Community and Consensus in Islam: Muslim Representation in Colonial India, 1860—1947. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 272 pages. ISBN 0521363284.
• Talbot, Ian and Gurharpal Singh (eds). 1999. Region and Partition: Bengal, Punjab and the Partition of the Subcontinent. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 420 pages. ISBN 0195790510.
• Talbot, Ian. 2002. Khizr Tiwana: The Punjab Unionist Party and the Partition of India. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 216 pages. ISBN 0195795512.
• Talbot, Ian. 2006. Divided Cities: Partition and Its Aftermath in Lahore and Amritsar. Oxford and Karachi: Oxford University Press. 350 pages. ISBN 0195472268.
• Wolpert, Stanley. 2006. Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 272 pages. ISBN 0195151984.
• J. Butler, Lawrence. 2002. Britain and Empire: Adjusting to a Post-Imperial World. London: I.B.Tauris. 256 pages. ISBN 186064449X

Articles

• Gilmartin, David. 1998. "Partition, Pakistan, and South Asian History: In Search of a Narrative." The Journal of Asian Studies, 57(4):1068-1095.
• Jeffrey, Robin. 1974. "The Punjab Boundary Force and the Problem of Order, August 1947" - Modern Asian Studies 8(4):491-520.
• Morris-Jones. 1983. "Thirty-Six Years Later: The Mixed Legacies of Mountbatten's Transfer of Power". International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs), 59(4):621-628.
• Spate, O. H. K. (1947), "The Partition of the Punjab and of Bengal", The Geographical Journal 110(4/6): 201-218.
• Spear, Percival. 1958. "Britain's Transfer of Power in India." Pacific Affairs, 31(2):173-180.
• Talbot, Ian. 1994. "Planning for Pakistan: The Planning Committee of the All-India Muslim League, 1943-46". Modern Asian Studies, 28(4):875-889.
• Visaria, Pravin M. 1969. "Migration Between India and Pakistan, 1951-61" Demography, 6(3):323-334.

External links

Bibliographies

• Select Research Bibliography on the Partition of India, Compiled by Vinay Lal, Department of History, UCLA; University of California at Los Angeles] list]
• A select list of Indian Publications on the Partition of India (Punjab & Bengal); University of Virginia] list]
• South Asian History: Colonial India — University of California, Berkeley Collection of documents on colonial India, Independence, and Partition]
• Indian Nationalism — Fordham University archive of relevant public-domain documents]

Other links

• The Partition of India : Impact and Aftermath
• Partition of India by A. G. Noorani.
• The Story of Pakistan
• Clip from 1947 newsreel showing Indian independence ceremony
• Partition of Bengal, 1947, Asiatic Society of Bangladesh
• Sindhi Exodus - Some personal accounts of Hindu Sindhis
• The 1947 Attacks on Hindus and Sikhs