The Partition of India: A Photographic History
Polarized by religion, friends and neighbors turned around. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions displaced. The atrocities were horrific - pregnant women and infants were not spared.
It was the unexpected result of Britain's lawless plan to leave the subcontinent in 1947 after nearly three centuries and dividing it into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan, itself divided into two regions more than 1,000 miles apart. The partition, as the division became known, sparked one of the greatest migrations in history.
It would forever change the face and geopolitics of South Asia; nearly 25 years later, for example, Bangladesh was born out of East Pakistan.
Some historians argue that partition would not have been necessary if Britain had earlier granted autonomy to India, where Hindus and Muslims have lived side by side for centuries. But the idea of a separate state for Muslims in British India gained traction in the 1930s, even though Mahatma Gandhi opposed it. A decade later, Britain was reeling from World War II and preparing to cede power.
Pakistan's request, directed by Muhammad Ali Jinnah of the India Muslim League, contributed to one of the largest Hindu-Muslim riots in India in August 1946, when at least 2,000 people were killed in five days in Calcutta (now Kolkata), then capital of the province of Bengal. Over the following months, more communal fighting followed, particularly in Bengal and Punjab, another region with a large mixed population that also included Sikhs.
As India and Pakistan prepared for independence, Jinnah, about to be president of the Muslim-majority state, proclaimed a liberal Pakistan. And on August 15, Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, celebrated his nation's independence and “rendezvous with fate”. But trouble was already underway.
Lord Louis Mountbatten, the newly appointed last Viceroy of British India, had yet to reveal the whereabouts of the new borders, which created East and West Pakistan with India wedged in between, would be. This would happen two days later on August 17.
Muslims left India for Pakistan, mostly westward, while Hindus and Sikhs made the reverse trip. No less than 20 million people have fled. Both sides left devastation in their wake. Documentation is sparse, but hundreds of thousands and up to two million people were killed. There is no count of the number of rapes.
"It's a really, really huge part of world history," said Guneeta Singh Bhalla, the founder of 1947 Partition Archive. , a decade-old oral history project. “It really defined where we are culturally, sociologically and politically,” she said of South Asia.
La most Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis were born a generation after partition. . But its repercussions persist. India and Pakistan fought three wars, often squabbling over claims to Kashmir, India...
Polarized by religion, friends and neighbors turned around. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions displaced. The atrocities were horrific - pregnant women and infants were not spared.
It was the unexpected result of Britain's lawless plan to leave the subcontinent in 1947 after nearly three centuries and dividing it into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan, itself divided into two regions more than 1,000 miles apart. The partition, as the division became known, sparked one of the greatest migrations in history.
It would forever change the face and geopolitics of South Asia; nearly 25 years later, for example, Bangladesh was born out of East Pakistan.
Some historians argue that partition would not have been necessary if Britain had earlier granted autonomy to India, where Hindus and Muslims have lived side by side for centuries. But the idea of a separate state for Muslims in British India gained traction in the 1930s, even though Mahatma Gandhi opposed it. A decade later, Britain was reeling from World War II and preparing to cede power.
Pakistan's request, directed by Muhammad Ali Jinnah of the India Muslim League, contributed to one of the largest Hindu-Muslim riots in India in August 1946, when at least 2,000 people were killed in five days in Calcutta (now Kolkata), then capital of the province of Bengal. Over the following months, more communal fighting followed, particularly in Bengal and Punjab, another region with a large mixed population that also included Sikhs.
As India and Pakistan prepared for independence, Jinnah, about to be president of the Muslim-majority state, proclaimed a liberal Pakistan. And on August 15, Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, celebrated his nation's independence and “rendezvous with fate”. But trouble was already underway.
Lord Louis Mountbatten, the newly appointed last Viceroy of British India, had yet to reveal the whereabouts of the new borders, which created East and West Pakistan with India wedged in between, would be. This would happen two days later on August 17.
Muslims left India for Pakistan, mostly westward, while Hindus and Sikhs made the reverse trip. No less than 20 million people have fled. Both sides left devastation in their wake. Documentation is sparse, but hundreds of thousands and up to two million people were killed. There is no count of the number of rapes.
"It's a really, really huge part of world history," said Guneeta Singh Bhalla, the founder of 1947 Partition Archive. , a decade-old oral history project. “It really defined where we are culturally, sociologically and politically,” she said of South Asia.
La most Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis were born a generation after partition. . But its repercussions persist. India and Pakistan fought three wars, often squabbling over claims to Kashmir, India...
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