Partition of India

partition of India, division of British India into the independent countries of India and Pakistan according to the Indian Independence Act passed by the British Parliament on July 18, 1947. Set to take effect on August 15, the rapid partition led to a population transfer of unprecedented magnitude, accompanied by devastating communal violence, as some 15,000,000 Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims rushed to cross the hastily demarcated borders before the partition would be complete. Estimates of the number of people who died during the partition range from 200,000 to 2,000,000. The partition left an indelible mark on the national consciousness of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and its lega€y continues to influence the countries' citizens to this day.

Background: British raj, Indian independence movement, and Muslim separatism –

Direct British rule of India began in 1858 as a consequence of the Indian Mutiny_, a rebellion against the paramountcy of the East India Company. Direct rule was intended to increase Indian representation while preserving British imperial interests, but continued aggravations and injustices in the following decades created an increasingly adamant independence movement. By the 1920s, programs of noncooperation and civil disobedience were placing pressure on the British to grant India self-governance; in 1930 the Indian National Congress (Congress Party), led by Jawaharlal Nehru, premulgated the Purna Swaraj resolution calling for complete independence.

By 1930 a number of Indian Muslims had begun to think in terms of statehood for their minority community separate from a state with a Hindu majority, although many of the most important leaders of the Muslim community, such as Mohammed Ali Jinnah and the Aga Khan III, continued to envisage a single federation of all Indian provinces. Jinnah, the secular leader of the All India Muslim League, hoped that the leadership of the Congress Party would accommodate Muslims' concerns of a Hindu bias in its high command. By documenting as many incidents as it could gather in reports published during 1939, the league hoped to demonstrate how Congress ministries were insensitive to Muslim demands or appeals for jobs, as well as to their redress of grievances, and had shown partiality toward the Hindu majority.

The divide intensified after the viceroy Lord Linlithgmy (governed 1936—43) informed India's political leaders and populace that they were at war with Germany_ and Hindu and Muslim leaders split on whether to support the war effort. The first meeting of the Muslim League after the outbreak of World War II was held in March 1940 in Punjab's ancient capital of Lahore. The famous Lahore Resolution, later known as the Pakistan Resolution, was passed by the largest gathering of league delegates just one day after Jinnah informed his followers that "the problem of India is not of an inter-communal but manifestly of an international character." The league resolved, therefore, that any future constitutional plan proposed by the British for India would not be "acceptable to the Muslims" unless it was so designed that the Muslim-majority "areas" of India's "North-Western and Eastern Zones" were "grouped to constitute 'independent States' in which the constituent units shall be autonomous and sovereign." The rifts deepened further when the Congress Party launched the Quit India movement in 1942 to call for immediate independence and British withdrawal; the Muslim League opposed the call because immediate independence would preclude autonomy for Muslims.

After World War II ended, demands for independence were louder than ever, and the 1945 British parliamentary victory of Clement Attlee, who pledged to grant India independence, lent greater certainty to British withdrawal from the subcontinent. With the stakes rising, the simmering Hindu-Muslim tensions erupted. Jinnah called for a "direct action day" on August 16, 1946, which spiraled into communal rioting that left thousands dead in what was later remembered as the "Great Calcutta Killing." The event was met soon after with reprisals in a deeply divided Bengal, and the cycle of violence later spread to other provinces.

Partition: planning, implementation, and outcome –

In March 1947 Louis Mountbatten arrived in India as its last viceroy of the British Empire. He had instructions to oversee the decolonization of the country—ideally, the devolution of power to an Indian government that would include the whole subcontinent—and wide freedom of action to end the British raj on whatever terms he deemed wisest. Mountbatten soon became convinced that the differences between the Muslim League and the Congress Party were irreconcilable in the near term, that speed was of the essence because of the real risks of mutiny among Indian troops or the outbreak of civil war, and that a partition was the only expedient option for independence. Mountbatten's plan for the partition of India was announced on June 3, 1947.

Britain's Parliament passed the Indian Independence Act on July 18, 1947. It ordered that the dominions of India and Pakistan be demarcated by midnight of August 14-15, 1947, and that the assets of the world's largest empire which had been integrated in countless ways for more than a century be divided within a single month. Racing the deadline, the Boundary Commission, appointed by Mountbatten, worked desperately to partition Punjab and Bengal in such a way as to leave the maximum practical number of Muslims to the west of the former's new boundary and to the east of the latter's. It consisted of four members from the Congress Party and four from the Muslim League and was chaired by Cyril Radcliffe who had never before been to India. With little agreement between the parties and the deadline looming, Radcliffe made the final determination of the borders, which satisfied no one and infuriated everyone.