Partition Is The Gateway For Mass Hatred Between Hindus And Muslims

“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”

Apart from religious and sectarian tensions between Hindus and Muslims, an ideological difference between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League is another key factor which led to the partition.

There was a high food shortage in 1946 and this caused many to ration. World War II left a deep wound in India as two and a half million Indian soldiers were sent to aid the allies and 24,000 killed. Many were unemployed as they lost their jobs after the war since there was no need for war production. Gandhi’s party, Indian national congress, created in 1885 seemed it would be the power that ruled after Britain left. This changed, however, as the All Muslim league became popular during World War II. Muslims were a minority compared to the Hindus. The Partition of 1947 created Pakistan, where the Muslims would live, and India, where the Hindus would live.

Preferring to live in Hindu-dominated India rather than Muslim dominated Pakistan, 2.5 million Sikhs moved from Pakistan’s West Punjab region to East Punjab in

The dominant idiom of Indian writing today is firmly entrenched in pain, anxiety of displacement, nostalgia, yearning to belong to roots, and so on. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss are two such novels that explore the tragedy of man on several levels using different perspectives. Both the novels are about averted culture-clash tragedies, homogeneity vs. heterogeneity, and about Indian sensibilities.

This sense of prejudice and corruption definitely comes to life when Boo shows us instances of where the Husains (who are Muslim) experience obstacles that Hindus in Annawadi do not. An example of an obstacle would be when the Mumbai police were looking for Abdul and he looks for a place to hide while making sure his neighbors wouldn’t see him. This example shows the reader that the old Hindu-Muslim resentments were still in place and because of these resentments as well as the neighbors’ economic envy for Abdul’s relatively lucrative job, Abdul realizes that his mostly Hindu neighbors would not really like him and would be more prone to help the police find him. Boo expresses that living in such a corrupted society makes it very difficult for people to hold on to any sense of a moral; she tells us that anyone who tries to value selflessness or integrity amid this corruption cannot

A person’s heritage and cultural identity may be lost when moving to a new country where the culture is different and other cultures are not easily accepted. In the short story “Hindus”, Bharati Mukherjee uses setting, characters and the plot to discuss what it is like to lose your cultural identity while being a visible minority in America. Mukherjee uses the plot to describe the events that take place in the main characters life that lead her to realize how different the culture and life is in the America’s. She also uses the characters as a way of demonstrating how moving away from one’s culture and heritage can change a person’s perspective and ways of thinking. Mukerjee also uses setting in her story to identity the physical differences in culture between living in India and America. Alike the setting and characters, the plot helps describe the loss of culture with a sequence of events.

The religious practices which are still followed in the country, makes one feel that they are living in the primitive world. The story of Roop Kanwar from Deorala , Rajasthan, is a violent and forceful murder, Which was fabricated as ‘Sati’ by the villagers. When speaking about ‘Sati’, Dalrymple enumerates:

This can be put down primarily to the harsh treatment of Hindus and Sikhs by Emperor Aurangzeb, despite the fact he made attempts to reconcile, especially towards the Sikhs, in the last few days of his life. This underlying hatred continued for hundreds of years and it was perhaps the first cause of hatred between Muslims and Hindus which made them believe they could not live together. This was an important first cause for the partition as it instilled hatred between Hindus and Muslims. The East India Company, or EIC was also the longest term cause, this time relating to independence by causing a rift between the British and Indians.

An event that has relation to war today is the tension in the northern region of India, Punjab, where the Sikh holy book was ripped up and thrown. Many Sikhs gathered in a peaceful protest, trying to bring to justice the people who were responsible, but the police ended up shooting and killing two peaceful protestors. Simran Jeet Singh, is one of the authors, who writes on this topic. He takes up this topic, because it represents part of the unjust that happened to Sikhs in 1984 where they were killed and murdered in the thousands by the Indian government. Singh says, “I was born in the United States in the summer of 1984, during the height of the anti- Sikh violence in Punjab” (Singh 1). He goes on to say how he feels the pain of his Sikh brothers and sisters who were killed in the year 1984, for their religious beliefs. Background about Singh shows us the importance of mediated narratives, as they show that Singh is trying to raise awareness about the issues going on in Punjab in an attempt to try to avoid the destruction that happened in 1984. Another one of these authors is Nirmala Ganapathy, who is part of The Straits Times. She takes up the same interest as Singh, as she works to raise awareness on the issues affecting her homeland of India. She writes about why Sikhs have been blocking major roads in India and the influence this has. Her curiosity is what has

This article is based around the disagreement of beliefs between fakirs and Muslim fundamentalists in India. It focuses on the ideas and beliefs that fakirs hold, these often being very diverse when looking at different communities. Sue Isherwood, the author, recounts some of her experiences in India with Abdul, one of the many Muslims associated with Fakirs, who has, like many others faced hardship from those who are of the fundamentalist view. Some specific encounters of mistreatment include the fakirs being forced to eat beef, being prevented from using the village well and having their instruments smashed, which was their source of income. This article mentions the constant focus on the tension between Hindus and Muslims, where now the

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:

Then in 1905 The Partition of Bengal took place. This separated the Hindus from the Muslims. The Partition, as well as the creation of Pakistan, which became dominantly Muslim, led to mass immigration of refugees. Most of the citizens lived in bustis, or slums, continuing to today.

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.

In the novel The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, the reader notices the differences between the modern American view of politics and society between the politics and society in the novel. This novel takes place in the southwestern part of India in a town called Kerala and is focused on the wealthy family of the Syrian Christian Ipe family of Ayemenem. Within this family, many of them have problems in their lives and as a result, go to the house once their problems have taken a turn for the worse. A major theme of this story is the society of India and the caste system that is in place. Some characters that were majorly affected by the caste system are a woman named Ammu and her two children, Estha and Rahel along with an Untouchable named Velutha. Besides the caste system Ammu and her children must worry about the social system and the outcomes of actions that are not socially acceptable. Another recurring theme of this novel is the change in political stances in the country of India and how it affects the characters. Since the Ipe family is wealthy, they own a factory called “Paradise Pickles and Preserves” and some character struggles revolves around the fact that there is a motion for a change in politics. Although the novel can be understood on its own, it makes it more understandable if the reader learns about the political history of India and an understanding of the caste system. Besides the political history and caste system the view on gender in the country of