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    HB! :danc...

    Sixty bitter years after Partition
    As the 60th anniversary of Indian Partition approaches, the BBC's Andrew Whitehead looks back at how and why independence from Britain meant the creation of two separate countries, India and Pakistan.


    "There can be no question of coercing any large areas in which one community has a majority to live against their will under a government in which another community has a majority. And the only alternative to coercion is partition."

    With those words, the last Viceroy of British India, Lord Mountbatten, announced that Britain would be granting independence not to one nation, but to two. All Britain's attempts to devise a constitutional formula which preserved India's unity while offering safeguards for the large Muslim minority had failed.

    Mountbatten's speech was made on 3 June 1947. Just 10 weeks later, he was presiding at twin independence ceremonies.

    In Karachi on 14 August, he witnessed the birth of a nation with an explicit Muslim identity, Pakistan. The following day, he was in Delhi for India's independence ceremonies - a country more than three times the population of Pakistan and with a large Hindu majority.

    In those hectic weeks between the announcement of partition and the transfer of power, a British judge, Cyril Radcliffe, was brought in to devise the border between India and Pakistan. It meant cutting in half two of India's most powerful and populous provinces, Punjab and Bengal.

    Radcliffe had never been to India before and never came again. Whatever line he had devised, tens of millions would have felt aggrieved. The hasty partition of these provinces triggered one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th Century.

    Independence dream

    Tens of millions of Muslims on one side, and Hindus and Sikhs on the other, found themselves on what they regarded as the wrong side of the boundary line. Amid the tension, the communal clashes and the panicked mass migration, there was huge loss of life. No one knows the exact number.

    Historians believe that upwards of half a million people were killed, tens of thousands of women were raped or abducted and more than 10 million people became refugees in a catastrophe which still haunts South Asian politics and diplomacy.

    India's demands for self-rule dated back to the previous century, and gained particular force in the 1920s and 1930s under the leadership of the Hindu ascetic and campaigning genius, Mahatma Gandhi.

    By 1945, and the end of World War II, it was clear that self-rule for India was imminent. The landslide victory of a radical-minded Labour party in Britain's 1945 elections hastened the process.

    The complicating factor was that many in India's large Muslim minority felt they would be at a disadvantage in a mainly Hindu nation.

    The Muslim League, led by austere lawyer Mohammed Ali Jinnah, took up this issue.

    Religious split

    It was as late as 1940 that the Muslim League started demanding a separate nation for the region's Muslims. But the League's strong showing in post-war provincial elections meant that their demand for a separate Pakistan could not be ignored.

    The terrible violence between communities which so tarnished independence began in Calcutta (now Kolkata) a year before the British transferred power and slowly spread.

    But it was only after the independence ceremonies - and then, two days later, the announcement of where the boundary would run - that Punjab became engulfed in the worst of the Partition bloodletting.

    Punjab was home to a large and influential Sikh population, who dominated much of the region's agriculture but there was hardly anywhere where Sikhs were in a majority and their lands and most important places of worship straddled the new Partition line.

    Almost all Sikhs felt more comfortable in India than in Pakistan - hundreds of thousands moved in endless caravans, some 70 miles long, in the monsoon months of 1947. So did many Hindus. Roughly equal numbers of Muslims made their way to Pakistan.

    There was little pattern to the violence. All communities suffered, all harboured perpetrators. It was vicious - almost unbelievably so. Columns of refugees were attacked, harried and sometimes slaughtered.

    Trainloads of migrants were put to death, their bodies sometimes horribly butchered and disfigured. On both sides, women were particular targets for violence and impregnation.

    Bad neighbours

    The debate about whether Partition was right or wrong, whether it was inevitable or avoidable, has receded over the years.

    THE PARTITION IN VERSE

    ...In seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided, A continent for better or worse divided
    from Partition by WH Auden

    Corpses lie strewn in your [the Punjab's] pastures and the Chenab [river] has turned crimson
    from An Ode to Waris Shah by Amrita Pritam

    Somewhere the wave of the slow night will meet the shore and somewhere will anchor the boat of the heart's grief
    from Freedom's Dawn by Faiz Ahmad Faiz


    But historians in South Asia by and large agree that if Britain had sought a less hasty and better prepared transfer of power, much of the bloodshed could have been avoided.

    Pakistan's founder, Jinnah, and India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, never got on well. The tension and appalling violence which overshadowed their nations' births made matters much worse. Countries which could have been good neighbours turned out to be enemies right from the start.

    The Kashmir issue intensified the sense of conflict. Kashmir lay between India and Pakistan. It had a Muslim majority but a Hindu princely ruler had to make the decision about which country to join.

    Pakistan tried to force the issue, encouraging first a local uprising and then an invasion by Pakistani tribesmen. The maharaja pleaded to India for help, and Indian troops airlifted into the Kashmir Valley succeeded in blocking the tribal army's advance.

    India should never have been partitioned. The benefits of India's growth would have been shared by all and huge sums of defence money saved and redirected to better causes.
    Peenal, London


    Within months of independence, India and Pakistan were at war in Kashmir. The dispute has never been resolved. Kashmir has endured its own informal partition with the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley, the heartland of Kashmiri culture, under Indian control but still claimed by Pakistan.

    Pakistan had the acute problem of geography. It consisted of two wings, Bengali-speaking East Pakistan, and Punjabi-dominated West Pakistan, with 1,000 miles of Indian territory in between.

    The East had just the larger population - but power and influence lay with the West. In 1971, Indian troops supported Bengali nationalists in prising East Pakistan free of West Pakistan's control, and the new nation of Bangladesh was born.

    Defined by the differences

    The wars and rivalry between India and Pakistan have encouraged both countries to build strong armies (in Pakistan, the army has repeatedly overthrown civilian governments) and to develop nuclear arsenals.

    Regional co-operation in South Asia has been perpetually frustrated by this rivalry. India still has a large Muslim minority, about one in seven of the population, but the tension with Pakistan has put strain on the Indian tradition of secularism in public life and religious tolerance.

    The start of a separatist insurgency in Kashmir from the end of the 1980s further worsened relations between the two countries.

    Pakistan insisted it was only giving moral support to the separatists - India was convinced that Pakistan was arming, training and at times organising these Muslim militants.

    Some were advocates of jihad who had been supported by Pakistan in fighting Soviet rule in Afghanistan and then turned their attention to Kashmir - and have also trained and encouraged Islamic radicals who have sought targets further afield.

    Both India and Pakistan have struggled to escape the shadow of the violence amid which they gained nationhood. Kashmir is only one aspect of the unfinished business of Partition. Both national identities are defined in large part by contrast with the other.

    Yet India and Pakistan have - hesitatingly, and sometimes painfully - been struggling towards building better links. If that happens, South Asia will finally have managed to supersede the bitter legacy of 1947.


    BBC, News, BBC News, news online, world, uk, international, foreign, british, online, service
    THEY!!111 OMG WTF LOL LET DA NOMADS AND TEH S3D3NTARY PEOPLA BOTH MAEK BITER AXP3REINCES
    AND TEH GRAAT SINS OF THERE [DOCTRINAL] INOVATIONS BQU3ATH3D SMAL
    AND!!1!11!!! LOL JUST IN CAES A DISPUTANT CALS U 2 DISPUT3 ABOUT THEYRE CLAMES
    DO NOT THAN DISPUT3 ON THEM 3XCAPT BY WAY OF AN 3XTARNAL DISPUTA!!!!11!! WTF

  • #2
    India & Pakistan.
    Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.
    "Hating America is something best left to Mobius. He is an expert Yank hater.
    He also hates Texans and Australians, he does diversify." ~ Braindead

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    • #3
      I lived in Cyprus as a boy, before the Greek and Turkish Cypriots each withdrew into their own part of the island.

      And I travelled through Yugoslavia several times before that country fragmented and the various racial groups separated themselves out.

      In neither case did I detect the sort of underlying insecurities and hatreds that later surfaced.

      The process of partition itself, I suspect, fills people with fear and enflames them against each other.

      Weird - that you can accept someone as a neighbour for years only then to exhibit the sort of hatred and fearm of them which is described in the article.

      Comment


      • #4
        The funny thing is in places removed from that tension, like the US or Britain, most Pakistanis and Indians see each other as comrades, sharing a similar culture, rather than enemies.
        “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
        - John 13:34-35 (NRSV)

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by East Street Trader
          I lived in Cyprus as a boy, before the Greek and Turkish Cypriots each withdrew into their own part of the island.

          And I travelled through Yugoslavia several times before that country fragmented and the various racial groups separated themselves out.

          In neither case did I detect the sort of underlying insecurities and hatreds that later surfaced.

          The process of partition itself, I suspect, fills people with fear and enflames them against each other.

          Weird - that you can accept someone as a neighbour for years only then to exhibit the sort of hatred and fearm of them which is described in the article.

          Thats odd, as at least in Yugoslavia, there has been hostility practically since the state was formed in 1918. Perhaps the hatred was simply repressed at the time.

          What I understand of the situation in India is that the issues arose as it became clear that the British were leaving.

          Cyprus maybe was different. That would be worth a thread of its own, I guess.

          What raises the issue is the prospect of self-rule, and fear as to who will succeed the previous supranational power, whether that power is the British Raj, or Marshall Tito.
          "A person cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human. To become human, is what this individual person, has been created for.” Martin Buber

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
            The funny thing is in places removed from that tension, like the US or Britain, most Pakistanis and Indians see each other as comrades, sharing a similar culture, rather than enemies.

            yeah, and in the US secular and Reform Jews can even get along with the Ultra-Orthodox The tension is for power, and when someone else has the power, and youre too weak to even attempt to control the ones with the power, you dont have the tension. Not that the US or Britain are idyllic. But in the US the struggle is fundie christians vs secularist and liberal christians, frightend native whites against non-white immigrants and their would be employers, etc, etc.

            Of course this dynamic isnt universal, either. Jews and Muslims get along ok in the USA, for the most part, but not so well in France. In fact I have less hope for reconciliaton between Jews and Muslims in France than I do for that in the ME.
            "A person cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human. To become human, is what this individual person, has been created for.” Martin Buber

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            • #7
              LOTM, I think many Serbs, croats etc who are alive now, are the result of mixed between serbs, croats, slovenians, bosnians marriages during the commie era.

              The best croat tennis player is half bosnian, and the best serb tennis player is half croat, (both are around 20 something in age)

              I think all the nationalities have respect for Tito.
              I need a foot massage

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              • #8
                Altough I remember a big fight in Australia between immigrants of balkan nationalities, so it seems now they hate each other for sure
                I need a foot massage

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
                  The funny thing is in places removed from that tension, like the US or Britain, most Pakistanis and Indians see each other as comrades, sharing a similar culture, rather than enemies.
                  Racial affinity. It becomes apparent only after you go to a place where you aren't the only race around.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    As for Partition - it was a brilliant idea, but horribly executed. It should have been done over a five to fifteen year time period, with that period being the ultimatum for all non-Muslims in Pakistan, and all Muslims in India, to leave the country, so that India would have had no problems with Muslims or terrorism, and Pakistan and Bangladesh would not have committed the atrocities they did (and still do) on Hindus.

                    The other option was to simply declare that the country would not be partitioned, and let the bloodbath of the millennium ensue. It would have at least taught us - Hindus and Muslims - to live with each other. But of course, it would have been a disaster in the long run.

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                    • #11
                      Or better yet, the British should have just slaughtered every Muslim in the subcontinent before they left. Then they couldn't screw up both India and their own countries and harass the entirely faultless Hindus.
                      "The French caused the war [Persian Gulf war, 1991]" - Ned
                      "you people who bash Bush have no appreciation for one of the great presidents in our history." - Ned
                      "I wish I had gay sex in the boy scouts" - Dissident

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                      • #12
                        with that period being the ultimatum for all non-Muslims in Pakistan, and all Muslims in India, to leave the country


                        ethnic cleansing

                        Oh, and I almost forgot, it's all the Mooslims fault!
                        “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
                        - John 13:34-35 (NRSV)

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Britain should have kept control of Punjab and Bengal, and done their pest to make them their own countries outright (as happened with Bengal anyways) long after the fundi India and Pakistan proved what religious fantacism leads to.
                          "The DPRK is still in a state of war with the U.S. It's called a black out." - Che explaining why orbital nightime pictures of NK show few lights. Seriously.

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                          • #14
                            That's stupid.

                            Also, Bengal isn't its own country.
                            THEY!!111 OMG WTF LOL LET DA NOMADS AND TEH S3D3NTARY PEOPLA BOTH MAEK BITER AXP3REINCES
                            AND TEH GRAAT SINS OF THERE [DOCTRINAL] INOVATIONS BQU3ATH3D SMAL
                            AND!!1!11!!! LOL JUST IN CAES A DISPUTANT CALS U 2 DISPUT3 ABOUT THEYRE CLAMES
                            DO NOT THAN DISPUT3 ON THEM 3XCAPT BY WAY OF AN 3XTARNAL DISPUTA!!!!11!! WTF

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Excuse me, Bangledesh.

                              And it is far less stupid than 500,000 dead and 10,000,000 displaced it would seem.
                              "The DPRK is still in a state of war with the U.S. It's called a black out." - Che explaining why orbital nightime pictures of NK show few lights. Seriously.

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