Indian Partition And Its Effect

“India has never been a symbol of unity of Hindu-Muslim civilization. It is not possible for the British Government to create homogeneity between Hindu and Muslim culture and civilization as the two systems are distinctively opposed to each other. There is no way other than the partition of India”

Many people believe that in the 1940’s most of India’s problems involving independence was to do with divisions within India rather than British imperialism. In this essay I will be looking at both points of view and finally giving my opinion. I will be using three sources also to help me show both sides of the story. I will also be using my further knowledge to add a wider range of knowledge.

Throughout the years many historians have compilated and examined why Indian people were so desperate to gain back their independence from the British Empire during their rule over India, from 1612 to 1947. The reasoning can most definitely be found as the British discriminated against Indian people as they believe that they were inferior; it is no surprise that Indian people fought so hard for their independence. Throughout the British Raj, they placed and put forward unbelievably racist acts and laws which discriminated against Indian people. Which of course led to Indians to rebel against the British rule and which the British reacted with causing massacres. Explaining the nationalistic many India’s felt during the British Raj.

The partition of India and its subsequent independence is the most barbaric incident in the history of India. Millions of people were forced to leave their homes and many were butchered in the worst possible ways. There was an unorganised and unplanned brutality. The unbelievable part was how could our sense of moral righteousness be handicapped by the actions of a few. How could it be that the same people who had driven the Britishers out of 'their' country could in turn start killing each other. The communal politics reached every nook and cranny in India polluting whole of the country with the advertisement of a freedom of a very unique kind than that imagined by many people of India.

Throughout the year’s many historians have compilated and examined why Indian people were so desperate to gain back their independence from the British Empire during their rule over India, from 1612 to 1947. The reasoning can most definitely be found as the British discriminated against Indian people as they believe that they were inferior; it is no surprise that Indian people fought so hard for their independence. Throughout the British Raj, they placed and put forward unbelievably racist acts and laws which discriminated against Indian people. Which of course led to Indian’s rebelling against the British rule and thus many massacres and rebellions occurred during their ruling. Thus, answering why Indian people fought so desperately for

The ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan has been the subject of speculation and study by political scientists and historians for a number of years. The ethnic conflict seems to have been sparked at the very beginning in 1947, when the British used Muslim and Hindu mercenaries against each other before the area finally split into today’s countries of India and Pakistan (Spiegel et al. 2015, 185). The timeline since then has been full of conflicts, both major and minor. Brutal tactics used by security forces and a high rate of unemployment have added to the issue (BBC News 2016).

Today, India is a free country, but this country’s history to freedom was not pleasant. Britain, a country that occupied many territories, came to conquer India for its valuables. During this time, they treated Indians poorly and stole all the goods of the country to trade. This rule continued for nearly two-hundred years, and India struggled to fight for freedom from 1857 to 1947. On August 15, 1947, India finally gained its independence through the India Independence Act passed by the British House of Common. The British House of Commons is the UK parliament that is part of the legislative branch. The act stated that India would be divided into two dominions, India and Pakistan, thus granting Pakistan independence on August 14 and Indian independence on August 15. Marc Aronson, in his book Race, explores and examines the concept of race where the reasoning behind racial discrimination can be seen. Aronson provides the four pillars of race, which show an ideology behind racism that occurs universally. During the British-rule in India, the British racially discriminated Indians. As a result of the discrimination, Britain

The British’s goal to separate the Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs was a total disaster. “The trouble was that Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs were an integrated population so that it was impossible to make a border without widespread dislocation.” This quote states that making a border was impossible because the groups aren’t meant to be spread apart. “By the end of 1947 there were virtually no Hindus or Sikhs living in west India - now part of Pakistan - and no Muslims in the Indian east.” This explains how the British made Pakistan because of the partition. “The British government and Mountbatten must bear a large part of the blame for this tragedy." Therefore, the British caused religious violence and disagreement against each

Recognizing India’s partition between Hindus and Muslims as a step towards war, the British government quickly withdrew and allowed India to gain independence and settle its own affairs, an insightful choice as it ultimately avoided a civil war. Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohandas Gandhi both sought an independent,

Contemporary comparative erudition on the topic of nationalism proposes another reason for India’s democratic survival. Under the independence movement, with the governance of Gandhi, Nehru and the Congress party turned what formerly had been a cultural unit into a nation with a cultural political unit. This transformation perpetuated Indian democracy: “There has to be a political unit before there can be a democracy” The strategic communications between British authorities and national movement leaders also laid the fundamentals of democracy. No historical explanation can be comprehensive unless it takes the “agency” of India’s freedom movement into justification – with the attainment of India’s autonomy. (Varshney 1998: 38)

The Partition of India was the partition of the British Indian Empire that gave birth to the two independent and sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan which was later split into the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Union of India later Republic of India on 15 August 1947. "Partition" here refers not only refers to the segregation of two nations, but also to the respective divisions of other assets of army and navy, valuable minerals in central treasury and other administrative possessions of the respective countries. This partition has been termed as the largest human migration in history to have ever taken place. That being said it also has paid the price of loss of lives which are innumerable, from being 200,000 to 500,000 recorded deaths and 14 million Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims being displaced from this partition.

In this essay I will be discussing the impact that the rule of the British Empire had on India’s development as a nation. I will be looking at how British imperial rule both benefitted and hindered the growth of India economically, socially, and culturally. To do this I will be looking at the beginning of the British Empire’s involvement in India, right up until India gained its independence from Britain on the 15th of August 1947. The purpose of this essay is to examine the long lasting effects of the British Empire on the Indian nation. India, like all colonies, was affected in many ways by the age of imperialism, and those effects are still evident today. The essay will look at both sides of the argument, allowing for positive and negative effects before finally concluding with a summary and re iteration of the points and arguments made throughout the essay. The essay will avoid taking sides, but rather the aim is to merely give an account of the positive and negative effects of British imperialism in India. The essay as previously mentioned will focus on the economic, cultural, and social effects.

Second, British India, which included today’s India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, was a region so large that there were areas in which Britain exercised direct control over the subject population and others where it exerted indirect control. It is exceedingly difficult, therefore, to extrapolate from one experience to another. Although it is impossible to determine how India would have developed had England never established a dominating presence there, I find the results of British colonialism to have been a mixed bag for India: the negatives, however, far outweighed the positives.

The Partition of India in August, 1947 was a significant event in history that accounted for the separation of one of the world’s oldest civilization into two, independent nations – Pakistan and India. Like many other wars in history, The Partition of India was instigated by religious, political and social conflict. This resulted in violence, discrimination and the largest human displacement in contemporary history. While the Partition was well-studied, much of our understanding was focused on the political side of history, not the human side of it. This was why oral history played an important role in manifesting the complexity of a historical event. Our focus here is Maya Rani’s testimony from Butalia’s book, The Other Side of Silence:

Before the Partition of India, in 1947, India was considered a country with a reasonably peaceful history. However, during and after the Partition, sexual violence, both towards men and women, escalated, resulting in the rape and abduction of over 80,000 women. Cracking India, by Bapsi Sidhwa, tells a story that highlights these violent acts by both Muslims and Hindus, through the eyes of a disabled young Parsi girl named Lenny, who witnesses first hand the violence of Partition when she mistakenly participates in the abduction of her ayah, Shanta. Throughout Cracking India, Lenny observes as the religions involved in Partition become increasingly violent towards both men and women, within their own religions and against others.